The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

Spinoza.

frontispiece,

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I’d end, a great wind would

sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat would be empty.

Einsatzgruppen

“Under the Romanoffs,”

WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BE When I’d come in, she’d call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She’d stroke my hair and say, “I love you so much,” and when I sneezed she’d say, “Bless you, you know how much I love you, don’t you?” and when I got up for a tissue she’d say, “Let me get it for you I love you so much,” and when I looked for a pen to do my homework she’d say, “Use mine, anything for you,” and when I had an itch on my leg she’d say, “Is this the spot, let me hug you,” and when I said I was going up to my room she’d call after me, “What can I do for you I love you so much,” and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less.

I’m only eight, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

To change the subject, I told her about hemlock, wild carrots, and parsnip, but that turned out to be a bad idea because her eyes got teary and when I asked her what was wrong she said nothing, it just reminded

her of the carrots Dad used to grow in the garden in Ramat Gan. I wanted to ask her what else he used to grow aside from an olive tree, a lemon tree, and carrots, but I didn’t want to make her even sadder.

My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

she was engrossed in a book of stories, repeatedly exclaiming that the author should be given a Posthumous Nobel. My mother is always giving out Posthumous Nobels.

Then, very quickly, as if it weren’t the point of everything, she said the book had belonged to Dad. Bird hurried over and touched the cover.

They called it the dark biosphere.

The only boy I’d ever kissed was Misha Shklovsky. His cousin taught him in Russia, where he lived before he moved to Brooklyn, and he taught me. “Not so much tongue,” was all he said.

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love (there was a flare of interest following Litvinoff’s death, and the book was briefly returned to print with Rosa’s introduction), at least one copy was destined to change a life—more

indelible.

If someone had told me then that Eve had eaten the apple just so that the Grodzenskis of the world could exist, I would have believed it.

all. The fact that you got a little happier today doesn’t change the fact that you also became a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you’re the happiest and the saddest you’ve ever been in your whole life.”

“Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”)

Except for when I was very little and thought that being an “engineer” meant he drove a train. Then I imagined him in the seat of an engine car the color of coal, a string of shiny passenger cars trailing behind. One day my father laughed and corrected me. Everything snapped into focus. It’s one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you.

My mother would say she was everyone, every girl and every woman that anyone ever loved.

Isaac Babel

Osip Mandelstam,

just as for five years I never knew that our sum had come to equal a child.

And then I thought: Perhaps that is what it means to be a father—to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.

Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go out into the woods. She’d packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. “Go,” she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she’d follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn’t bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I’ve lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fritzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he’d last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I’d taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else’s. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn’t also lose my mind?

She was one of a group of girls he’d observed bloom from scraggly weeds into tropical beauties who churned the air around them into a dense humidity.

Litvinoff could still remember the original catalogue of bared thighs, inner elbows, and backs of necks that had been the inspiration for countless frenetic variations. That Alma had been taken by someone else in an on-and-off-and-on-again sort of way didn’t distract from her participation in Litvinoff’s reveries (which relied heavily on the technique of montage). If he ever envied her being taken, it wasn’t out of any special feeling for Alma, but out of a wish to be likewise singled out and loved alone.

HOW ANGELS SLEEP. Unsoundly. They toss and turn, trying to understand the mystery of the Living. They know so little about what it’s like to fill a new prescription for glasses and suddenly see the world again, with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude. The first time a girl named—here Litvinoff paused to crack his knuckles—Alma puts her hand just below your bottom rib: about this feeling, they have only theories, but no solid ideas. If you gave them a snow globe, they might not even know enough to shake it.

denuded.