by Zion's Fiction- A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature (retail) (epub)
A sound of metallic crackling and rattling came from the mouth of the alley. Hearing it the old ladies stopped their chatter, exchanging glances critical of the world-at-large. It was all I could do not to laugh at their reaction.
“The Meshuga, a curse upon its soul, is back again,” said Yaffa.
“Poor thing, if one more bit falls off it, it’ll come apart,” Nana said in its defense.
“But it’s such a bore,” commented Orit in what she must have thought was a mature manner, and squinted at me.
Avrum’s mother, who looked like an Egyptian mummy and was probably as old, held up a fragile finger and cackled, “When I was young, there were no such things around.”
“It says in the papers that they kidnap children,” said Orit.
“No, come on, it’s not kidnapping children,” replied Nana. “Poor thing, this Meshuga, it’s been in the neighborhood for years, and no child got kidnapped, ever.”
“How true,” lowed Odelia’s toothless mouth. “It’s all stories made up by the Bank. Damn the Bank, where does it get off harassing them?”
“Tomatoes!” Avrum’s mother burst out nostalgically. “When I was little we used to buy tomatoes at a store, from a person who was actually selling them. A real person. Not like today: you stick the bank card in a wall, and out comes a kilo of tomatoes.”
“Bank, schmank,” said Nana dismissively. “There’s the Meshuga. All painters have a few screws loose.”
The rattling noise grew louder, and then the Tin Beggar made its entrance. It limped in a tight, precisely controlled, clockwork way. Its left shoulder was bent, the result of an old sledgehammer blow, its face covered with a blackened patina. One eye was missing, and from the empty socket colored wires dangled down its cheek. One knee crackled, two of its fingers were broken, and a few holes in its head suggested it was missing some nuts. Just a regular neighborhood tin beggar, whom the crones gave a disdainful name to tell it apart from others of its ilk, even though tin beggars have no real names.
“Here comes Chambalooloo!” said Orit, frowning. She poked a knitting needle in the air and prophesized: “Some day all this will end, and not in a good way! The papers say they’re dangerous, I’m telling you!”
“The papers all belong to the Bank,” I interjected to silence her.
She huffed but threw me a flirtatious glance.
“Ah!” snorted Flora, “Now it’ll want to paint us for a handout. Who needs to be painted, who? Tell it that the Rebbetzin said we shouldn’t accept paintings from tin beggars.”
“But the Rebbetzin also said we must treat them nice!” replied Nana fiercely.
“Nothing good will come out of this one,” claimed Orit, disappointed. “This is no real man, this one.”
Her mother looked at her, sad and hurt. The old ladies’ lips trembled in an attempt to hide their smirks. As for me, I turned my face up diplomatically to see whether there were any clouds in the sky.
The robot stopped in front of us and asked, “Madam, can you spare a gift of metal?”
Nana smiled, signaled for it to come closer, searched in her housecoat’s pockets, and took out a large nail, rusty and bent. Smiling happily, she handed it to the Tin Beggar: “There you are, Chambalooloo.”
“Another nail?” Holding it, the Tin Beggar looked utterly disappointed.
A long time ago Nana poked around in her shed and found a bucket full of large, rusty, bent, totally useless nails. Generously, she would give one to Chambalooloo every day, except on Shabbat. As I said, Nana lives near a religious neighborhood. The tin beggars learned to watch their steps on the holy day, since the time some metallic unfortunate started cleaning a street in Me’a She’arim as a gesture of good will. It was Shabbat, and the worshippers emerged from their synagogue to tear it to pieces, leaving behind only tiny bits of metal.
“Would you like me to paint your portrait, Madam?” the Tin Beggar asked Nana.
Amazingly, the chief occupation of tin beggars is art. They paint, they play music, they tell beautiful stories, all for metal handouts. But resolutions angrily adopted by the Writers and Poets Union, the Painters and Sculptors Union, and the Musicians Union declared that any painting, poem, story, or tune produced by a tin beggar is not to be considered a work of art (and for good reason, too: few humans can meet the impossibly high standards set by the tin beggars). Thus, the tin beggars were doomed to remain the makers of ephemeral, perishable art, since there was no one willing to preserve it.
