And the Rat Laughed

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

Gem?ldegalerie, 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.
We had a good laugh over it in the end. And I couldn’t help myself: even though my grandfather said it was a secret, it didn’t seem to me like such an important secret and I didn’t keep it to myself. I mean, I just blurted it out when I was laughing because she’d just come into the room and she saw us, so she started laughing too, because maybe she’d decided that it was silly to fight over a thing like that. I mean, why argue over a doll that wets herself. And Grandpa gave her a hug, which kind of embarrassed me – I mean old people hugging – and she went on laughing because if there’s one thing you can’t say about my grandmother it’s that she doesn’t have a sense of humor, although not everyone understands it, especially not my mom. My grandmother, what can I tell you, she like laughs at the weirdest things, like people on talk shows arguing about the meaning of life, or the horoscope telling you what’s going to happen to you because some comet crossed the horizon of Mercury while you were being born. And once we were watching TV together and we saw this expert talking about a technique for controlling your thoughts and your feelings, and another expert was telling the studio audience how to release anger and talking about energy points – you just have to press on the right places and you get rid of all the garbage inside. And she thought it was hilarious. She gave this strange laugh of hers. Really quiet, no sound, all you see is the way her mouth twitches, and the little muscles around her mouth. A silent laugh as if it isn’t coming from her throat, or from her stomach, or wherever people usually laugh, but from somewhere completely different.
And I’m telling you, Miri, none of the things you’d expect from someone who went through the Holocaust stuck to her. She’s a happy-go-lucky person with lots of friends too. And ever since she retired and stopped working in the x-ray lab at the hospital, she’s been going to the theatre every week and to the flea market every Sunday. And she brings back all sorts of junk, especially old necklaces. She has a whole collection hanging on her bedroom wall – she never wears them – and when I was little, she’d let me play with them. And she’s not a pain like some other grandmothers. Never tells me off for wearing a belly shirt or for debating between piercing my bellybutton and getting a tongue stud, and she never says: When we were young ... in our generation ... – which is what I keep hearing from my mom, who seems a lot older than my grandma sometimes. Even my friends say that my grandmother is cool, especially after she started getting into computers and announced that she was going to surf the net. I even screamed it at my mother once when we were having a fight, and she screamed back: I’m not in some competition with your grandmother. And I said: Why don’t you call her “my mother”?
So what do you want me to write? That she was a little girl and she was saved? That’s the whole story. My mother doesn’t think there’s much to look into either, because everyone who was a child there and who was hidden stayed alive at least, and had someone to care about them – which should count for something.
And what did they get me for my birthday in the end? Not for that birthday, I mean, but for my last birthday – my bat-mitzvah. She insisted on going to the pet shop with me, which sounds neat, even though my mother was against it, because she said animals are dirty and that she had no intention of cleaning up after one. My grandma got really mad when my mother talked about the filth that animals make, but she didn’t say a word.
I wanted a pedigree dog, a Pinscher or a Dashchund, or maybe a Siamese cat, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking for any of those because they cost a fortune, but my grandmother kept asking the sales guy about snakes and if he knew anyone who raises moles – at home, on purpose – and she asked if she could touch some worms, but he told her she’d have to go to a fishing place to get worms. He liked her a lot, and thought she was cool, so he let her open the cages. He simply knew he could trust her not to steal anything and not to kidnap some expensive animal, and he watched her when she started petting the hamsters and the gerbils and the guinea pigs, and for a second I got the feeling she was even talking to them, but I guess I was just imagining things. And when she caught the sales guy’s eye she winked to him as if they shared some secret, which seemed really odd, considering they’d never met.
Slowly, more people started gathering round, and she began explaining that the most faithful animals are the ones that you never find in a shop. And the sales guy said, You’re ruining my livelihood. But he said it nicely and you could tell he liked her, and when we were leaving he said: Your grandmother should have worked in a zoo, and he started explaining, like on Animal Planet, that some people just have a knack with animals and they could be lion tamers in the circus or jungle explorers. And I told him my grandmother could have been Mowgli.
She stood there with her back turned, halfway into the street already, and started laughing. The real zoo is right here, she said and stomped her foot. The salesman told her she was breaking up the Tel Aviv sidewalks, which were in need of serious repairs anyway, and she said that as far as she was concerned, she’d write to the mayor and ask him to remove the top layer of Tel Aviv, and then she’d organize guided tours, because there’s a Tel Aviv under the ground too. Every city has an under-the-ground city too, every place has an under-the-ground, because wherever there are people there’s an under-the-ground, and even if the under-the-ground wasn’t there before, it begins to form because of them, even without their noticing it, behind their backs, and that’s the real zoo.
The salesman told her: If you’ve got nothing to do when you retire, why don’t you come work for me, or for the SPCA, because they’re always looking for volunteers, and she said: Thanks, I’ve got lots to do, especially now, while I’m taking a special computer course for mature adults, and learning about the internet too.
But when all was said and done, she didn’t buy me anything.
When we got home she said: Your pet will find you. And I said: Come on, Grandma, what animals ever choose their pet-human? But she didn’t answer, and I thought, there goes another lousy birthday.
Believe me, it wasn’t easy to pin her down to arrange for us to meet for this school project. Every time I tried to set a time with her she avoided me. She had plenty of excuses. She had to wait for the computer guy to hook her up to the net. It was only when I told her that I was going to flunk on her account that she gave in. In the end, we made a date for the afternoon, and I even skipped drama class for this interview. I sat there across from her, all ready to go, if you get my drift, with my pen and notebook, just waiting to hear her out. Just like you said. And I had my outline ready and the list of questions I’d typed out at home, and I thought about what you’d said in class, that this is the eleventh hour because these are the last witnesses who can still tell us firsthand about what they went through in those terrible, horrible years, and pretty soon they won’t be around any more. I remembered that you said we should try to bring along a camcorder or a tape recorder to tape the story, but my grandmother just wouldn’t have it. She barely agreed to the notebook.
