And The Rat Laughed (4 page)

You could say it’s been
wrought
inside her.

To think of all the complaints heaped on her by her own child, the one whom she bore and who had given her her share of complaints. The old woman had to be on guard, as if her daughter was the enemy.

The daughter, the granddaughter’s mother, always suspected that her mother was obsessively repeating the story to herself. She claimed that whenever a person becomes immersed in a story, he doesn’t bother to listen to anything around him. Perhaps she was trying to cry that she had a story too, one that was no less important than her mother’s. No one had explained to her that her mother was immersed not in the story, but in the question of how to tell it or to refrain from telling it. If only the old woman really had allowed herself to indulge in self-pity, the story might have come to the fore much earlier. And if a few spikes did somehow come loose nevertheless, the granddaughter’s mother was quick to turn them against the old woman.

You’re a lousy mother.

You should never have had children.

On that day, the daughter came knocking on the old woman’s front door ahead of schedule. The granddaughter who is no longer a girl opened it, and stood facing her, more surprised.

Didn’t I tell you I’d be picking you up? Now there was a mother who kept her promises.

When the daughter discovered the notebook, she lost no time trying to gain possession of it. She tugged at the sweet angel. The granddaughter resisted vehemently. She didn’t want anyone sharing the story. Not even her mother. Especially not her mother.

Gratified, the old woman watched her granddaughter and told herself: It’s the worst traits that are passed on from one generation to the next. That’s what she said but what she really meant was quite the opposite.

The granddaughter’s mother wasn’t the kind of person who gave up easily. If she had not been chosen to hear the story, then no one else should receive it either.

Not everything needs to become known.

Everything has already been written.

Except for what has not been written.

Mother, don’t you go messing up my daughter’s head.

For the first time on a blinding afternoon, the old woman actually cracked a smile. The realization that the one she had given birth to had become such an expert at survival was gratifying.

5

When the farmer’s wife pulled her out of the pit, the little-girl-who-once-was covered her eyes. For a moment, the burning sensation caused by the light reminded her of the illusion of tears, though she would never ever shed any real ones again for the rest of her life.

The farmer screamed to his wife: What a horrible stench! Wash her first.

The girl who once was, was sure she was blind. Couldn’t see a thing. The farmer’s wife said: Cross yourself. Say thank you. And pulled her into the church.

They went in, the farmer’s wife dragging her along like a sack of potatoes.

Her whole body was itching from the lice.

You stink to high heaven. Even Jesus would hold his nose. Ask His forgiveness.

Emerging from a black pit-box was another Stefan. That’s the confessional, the farmer’s wife announced. Six years old, the little girl understood they were about to shove her into another darkness. A black figure stuck a head-spike out of the other side of the pit-box.

It’s his reverence, our priest. Kiss his hand. The farmer’s wife pushed her inside.

The little-girl-who-once-was teetered, stumbled, crawled. Said her first confession to Ave Maria.

Holy Mother, thank you for making me blind. Never again will she see another Stefan intent on doing to her what the Stefan always does.

She didn’t have a name for it.

Back then.

***

The story is between her legs. It must be excised.

Cut it off.

But without giving
it
a name. Not because she doesn’t know the exact word. It’s just that her granddaughter is so sharp. It would be dangerous to name it. Whatever energy she has left the old woman puts into concealment, because if she utters...

***

“If.” A tough, unrelenting conditional word, which some people squander, almost like, “What if ”.

What if they hadn’t handed her over...

What if there hadn’t been a servant...

What if there hadn’t been the farmer and his wife...

What if they’d been childless...

What if her parents hadn’t promised...

Promise.

That’s a word that ought to be abolished for all eternity, that should never exist in any story, or beyond.

***

Outside the black box, the farmer’s son too was kneeling before a gilt statue of a woman.

The girl prayed: Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Don’t let him turn around. Amen.

His face moved and he invaded the inside of her. Her sense of vision was back to normal. The trembling – between her legs and in her other cavities – made all the lice fall out.

The farmer’s wife said, Confess, you little sinner.

***

Black man, I hope you die.

I hope Ave Maria dies too.

The man in the box pulls some small round wafers out of his habit. Her mouth opens wide with hunger. He puts all of them on her tongue at once.

Little girl, Jesus is your father and your mother now. I don’t want parents, she tells the priest. I hope they die.

She avoids the word Father, to bypass the pain.

When he pulled her out, she’d been soaking in her own urine. Excrement was dripping down to her feet. Her primordial sin. The stench overpowered the church, but the priest did not demand penance. The entire content of her body was seeping out under the gilt mother, but the man in black knelt down and wiped it off himself.

***

A story cannot be stalled indefinitely. It has to draw to a finish. One way or another. When the old woman hears the story being told in her own voice for the first time, she’s glad that it shows neither orderliness nor clarity. By translating the story into words through the use of a part of our body, do we necessarily create a new, distorted version of it? If she could, the old woman would have volunteered to have her memory amputated, just so long as it continued to exist outside of her. The old woman wants the story to be known, but without having to be the one who provides it.

***

There are some things that the old woman does not realize she’s withholding. But one thing she omits deliberately. Whenever the doorbell rings, whether expectedly or not, at any time of day, whether early or late.

She walks to the door. As she faces the closed door, the sharpest spike of all jabs into her. Perhaps they’ve returned. They promised, didn’t they? Even though it’s been nearly seventy years.

That’s something she doesn’t mention to her granddaughter. Maybe she’s too ashamed, or maybe it’s because the rage instantly gives way to unbearable pain. She switches off her eyes, giving in to the darkness. How she hardly breathes as her hand presses the door handle.

***

It’s for your own good.

If only to block the Stefan, her parents should have returned. If they haven’t – from wherever they are – it must mean they’ve shirked their responsibility and don’t deserve to be a father and mother, if anyone ever does.

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.