When God Was a Rabbit: A Novel

by Sarah Winman

“Do you think you could talk to them?” I said. “Just to hear your voice would be enough.” “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

We got as close as we could. The smell of burning oil had given way to the stench of the unspeakable. He read the photocopied sheets of paper of the missing and somewhere I knew he still felt that way.

We’d walked too far; he’d overestimated his strength, and soon his face paled beneath exhaustion. We took it slow across the bridge and I told him how he used to love the bridge, that he’d probably taken it the night of his attack.

“I asked Charlie if I had a boyfriend.” “And what did he say?” “He said I never had a boyfriend. I made it hard for people who loved me. Do you know why I did that?” I shook my head. “Why does anyone do that?” He didn’t answer.

“Are you waiting for my mind to fully return?” I took a moment to think how I should answer. “Yes.” “What if it doesn’t?” I shrugged.

“I can still be your brother.” Not the same, I thought. “You’re the only person who really knows me,” I said. “It’s how we were, how we grew up.” “That’s a bit fucked,” he said. “No pressure, then?”

I heard the front door just as the coffee came to the boil. He must have noticed the light because he came down the stairs and put his head around the corner and seemed surprisingly sober. “Hey,” he said. “Up early or still up late?” “Not sure. Want a coffee?” “Coffee would be good,” he said.

“Ginger used to say that you could make a woman pregnant just by looking at her. She loved you.” He nodded. Sighed deeply. “Everybody seemed to love me. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I walked over the bridge because I wanted to feel what it meant to me, the way you said. Feel the person I’m supposed to be. But I couldn’t. Something is dislocated; I’m dislocated. And I sat and I looked at the city and I longed for those last moments again. I thought it might prompt me to remember something, to frighten me, anything. But it was just a bench. I had no sense of peace, no sense of place.

I’m constantly reminded of someone I can’t live up to. No one wants the person I am today.”

He mentioned that he wanted to live by himself, didn’t want us around, so burdened was he by our expectation, and I couldn’t tell my parents, waiting as they were for his planned arrival.

Charlie showed Joe to his bedroom, and we didn’t see him for the rest of the evening. We didn’t feel like eating; too often now meals were replaced by drink. We were unhappy, each daring the other to voice the unspeakable, the malcontent of our lot.

Joe didn’t emerge for two days. Finally stepped out with the sun, as Ginger would have said, and he walked into the kitchen offering to make us toast. We’d already

eaten but we said yes, the gesture was fine and he looked like he was trying.

He looked unfamiliar, and that made it easier ...

I waited for him to add something critical, something provoking. I didn’t have to wait long. “I think you’re one of those people who write instead of live, aren’t you?” “Fuck off,” I said, adding a smile—a composed smile—the way Nancy always did. “Touched a nerve.”

I retreated, said nothing all night, simply drank—we all did, no one was counting—and I felt my rage burn acid-hot as I watched him grow in his present, seem happy in his present. I didn’t know why I felt like this. Normal, the doctor would have said, my feelings were normal.

“It’s too easy, isn’t it? You fight for nothing. You’re just not interested in any of it. Not us. None of it. You don’t care about what went before. You just fucking mock us.” “I care.”

“You can’t throw a Frisbee. And you can’t dance. You see, that’s who you are, Joe. All these things. That’s the person I know, and through him, is the way you’ll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was

there.

“You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. And you were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then.

His strange presence

had uncovered a loneliness of such devouring longing, one that reached cruelly back into the past, and I knew I could no longer be around him.

“It’s just … something came back, Ell. In there. Charlie said I needed to ask you.” “Ask me what?” I said, my voice cold, unrecognizable. “The word Trehaven. What is it?”

“Thank you for bringing him home.” I wanted to turn around and say something, but there were no words, just this image of her son, my brother, amidst us once again; the light clinging to him in the frail dusk, the light that said never go out.

And he uncovered in us a curious need: one where we all secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realized that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.

He was so often not the person I remember him to be; long gone was the fragile cynicism that kept him away from normal human encounter, now replaced by a bountiful enthusiasm that saw life like a child.

And sometimes his memory buckled at discretion and gave way to the revelations of secrets he’d once promised never to disclose,

Or like the moment we settled down for dinner and he turned to my parents and said, “Have you ever forgiven him?” And they said, “Who?” And he said, “Mr. Golan.” And they said, “For what?” And he told them.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was shy. And he was my friend. And I didn’t really know what to say.” “But what about after? When you were older?” “I got on with life. It’s what children do. And I became okay.”

“Wipe those tears away, my boy. I’m not dead yet.” And I bent down toward him and said, “How did you know he was crying, Arthur?” And he said, “I can see again.”