The first thing I noticed was that she’d made room for a computer in the living room near the window. She said they’d promised to hook her up within a day or two, and she was still waiting. I thought it was kind of funny to see people her age surfing the net.
I waited patiently for her. First she drew the curtains, even though the light never disturbs me. Then she straightened up the sofa and the propped-up cushions she’d made out of silk and lace, with embroidery in lots of colors that she collects from all over the world or buys at the flea market on Sundays. Finally she chose the armchair directly across from me and sat down, even though it was my grandfather’s chair, where he’d sit with the remote control and wind up watching just the sports channel. It was the armchair he died in, in fact. He got a heart attack all of a sudden, and took us all by surprise.
There was a bit of a distance between us, so I had to bend down to see her face. She sat there in a strange position, like a school-girl, or as if she was facing someone who has made her bow to him and even though she had to obey, there was something inside her that succeeded in resisting. I didn’t feel comfortable in that position. I kept thinking that I don’t want to upset her, and that if I just do what you told me, the story will come out clear and smooth, with a beginning, a middle and an end – and a sense of progression to boot. That’s what you explained in class. You really explained it well, Miri, and you know I’m not one to butter up my teachers. I thought a lot about the way you put it, and about how one thing leads to another. Otherwise things don’t make sense, because the biggest danger is when everything gets confused and chaotic. And I did whatever I could. I thought your instructions were really super, and that if I followed them, I wouldn’t cause her any unnecessary pain, because I certainly don’t want to do that, especially now that my grandfather is no longer alive.
My grandma asked: What did you bring that notebook for? I’ve got nothing to tell you. A few words and that’s all. Why don’t you try someone else?
I said: I don’t have anyone else.
And finally she said: Darkness, a pit, potatoes, and then the War was over.
I had a feeling she was a little mad at me then, but I didn’t know why, and I figured I was tiring her out, using up her time, which may be very precious to her, because old people really don’t have enough time, and I may be getting on her nerves with my school project, the one I have to do to get a grade, and that it wasn’t fair to make her go back to when she was so little, because a little girl cannot control her life when she’s so small, or tell herself in advance that some day this will become the most important and significant thing in her life. Even I myself, seven years older than she was then, I can’t know what will become important in the end and what will fly right out of my memory as if it never happened. And she said: What a shame Grandpa isn’t alive, because he had an amazing memory, and now that she was taking the special mature adults computer course, she realized that he was hooked up to the memories of others too.
I became nervous as hell, partly because my notebook was still empty and partly because I’d been so worried about having to listen to all sorts of horrible stuff. But now I wasn’t so worried any more because I understood it wasn’t going to be that kind of a story, and deep in my heart I was grateful that she’d been too little, back then.
I didn’t succeed in getting the names of the farmers who saved her either, and believe me I did ask, as tactfully as I could, just like you taught us in class. I even remembered some of the examples you put on the board.
What did you call them, Grandma? And I made some suggestions too, just to jog her memory, if there really is such a thing as jogging someone’s memory. Maybe she called them Auntie and Uncle for example, because I figured that maybe her parents had told her they were taking her to some relatives. Or maybe there were nicknames, which would seem logical for a little girl. And for a moment I thought maybe she’d called the farmers Mother and Father but I didn’t dare mention it to her.
But nothing worked. I’m sure she tried, because there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me, so she says, and that’s what my mother says too, bitterly sometimes, and I think she may be a little jealous of me.
And I used to think that old people are really good at remembering things that happened to them a long time ago, but they’re perfectly capable of forgetting what they had for breakfast that day. Then again, maybe that’s just a myth, and maybe people can control their memory and keep rearranging it the way you arrange your school schedule and decide what to take at what hour, and they’re also the ones who decide when the bell should ring and maybe they keep deluding themselves into thinking that memory is just one big free-for-all. Even I know there are things that I’d rather not remember, but it doesn’t help me much. Maybe some day I’ll figure out a better way, to push memories aside.
Grandma said she wished she had more control over her memory, but that unfortunately you don’t always remember what you should, and vice versa. Then she said: Don’t feel too bad. It’s not such a great loss.
But I did feel bad actually, because people who saved a little girl deserve to be remembered, and I even felt sort of annoyed with her, because the least their survivor could do is to remember them, even if she doesn’t like being labeled a “survivor”. It seemed so unfair not to remember the people who helped you the most, but I hid this from her because I was sure that not a day went by when she did not try hard to remember them but that it just wasn’t her fault that she’d been so little.
Believe me, Miri, you’re my favorite teacher, and I wouldn’t lie to you. I tried everything. I asked her to tell me about that place under the ground because I have no idea what a potato pit is. We don’t exactly keep potatoes under the ground, you know. In our house, they’re in the vegetable bin in the fridge. And if it was some kind of a basement, then the only basement I know is the old bomb-shelter in Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Tel Aviv, which nobody uses, and the city closed it after one of the wars, I don’t remember which one, and there’s a warning sign hanging there.
