And The Rat Laughed

by Nava Semel

  The spikes of memory keep jabbing. There’s no point in documenting them in a notebook under the auspices of commercial angels, because the time is very near.

  It’s for your own good. Prying out that spike would mean destroying the entire fragile structure of the story.

  And where was her father when her mother turned her back?

  That’s not a random spike jutting out either, but a red-hot blade slashing across the entire story. As she continues talking to her granddaughter, the old woman tries to position her father. Was he standing near the steps, or behind the servant? Or maybe he was hiding behind the rose-patterned lace curtains.

  Either way, she’s been spared that memory.

  Every time she travelled abroad, she combed the phone directories for her parents’ names.

  ***

  Don’t want to be Jewish any more.

  The priest said: Jesus was Jewish too.

  The little-girl-who-once-was asked: Is that why they killed him?

  The priest did not reply. When he tried to gather her up in his arms, she fled to the cross, bumping into the wood, riveted to the hands bleeding above her. Maybe Jesus throws up too, and urinates or gets so scared he shits. Poor Jesus. His mother’s Jewish. Jews make bad parents. Jesus was the brother she’d never had and never would. Like her, he too stopped being Jewish.

  Only Jesus keeps his promises.

  ***

  The old woman learned to control her laughter because it can be a giveaway, like tears. That was why it is so hard to find any humor in her story. And yet, there has to be a smile once in a while. Every story demands its comic relief. Otherwise even the most hardened listener would panic and flee.

  In the dark, she chased after the rat. Shared her slices of bread with him. It was only thanks to her that he grew plump. She’d move her lips to summon him, and he never turned his back.

  Before letting her come up above ground, the farmer’s wife told her: You Jews, you take up all the places in Heaven. Because of you, we’ll all have to go to Hell.

  And she roared with laughter.

  Ave Maria tells Jesus: Move aside, Son. Too many Jewish children are coming out of their holes, and we have to make room for them. Ha, ha, ha. Amen.

  Humor is the only way of undermining the story, making believe that we’re standing over its ruins. Even now, the storyteller makes fun of herself: an old woman, spending a blinding afternoon in Tel Aviv, in a room with its shutters closed tight. Paralyzed with fear of what she and her story are inflicting on her granddaughter.

  Just so long as she doesn’t turn her back on her.

  And if it hadn’t seemed so ridiculous, she would have let loose the hint of a smile.

  ***

  Every now and then, on Sundays, she’d sneak out of the house, covering her eyes with oversized sunglasses and take a bus to St Anthony’s Church in Jaffa. Along with the hardworking Filipino laborers who’ve come as far as Tel Aviv for their children’s sake, she opens her mouth to receive the wafer.

  Later, as they kneel beneath their Ave Maria and ask for her blessing, the old woman turns her back and leaves.

  ***

  A handful of friends, all of them old like her, are overcome with nostalgia whenever they speak of their childhood, that elusive and magical domain, which people grow ever more wistful about as it grows further away. They wax poetic, and she smiles. To her friends, her smiles confirm that her story, just like their own, justifies all the trite excuses people make for recollections of childhood.

  ***

  A different storyteller – less involved, more distant might have produced a broader narrative, dwelling on the other protagonists too, preparing the groundwork for their individual versions, and giving them the space they deserve.

  If only it were possible to have the vantage point of the rat, for example.

  The old woman is worried about how the stories are liable to evolve. In a world where stages are glossed over, with no apparent sequence, one must take into account the possibility of changes and reframings. Whatever the next storyteller adds worries her even more than what he may leave out. The Stefan must never turn into the main character, God forbid.

  Must never become the hero.

  The farmer’s son, who inherited the farm and everything on it, will never divulge the story. If questioned, he will deny it categorically. On autumn evenings, he sits with the offspring that Janka – or some other woman bore him, and thinks fondly of his younger days. Once upon a time in a small village in Europe.

  That is what the old man is telling people over there.

  ***

  As for her name, never once did she blurt it out in the muddle of darkness. She was not even allowed to pronounce it, because if she did, that would be end of her. Maybe that is why, even at this late date, she is incapable of divulging it.

  ***

  The story won’t be told by her again, either in part or in full. This is the first and last time. If ever another version is given, the future storyteller will have to dismantle the time capsules and expose their content. But that won’t happen. Dissecting the story into its individual parts under a magnifying glass is not the responsibility of the storyteller but of the listener. From here on in, the story is the listener’s. Whether she likes it or not, the addressee will be the next storyteller. And in the case of her granddaughter, concentrating on a particular part – especially on the Stefan – is liable to bury it forever.

  ***

  For a moment, the old woman feels as if she has not told the story at all, but has merely imagined doing so. And even before her granddaughter gets up to leave, she is overcome with a burning desire to go back and try again, to tell it more smoothly, in a way that would include whatever the little girl hunkering in the pit knows.

  Was there any point in telling the story? Could it have been told differently? No matter how it is told, after all, the scaffolding will stand strong. The darkness will remain darkness. The rat will be a rat.

