by Nava Semel
And The Rat Laughed
By
Nava Semel
Translated From Hebrew by Miriam
Shlesinger
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And the Rat Laughed
Nava Semel (b. 1954, Tel Aviv, Israel) holds an MA in Art History and is an art critic. Semel has worked as a TV, radio and recording producer and as a journalist. She has written poetry, prose for children and adults, television scripts and opera libretti, in addition to translating plays. Semel has received several literary prizes, including the American National Jewish Book Award for children’s literature (1990), the Women Writers of the Mediterranean Award (1994), the Austrian Best Radio Drama Award (1996), the Israeli Prime Minister’s Award (1996) and Tel Aviv Woman of the Year in Literature Award (2007).
Professor Miriam Shlesinger was born in the United States and has been living in Israel since 1964. She completed her BA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in musicology and linguistics in 1968, her postgraduate diploma in translation and interpreting at Bar-Ilan University in 1978, her MA in the Department of Literary Studies at Tel Aviv University in 1989, and her Ph.D. at Bar-Ilan University in 2000. She is currently chair of the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Professor Shlesinger is also a practising translator of plays, novels and short stories from Hebrew into English, as well as a conference interpreter.
Also by Nava Semel (in translation)
Becoming Gershona
Flying Lessons
Bride on Paper
Hat of Glass
Love for Beginners
Who Stole the Show?
The Child Behind the Eyes
To my family
Contents
And the Rat Laughed
Part One The Story
Part Two The Legend
Part Three The Poems
Part Four The Dream
Part Four The Diary
Part One
The Story
A day in Tel Aviv, late 1999
1
How to tell this story?
Things that had been locked inside her have begun showing through lately.
But maybe there’s no need to tell it. The old woman keeps trying to defend her unswerving resolve, and to stick to her silence. For so many years she’s kept the story within her. And now, the question refuses to be muted any longer. It rises out of its grave, egging her on, intrusive.
How should the story be told?
But maybe it’s been told already. Leaking through in moments of distraction, forcing its way to the surface whenever she loosened her grip. And since the thought of that story being jostled about, unattended and vulnerable without her, is too unsettling, it’s as if she has no choice but to assume the role of storyteller.
But she doesn’t know how. And just as she has repressed the story, so too does she now repress the very question of how to tell it. Because if she were to give it a voice, the story would burst through without her being able to contain it, and its severed limbs would scatter in all directions, unfamiliar even to her.
Insofar as it depends on her, she’s not going to tell the story in full.
***
I was their little girl. Father’s and Mother’s. I loved them.
That could be the beginning.
No.
That would put an end to the story even before it began.
***
Even when she pent it up inside her, the story would stab its way through, jabbing its spikes into her. Other spikes dissolved or fell off, and she’d hoped that time would do a good job of covering things up, obliterating whatever should not be remembered, should not be retold even to herself. On rare occasions, when she did manage to summon one particular spike, memory would turn against her, refusing to play along. It was only in distraction, when she had abandoned control, that the unsummoned spike would jab into her, foisting itself on her and dragging her deep into the entrails of the story.
***
I was a little girl.
I did not choose to be born.
I suppose I must have been happy. Not that the question ever arose, of course. Children are not in the habit of wondering about their own happiness.
What would you like to know?
What good will it do?
Why now?
The old woman’s barrage of questions tries to ward off the inevitable. But her granddaughter won’t let up. She insists on getting some answers.
The old woman is having trouble finding a sensible place to begin the story, one that won’t jeopardize the rest of it.
***
As far as she’s concerned, the story isn’t that important to her, and at this late date it doesn’t seem to be important to anyone else either. There are many others like this story, including some that have already been told. She doesn’t think that hers is any more worthy.
On the contrary, she’s convinced that the story will resist her, will become incoherent, and in an effort to disguise its own ugliness will turn into something completely different.
And yet, she is the only one who can tell it. If not all of it or most of it, then at least some parts. A strange sense of urgency overtakes her. Maybe it’s old age. She cannot afford to let the story disappear as if it never happened.
***
I had a mother.
I had a father.
Won’t you make do with that?
I loved and I lost.
That’s the end of the story. The beginning too.
The old woman keeps on grappling to the last minute, when the doorbell rings, causing the walls to shake.