She said: A pit. Just a pit. As if a pit that you lower a little girl into is the most ordinary thing in the world. And for me a pit is a hole in the garden where you plant a flower or a tree – not a place you live in, not even temporarily. I mean, it must have been something special that the farmer and his wife had prepared in advance. Maybe they even planned it together with her parents to make it look just like her room at home so she’d hardly notice the difference and would feel comfortable right from the start. With a bed and a carpet, and a cupboard maybe. Because I bet her parents sent all her clothes and her games and toys with her, and her doll of course. And there must obviously have been a flashlight or a lamp, because there had to be some light down there.
But no matter how hard I tried, she kept insisting: a pit. No more.
***


I went back to the notebook. I was getting really desperate, because I couldn’t understand why she was getting so hung up on the wrong word, though I’d always found it really funny how she mixed up all sorts of things and didn’t always know what went with what. Like for instance she used to say, “come on up downstairs” or “come on down upstairs”. And my dad, last time he came for a visit, said there was no point in trying to correct her because it was her own special sense of humor. Except that now I didn’t think it was funny at all. I looked at the questions I’d prepared, and saw they weren’t worth anything, and I had no choice but to start making up new ones.
I asked her how she’d gone up and down, and whether there’d been stairs, and I even imagined a special tunnel that the good farmers had made to take her out for a breath of fresh air, or to take a walk late at night or whenever they thought it would be safe. And I guessed they must have told the neighbors they were raising the poor orphan of a relative, who had nowhere to be because of the War. Of course they only confided in neighbors or close friends that they knew they could trust. And I got the feeling that all my guesswork about her life there was right on target. And the fact that there really are such good people in the world is pretty encouraging, because all you see on TV is people who do really horrible things. And I wish I could have gotten her to remember the names of those farmers, because then I might have written to thank them, even though I’m pretty sure they’re no longer alive, or at least I would have written to their children or their grandchildren, and I would even have contacted the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, and told them that I’d tracked down some Righteous Gentiles. That’s what I was thinking. About how unfair memory can be, and about how memory didn’t give a damn, and about what a shame it was that I hadn’t thought of asking her about it earlier. I was even more upset that my mother never bothered to find out all these details when Grandma was much younger and her brain was much sharper, because then I might at least have been able to hear the story from my mother – organized and clear, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And it just isn’t fair towards the people in that village that even its name has disappeared from her mind, though of course it wasn’t her fault. And it wasn’t that she was ungrateful, it’s just that she’d been too little.
She said she never ever left the pit. Only the rat did. And that’s how I found out about the rat.
And you know that I’m not one to give up easily, so I took down my grandfather’s old atlas, the one with countries that don’t actually exist any more because they’ve been split up, and I asked her to find the place. I even put my finger on the map. My finger moved from country to country, cutting across borders in no time. I flew across all of Europe and even reached Asia by mistake. I deliberately pointed to the tiniest countries in the world, the ones that you couldn’t see without a magnifying glass, like San Marino and Andora and the Vatican in the middle of Rome, just to prove to her that it’s possible. But she said she was no good at geography and couldn’t pinpoint the place. So I said it didn’t have to be the exact spot. Even something in the general area would do, and she said: Let’s just forget it, sweetheart, it won’t work. Still, I took her finger – she has long nails, and a nice manicure, with nail polish and everything – and tried to place it on the old atlas, but she said that maybe the place didn’t even exist any more or that it never had existed because everything was changing anyway at the end of the millennium and none of what had existed before would continue to exist in the next millennium, and that word, “millennium”, sounded strange coming from her, even though you keep hearing it all day on special sales and stuff.
And then she pulled a fast one on me. She moved the atlas and took the notebook instead. She opened it and leafed through it, looking at the cover and asking where I’d bought it.
I said it was from an ordinary stationery store at a back-to-school sale, nothing special. I’d bought a whole stack of them, to last me all year. And she asked if I liked angels. I said it didn’t matter what they had on the cover. You throw the notebook out anyway when it’s full and finished. I don’t even wait till the end of the year sometimes. I throw them out right away when they’re used up and I don’t bother keeping them as souvenirs. She looked at the cover again, checking it out as if she was still an x-ray technician and hadn’t retired.
I said the whole business with the covers was just a fad, and that as far as I was concerned they could put Britney Spears or Winnie the Pooh or the Fox Kids announcer on the cover, and the angel was just by chance, though I had to admit that whenever I got bored in class I’d give it a moustache or add some tattoos, and I’d erase the wings completely, really give it a workup. He’s really smart, that angel, having the time of his life, though I guess angels don’t have such a thing as time anyway.
She leafed through the notebook and I was sure she was going to make some comment about how I hadn’t written anything down, but she actually seemed happy about that.
I tried a roundabout approach, and asked her what language she dreamed in, and she said that some people never open their mouth in their dreams, they keep quiet all through the dream, and then she said she doesn’t dream at all. I said that was impossible, because everyone dreams, even people who don’t realize they’re dreaming. Especially those who suffer from nightmares. Even babies dream inside their mothers, according to scientists. And she said that some people have all their dreams at once. I told her that would be a terrible waste, spilling it all out in a single swoop, because then there’d be nothing left, and you have to save one dream for emergencies.
She didn’t say anything. And I thought maybe even the single dream that she must have had at some point had been used up already, which would really be a shame.
Then she left me for a moment, to the bathroom or something, I don’t know, and I heard her coughing. I don’t know if it’s a cold or something that old people get, but it scared me a little, because I don’t want her to die, like Grandpa, even though my mother keeps reminding me that it’s bound to happen.
Meanwhile, I took down Grandpa’s old dictionary from its spot next to the atlas. The pages were so old they were falling apart, but that’s all there was, so I opened it and looked up memory.
“The power of the soul to recollect things and not to forget them.”
