by Nava Semel
***
In the case of the old woman and others like her, the hereditary deficiency has reached its quintessence. Her daughter had complained, first behind her back and then to her face. And that too is part of the story, though it is probably part of a different one.
The old woman would also have liked her unbridled story with its warped and twisted spikes to be replaced with something more tame. Had the granddaughter’s mother been witness to this conversation as it unfolded on a sunny afternoon in Tel Aviv, she would have been more relentless in her judgment on the art of storytelling than any outside expert.
Don’t lay this on us, Mom, she would have screamed. Spare us. So much for this story. Cut it out once and for all.
***
What is a Jew?
If it’s such a terrible thing to be a Jew, why did you make me one?
Papa and Mama, it’s your fault. You’re to blame that I am what I am. You’re the worst father and mother in the world. I wish I had known. I would have chosen to be born to someone else.
Maybe she’d heard the word Jew before, but five-year-olds don’t give much thought to the words hovering around unless a particular one is repeated over and over again, and begins to hurtle at a frightening pace.
There were other insults. Once she even spat at her father. He wiped off the wet spot and, much to her surprise, did not scold her. She tried to strike a bargain. She promised to be the very best. She’d never ask for anything again. She swore she’d eat cabbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They knew how much she hated cabbage.
They rinsed her hair with peroxide. She thrashed about wildly. The servant threatened to tie her hands together, and eventually managed to hold them tight.
It’s so you don’t look too Jewish.
If there’s such a thing as too Jewish, there’s such a thing as not Jewish enough too. She’d already made up her mind: as soon as she could, she would stop being Jewish at all.
If being Jewish was such a terrible thing, then being a Jewish little girl was the worst thing in the world.
***
There was another word she heard for the first time. They spat out War like you spit out a broken tooth. Then they started whispering, as if they’d lost their voices. And even though her lungs were still full of screams at that point, she was already starting to sound like them. First masking her voice, then whispering, and finally utter silence.
If you were going to hand me over to strangers, why did you bring me into the world?
Where is “there”?
Who’s going to help me with my homework “there”?
Whose bed will I go to “there”?
And who will be with me “there”?
Who else will be “there”?
Why isn’t “there” here?
The old woman rattled off the questions one after the other, the way children do to control what comes next. Now she realizes that this had been her way of reducing her fear, though she can hardly bear to admit that the effort was doomed to fail. Would her granddaughter be able to see through the old-woman shell, and perceive the five-year-old child she once was? Her childish voice reaches out through the cracks in the story. Once she’d been forced into the next stage, the child had trained herself never to speak in anything but a grown-up’s voice.
***
When her strength ran out – how much strength can a five-year-old have? –she whispered: Will you come to visit me? And they swore they would.
Just before they left the house, as the servant clasped her hands with fleshy handcuffs, she asked, barely audible: Will you come to take me back when you can?
And again they promised they would.
***
The storyteller is supposed to gain something from the very act of telling the story. Release, after all, according to the experts, is supposed to bring relief. The old woman certainly has a hefty motive then. And yet, no gain seems to present itself in the case of her story. The natural act of returning to the past and rummaging through memories brings solace only to those with very different stories to tell. The growing weight of her own story leaves no room for relief. And there’s no turning back now either.
Don’t turn your back on me, the story seems to be imploring in an almost-human voice. The deeper it was buried, the wilder it grew and the stronger its roots, though the old woman had deluded herself into thinking that she had managed to sever its limbs and eradicate it. Now it is her turn to implore, to beg her memory to set her free. She needs its blessing if she is ever to be able to emerge from her hiding place.
***
They stood with their backs to her.
Her mother did not turn around. Didn’t say a word. Not even good-bye. Didn’t touch her either.
The old woman is almost choking. The story is lodged between her throat and her mouth. She couldn’t know that, had her mother made a move – even the slightest one, like holding out a finger or blinking or twitching – everything would have fallen apart.
The granddaughter gets up. The old woman feels that the girl is about to touch her, but as if on an uncontrollable impulse, she turns her back.
For a moment, that seems to be the end, but it isn’t even halfway through.
3
They lowered her into a pit under the ground. The stranger, the one whom she would come to call the “farmer’s wife”, dragged her down the ladder and said, This is where you stay.
The little-girl-who-once-was thought that only the worst creatures in the world lived under the ground. Moles and snakes and worms. And the worst of all were the rats. She was worse than any of them though, if she had to be hidden away from all the people up above.
That’s what the old woman thinks she must have been feeling then. But instead of adding to the story, she only seemed to be detracting from it.