  And the Stefan Stefan.

  ***

  When the granddaughter’s mother intruded into the house, the story stopped. The granddaughter insisted on staying. In fact, she just about threw her mother out. And yet, vestiges of the daughter’s presence remain in the room, eavesdropping on the story without actually being there.

  At a different time in her life, as late as possible, the granddaughter will arrange the story anew. The scaffolding will be the same, and the wall too, but the house will be a different one.

  The old woman smiles once again. In relief.

  ***

  She has a soft spot for the creatures of the night. On summer evenings she sneaks out of the house, crawling on all fours, to look for snails and slugs that have pulled out of their shell. Luckily for her, nobody sees her. She smiles to herself. Don’t worry, she has not lost her mind. It’s nothing more than a private joke.

  Once she walked into a pet shop and searched in the cages for a rat. The salesperson wanted to phone the police. Poor man. No sense of humor at all.

  ***

  The addressee was born to the one who was born to her, which is why the old woman keeps hoping that the very first time the story is retold, at least, it will remain faithful to the original. And even if the content of the time capsule is never revealed in full, the spirit of the story will continue to roam. Stories have ghosts too, after all.

  When her time comes, the old woman will be lowered into the earth, into the familiar darkness. She’s not afraid. Unlike those who find refuge in the light, she has been there. She emerged from the darkness, and has remained in the darkness.

  And pretty soon, she’ll be going back there. If there is one promise that is always kept, that’s the one.

  ***

  The old woman took her chances, and the granddaughter did not turn her back. Which doesn’t mean that there won’t be setbacks, but never mind that for now.

  Even if the story is devoid of love, the closer it gets to its inevitable endin
g, something fills it in nonetheless. To love – a verb which she uses sparingly – is such a heavy burden. But without it the story would have no meaning. At the end of their conversation, the old woman intends to ask her granddaughter to search for her mother and father on the internet. People say that this net is spreading into the world beyond this world.

  ***

  Just before the end, the story poses the most complicated challenge of all: how to overcome old age? Because she, of all people, must not change or turn into an old lady. After all, if she changes, how will her father and mother recognize her when they come back? She couldn’t bear the thought that the promise might be kept for someone else.

  Inside her, it is true, time has become fossilized, but on the outside it has taken its toll.

  ***

  Darkness falls. This commonplace natural phenomenon has never ceased to amaze her. Sometimes one side is completely dark while the other retains a pale pink haze. But whether she closes her eyes or leaves them open, the old woman meets up with the darkness all at once.

  She is standing in the stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment building, flicking the light switch again and again to keep it on, until she hears her granddaughter’s voice from below. An echo rises from the entrance hall, over the old bomb-shelter.

  Grandma, I’ve reached the ground. Good night.

  ***

  The story should be recorded in full, the old woman hears a voice within her, echoing the public demand to tell it before it’s too late. Those who can tell such stories are numbered. But she and others like her will never be the perfect storytellers. All they can offer is the shell. We’ll have to settle for that. One thing that the old woman’s hands remember well – because a flame burns on in her fingers to remind her, oblivious to the main Memory valve – is the slough of the snakes. Scaly, coarse, refusing to crumble. The little-girl-who-once-was envied the snakes.

  A shell of a story, or a slough. No more.

  ***

  The old woman gave in, and agreed to share a small portion of her story. Not because she thought it would be of use to anyone, but because in her heart of hearts she was hoping to uncover something which she herself had not known before.

  Now she regrets having been hostage to the story for so long. The rage and the yearning have deprived her of the ability to express what she was feeling. And she is feeling so much. At this very moment, in Tel Aviv, the old woman is slithering into herself.

  Despite the story.

  ***

  One time the old woman crossed over and entered the confessional. It happened a few days before her conversation with her granddaughter.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

  For the first time in her life she had said Father. In her conversation with her granddaughter, she would try to say Mother too.

  In St Anthony’s Church in Jaffa the priest sat behind the screen and did not rush her. In talking to his flock – foreign workers who have come all the way to Israel to provide bread for their children – he told her that an evil spirit once attacked St Anthony, patron saint of the poor and the ailing, the brushmakers and the household pets. The saint lay in his black cave, mortally wounded and mistaken for dead. He lay there all night, but in the morning, by some miracle, he was his old self again.

  There was a long line outside the confessional, but still the priest waited for the old woman.

  Finally she spoke, asking: What happens to all the sinners for whom no confession has been said, the ones still buried in the dark?

  The priest at St Anthony’s in Jaffa asked her to switch places. He himself sat behind the screen as a repentant instead of the woman who was wrought. His head came lower than hers, with its hair which had been whitened by old age, not peroxide.

  Yigdal Elohim Chai ve-Yishtabach

  The living God O magnify and bless,

  Transcending time and here eternally.

  One Being, yet unique in unity;

  A mystery of Oneness, measureless.

  Lo! Form or body He has none, and man

  No semblance of His holiness can frame.

