by Asaf Schurr
Holding up, repeated Motti.
We need to come up with a plan for you, declared Menachem.
A plan?
A plan. What you’ll do when you get out of here. What you’ll do with your life, what you’ll achieve. Goals, Menachem pointed out. Prioritize goals. Be proactive. Decide what you want and go for it, you hear? Here, he said. Look at me.
So, said Motti.
So what, asked Menachem.
I’m looking at you, said Motti.
Hah! laughed Menachem. You bastard, what a bastard. I’m crazy about you. Maybe, he continued, maybe you’ll come work with me. I’ll fix you up with something, it’s a great start, I’m telling you. Did you lease your place?
No, answered Motti. Someone in my place, digging through my things…that’s not…I don’t want that.
Definitely not, agreed Menachem.
And it’s not that I have bills to pay, added Motti.
Definitely not, confirmed Menachem.
Other than property tax, corrected Motti.
Other than property tax, agreed Menachem again, thought for a moment and then said, I’ll cover that for you, man.
Thanks, said Motti.
Nothing to it, said Menachem and peeked at his watch. Nothing to it. So what, he strained to laugh, did you see the ass on that guard? I’d give it to her in a second.
Um, said Motti.
When you get out of here, promised Menachem, I’ll get a thousand whores for you. At the same time, yeah?
No need, said Motti and looked at the table. Just take care of Laika, okay?
No question, said Menachem. And the property tax as well, yeah?
And the property tax, agreed Motti.
Good, said Menachem and looked again at his watch intently. I’ve got to go, Edna’s birthday today.
Of course, of course, said Motti. I didn’t know it was today. Send her congratulations from me, yeah? You didn’t have to come today if it’s her birthday and stuff.
Nonsense, said Menachem and got up. Today’s Wednesday, no?
Wednesday, confirmed Motti.
So we’ll see each other next week, yeah, man?
Of course, of course, said Motti.
Or maybe not next week, said Menachem suddenly. I was thinking about taking Edna abroad for a bit. A few days, you know. She deserves it.
Deserves it, said Motti. Definitely deserves it.
But the Wednesday after that I’m here, yeah?
I’m not going anywhere, said Motti.
Of course, of course, Menachem said now. You know that I owe you, yeah?
Nonsense, said Motti. You’re like a brother to me. You are, you know.
38
And after Menachem left, Motti thought, I should have prepared him a list for Laika. Write down the things she loves to do, so she won’t be miserable. (And in the back of his mind a voice also said, no, I shouldn’t have prepared him a list. So she won’t love him like she does me. So she’ll want to come back to me when I get out. He quickly silenced it, this voice.)
Because he, Motti, is her owner. Even the municipal documents say so, in writing. Therefore it’s necessary to tell Menachem if she likes raw sausages or leftover steak, if she likes when you throw her a ball, so she’ll fetch it, or if she doesn’t understand why you’ve taken it from her and thrown it, the small ball that she gnaws so diligently. Did he tell Menachem not to let her out on the street without a leash? Certainly he told him. No need for a muzzle, for sure he told him that too, even though now he doesn’t remember.
“In short,” Guard B said after he returned to Motti’s cell and sat down, folding his legs and hoping for a glass of cold, freezing, water, except that kind of thing can’t be found in prison, and he looked at the vague and stupid marks drawn on the plaster, “In short,” he said again, even though there was nothing short about it, “Jimbo sits there, see, with those pictures, and cries like a little boy. Look, he says to me, even though I’m already looking. Look at that sweet girl, how did I leave her? Oh, oh, my girl, he says. I promise you I’ll return soon. And how many pictures he had! Well, not many, actually. Maybe five. And that’s my wife, he tells me for maybe the thousandth time. Pretty, no? Prettiest in the neighborhood. Or prettiest in the village or wherever he came from. Oh, oh, my wife, he says. He had a tendency to repeat himself, you understand. Oh, oh. Lucky that there are cameras, no? Think how it would be if we all just had to remember. In the end we wouldn’t recognize anyone. Here,” he says, “look at me. Every time I imagine my family, I see someone else. That’s how it is. So many years have passed.”