***
Early afternoon in Tel Aviv is always a difficult time of day. The light is invasive. Only rarely does the old woman let herself take it in. Most of the time, she draws the curtains and shuts the blinds, to let in the darkness, her old ally.
Her mother and father hadn’t told her that “there” was in the darkness under the ground. Even the servant, who had shared their secret, had kept it from her. But if the old woman had known ahead of time what lay in store, would it have been any easier for her? Can a person prepare for the possibility of being lowered into a pit under the ground?
The little-girl-who-once-was thought: Maybe I’m really dead. Because only dead people get pushed so deep down.
***
Why do they call the main character of a story the “hero”? Some people naively assume that it’s because the main character gives the story its strength, but the fact that the character happens to be in the centre doesn’t necessarily mean he or she will be heroic in carrying the story along.
The old woman’s style seems more in keeping with our modern approach – choppy, jumpy, breathless. But it’s not because she doesn’t have enough time, or because she’s eager to get to a point that will be particularly rewarding. Nor does she tell it out of consideration for the reader’s impatience.
Her granddaughter is sitting across from her, confused.
***
Darkness.
This is where the story reaches an impasse. The old woman is finding it difficult to explain darkness to someone for whom it has an obvious meaning, part of the day-and-night cycle, associated with the safety of sleep, of dream life.
At this point in her story-line, she is inclined to give up trying. Her darkness is not about a lack of light nor even a contrast with light. It’s a subcutaneous substance that has mass and weight, and has managed to defy the laws of nature and work its way through every barrier in the human body. Even when she discovered within herself the intention of shedding light on it, especially for the sake of the one with whom she has had children, that intention was short-lived, because she soon discovered that her darkness would not lend itself to reformulations.
This
is all she can offer then: I was in the dark. A muddle of time. I don’t know when it began or when it was over.
If it was over.
***
And those are the details of the story, pretending to be ordinary. The creatures who were there in the dark grasped her presence. A rat groped its way in her direction, first sniffing, then biting. She didn’t scream. It was she, after all, who had disrupted his routine. Then they grew used to one another. She petted him and he grew fat. The glimmer in the rat’s eyes was her only light.
She could not make out her hands or feet. To be sure they were there – she fingered herself, and that’s how she discovered the lice, not knowing that’s what they were called, these tiny creatures that had set up home in her hair and on her body, being fruitful and multiplying. She picked them off her body and crushed them – the only sound in the darkness. That and the sound of her breathing, which she also learned to emit ever so softly.
Her senses, which had grown sharp almost instantly, began by grasping the subterranean movement. The rotting of the potatoes. The slow progress of the roots. The groaning of the wood in the ladder leading down to the pit. The wheezing of the seeds as they fought to sprout. The drops of rain percolating through the soil.
She learned to recognize the sounds above ground too. The lowing and the growling. The footsteps of cows. The croaking of frogs in a faraway lake. She concentrated on every murmur, deciphering its effects on the world above. Then she translated the sounds into pictures. The hay being stacked up in the silo. The thrashing of the pitchfork. The neighing of the farmer’s horse as it crossed the wheatfield. The farmer lashing out at his wife: What did we need this for, you fool! And for next to nothing too. Jesus, that little Jew is a danger to all of us.
Birds she didn’t hear even once. Maybe they were too far away. But planes she could hear clearly. Every time she recognized the muffled hum, she couldn’t help thinking of her father and mother, and clinging to their promise. Even if they were the meanest parents in the world, the kind who abandon their daughter, still she wanted to be with them. Every part of her body was aching to be hugged. The anger and the longing blended together. Never would she be able to tell them apart.
The farmer woman was coming down the ladder. She threw down the bowl along with a spoon, and a bucket-toilet, and announced: You’re not coming up until you know.
But the little-girl-who-once-was did not know what it was that she was supposed to know.
***
Twice a day – soup and two slices of bread. That was how she could tell time. Whenever she got very hungry – and she did – she would gnaw at the potatoes. Then she grew worried that the farmer woman would count the potatoes, one by one, and would realize that some were missing. She learned to stick to the moldy ones.
In a rare surge of boldness, she asked: If you hate Jews so much, why did you agree for me to be under your ground?
The farmer’s wife said: Just pray that the money arrives. And spat on the ground of the darkness.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
The little-girl-who-once-was stammered voicelessly, stumbling over the words. In the darkness, the farmer’s wife aimed an expert hand at her cheek and slapped her. You little sinner, she said, say it out loud. How can you expect to learn it unless you say it out loud? We should have asked for more. To think what you cost us.
The farmer’s wife took the little hand and made a cross over her body time after time until she was satisfied.
Up above, the farmer was muttering: I’ve had it. I’m handing her in. Enough of this story.
