What The?
What about a teakettle? What if the
spout opened and closed when the
steam came out, so it would become a
mouth, and it could whistle pretty
melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just
crack up with me? I could invent a
teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so
I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of
kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow
Submarine,” which is a song by the
Beatles, who I love, because entomology
is one of my raisons d’tre, which
is a French expression that I know.
Another good thing is that I could train
my anus to talk when I farted. If I
wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d
train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made
an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever
made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall
of Mirrors, which is in Versailles,
which is outside of Paris, which is in
France, obviously, my anus would
say, “Ce n’tais pas moi!”
What about little microphones? What if
everyone swallowed them,
and they played the sounds of our hearts
through little speakers, which could
be in the pouches of our overalls? When
you skateboarded down the street at
night you could hear everyone’s
heartbeat, and they could hear yours,
sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder
if everyone’s hearts would start to
beat at the same time, like how women
who live together have their
menstrual periods at the same time,
which I know about, but don’t really
want to know about. That would be so
weird, except that the place in the
hospital where babies are born would
sound like a crystal chandelier in a
houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t
have had time to match up their
heartbeats yet. And at the finish line
at the end of the New York City
Marathon it would sound like war.
And also, there are so many
times when you need to make a
quick escape, but humans don’t have
their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so
what about a birdseed shirt?
Anyway.
My first jujitsu class was three and a
half months ago. Self-defense
was something that I was
extremely curious about, for obvious
reasons, and Mom thought it would be
good for me to have a physical activity
besides tambourining, so my first
jujitsu class was three and a half months
ago. There were fourteen kids in the
class, and we all had on neat white
robes. We practiced bowing, and then we
were all sitting down Native
American style, and then Sensei Mark
asked me to go over to him. “Kick my
privates,” he told me. That made me feel
self-conscious. “Excusez-moi?” I
told him. He spread his legs and told
me, “I want you to kick my privates as
hard as you can.” He put his hands at
his sides, and took a breath in, and
closed his eyes, and that’s how I knew
that actually he meant
business. “Jose,” I told him, and inside
I was thinking, What the? He told
me, “Go on, guy. Destroy my privates.”
“Destroy your privates?” With his
eyes still closed he cracked up a lot
and said, “You couldn’t destroy my
privates if you tried. That’s what’s
going on here. This is a demonstration of
the well-trained body’s ability to
absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my
privates.” I told him, “I’m a pacifist,”
and since most people my age don’t
know what that means, I turned around
and told the others, “I don’t think it’s
right to destroy people’s privates.
Ever.” Sensei Mark said, “Can I ask you
something?” I turned back around and
told him, “‘Can I ask you something?’
is asking me something.” He said, “Do
you have dreams of becoming a
jujitsu master?” “No,” I told him, even
though I don’t have dreams of running
the family jewelry business anymore. He
said, “Do you want to know how a
jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu
master?” “I want to know everything,” I
told him, but that isn’t true anymore either.
He told me, “A jujitsu student
becomes a jujitsu master by destroying
his master’s privates.” I told
him, “That’s fascinating.” My last
jujitsu class was three and a half months
ago.
I desperately wish I had my tambourine
with me now, because
even after everything I’m still wearing
heavy boots, and sometimes it helps to
play a good beat. My most impressive
song that I can play on my tambourine
is “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” by
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, which is also
the ring tone I downloaded for the cell
phone I got after Dad died. It’s pretty
amazing that I can play “The Flight of
the Bumblebee,” because you have to
hit incredibly fast in parts, and that’s
extremely hard for me, because I don’t
really have wrists yet. Ron offered to
buy me a five-piece drum set. Money
can’t buy me love, obviously, but I
asked if it would have Zildjian cymbals. He
said, “Whatever you want,” and then he
took my yo-yo off my desk and
started to walk the dog with it. I know
he just wanted to be friendly, but it
made me incredibly angry. “Yo-yo moi!” I
told him, grabbing it back. What I
really wanted to tell him was “You’re
not my dad, and you never will be.”
Isn’t it so weird how the number of
dead people is increasing even
though the earth stays the same size, so
that one day there isn’t going to be
room to bury anyone anymore? For my
ninth birthday last year, Grandma
gave me a subscription to National
Geographic, which she calls “the National
Geographic.” She also gave me a white
blazer, because I only wear white
clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it
will last me a long time. She also gave
me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for
two reasons. I asked why he didn’t
take it with him when he left her. She
said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.”