I gave it some thought, and realized that if I gave her mind the power, I’d be like some kind of battery pack, like an electrical supply, and that maybe whatever ought to be remembered will be, and I wondered whether my own mind had enough power to give to someone else, and how can you measure the power of a person’s mind anyway?
Then she came back, and I asked her if she was OK, because she looked kind of pale under her make-up, and I couldn’t quite figure out why she had to put on make-up on my account, because I saw right away that she’d put on a new coat of lipstick, and some rouge too. She said it was just because of the heat, but she didn’t fool me, because I saw that she was fingering one of those necklaces of hers, moving the beads back and forth. I felt like I was being hypnotized, and I even counted them between her fingers. Forty-one beads. Then she noticed the dictionary open on the table and put it back in the right slot on the bookshelf, next to the atlas. She was standing with her back to me when she said: I was a champion ice-skater.
For a moment I thought she was talking about that one dream that we’d been discussing earlier, a beautiful dream. I wish it had been mine. And then she moved Grandpa’s armchair, pushed the sofa aside, rolled up the carpet, kicked off her shoes and just like that, barefoot, she started sliding across the floor tiles. She took some real spins and axels, like a pro, as if she’d spent her whole life practicing. I started laughing out loud, not like she did. I asked: Grandma, what do you need the internet for? I’ll buy you some inline skates for your birthday, with my birthday savings. Just let me know when your birthday is.
That’s when she sat down on the floor, took my hand in hers, and said: Sweetheart, I don’t know when my birthday is.
But doesn’t everyone know when their birthday is, and when people celebrate it, and what presents they used to get? So how come she doesn’t remember hers? Where will I find the power for her mind, so she can remember such a simple thing, which means a lot to me...
And when she saw how much it upset me, she tried to make it seem like nothing. It’s just like any other day, and you can always celebrate it on a different date.
What different date?
One when something just as important happened.
Like what?
Maybe it was the day when her parents returned, but they didn’t return. Or the day when the farmer and his wife said good-bye and they must have soaked her with their tears because they were practically her parents by then – foster parents – and I’m sure it must have been terribly hard to give her up after they’d saved her life and they’d grown so attached to her. I know they must have loved her. That much I didn’t need to ask.
And now I understood that I didn’t even know how old she was, and maybe she didn’t know how old she was either. It wasn’t her exact age that I cared about, but to this day I can’t take my birthday casually. I mean, it’s the day when I came into the world, the happiest day in my father and mother’s life, and I couldn’t understand why she was playing down the significance of her birthday. I mean, she remembers mine and my mother’s and everyone else’s in our family, even though in the end she didn’t buy me a pet for my bat-mitzvah, or anything else for that matter.
And even though I didn’t say a word, she mentioned the rat again.
A rat?
He was with me, she said. Her voice was soft.
I shuddered.
What a repulsive animal, disgusting as they get. What a nightmare, living with a rat, spending days and nights with it. I would never have lasted.
Believe me, Miri, I changed the subject as quickly as I could, because that rat must have been a nightmare for her. I didn’t even manage to think of a single question I’d prepared, and I forgot every one of the headings in my outline. I don’t know why I wound up asking her what language she’d used with her parents, when I don’t even know what their names were, and now they’ve been lost forever.
And I was sorry I’d brought it up, because you can’t replace an old memory with a newer, smarter one, with more gigabytes, the latest fad.
Still, she answered.
She said it was a language that people don’t use any more, like those ancient languages, Sumerian and Accadian for example, that have completely disappeared, and that she’d gotten used to not being able to remember the words. Darkness was what she could feel.
Darkness even had a taste, my grandma said. And when the sunlight disappears for good, maybe I’ll teach you to feel it.
Maybe.
Her fingers stretched and moved, as if she was feeling something. It seemed to me that she was holding something that I couldn’t see but she could.
kept quiet.
To feel darkness.
I’m not so sure I’d like that.
So what did they tell you when they sent you away?
Be a good girl.
I thought she was imagining things, because parents couldn’t possibly say that to their daughter just before they sent her far away. It’s much more likely that they hugged her tight and soaked her with their tears, and maybe that’s why she prefers laughing. To tell you the truth, Miri, I’ve never seen my grandmother cry. Not even at my grandfather’s funeral. She stood tall and looked right into his grave, even when my mother completely went to pieces and really embarrassed me with her screaming and my uncle Nachum had to keep her from falling. To tell you the truth, just between you and me, sometimes I think Mother loved Grandpa more than she loves Grandma, because she never stops grumbling that Grandma doesn’t care about anyone but herself, as if she’s the only person in the world. And I’ve told my mother that maybe it’s because she was in the Holocaust, and Mother said: What did she go through, compared to the others? And it made me feel awful. I don’t like it when people say “compared to”, because when it comes to suffering, some people suffer more and some suffer less, but there’s no way you can measure it. And it reminds me how people tell me I’m a fortunate kid because I’ve got a computer and CDs and a neat stereo set and unlimited internet access, when there are kids in the world who work from morning to night in some stinking sweatshop, just to glue the soles onto my Nikes.
And my dad came to the funeral too, even though he and Mom got divorced when I was six, because he really liked Grandpa. He flew in all the way from Palo Alto, where his hi-tech company is located. His new wife didn’t come, though. And when he saw Grandma standing so close to the grave, he simply pulled her away from there, but gently.
I told her: Don’t you trust me? I’m a big girl, and I can take anything. We’re a different generation. We see it all, we know all about things. We’re the kids with TVs and computers, and nothing’s hidden any more. You can see the worst atrocities live on TV, even on the family channel. Planes crashing and people cutting each others’ heads off or doing drugs, and buses exploding. What could she possibly tell me that I don’t already know?