***
It’s not one of those stories that audiences love. Old Woman, give them something airy, upbeat, with an engrossing plot. The hero ought to be larger than life, that’s what her granddaughter tells her. Glamorous, sort of famous, like someone from TV. Despite her age, the old woman knows the new stories, how a story does well precisely when it removes its addressees from their own bleak and compliant place. People have enough on their plate without stories like hers.
The recipients of the new millennium’s stories are quick to pass judgment. They’ve heard enough, so they declare. This story, that story, the world is filled with so many stories. Even those without a story to tell insist on their own snippet. And as long as it’s being told, they want the snippet to ring true.
But her story, rotting away in its drawn-out darkness, couldn’t possibly sound familiar. Which is why its chances of finding a receptive addressee are all the more slim. Deep inside, the old woman is hoping for a hostile reaction that will wipe out the story once and for all.
But to undo it completely would be impossible.
Besides, she knows that in her case just telling it will take a supreme effort. To try not to undermine it. To continue loving even in those places where the story is devoid of love.
Because once she lets go of
it, it will be told differently. People will add things, leave things out, twist it out of shape. And all she has to go by is her own version, her own inadequate best. Deliberately, cautiously, the old woman will pry out spikes from the body of her story, hoping for it to work its way to the surface carefully and discreetly.
As for the brutality of it, she’d better just let that be.
For now.
***
The girl sits facing her. Her hands are unclenched.
Grandma, tell me.
The old woman says nothing.
Grandma, it’s me.
She’s still prying out those spikes.
***
She’s not as old as she seems. But since her granddaughter sees her as planted in a world which can hardly have existed, let’s just call her “the old woman”, though age, at least in her case, is an elusive notion.
In her case, in fact, it is her childhood that is fixated. And not out of nostalgia.
The old woman is the little girl who once was. True, it would take a daring leap of the imagination to connect pudgy little hands to the body as it is now, or to visualize the dimples and the baby teeth. But since the reflection of the little-girl-who-once-was has none of that wistful sweetness to it, we will not refer to her as “that little girl”. Whenever the old woman stands in front of the mirror, she searches – and she keeps searching – in the hope of not finding.
***
I lost it.
I lost everything.
Not everything.
Almost everything.
***
Patience, Child. Every storyteller has trouble finding the right words, and this particular storyteller is finding it especially hard, since her spikes and the sudden jabs have never before been translated into storytelling language.
That was an excellent pretext for not telling it to the girl’s mother, whom the old woman also called “the girl”, though it was a long time since she’d been young.
The old woman uses “girl” for all those who’ve been born to her, including those born to the ones who’ve been born to her.
How should she begin? Maybe with the beginning that came before it began.
Once upon a time, there was ... – that’s the usual format, the proper way of starting a story. Well, once upon a time there was a man and a woman. They met. They fell in love. More or less. They had a daughter. A family. A neat and familiar pattern. How’s that for a promising beginning?
Except that the story refuses to be told that way.
***
Why are they doing this to me?
What did I do wrong?
Why?
That’s the whole story in a single word.
***
A story? The old woman protests. Why call it a story anyhow?
The very word implies something fictional, and may even allow the harsh details to be turned into anecdotes.
But the girl who is sitting across from her won’t take no for an answer. It is a story. That was what she was taught. Not just any story, but a first-person account. She’s even brought a notebook along, to take it all down. There’s a sweet angel on the cover, a commercial print that you see everywhere. Its chin is resting on its hand. Its wings are colorful, and its eyes are looking upwards.
The girl sitting across from the old woman is her granddaughter. Knowing that she herself is going to be seen differently by her young listener as the story unfolds, the old woman holds back. She must not cause the child to age prematurely. She’s afraid of changes.
What might have happened if...
What if the girl sitting across from her had been there instead?
It would have been totally different.
Or maybe not.
***
A home. Her room. There’s a window in the wall. A rose-patterned lace curtain. A doll with braids. She’d gone to sleep with the doll under her pillow. In the middle of the night she got up and pulled out the doll, worried that it might suffocate. She told the doll she was sorry.
Her mother laughed.
The granddaughter is disappointed. That wasn’t the beginning she’d been hoping for. Some day, when she retells the story, she’ll choose a different way to begin it. Her own way.
***
I loved them.
They loved me.
Those are the foundations.
No, this story cannot be begun with love.