  The priest repeated after her the Jewish confession, recited before death, and begged for forgiveness.

  ***

  Downstairs, above the old bomb-shelter, the granddaughter had the impression that the old woman had said something more.

  Stash.

  What’s Stash, Grandma?

  The old woman fingered the necklace she was wearing and shouted from upstairs: It was just your imagination.

  The granddaughter dismissed it, never mind, it really must be her grandma’s old age, and closed the open notebook she’d been holding.

  ***

  The story has subplots and untold portions, but since the afternoon has lost the final vestiges of daylight and darkness is falling over Tel Aviv, the old woman leaves the untold portions suspended in the twilight. This was the hour when she would, if she could, have chosen to die.

  There are stories which, like human beings, have a tendency to spill over. This story too contains so many feelings that every tilt, no matter how delicate the angle, is liable to cause it to overflow.

  To make sure it doesn’t spill over, the old woman does everything she can to contain herself. She doesn’t want to be left with nothing, after finally managing to have whatever she has.

  ***

  Should I turn on the light, Grandma?

  Not yet.

  But it’s dark already.

  Almost.

  Where are you? I can’t see you. Give me your hand.

  I need you, Grandma.

  ***

  Someone ought to intervene and tell the old woman: Hug your granddaughter. Don’t ever forget who she is, so you don’t get confused. In darkness which is darkness, and in light which is also darkness. Born of you. This is the right sequence. And as for the timing, there is no other. Face to face, hug her. Don’t turn your back.

  And this too is a possible ending to the story.

  Part Two

  The Legend

  Notebook

  40 sheets

  60 grams

  14.8cm x 20.8cm

  Front cover: Angel

  Detail from The Sistine Madonna by Raphael

  c.1512-1513

  Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany

  The following day: Tel Aviv, late 1999

  I don’t have a story, Miri. I’m so sorry. You can flunk me. I know your intentions were good. And besides, I’m the one who put my hand up in class and said that she’d been there. And I admit it, maybe I was kind of trying to make an impression, and you figured there had to be a story there, but I didn’t find it, and I swear to you I really tried. I deserve a passing grade for doing that much, don’t I? I spent the whole afternoon with her, till evening, and here’s the notebook, you can see for yourself, and I was all prepared to take down her story, just like you said, and maybe, much as I hate to say this because you’re my teacher, maybe there simply is no story.

  She won’t even let me call her a “Holocaust survivor”. She said survivors are just the ones who’ve had some miracle happen to them, and my grandmother doesn’t believe in stuff like that. And now I don’t know what to call her. A Little Holocaust, that’s what she said. I swear those were her words, even though for some reason, I really don’t know why, I didn’t actually write them down.

  I told her: But you did survive, you stayed alive, and I even stressed the word “alive”, like you told me to, but she answered right away that it wasn’t a miracle, though I suspect she really did expect a miracle back then. And I tried, I swear to you that I tried to get her to start from the beginning so I could get it all down, and I did just what you said to do, because even though you’re our history teacher, I know you’ve studied psychology too, but she just kept mixing things up and getting all confused, even though it isn’t like her to get confused, at least not on those kinds of things. And just when I thought she was finally getting on with it, she would stop
and clam up, and Then she’d try again, and again everything got stuck, and I couldn’t understand where the bug was, and I started losing patience, but still I kept restraining myself, because it isn’t easy for them to go all the way back, and we have to be sensitive and responsible in how we draw them out. And the main thing is to be compassionate, though we’ll never really be able to understand. That’s what you told us. But even trying to listen is worth something.

  I tried every way I know. I asked the simplest things, but it didn’t work. Because if the story is stuck, how am I supposed to know how to get it free? Unless there is no story, or at least not the story you were expecting.

  And I admit that suddenly this whole project is beginning to look pointless, because even though my grandmother really was in the Holocaust, I’m not sure it counts, because she was a little girl and she didn’t go through any of the big, horrifying things we learn about in history or read about or see in the movies. If she’d been an adult, or at least my age, then she’d have had a story by now, or half a story, something that could count as a story. But me, all I’ve managed to get out of her was that they hid her with a couple of farmers in some small village. She couldn’t even remember its name because she was so little then, and considering that she can’t say anything about a ghetto or about concentration camps, her story doesn’t add up to much. And what little I got, which doesn’t amount to a story anyway, I could have put in my notebook without having to spend a whole afternoon at her place, because the tiny bit she told me is stuff that my mother knows too.

  And if my grandmother doesn’t even remember what grade I’m in, then why should she remember something that happened when she was a little girl with a small memory? Whenever I have a birthday she always messes it up and brings me the wrong present. It’s become a kind of family joke, because when I was four, or maybe five, whatever, she refused to buy me a doll, and she and my grandfather even fought about it – he was still alive then – because he’d seen this commercial with a doll where you press its bellybutton and it wets itself. And after a while he even let me in on his secret, that he bought it anyway, but my grandmother took it to the shop and forced them to take it back, even though he hadn’t even bothered to take a sales slip.