Sure, she had it rough. I’m not stupid. They stuck her in some strange village, with people she’d never met, and it must have been difficult to learn how to get along with them. I guess the farmer’s wife was a little hard on her, to make sure she got used to the place as soon as possible, so she could play the role of their orphan-relative. And I guess she got used to those farmers, whether she liked it or not, because what choice did she have? And it’s just as well that she was so little, because I think little kids adapt to new places quickly and figure out how to do what people tell them to do, till they wind up feeling it’s the most natural place for them. Take me, for instance. Didn’t I get used to my parents being divorced?
And my dad didn’t even come to my bat-mitzvah...
So she was really lucky not to have to see her father and her mother being killed. It freaks me out just to think what she might have had to go through if she’d stayed with them. Her parents simply sent her away “till the storm lets up”, and saved her from having to see all those horrors.
I asked what games she’d played and what songs the farmers had taught her, and I hoped the question would help her remember some scenes from the village, which was probably very pretty, with forests all around and snow, and I could even picture her with a red bow in her hair and a white pinafore and a wicker basket, like Little Red Riding-Hood, picking flowers and fruit like the little girls in stories always do. Raspberries or blueberries. Shame we don’t have them in Israel. It’s a scene I even described out loud because sometimes just describing a scene like that can give your memory a kick in the stomach, so it finally wakes up. Smells do it, at least for me, though I couldn’t describe a smell this time.
There was another picture that I tried to describe to her. Of her with the other children.
Did the farmers have sons and daughters?
Did you make friends with them?
Did you play with them?
They were like your own brothers and sisters, weren’t they?
And it didn’t help when I tried names of games like catch or hide-and-seek. I don’t know if they played those games then anyway. Suddenly she seemed so helpless, though I’m sure that if she realized I was feeling sorry for her she’d have been really mad.
And when I saw that she couldn’t even remember the farmers’ children, I realized it was a lost cause. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her when she’d begun to forget her real parents, even though that was one of the questions that I’d written on the first page of my notebook, and I’d even marked it as the most important one.
I hid the notebook from her.
I thought to myself that at that age she must have forgotten really quickly, which was lucky for her, because if anyone stuck me at my age in some godforsaken place I’d never forget it, but maybe that’s because my memory works differently and I never forget anything, which is something I have inherited from my dead grandfather.
I consoled myself: it’s a pretty good story, even though it’s kind of short, without anything horrible, with good characters and with my grandmother who saw the nicer side of life, and it’s just my lousy luck that I can’t write the story and get a hundred, because that’s the grade I would have gotten if I’d been able to produce a story like that after we kept hearing only awful things.
And it was only much later that I noticed that I was the only one who was using the words Mother and Father...
I was about to get up, and then she said: Come, let me tell you a legend.
Why a legend? I asked. I’m not a child, and I’m not some kind of retard who needs to have everything painted rosy, with lots of soft edges that have nothing to do with how things really were.
I’m too old for legends, Grandma, I told her. Besides, our generation doesn’t go for legends. Except maybe for babies who believe in happy endings, and take it in along with “and they lived happily ever after”, which is the biggest lie in the world. So why was she treating me that way?
And then she said that some legends are horrible, and I said: Yes, like Hansel and Gretel with the witch who’s about to eat them up, or the ugly dwarf with the long name who wants to kidnap the miller’s daughter but then she pulls a trick on him. As long as we’re into legends, it should only be the kind that involves retribution and a chance to even the score, because if I’d been Hansel and Gretel, I’d never have forgiven the witch, and I would have run after her and caught her and shoved her in the oven and stood there watching the smoke and even burned down the gingerbread house till there was no trace of memory left of it. And as for the miller’s daughter, she wasn’t that little, so she didn’t forget anything, and she taught her kid – who stayed with her for good – never to believe what people told him, and to watch out for monsters in disguise, and how lucky we are that there weren’t any dwarfs left in the world, because there were more than enough mean people already, so there’s no point in inventing all sorts of nasty creatures besides.
Why didn’t my grandma tell the farmers that the rat was bothering her? Or else, maybe they did try to trap it and it kept coming back, because rats are such disgusting parasites, and a little girl makes the easiest prey. I felt really sorry for her. Of all the animals in the world – a creature like a rat! It must have been hell. How gross. What a filthy animal. Makes you want to throw up. I remember when the caretaker at school found a rat climbing on the drainpipe one day last spring, and got the principal and all the teachers to come. We stopped class and the principal kept screaming. You couldn’t tell if she was screaming because she was angry or because she was scared. The rat must have come from the sewer. Anyway, they sent us home early that day. It was before you came to teach at our school. So they called in the sanitation workers from the municipality with masks and toxic stuff, and they disinfected all the cesspools around the school and on the whole block. All because of one rat that they saw on the drainpipe for half an hour.
Daniel who sits behind me said that maybe the rat was more afraid of us, but that’s because Daniel always turns things around, just to feel superior.
And my grandma had to put up with that rat much longer than a single day. It wasn’t a pit, it was a lair...