I said, “But I was negative-thirty years
old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the
fascinating thing was that I read in
National Geographic that there are more
people alive now than have died in all
of human history. In other words, if
everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once,
they couldn’t, because there aren’t
enough skulls!
So what about skyscrapers for dead
people that were built down?
They could be underneath the skyscrapers
for living people that are built up.
You could bury people one hundred floors
down, and a whole dead world
could be underneath the living one.
Sometimes I think it would be weird if
there were a skyscraper that moved up
and down while its elevator stayed in
place. So if you wanted to go to the
ninety-fifth floor, you’d just press the 95
button and the ninety-fifth floor would
come to you. Also, that could be
extremely useful, because if you’re on
the ninety-fifth floor, and a plane hits
below you, the building could take you
to the ground, and everyone could be
safe, even if you left your birdseed
shirt at home that day.
I’ve only been in a limousine twice
ever. The first time was terrible,
even though the limousine was wonderful.
I’m not allowed to watch TV at
home, and I’m not allowed to watch TV in
limousines either, but it was still
neat that there was a TV there. I asked
if we could go by school, so
Toothpaste and The Minch could see me in
a limousine. Mom said that
school wasn’t on the way, and we
couldn’t be late to the cemetery. “Why
not?” I asked, which I actually thought
was a good question, because if you
think about it, why not? Even though I’m
not anymore, I used to be an
atheist, which means I didn’t believe in
things that couldn’t be observed. I
believed that once you’re dead, you’re
dead forever, and you don’t feel
anything, and you don’t even dream. It’s
not that I believe in things that can’t
be observed now, because I don’t. It’s
that I believe that things are extremely
complicated. And anyway, it’s not like
we were actually burying him, anyway.
Even though I was trying hard for it
not to, it was annoying me
how Grandma kept touching me, so I
climbed into the front seat and poked
the driver’s shoulder until he gave me
some attention. “What. Is. Your.
Designation.” I asked in Stephen Hawking
voice. “Say what?” “He wants to
know your name,” Grandma said from the
back seat. He handed me his card.
GERALD THOMPSON
Sunshine Limousine
serving the five boroughs
(212) 570-7249
I handed him my card and told him,
“Greetings. Gerald. I. Am.
Oskar.” He asked me why I was talking
like that. I told him, “Oskar’s CPU is
a neural-net processor. A learning
computer. The more contact he has with
humans, the more he learns.” Gerald
said, “O” and then he said “K.” I
couldn’t tell if he liked me or not, so
I told him, “Your sunglasses are one
hundred dollars.” He said, “One
seventy-five.” “Do you know a lot of curse
words?” “I know a couple.” “I’m not
allowed to use curse
words.” “Bummer.” “What’s ‘bummer’?”
“It’s a bad thing.” “Do you
know ‘shit’?” “That’s a curse, isn’t
it?” “Not if you say ‘shiitake.'” “Guess
not.” “Succotash my Balzac,
dipshiitake.” Gerald shook his head and
cracked up a little, but not in the bad
way, which is at me. “I can’t even
say ‘hair pie,'” I told him, “unless
I’m talking about an actual pie made out of
rabbits. Cool driving gloves.” “Thanks.”
And then I thought of something, so I
said it. “Actually, if limousines were
extremely long, they wouldn’t need
drivers. You could just get in the back
seat, walk through the limousine, and
then get out of the front seat, which
would be where you wanted to go. So in
this situation, the front seat would be
at the cemetery.” “And I would be
watching the game right now.” I patted
his shoulder and told him, “When you
look up ‘hilarious’ in the dictionary,
there’s a picture of you.”
In the back seat, Mom was holding
something in her purse. I
could tell that she was squeezing it,
because I could see her arm muscles.
Grandma was knitting white mittens, so I
knew they were for me, even
though it wasn’t cold out. I wanted to
ask Mom what she was squeezing and
why she had to keep it hidden. I
remember thinking that even if I were
suffering hypothermia, I would never,
ever put on those mittens.
“Now that I’m thinking about it,” I
told Gerald, “they could make an
incredibly long limousine that had its
back seat at your mom’s VJ and its
front seat at your mausoleum, and it
would be as long as your life.” Gerald
said, “Yeah, but if everyone lived like
that, no one would ever meet anyone,
right?” I said, “So?”