“So many,” repeated Motti unintentionally.
“Lots,” confirmed Guard B, “Lots and lots. No one left. Just me. Alone. Alone like a dog is alone. Dad I already told you about, Mom, you know. I had a little sister, but she’s gone too. Choked on a chicken bone. Got stuck in her foodpipe. And that was the end of her. Comma.”
“Oh, she went into a coma?” asked Motti.
“No,” said the guard. “Died right there, on the spot.”
“So that was the end of her, period, you mean,” Motti said.
“No, no,” countered Guard B. “Hadn’t gotten her period yet. She was so young. Wasn’t ten years old when she went.”
39
They acclimated her, Laika (that is, the historical Laika, the actual one, and prior to this her name was Kudryavka and she flew into space and died) to eat gelatinized food. Jelly. Because that’s the food she would get in the spaceship. They kept her, Moshka, and Albina in smaller and smaller cages, so they’d get acclimated to that too, and put them in flight simulators, so they’d get acclimated to the pressure of liftoff. Albina, before her, went up twice on a missile. Moshka was used in order to check the systems in the cabin, life support and the like.
The Russians, as the BBC website reported a few years ago, said she died after a week. As previously stated before, it wasn’t like that at all. (Barely a few hours. Maybe better that way. Suffered less.) The spaceship she flew in weighed 508 kilograms. She herself weighed approximately six. Only after liftoff did they say she wouldn’t return and wasn’t meant to from the beginning. She was fastened in so that she wouldn’t just tumble around inside the cabin, which was pretty small in any case. The spaceship returned on April 14, 1958, around five months after it was launched, and it burned up in the atmosphere upon reentry (and if someone made a wish then, thinking it was a shooting star, it’s quite possible this person is still alive—you could find him and ask what he wished for and if it materialized in the end).
I imagined the Laika in this book as a German shepherd, but everyone else can imagine her however they like. The dead Laika was, they say, of extremely mixed parentage. The beating of her heart accelerated threefold after liftoff. They had already put her in the cabin three days before ignition. Georgi Grechko, who was a cosmonaut, said that the spaceship, the satellite that Laika was sent up in, didn’t separate properly from the missile with which it launched. Perhaps the systems were damaged, and therefore Laika was baked inside her skin. Forty years after this, her likeness was engraved on the monument to fallen cosmonauts, near Moscow. I doubt this did her any good.
Look at her picture on the cover. A paw resting almost playfully, an ear bent mischievously, I think, or maybe because genetics made it so. It appears that she’s smiling, definitely smiling, I don’t see fear in that look, but who am I to recognize her fear.
40
“You listening?” Guard B made sure. “I’m standing there with that hat in front of Tom’s aunt. Middle of the heat wave, I’m telling you, and I feel the butter I put there start to drip. And she’s talking, the aunt, she goes on and on—and I’m feeling how it’s already starting to drip, you know? Onto my forehead and the neck and all that. And she stops speaking suddenly, starts staring at me, I thought I was going to die on the spot. Jumps on me and takes off the hat, I thought I was dead, suddenly she hugs me. God Almighty! she says. I thought the boy’s brain was starting to leak out on him her
e. Why are you walking around with butter inside your hat, you strange boy?”
“Funny,” said Motti.
“Funny?” Guard B was amazed. “I almost frightened her to death. What’s funny about that? You don’t know how awful that was for me. What, like I don’t know what it is to worry that someone’s going to die right in front of your eyes? Just like that, with my own eyes, I saw my mother die.”
“I’m sorry,” said Motti.
“It’s not your fault,” said Guard B, “and it also happened a long time back.”
“What did she die from?” asked Motti.
“From the disease,” said Guard B.
“What disease?” asked Motti.