She must have screamed, poor thing, and they probably had to calm her down. The farmers, I mean, and I hope it didn’t bite her or give her some horrible disease like the plague or typhus, because in Bible class when we read Samuel I, I remember the part about the Philistines who captured the Holy Ark, and when they gave it back they put some golden rats inside. As a penance, our Bible teacher told us, to rid themselves of the plague that God had afflicted them with. We even had a test on that chapter, and I remember the verses because I felt sorry for the Philistine artisan who had been forced to make a statue shaped like a rat, and I even wrote the word disgusting! in bold print, and the teacher almost gave me a zero and wrote a note on my paper. After class she called me in and said I didn’t have enough respect for our sacred forefathers and said I ought to apologize, but I didn’t. And my grandmother had to be locked up down there with that ugliness – it’s one of the eight vermin that cause the desecration of humans and dishes. That’s what it says in the Talmud. And I’m quoting the exact words that the Bible teacher used, even if she thinks I don’t remember the material. And it’s a creature that multiplies very quickly, and lives deep inside the guts of the earth and only comes out at night to do its ugly stuff. That’s what my grandmother had to live with.
I felt sick.
You see, I do remember, Miri?
The farmer’s wife did try to get rid of the rat, probably to protect my grandma, even though they couldn’t yet hide her above ground in their own house, because it would have been too dangerous. So the farmer’s wife took a piece of paper and wrote: “I hereby order the rat living in this place never to do anything bad to me. And if you ever come near me again, I swear on the Mother of our Lord that I will cut you in seven pieces.”
Then the farmer’s wife put the note over the pit, before sunrise. And for this in itself I’d like a chance to thank her, if only I could find out her name. The note my grandmother did remember, but not the name.
And I wanted to hug her, but that’s when she turned and faced me unexpectedly, and suddenly she seemed so far away that I didn’t try any more.
Maybe it was just a certain mood, or maybe it was the wrong timing, or maybe I’d asked the wrong questions. And maybe she’s suffering from some unusual disease, not amnesia where people get all confused and don’t recognize the ones they love or get lost in the street, but something that scientists haven’t even started studying yet so they don’t even have a name for it. Maybe “surplus memory” is what she has, and maybe that’s why it jams up and gets stuck. The idea that memory may have a will of its own suddenly gave me the creeps.
I looked at my empty notebook and realized that I didn’t have a thing – no story, no testimony, nothing that could be used to teach the coming generations a lesson, which is what you teachers are always after, and I knew that it was due the following day and that the whole class had already put together a tree and a genealogy and that they have everything they need, and I don’t have a thing.
She insisted: Just a legend. Take it or leave it.
I don’t understand where that legend idea came from, because she’s not one of those grandmothers who tell you a bedtime story or sing you a lullaby. I can’t remember so much as a single story or even half a lullaby that she ever ... just Grandpa. He was the perfect storyteller. He used to say it was for all the ones who weren’t able to tell, and he meant her.
OK, a legend. Whatever.
I had to go along with it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had anything to hand in, because if this was all I could get out of her, then either it’s a lack of talent that I’ve inherited from her, or else I just don’t have the patience or the technique.
One name at least. That’s all I wanted. Damn you, memory. Just give me a name! I was absolutely begging for it in my heart.
And suddenly I had an awful thought, the worst. Maybe she can’t even remember her own name, the one her parents gave her. I’d rather not think about what if the name I know her by isn’t even–
So what is real anyhow?
Just at that moment, the doorbell rang.
Grandma got up. Slowly. She was tense.
Who could it be?
I didn’t understand why she was so nervous. I said, Maybe it’s just someone collecting for the blind or for disabled children. Those people never tell you in advance.
She leaned on the wall, right where she’d made room for the computer. And she started to cough. She covered her mouth.
I asked if she was expecting anyone?
She didn’t answer.
Maybe they’re finally delivering the computer?
She didn’t move.
Should I get it? I asked.
The doorbell rang again, and I didn’t bother waiting for her answer any more.
It was my mother, even though we hadn’t arranged for her to come pick me up.
Mom said: I was worried, so I came to pick you up. Then she tried to grab the notebook away from me.
I told her I’d be back whenever I was ready. I promised.
I think you’re too young for this, my mother said. This project can wait for high school when you’re older. I’m going to file a complaint against your teacher. Don’t you dare, I told her.
My mother said: You’re still a child. Don’t you understand that? What’s the rush? Why grow up before your time? Where is everyone running to? Your generation has no childhood left. I feel sorry for you kids.
You don’t get it, I told her. Our childhood – it’s not up to us. The world has changed.
She pleaded with me to come home. She said Grandma would understand. Let me explain it to her.
You’re spoiling everything, I told her. You’re always spoiling everything.
I wouldn’t let her in. I nearly pushed her away.
In the end she turned around and started down the stairs, turning her back on me. And as she walked down she said: I can’t even tell if what we know about her is what she really is, and maybe it’s better that we don’t know, because I don’t know what it could have done to me ... to us ... maybe destroying everyone’s life.
That final sentence reached me as a little echo from the floor below.
When I came back into the room, Grandma was determined.
A legend.
Or nothing.
All right then. I had no other choice.
So if this project is a disaster, I take full responsibility, Miri. At least I’ve brought in a legend, and maybe it’s worth a passing grade. It’s all she gave me. As far as the rest is concerned...
I don’t know.
Just a minute, Miri, one more thing, before you decide about me. I almost forgot. I think – I mean I’m not sure – that I did manage to get one name out of her.
Stefan.
I think that’s what she called the rat.
My grandmother’s legend goes all the way back to the story of Creation. But her Book of Genesis is different. It starts on the fifth day, when God created the animals. We know all about that because it’s all there in writing. And He gave them all their animal traits. That much we can figure out even if it isn’t written in the Bible.
On the seventh day, after God had created man and had a chance to rest a little, He was ready to go back to work, because He realized He hadn’t put the final touches on His successful start-up. Despite what it says in Genesis He really was a pretty hardworking God. Can’t take that away from Him. The thing that was on His mind was how to upgrade man, because He’d already figured out that He’d gone about it too quickly and probably messed it up.
