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Authors: Nicole Krauss
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inside of your wrist. If nothing happens, touch it to the inside of your lip for three minutes, and if nothing happens after that, hold it on your tongue for fifteen minutes. If nothing still happens, you can chew it without swallowing, and hold that in your mouth for fifteen minutes, and if nothing happens after that, swallow and wait eight hours, and if nothing happens after that, eat a quarter of a cup’s worth, and if nothing happens after that: it’s edible.
I kept Edible Plants and Flowers in North America under my bed in a backpack that also had my father’s Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a plastic tarp, a compass, a box of granola bars, two bags of peanut M&M’s, three cans of tuna, a can opener, Band-Aids, a snakebite kit, a change of underwear, and a New York City subway map. It really should have also had a piece of flint, but when I tried to buy one at the hardware store they wouldn’t sell it to me, either because I was too young or because they thought I was a pyromaniac. In an emergency, you can also strike a spark using a hunting knife and a piece of jasper, agate, or jade, but I didn’t know where to find jasper, agate, or jade. Instead, I took some matches from the 2nd Street Café and put them in a zip-lock bag to protect them from the rain.
For Chanukah I asked for a sleeping bag. The one my mother got me had pink hearts on it, was made of flannel, and would keep me alive for about five seconds in subzero temperatures before I died of hypothermia. I asked her if we could take it back and get a heavyweight down bag instead. “Where are you planning to sleep, the Arctic Circle?” she asked. I thought, There or maybe the Peruvian Andes, since that’s where Dad once camped. 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.
I started to keep a notebook called How to Survive in the Wild .
18. MY MOTHER NEVER FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH MY FATHER
She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
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.
19. THE WALL OF DICTIONARIES BETWEEN MY MOTHER AND THE WORLD GETS TALLER EVERY YEAR
Sometimes pages of the dictionaries come loose and gather at her feet, shallon, shallop, shallot, shallow, shalom, sham, shaman, shamble, like the petals of an immense flower. When I was little, I thought that the pages on the floor were words she would never be able to use again, and I tried to tape them back in where they belonged, out of fear that one day she would be left silent.
20. MY MOTHER HAS ONLY BEEN ON TWO DATES SINCE MY FATHER DIED
The first was five years ago, when I was ten, with a fat English editor at one of the houses that publishes her translations. On his left pinky he wore a ring with a family crest that may or may not have been his own. Whenever he was talking about himself, he waved that hand. A conversation occurred in which it was established that
I kept Edible Plants and Flowers in North America under my bed in a backpack that also had my father’s Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a plastic tarp, a compass, a box of granola bars, two bags of peanut M&M’s, three cans of tuna, a can opener, Band-Aids, a snakebite kit, a change of underwear, and a New York City subway map. It really should have also had a piece of flint, but when I tried to buy one at the hardware store they wouldn’t sell it to me, either because I was too young or because they thought I was a pyromaniac. In an emergency, you can also strike a spark using a hunting knife and a piece of jasper, agate, or jade, but I didn’t know where to find jasper, agate, or jade. Instead, I took some matches from the 2nd Street Café and put them in a zip-lock bag to protect them from the rain.
For Chanukah I asked for a sleeping bag. The one my mother got me had pink hearts on it, was made of flannel, and would keep me alive for about five seconds in subzero temperatures before I died of hypothermia. I asked her if we could take it back and get a heavyweight down bag instead. “Where are you planning to sleep, the Arctic Circle?” she asked. I thought, There or maybe the Peruvian Andes, since that’s where Dad once camped. 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.
I started to keep a notebook called How to Survive in the Wild .
18. MY MOTHER NEVER FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH MY FATHER
She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
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.
19. THE WALL OF DICTIONARIES BETWEEN MY MOTHER AND THE WORLD GETS TALLER EVERY YEAR
Sometimes pages of the dictionaries come loose and gather at her feet, shallon, shallop, shallot, shallow, shalom, sham, shaman, shamble, like the petals of an immense flower. When I was little, I thought that the pages on the floor were words she would never be able to use again, and I tried to tape them back in where they belonged, out of fear that one day she would be left silent.
20. MY MOTHER HAS ONLY BEEN ON TWO DATES SINCE MY FATHER DIED
The first was five years ago, when I was ten, with a fat English editor at one of the houses that publishes her translations. On his left pinky he wore a ring with a family crest that may or may not have been his own. Whenever he was talking about himself, he waved that hand. A conversation occurred in which it was established that
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