Muttering – just like her parents. When they spoke about her, they lowered their voices.
She didn’t want to become a grown-up. Ever.
***
The old woman has no illusions. Her story is made of stumps. The chances that it will be mended at this late stage are very slim.
All around her, old people are losing their memory. In her heart of hearts she envies them.
The more the old woman recounts, the more she remembers. And the more she remembers, the less she recounts.
This conversation, on a sunny Tel Aviv afternoon, is becoming intolerable.
***
The little-girl-who-once-was kept shrinking and shriveling, absorbing the darkness into her. She learned to take up less and less space. To behave like a perfect subterranean creature. Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.
Once a week, the old woman goes to the doctor, hoping that he will not discover the clots of darkness blocking her blood vessels.
***
“Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee,” the one who had had children with her would quote the Psalm to her. Pretty words that even she, or so it seemed, could understand. He had never stopped seeking consolation. She had never called him “husband”.
He had been hoping to find an explanation, or at least some meaning. It wasn’t the old woman who had sent him searching. He went of his own accord. Perhaps he felt that of the two of them, it was in fact he who most needed compassion, because he had chosen a wife predestined to see him as someone who would turn his back.
Again and again, he had tried to prove to her that his promises were not false. Eventually, when the time came, he too was lowered into a pit under the ground, though she had to admit that he had in fact tried to say good-bye.
Had she loved him? She’d had children with him after all.
The old woman hesitates before answering this painful question. Granted, she had borne the burden of love, though there was always that fear that the day would come when he too would get up and leave.
And there were other things that her spouse, whom she had never called “husband”, had said to her: “My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” The old woman did not want to hear the Psalm. Supplications to heavenly emissaries are the invention of people who take refuge in light. They haven’t a shadow of doubt.
Still, she did devote her thoughts to the word wrought, which is no longer used. Had she been able to, she would have reinstated it as a key to the stories yet to be written.
***
The little-girl-who-once-was kept thinking that even God, whoever He may be, was ashamed of her. Otherwise He wouldn’t be hiding her in the dark. Maybe He removed her from the light in the process of Creation just to make sure He did not bump into her. She could not tell whether He was the Father or the Son.
And if in fact He does exist – God is a mother who turns her back.
***
Why tell the granddaughter?
Why not her daughter?
The old woman’s daughter, no longer young and not yet old, had been ruled out as a possible listener to the story. It wasn’t clear who had ruled her out. The old woman had kept postponing the storytelling, using a different excuse each time. Somehow it always seemed as if the story could endanger the offspring and maybe even jeopardize the chain of birth-giving. The daughter avoided it too. Maybe she felt that by accepting it, she was liable to be robbed of her mother, who would be superseded by a shattered creature, without a face or an identity. To tell the truth, she attributed otherworldly powers to the story. Anyone who criticized the daughter for shirking the burden of acceptance was ignoring the element of fear that the story contained.
Without fear no story would be what it is.
***
Now the old woman approaches the danger zone, the limits of control, the place where she would no longer be able to hold on to the story-line.
The footsteps of the farmer’s son.
At five she could count already. Up to ten, and one more. Coming down, closer, h
is legs heavy, the wooden ladder creaking. The ninth rung is shaky. Ave Maria, Holy Mother, make him stumble and crash. But the farmer’s son knows about the weak rung, and he treads carefully. She counts till she runs out of numbers.
She doesn’t know exactly how old he was. To her he was a man. How could she tell? A breed of giants, mean, deceitful, treacherous.
She never wanted to grow up.
***
The granddaughter stops.
That’s not the story I wanted.
It’s not up to you.
But I don’t want this story.
This is the only one there is.
It’s too late to stop now.
***
In all innocence, not realizing what lay ahead, the granddaughter has chosen to be the story’s addressee. Had she known, she would probably not have volunteered to document it, because the very act of committing the story to paper widens its circle of addressees. Throughout the conversation the granddaughter pretends to be writing, but in fact merely stares at the sweet angel on the cover. Since it was first painted, nearly five hundred years ago, it has managed to generate every possible form of replication. But the granddaughter, like most consumers of paper, has no idea about the artist or about the original painting, and all she can think about is whether the notebook will change as a result of the story. Perhaps this is why she refrains from writing anything down.
***
You were lucky, they told the old woman.
Even without hearing the story, they kept comparing. And the old woman too could not help weighing her own story against those of others, especially since new stories keep cropping up. But she never felt lucky. She’d smile, pretend to be grateful, and fine-tuned her deceptive front to a fine art. From that point on, the crack in the scaffolding began to show. How true are they, the details of her story? How true do they have to be for the story to count? Since this is the first time the story is ever being told, there is no yardstick for comparison.