I’m not saying it was His fault.
The following Sunday, exactly one week since He’d started creating the world, God was working His ass off again, if you’ll forgive the expression, to work out a program that would provide man with a set of human features, because He thought it would all amount to some sort of improved version. Which is how man developed jealousy, a contagious fast-spreading human trait. That’s what my grandmother says. After barely a day, all the animals were lining up, clamoring for the same traits that man had got.
God told them: You’ve already got one human trait, and not just any trait, but jealousy, the epitome of human traits. But they wanted something more.
God in my grandmother’s legend isn’t only hardworking, but generous too, which is why he agreed to let the animals have weeping too. To this day the female turtle cries when she lays eggs on a lonely beach on a summer night, and cats and dogs cry after mating, except they do it without tears.
All of the animals were pleased. Crying agreed with them. Only the rat wasn’t satisfied with what God had given him and didn’t give any thought to what God had taken away. The rat didn’t want to cry. It had the audacity – a trait you get directly from God – to confront the Almighty and to demand the ability to laugh instead.
Grandma stressed the word laugh as if it were something completely foreign.
God was surprised. After all, in the world he’d created underneath the earth, this silence was his greatest achievement. He’d really gone all out to make it happen. Unlike above ground, when you were underneath, you could hear the roots growing or the drops of water being absorbed. That’s what God told the rat, and He was definitely proud of all He’d done.
But the rat didn’t buy it, and he still insisted on asking God for laughter.
My grandma was talking so quickly, as if she was afraid she wouldn’t remember the legend. I told her: Grandma, I can barely get it all down, but she pretended not to hear me.
God told the rat: I’ve given you teeth to gnaw with, and claws to dig tunnels, and a wonderful sense of hearing and a highly developed sense of smell. These are all excellent traits in general, and for rats in particular. God couldn’t understand why the rat kept wanting more and more. He hadn’t made the rat greedy.
But the rat was extremely stubborn, just like God, and he didn’t give up. He just kept insisting “I want”, “I’ve got to have” – which is how God figured out that the rat had been given a surplus of human traits.
God said: The snake doesn’t have laughter, the mole doesn’t have laughter, the worm doesn’t have laughter, and you’re a subterranean creature just like them. Why should you be different?
So the rat decided to try a new tack, and he started begging. Because he really did want to laugh, at least once.
And he pestered God so much that God, who just wanted to get back to work, because now he was really keen on fixing some of the glitches in his creation project – he’d figured out by then that some of the things were beyond repair – and because he wanted to get rid of that pesky rat, said: So long as you don’t hear some other creature laughing beside you underneath the ground, you will not laugh.
And then God decided it was time to throw that subterranean animal out of Heaven, once and for all, and He figured that the rat had a short memory and wouldn’t remember the promise.
OK. I closed my notebook. I thought that was the end of the story. It sounded like an ending.
Memory cannot be put into words, my grandma said. Throw your notebook away. But I held onto it anyway, clutching it on my lap, though my knees were shaking.
She continued. Time marched on, because the progress of time is the most fundamental law of that first Creation and no laughter was heard under the earth. The rat kept looking for laughter in his pit. Nothing. Then he dug tunnels under the whole earth, and discovered lots of other pits. He saw dead people resting, some with a peaceful expression, others looking tormented. But they weren’t laughing, because dead people don’t laugh.
My grandmother added that maybe there are some dead people who do laugh, but these the rat did not find.
The rat despaired, and so did his child rat and his grandson rat. And he started to hate God, and even cursed Him in secret. The rat, like humans, didn’t dare curse God out in the open. And even though the promise was handed down through the generations, the first rat’s grandchildren despaired too, and so did his great-grandchildren when their turn came, and they told each other that God makes promises but never keeps them. They even started looking for a different God, but they couldn’t find another one.
Then one day the little girl reached the rat’s pit. She was a man-cub. She was alive and breathing and she would nibble on their potatoes, and she smelled like a human. She made liquids and things that only humans make, and even though she wasn’t one of them she lived in the darkness just like they did.
Although the rat in that pit hadn’t witnessed the promise given by God, it was part of his rat-memory, which wasn’t short at all, and he started hoping. He hoped and he hoped, but the little girl didn’t laugh.
Grandma stopped, and I thought she wanted to rest. I asked if she would rather we continued on a different day. I’ll work something out with my teacher, I said. I’ll ask for an extension. Because I knew you’d understand if I asked to hand it in a week later.
Grandma stood up. She walked over to the window and said it was getting dark already. She asked me to turn on all the lights.
Another day went by, said Grandma. She wanted to know about the expression we use, “the time of your life”.
It’s just a figure of speech, Grandma. The time of your life just means something that you’re eager to hang on to. The best. You try to catch time with both hands, to keep it from moving, like in a black hole.
She laughed. Maybe to her I sounded like one of those know-it-alls on TV.
That’s what the rat should have told God...
She stopped.
Aren’t you taking it down?
I said I’d remember it all.
She went on.
...or the little girl.
And I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the one in the legend or to me.
She picked up again right away.
Slowly, the smell of underneath the earth stuck to the little girl, and she became blacker and blacker and darker and darker, but she still wasn’t laughing. The rat tried everything he could to make her laugh. He hopped around in the pit, he crawled out of the tunnel, he climbed back in, he sniffed at her smooth skin covering, he ate out of her hand, and she almost laughed, till the rat was convinced that pretty soon he’d succeed in laughing along with her. That’s how he figured he’d prove to God that promises should always be kept.