“The disease, the disease,” said Guard B impatiently and meant cancer, which many people don’t call by its name out of fear that it’s an actual, proper name, like the kind you call someone with, so it (the cancer) might come. Just like you don’t speak the Name itself, you know the one, as though there’s a big eye in the heavens that will open up as soon as you call by name that which cannot be mentioned. (I too never speak that Name aloud. I never say, Yahweh—but look, I wrote it, that much I did. Which, actually, is a little defensive strategy I’ve put together for my book. Now, in certain circles, it will have to go straight to the geniza, thank God, to be stored indefinitely.) “Right in front of my eyes, she died on me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Motti again, because what else can you say. “That’s tough, to see your mom like that for the last time.”
“If only, if only that was the last time,” said Guard B and lowered his voice. “In my dreams she still comes to me, that one. A few years dead already, and still coming. I’ve made myself sick over it,” he said. “Her and her underhanded death games. But, in any case,” he said philosophically, then cleared his throat. “Where was I?”
“With the butter,” said Motti.
“Yes, the butter. The whole hat was completely ruined. Did I already tell you what we would need that butter for?”
“No,” said Motti. “You didn’t say.”
“C’mon,” said Guard B. “What kind of shitty person am I, anyway. Don’t know how to tell a lousy story. Did I already tell you about how Jimbo went to jail?”
“No,” said Motti.
“Well, look,” said Guard B. “How can I expect you to understand anything? And what about the house that floats on the Yarkon? Did I say anything about that?”
“Not a thing,” said Motti.
“Well, well, well,” concluded Guard B. “You see? This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
41
Maybe (thought Motti a few hours, maybe days, after this; no one was standing outside his cell now, certainly not Guard B), maybe she ran away and got run over and now she’s lying on the side of the road, her leg broken and bleeding, and she’s whimpering in pain. She doesn’t know why this happened to her, why this pain. She doesn’t even wonder about it, doesn’t resent it, isn’t mad, isn’t saying she doesn’t deserve any of this, doesn’t deserve this suffering, she’s such a good dog. Motti, in his cell, cries bitterly. For the first time in this book he sits there and cries bitterly.
Only nothing’s happened. Not yet. Motti is in his cell and Laika is in the hallway of Menachem and Edna’s house, sleeping.
And then he passed by there, down one of the jail’s corridors, Guard B. He’s already finished his shift and is on his way outside and then home, grateful that he doesn’t have to stay here like all the unfortunate inmates, though also feeling a bit unpleasant because of this.
He’s a big man, and so easily embarrassed, his name should have been Irving, or Percival. But no, it wasn’t meant to be.
And more than once, by the way, whenever Guard B went back early, during the day, to his dark house—if he forgot his car keys, for example, if he left his cell phone on the dining room table—would it seem to him that he felt the vestiges of some presence in the house, the tail end of the air that someone else might have breathed, a shadow slipping away along a wall just before he could see it, not even caught in the corner of his eye. And yet, he’s still convinced that one day, if for instance he forgets his driver’s license next to the telephone, then goes back home where everything is dark, he’ll clearly feel, without a doubt, that someone, someone is there, that many are there, and then he’ll close the door and won’t leave, he’ll close it behind him and remain inside, the door to his back and he in the dark, and they’ll come out. In the meantime he hasn’t had the courage to try. Because he worries they’ll appear suddenly and because he’s embarrassed by his belief that they’ll appear.
In some senses he’s like one of those rodents—the shy ones. Every touch startles him, and sometimes he looks at himself from the outside, as it were, and reprimands himself. You idiot, he says to himself, for example. What’s your problem, you idiot? But he isn’t an idiot, and this isn’t his problem. His problem is that he’s lived to be over fifty, thank God, and despite this he’s still known to turn around when someone in the street behind him calls out, “Hey, kid!”
Tonight, in any case, Guard B (whose name is neither Irving nor Percival) passes by Motti’s cell and this sobbing comes from inside, this heartrending sobbing.