***
If she’d been asked to give an account instead of telling a story, it would have been simpler. A pre-formatted questionnaire with a clear purpose. She could have given them the dry facts, without having to formulate an argument. The distinct, calculated questions could have helped her remain in control, and anything that she did not want to let out could have been blocked.
As soon as she gave in to her granddaughter’s request, she realized that telling this story meant provoking it. She had no choice now. She’d set herself up.
Unable to break free, defeated, the old woman tries to start all over again.
2
A big city. There are many like it in Europe. Heavy snow in winter. The river is frozen over. For her birthday, they gave her a pair of skates. In her blue cape she skates without going further than she’s allowed, only where the ice is thick. They told her there were fish under the ice, but she didn’t see any.
A five-year-old can’t take in everything with her own senses.
Who was it that had held her hand to make sure she didn’t fall in?
Father. Mother too. Was it the servant? Probably not. Always in uniform: dark blue with a white collar and long sleeves.
Oh yes. The servant. Now there’s a beginning that looks promising. The granddaughter settles into her chair and opens the angel-covered notebook on her lap. That’s just what she had in mind: everything it takes to make a story, even a servant.
***
She screamed. She kicked. She broke things.
Why are you giving me away to people I don’t even know? I’ve been good, haven’t I? I’ve done everything you told me. So why are you making me go? My room. My doll with the braids. The window with the lace curtains. The rose-patterned ones. Mother made them.
I love you. How come you don’t love me back?
I won’t go. I don’t want to. I won’t.
You’re a bad father and mother.
In the end she hit them.
Now she really was a bad girl. She had it coming.
That’s how the story really begins.
***
Her granddaughter cringes. Still, she’s determined to go ahead. A poor beginning doesn’t necessarily mean a bad ending. As far as the young girl is concerned, the story has a happy ending anyway. The old woman is her grandmother after all.
“And it will end with death.” The granddaughter does not record that familiar sentence in her notebook, because that’s not how the story ended. At least not this story.
But the threat of untimely death was passed on from birth-givers to those who were born, and turned into a hereditary deficiency. A challenge to scientists struggling for a breakthrough in genetic engineering. The old woman nods, resigned to the inevitability of hereditary defects. She will not play a part in this rewrite.
***
She continued to resist. Refusing to pack. Not even the doll with the braids. On the last day she wouldn’t even eat. Hunger was her last resort. Even at this late date, the old woman makes a point of stressing that she did not go along with her parents’ plan. She really did become the worst possible girl in the world. Because if you throw someone out of their home, there has to be a reason. All her mother said was: It’s for your own good. And her father told her: It’s just for a short time.
Grown-up lies.
Her granddaughter now looks up from her notebook. Up to this point it seemed that she might have been trying to take it all down.
Grown-up lies. An unnecessary slip.
The old woman stops short. The story is begging for a paus
e in any case. She’s worried that her granddaughter will suspect her of not telling the truth, and won’t trust her.
She’s a grown-up herself after all.
Without trust, the story is in danger of collapsing.
***
If you throw someone out of their home, there must be a reason.
Such a bad girl.
Unwanted girl.
Too bad she was born.
She had it coming.
***
She had never been away from home without her parents. Her parents never left her. Even in summertime when they went to the seashore, they took her along. Now she’d have to live without them. To be with strangers in a strange place. Why weren’t they taking her with them?
All night long she cried. Her last tears. Her mother sat by her bed, trying to hold her hand. She pushed her away. Anger – that’s the scaffolding of her story. The old woman would try her best to keep the venom from splattering onto the recipient of her story. The old woman hadn’t chosen her, and there was no doubt in her mind that her granddaughter was hardly the ideal addressee. Had she been allowed to choose, she would have preferred someone indifferent, unemotional, far-removed from her and from the threat of her hereditary deficiency. But at her age, it would be foolish to expect a perfect listener.
When they come to judge her story’s tortuous emergence from its darkness, they will dissect the storyteller too. Maybe it could have gone differently. Maybe it would have been enough to tell just the beginning, and to limit the continuation to an innocuous minimum.
Without hearing all of it, her granddaughter’s mother too would question its validity, because to her mind, some stories have to be confined to those who have already crossed the twilight zone separating childhood from whatever follows.
Ever so laboriously, the story moves forward, only to retreat again.