But then, just as the rat was about to make his rattish dream come true, another human climbed down underneath the ground. Not a man-cub like the little girl, but one that had also been created in the divine image. He began to bite her, human bites, not rat bites. And digging tunnels inside her, human ones, not rat ones. The rat compared them, and concluded that it was definitely a human creature, but was disturbed that this human had invaded his space and was reducing his chances of making his dream come true. Because even though the little girl had once made sounds, they’d been stifled by silence, and laughter was entirely out of the question.
I started to tremble. I couldn’t help it. This wasn’t the legend I’d been after, if I had ever asked for one in the first place – but I had no way of stopping it.
By now, this little girl was the most silent creature on earth. The rat had to pounce on her and go so far as to hop on her head just to prove to himself that she was even alive. Sometimes he thought she might be dead, and he would try to wake her up, because that was his only chance of making the ancient dream come true.
The fact that my grandmother believes that rats dream sounded ridiculous to me, but I didn’t laugh. And the thing that caused the rat to make the effort was the scent of the little girl. A smell, but not that of a dead person. And even though he jumped higher than ever and hopped further than ever, the little girl was as still as a potato now, except that her skin covering wasn’t smooth any more. The rat had figured out that his last hope had gone to pot. God, that son of a bitch, had cheated him, and had broken the promise without so much as blinking – another trait he’d passed on to whomever when he made that pompous announcement about man being “created in My image”. That’s what my grandmother said.
The rat – an animal that’s anything but dumb – had worked out what God’s worst mistake was. Because a world where children need to be placed in hiding, a world like that isn’t just a glitch, it’s the total collapse of all systems. A world like that ought to be wiped out completely and started from scratch.
And I’m not sure that this part belongs in the original story. I guess it must have been something my grandmother added.
And then the little girl climbed out of the earth.
I stopped.
There’s something missing.
How did she just come out all of a sudden?
Grandma said: There was this ... black angel. It just arrived, and put her back in the world above.
I stopped again.
An angel? You don’t believe in stuff like that, do you?
Grandma explained that this was just one of the figures of speech in the legend. They’re codes, just like the icons on your computer. You click on them with your mouse. And that’s what’s so nice about the legend, because in ordinary stories the symbols are always liable to be carrying too heavy a load. But it’s lucky that the computer can make symbols clean again and restore their lost dignity.
I refused to drop it: So she was saved. A miracle had happened after all.
My grandmother denied it right away. She said she didn’t want to dwell on the angel too much, because a sharp turn like that is crucial to stories. It was getting late. She wanted to wind up and to leave me with something, even if it wasn’t down in my notebook.
The most important thing, she said, was that the little girl had come back into the world above. She was finally standing above the pit and watching the gaping hole beneath her in broad daylight – even though she would never really feel warm in the sunlight again. Here was more proof that all the systems had broken down, that’s what Grandma said. I bet it was the computer course that made her say that.
The little girl pointed at the rat and emitted an enormous sound instead of all the sounds she hadn’t made before. She pointed to the sky, or maybe it was to the earth – and screamed: There’s the happiest creature on earth!
Nobody knows who she was shouting to or who actually heard her shout. Those details my grandmother left out of her story, because even if you’re just telling a story, you need to have a memory.
And then the rat laughed. His laughter made the ground shake. It was his first and last laugh, and it made the pit shake too from end to end till it shook so hard that the rat collapsed into the pit, and was buried without a trace.
Thy footsteps are not known, the Psalms tell us.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and the light in the stairwell was out. It was so dark I couldn’t even make out the opening to the old bomb-shelter. I waited for her. I shouted out that I was down, that I was OK, but nobody answered. Suddenly I got really worried. I pressed the switch but the light didn’t go on. I figured there was a power cut, and I got scared for her. I hated the idea of her alone in the dark. I started slamming the switch, banging on it so hard that I almost broke it, then suddenly the light went back on.
My legs ran up the stairs. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know why myself, but I shut my eyes. I went up in the dark and it was my own darkness. I could taste it, chew it even. That darkness got stuck between my teeth, in my throat, in my stomach, between my legs...
I wanted to throw up.
And even when I really wanted to open my eyes I couldn’t, as if something stronger than me was keeping them shut. I didn’t even have enough power left for my own soul.
I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I don’t know how to explain it. I kept running up the stairs. I wasn’t even sure I hadn’t run too far, right past her floor. The fear and the darkness made me feel somehow that there was a light beyond my own body. Maybe that’s what kept me from falling.
Why did the rat laugh?
It seemed as if I was hearing that laughter rolling through the stairwell.
As far as the bomb-shelter underneath the house.
I have a question for you, Miri. Would you happen to know what Stash means?
Have you ever heard the word Stash? Because it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Though it does kind of reverberate. As though I’ve heard it lots of times and I simply can’t remember it.
I’ll tell you the truth. I thought I was hearing Stash in the stairwell, but I wasn’t really sure it was my grandmother’s voice, because she was upstairs and I was downstairs, so how could I have heard it at such a distance? Maybe it was just my imagination. You know. Being afraid and everything.
Her door on the third floor was wide open, and the light was trickling out. Dim, pale, trembling, but still it was light.
She was standing in the doorway and I couldn’t make out her face because I was blinded from opening my eyes all at once. Now they opened without difficulty, as if they’d never been shut tight.
I said Grandma, Grandma, and that name seemed real to me. As real as can be.
Grandma, give me your hand. I can’t see you.
Then I hugged her, and I felt her hugging me back, and her face was so close.
And I could feel her beads too, close to my heart.
But then I had the strangest thought. Stefan the Rat. Now I called him by his name. You see, Miri, I’d found ... a kind of consola ... I was so happy that there was something human in the pit with her.