He too would cry if they left him like this, alone in a cell. Therefore he stops by the door and waits a moment, to see if the sound subsides. And when it doesn’t subside he knocks softly.
“Everything okay with you, man?” He asks. “You need something?”
“It’s my dog,” Motti says, “I think something terrible happened to her.”
“Is she there in the cell?” Guard B is alarmed, since it is absolutely and strictly forbidden to bring animals inside the prison.
“No, no,” says Motti, “She’s at the house of my friend Menachem.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” says Guard B, hesitantly. Motti doesn’t answer.
“Do you want to call him,” offers Guard B in a whisper. He’s forbidden to offer things like that, he could get fired. “I’ll bring you my cell phone, don’t tell anyone.”
“That would be great,” says Motti and wipes his nose.
“Here, here,” Guard B extends his phone through the hatch. “Call quick.”
And Motti calls. Two in the morning now, but he calls.
Menachem answers, panic-stricken. Hello? Who is this? He asks. Motti? What happened?
Is Laika okay? Motti asks quickly.
She’s here at home sleeping. Do you what time it is, you psycho? It’s two in the morning now. You woke the kids.
I’m sorry, Menachem, Motti says. Tell Edna that I’m sorry too. I had a horrible feeling, you know.
C’mon, it’s okay, says Menachem. But try saving your awful feelings for normal hours, okay? You woke the kids.
I’m sorry, Menachem, Motti says again. Pet her on the tummy for me.
Sure, sure, and Menachem hangs up. And to Edna, who woke up panic-stricken as well—parents often wake up panic-stricken—to Edna he says, that motherfucker Motti sure picked some time to call.
He always was a bit strange, says Edna, nearly asleep.
Motherfucker, Menachem says again before he falls asleep.
Nothing can happen to her, to Laika. In the beautiful stories he tells himself she’s often there, with him and with Ariella. Walking in fields, sitting on benches, watching television, stuff like that.
42
And what’s with Laika, really? This very much disturbs me, that she has no personality. Half a book already written and she has no personality. Half a book—and I’ve only just noticed it. What an embarrassment this is, especially for a book that preaches so much—and with such immense self-righteousness.
In short, what’s with Laika? What kind of dog is she? Lively and playful and full of energy? Affectionate? Does she love people? Does she sleep a lot? Did she ever chew up Motti’s library? Chew up his shoes? And how long did it take her to learn not to relieve herself in the house?
Her
history doesn’t interest me here. It doesn’t matter if she came to Motti as a puppy or already full grown. It only matters what she’s like, what gives her pleasure, what makes her suffer. Like the rest of the characters here, all the details of her past are just cheap gossip as far as I’m concerned.
And so: Laika is a good dog. She doesn’t have hip or skin problems, she has good teeth, a not-too-sensitive digestive system, good instincts, sharp hearing, a refined sense of smell. She doesn’t bark excessively at night, wags her tail when you get home. Chases cats, but doesn’t catch them. And not because she can’t catch them, but rather because she’s not interested in this. It’s a game for her, not hunting. Loves it when you pet her on the tummy and scratch her behind her ears, a thing Edna does wonderfully; for hours they can sit like that together, Edna watching television or paging through a magazine, her free hand scratching Laika behind the ear. Such pleasure this is! Whoever isn’t a dog just can’t understand, not even if you love it when someone pets you on the tummy, not even if you wiggle your hind leg when they pet you there.
What else can be said about a dog’s personality? As with people, there’s no real point talking about it. Either you know them or you don’t, why go into detail? Maybe just to fill up some extra pages so your book won’t be too short (a novella), but instead will weigh what it needs to, so people will feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.
Laika, in any case, loves things that move. Drag a towel or a toy in front of her—she’ll jump at it immediately, grab it with her teeth and pull. What’s the difference between these toys and those living cats: these that she catches and those that she doesn’t? What’s the difference from her perspective, that is? How does she tell them apart? Hour after hour, by the way, she can lie hypnotized and watch the hamster running on his small wheel in the children’s room.