“There’s a rule against painting in this neighborhood,” said Nana. “But my leg hurts. Can you just do us a favor and throw out the garbage?”
Hearing Nana’s request, I could no longer keep a straight face and burst out laughing. How like Nana! For a rusty nail a day, she’d made the Tin Beggar her slave.
The robot’s shoulders sank. It went into her home and came out again, carrying the garbage can in one huge hand. I got up and stepped into the kitchen to make myself some coffee. Returning to sunlight, I sat myself back on the stool, facing the old ladies. The Tin Beggar returned Nana’s trashcan to the kitchen. Upon emerging, it started rocking to and fro on its heels to draw Nana’s attention while she was arguing with the ladies about the exact time of the Tish’a b’Av fast onset.
I smiled again. It was waiting to ask whether Nana wanted anything else. Knowing her, she would definitely ask it to do some more, like clean the windows, then sweep the floor, and if there was any laundry to wash, do that as well. Nana was not one to let such an opportunity slip by.
Finally, Nana addressed the Tin Beggar. “Did you throw out the garbage, Chambalooloo, apple of my eye?”
“Garbage disposed of,” it intoned. “Will there be anything else, Madam?”
“Chambalooloo darling,” Nana said charmingly, “my leg hurts terribly. There are a few dishes in the kitchen sink. Could you please wash them? If it’s not too difficult?”
My grin grew wider as I observed how obsequiously this gigantic hunk of metal was bent to Nana’s iron will.
“No, it’s not too difficult,” groaned the robot.
The metal giant took a step toward the kitchen, then froze.
“Madam,” it said quietly to Nana, “there is a giant mouse in your kitchen.”
“You didn’t even enter the kitchen, so how can you tell?” Nana wondered.
“I can hear it.”
Nana pursed her lips in annoyance and waved a finger at the Tin Beggar. “It’s not so nice, shirking work like this. What did I ask for, anyway? Some help for five minutes, that’s all.”
“I am not shirking work. You have a giant mouse in your kitchen.”
Now Nana became mad. “There are no mice in my kitchen! You tell me, am I treating you wrong, the way you treat me now? Don’t I give you a nail every day?”
“You are treating me kindly, and you do give me a nail every day, and I’ll do the dishes. But right now there is a giant mouse in your kitchen.”
I covered my mouth to hide my grin, squinting at the crones. They looked like they were ready to rise and stab the Tin Beggar to death with their knitting needles.
“That’s what I told you,” Orit said sanctimoniously to Nana. “Nothing good will come out of this one.”
“No, you’re wrong,” said Nana vehemently to Orit (as a show of good will indirectly intended for the Tin Beggar), “it is alright. Perhaps it got tired today. But for years I’ve been asking it to help me, and it’s come through every time. Maybe it’s just not feeling well today.”
The Tin Beggar said miserably, “I am telling the truth!”
The professionals claim that robots have no feelings. But we Jerusalemites know full well they’re sensitive, and they do have feelings.
“What truth?” said Nana angrily.
“There is a giant mouse in your kitchen.”
Nana decided to check this out, and, being the shrewd person she was, immediately put the burden on someone else. “Ethan,” she said to me, “you go see what’s in the k
itchen.”
I got up from my stool, taking the empty coffee cup with me, and flashed a friendly smile at the ladies. Odelia returned my smile with her zipperlike mouth. Avrum’s mother’s smile reminded me of the Angel of Death. Orit’s fat cheeks hid her beady eyes as she attempted another coy smile. Only Nana gave me a direct glare.
I went into the hallway with the Tin Beggar trailing me in its meticulous limp. The rooms were lined up along the hallway, the third door leading into the kitchen. There was indeed some noise in there, the sound of something heavy being dragged on the floor. I opened the door and looked in.