Mom squeezed, and Grandma knitted, and
I told Gerald, “I kicked
a French chicken in the stomach once,”
because I wanted to make him
crack up, because if I could make him
crack up, my boots could be a little
lighter. He didn’t say anything,
probably because he didn’t hear me, so I
said, “I said I kicked a French chicken
in the stomach once.” “Huh?” “It
said, ‘Oeuf.'” “What is that?” “It’s a
joke. Do you want to hear another, or
have you already had un oeuf?” He looked
at Grandma in the mirror and
said, “What’s he saying?” She said, “His
grandfather loved animals more than
he loved people.” I said, “Get it? Oeuf?”
I crawled back, because it’s dangerous
to drive and talk at the
same time, especially on the highway,
which is what we were on. Grandma
started touching me again, which was
annoying, even though I didn’t want it
to be. Mom said, “Honey,” and I said,
“Oui,” and she said, “Did you give a
copy of our apartment key to the
mailman?” I thought it was so weird that
she would mention that then, because it
didn’t have to do with anything, but I
think she was looking for something to
talk about that wasn’t the obvious
thing. I said, “The mailperson is a
mailwoman.” She nodded, but not exactly
at me, and she asked if I’d given the
mailwoman a key. I nodded yes,
because I never used to lie to her
before everything happened. I didn’t have a
reason to. “Why did you do that?” she
asked. So I told her, “Stan-” And she
said, “Who?” And I said, “Stan the
doorman. Sometimes he runs around the
corner for coffee, and I want to be sure
all of my packages get to me, so I
thought, if Alicia -” “Who?” “The
mailwoman. If she had a key, she could
leave things inside our door.” “But you
can’t give a key to a
stranger.” “Fortunately Alicia isn’t a
stranger.” “We have lots of valuable
things in our apartment.” “I know. We
have really great things.” “Sometimes
people who seem good end up being not as
good as you might have hoped,
you know? What if she had stolen your
things?” “She wouldn’t.” “But what
if?” “But she wouldn’t.” “Well, did she
give you a key to her apartment?” She
was obviously mad at me, but I didn’t
know why. I hadn’t done anything
wrong. Or if I had, I didn’t know what
it was. And I definitely didn’t mean to do
it.
I moved over to Grandma’s side of the
limousine and told
Mom, “Why would I need a key to her
apartment?” She could tell that I was
zipping up the sleeping bag of myself,
and I could tell that she didn’t really
love me. I knew the truth, which was
that if she could have chosen, it would
have been my funeral we were driving to.
I looked up at the limousine’s
sunroof, and I imagined the world before
there were ceilings, which made me
wonder: Does a cave have no ceiling, or
is a cave all ceiling? “Maybe you
could check with me next time, OK?”
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said, and I
reached over Grandma and opened and
closed the door’s lock a couple of
times. “I’m not mad at you,” she said.
“Not even a little?” “No.” “Do you still
love me?” It didn’t seem like the
perfect time to mention that I had already
made copies of the key for the deliverer
from Pizza Hut, and the UPS person,
and also the nice guys from Greenpeace,
so they could leave me articles on
manatees and other animals that are
going extinct when Stan is getting
coffee. “I’ve never loved you more.”
“Mom?” “Yes?” “I have a question.”
“OK.” “What are you
squeezing in your purse?” She pulled out
her hand and opened it, and it was
empty. “Just squeezing,” she said.
Even though it was an incredibly sad
day, she looked so, so
beautiful. I kept trying to figure out a
way to tell her that, but all of the ways I
thought of were weird and wrong. She was
wearing the bracelet that I made
for her, and that made me feel like one
hundred dollars. I love making jewelry
for her, because it makes her happy, and
making her happy is another one of
my raisons d’tre.
It isn’t anymore, but for a really long
time it was my dream to take
over the family jewelry business. Dad
constantly used to tell me I was too
smart for retail. That never made sense
to me, because he was smarter than
me, so if I was too smart for retail,
then he really must have been too smart
for retail. I told him that. “First of
all,” he told me, “I’m not smarter than
you, I’m more knowledgeable than you, and
that’s only because I’m older than
you. Parents are always more
knowledgeable than their children, and
children are always smarter than their
parents.” “Unless the child is a mental
retard,” I told him. He didn’t have
anything to say about that. “You said
‘first of all,’ so what’s second of all?”
“Second of all, if I’m so smart, then
why am I in retail?” “That’s true,” I said. And
then I thought of something: “But wait a
minute, it won’t be the family jewelry
business if no one in the family is
running it.” He told me, “Sure it will.
Continues…
Excerpted from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright © 2005
Jonathan Safran Foer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-618-32970-6