Astonishment nearly knocked me off my feet. By the sink, near the cabinets, there stood a mouse as big as a small donkey, a bit taller than the height of my hips, all gray, its whiskers thick as ropes. The mouse, aiming its snout at the shelves, was sniffing the condiment jars one by one. Its weight was too much for its skinny legs, so it leaned on its backside against the floor. Its breathing was a running gurgle indicating a superhuman, I mean a supermousy, effort. I stared stupidly at the long pipe that was its tail.
“It might be dangerous,” said Chambalooloo behind me.
Hearing its voice, the mouse turned heavily toward us, and what it did then made me gasp in even greater surprise. It shrank to cat size. The transformation was fast, and obviously, the reduction in size gave it back its agility. It started skittering to and fro, squeaking angrily. Eventually it calmed down a little, squatted on its behind in front of me, drawing its body up like a hamster. I stared at it, my mouth agape. The mouse started squeaking again, waving its paws. Recovering from my surprise, I realized that there was some pattern to its tweeting, as if it was trying to communicate with me. Judging by the motions it made with its paws, it must have been an angry communication.
I screamed in disgust and threw the empty cup at it, following close behind with my foot up to give it a kick. As the cup was about to hit it, the mouse shrank itself further and vanished.
I looked the question at the Tin Beggar. “What was that all about?”
“A Stern-Gerlach mouse,” it said.
“Stern-Gerlach mice? I didn’t know they could size-shift.”
The Tin Beggar made no answer. Instead it proceeded, in its meticulous limp, to clean up the cup fragments. Then it did the dishes. I went out.
“What were you up to, breaking a glass? Marrying Chambalooloo?” Nana asked, whether in anger or in mirth I couldn’t tell.
“I tried to kill the mouse.”
“What mouse?” Nana was astonished.
“A mouse as big as a donkey,” I told her.
“You’re crazy!” Nana stated. “You’re like Chambalooloo. A mouse like a donkey?! And in my own kitchen yet? Come on, you crazy, you! Where do you get off, saying something like that?”
My face reddened, but I managed to check an angry response. Nana gets mad quickly, and she has a big mouth. Once she gets started, there’s no getting away from her.
After a few minutes Chambalooloo came out, its metallic hands wet. “I’m through, Madam, if you …”
“Thank you very much, Chambalooloo,” Nana interrupted. “Next time, feel free to tell me if you’re tired.”
Obviously, Nana didn’t believe the mouse story.
Suddenly I heard a belabored grunt behind me. I turned around, jumped up, and nearly fainted. In the doorway there stood a mouse as tall as a donkey and broad enough to look like a sickly lion. Around its head there was a metal band made of glowing, buzzing cubes.
The old ladies yelped in surprise; Orit even screamed. I felt like my chest and arms were being stabbed. I growled like an animal, grabbed the stool, threw it at the mouse, and dived after it. The mouse size-shifted, but the stool hit it halfway through the transformation, in the middle of its back. The impact knocked it aside, and I reached it and stomped my foot against its head, once, twice. I lifted my foot for a third stomp … and then all hell broke loose.
From the corner of my eye I saw a grey blur flying at me. I tried to fend it off, but the mouse sunk its teeth into my arm, hanging on to it. From the rooms and the corridor there came out a flood of angry, screaming mice. Mice were nipping at my legs. Then a gigantic mouse popped up behind me. Hearing its disgusting grunt I turned around, and the monster hurled its weight against me. I fell, and a flurry of furious mice scrambled over me, biting. The giant mouse made a move for my head, its gaping mouth revealing teeth as big as daggers, so help me God! I slammed it ferociously with the stool, and it yelped and started shrinking. I pounded it again and again until it nearly shrank from view. Overcoming my panic, I started whacking at the other mice, methodically now, not blindly as before. After killing twenty of them I realized I was bleeding from numerous puncture wounds. I hurled myself out and slammed the door.
Nana was white as a sheet. “Wow, Ethan! I thought you were lying when you said there was a mouse there. Forgive me. Actually, I must beg Chambalooloo’s forgiveness as well.”
The Tin Beggar hissed electronically from the corner of its speaker, “They are all over the street.”
Whole families were running out of their homes, shrieking in terror. (The official inquiry would later determine that the mice, some as big as donkeys, had suddenly appeared in all these houses at the same time, driving out their inhabitants. They must have been microscopic when they invaded, then expanded to their gigantic dimensions. The mice showed up when the men were at work. Only I, a student, could afford to lay about when everyone else was laboring.)
How long can you stay frozen in shock? I started swearing as mothers and daughters burst from their homes, carrying infants in their arms. Old men fled for their lives, waving their feeble fists, and old women scrambled after them, shrieking. The street turned into a cauldron of frenzied howls. A mouse emerged from one doorway, sat on its bottom huffing like a hippo, and started keening, exhorting its fellow combatants with frantic paw gestures. But it never got to the end of its speech. A furious woman slammed a sizable rock against its head. The mouse tumbled, dazed, and before it could issue another squeak, half the street swarmed it with planks and kicking feet. As big as it was, all that was left in the end was some mincemeat.
(A month later I was invited to Israel TV studios for an interview. A trio of reporters, who looked like a contingent of the Spanish Inquisition, insisted that the mice had just wanted to parley. But we, members of the uneducated classes that we were, just had to press the attack. They declared that as a person of some learning I should have sensed the rodents’ yearning for peaceful coexistence and stopped the mob. Knowing that I had single-handedly killed more mice than the military by attacking the mice directly, they branded me the aggressor. I got mad and asked them what should a man do when confronted by monsters that can tear his head off in one bite? He defends himself, inhumanely if necessary. And if he senses an opportunity—as when the speech-making mouse started distracting its comrades—he moves in as aggressively as possible to remove the threat. The TV people didn’t agree, so I stormed out of the studio midway through the ordeal.)
I suddenly remembered the mouse in the kitchen, how it counted jars with its snout, and cried in amazement, “Damn that bastard! It was taking inventory!”
Nana said resentfully, “And tomorrow being Tish’a b’Av!”
She got up heavily from her bench. “Let’s get in the house.”
“Your house is full of mice!”
“Then what should I do? Sleep outdoors?”
The crowd pulverizing the speaker mouse quickly dispersed. Seeing the torn carcass of their gigantic comrade, several mice began whistling excitedly at each other.
All of a sudden I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, its volume and pace growing unbearably. I covered my ears, trying to stop the infernal noise. All around me little old ladies, younger women, and children suddenly fell to their knees, their eyes glazed. By the time my heart reached a crescendo, the noise became indistinct. I lost my sense of balance, the world tilted, and the ground suddenly s
lapped me in the face. On my way down I caught sight of Chambalooloo sweeping Nana into its clanging arms and running to the end of the street. As I began regaining my senses, it came limping back. “I hope they won’t accuse me of taking part in this occupation and let the Bank repossess me.”
“I’ll testify in your favor,” I replied numbly.
“Wait here,” it said. “Women and children first.”
I cursed it, too, as it shambled away from me.
Chambalooloo picked up fat Orit, who screamed in horror, or perhaps delight, almost choking it. I turned on my back and saw a police hovercraft above the street.
Reaching the end of the street, Chambalooloo tried to shake fat Orit off it. Orit refused to let go. It gently undid her stranglehold with its broken metallic hands, and she let out angry screams at its receding back.
Then a new apparition towered over me, a mouse wearing a helmet fitted with various antennae, wires, flashing lights, sparkling bursts of energy, and whatnot. It was flicking its foul tongue over the control panel hanging in front of its face. A loud whistle pierced the air, nearly piercing me as well. My muscles spasmed and I started screaming. Darkness descended. I floated off.
I tried to reach out and grab at something in this awful darkness. “You are going to die,” I heard in the emptiness.
Then I started plummeting, an endless fall into a horrendous awful emptiness.
When I came back to visit Nana after my release from the hospital, the neighborhood was in shambles. Where Hasson’s pear tree had stood I saw just a stump.
I found out that Nana had quarreled with Orit, because Orit tried to seduce Chambalooloo. (True, as I live and breathe!) Nana had made the Tin Beggar her protégé, insisting that Orit would only make trouble for it.