And The Rat Laughed

by Nava Semel

  If I succeed in my efforts of obliteration, perhaps I can place the little girl back on course towards a normal life. But if everything is erased, where will the memory come from? If she forgets, who will remember for her?

  All of us are sentenced to march along the Via Dolorosa, but each of us in turn tries to break away from the procession. The most suitable position is that of a bystander, looking from the side of the road on that man kneeling alone under his load. All of us, after all, heave a sigh of relief, whether in our hearts or out loud, when we discover that the cross is being borne on someone else’s back, rather than on our own.

  14 September 1944

  Day of Triumph of the Holy Cross

  On this date, in AD 326, the true cross was discovered, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was consecrated in the City of the Jews.

  Perhaps I have been chosen as the last witness of their existence, because if all memory of them has been lost, I have a sacred mission: at all costs I must preserve not only the tangible existence of the little girl, but her spiritual existence as well.

  The last Jewish child.

  And as I write those words, I am overcome with nausea, as if I had written a name-tag over the reliquary. If all of my efforts are aimed at preserving her as a mere relic, then I am no different from those who are trying to annihilate them. Even they leave an isolated exemplar on display, protected in a precious vessel behind glass. It would be their way of signaling their triumph, and making certain that it lives on.

  15 September 1944

  Day of Our Lady of Sorrows

  She has been with me for a year now. Let this be your birthday, I told her. The date on which a person arrives in this world is a cause for celebration for those who cherish him. I place a candle upright in the dust and ask her to put it out. She plunges her hand right into the flame, puts it out, and asks: how old am I?

  My grandmother never told me when I was born. I suspect I came into the world on St Stanislaw’s Day. Perhaps the old woman did not want to hurt me, or maybe she wanted to drive out the anguish I had caused her daughter. In the villages they call a woman who is with child “a woman with hope”, but my mother was “a woman with despair” – a hereditary sin.

  Disappointed, the little girl overturns the candle. Some children are old people, and some old people are children, and maybe they are a mixture of both. Had I not been prevented from bearing children, I might have been able to tell them apart.

  I open the Scriptures. She reads the Psalm, and I listen to her clear voice. “Yea, the darkness shall cover me; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

  A king wrote those words, Child. His name was David and he was a wonderful musician. On gloomy nights he would sing to his predecessor King Saul to drive out his despair, but in the end he was defeated by it.

  “I was wrought in secret.”

  The little girl is struggling with the words, and I do not bother to correct her. I tell her: One day you will travel to a land both far and near. There is a city there, a real city and not a heavenly one. A place of dubious beauty, but it is yours.

  And some day, when you visit the mountain where the Holy Mother sank into eternal slumber, walk down the steps to the crypt and place a small stone there. Direct it towards the light, and it will swallow the memory and set out on the long journey from your past to my future.

  I am the bearer of memory, placing my own memory at your disposal because you will not be able to carry the cross by yourself. I am your remembearer.

  “We were wrought in secret.”

  A Psalm to the children of David.

  14 October 1944

  The echoes of the shooting are very near. I spot some movement in the bushes at the edge of the forest. The wind carries the thundering of cannons. At twilight the Red Army tanks enter the town square. The villagers grovel before the soldiers, offering up vodka and pork sausage. The farmer’s son is riding on the first tank, and the soldiers are patting him on the back and filling his pockets with cigarettes. In the evening I hear that there is a Jewish officer among them. All day long he went from house to house asking whether there are any Jews among us. Even when people laughed in his face – they’re all dead! – he did not give up.

  I went looking for him. Entered the inn even. Into the church he refused to come, as if I were setting a trap for him. Two Hebrew words surfaced suddenly in my mind. I don’t know what memory they came from.

  Shma Yisrael – Hear O Israel.

  The Jewish officer followed me to the churchyard and waited at the gate. I took the little girl to him.

  Don’t be afraid. This man is your brother.

  She clutched the edge of my robe, started tugging at my body.

  Make him leave, she cried.

  The officer put his hand on the butt of the gun and turned to go.

  I knelt before her. I said: I am a Jew too. Forever a Jew.

  Frantically she kissed the cross around her neck. I removed my own and put it on the ground.

  The officer began to speak to her in the language of the Jews, but she did not respond. He pulled a piece of candy out of his uniform. Her body froze, like on the day when I took her in. I buried my face in the dirt at her feet. I rubbed my nose against the candy, then licked it. Sweet dirt.

  Hesitantly she fingered the candy, fluttering over it and withdrawing.

  The Jewish officer was kneeling now, on the ground before her.

  Whose child are you? What is your name? You can say now.

  When he promised to look for her parents, she turned her back and ran inside.

  I stood up, my robe forming a cloud. I told him: The Knights of the Holy Grail were forbidden to reveal their name or where they came from.

  The officer said: The Zionists are going through the orphanages now. Go hand over the girl.

  1 November 1944

  All Saints’ Day

  I lit all the candles in the church. The shadows are scampering in all directions, and the saints are fixing their doleful gazes on me. Perhaps I have infected them with my own despair. How many children of pits and of basements, children of cupboards, children of boxes and niches are coming out of their holes now?

  Who will wait for them in a light that is no light?

  I wish I were the last sinner.

  I doubt it very much.

  2 November 1944

  All Souls’ Day

  At night she begged me to baptize her. She swore to do anything to keep me from handing her over.

  My Father, give me the strength to withstand the torment I am causing her. The tears I had hoped for so badly are streaming down now. She dropped at my feet, her tiny body convulsing. She hit me with her fists. A Holy Communion is what she craves, to partake of the bread and the wine. A tiny bride, draped in white, marching towards the altar. A nun she wants to be. I put my arm around her. If only I could swap places with her. Her warm tears wet me.

  In the end she immersed herself in the baptismal font.

  I told her: Baptism won’t do any good, because my faith does not force itself on anyone. A child is only baptized with both parents’ consent.

  But they promised, she screamed.

  She tore the rosary and pulled off the beads. They rolled over the church floor.

  Apostasy – that is the term that Jews use for their spiritual annihilation, the officer told me, for reneging on one’s faith.

  How can I explain to the child that if I cause her to renege on her people there will be no forgiveness.

  The beads scatter. I crawl around and hurt myself.

  I did not succeed in finding all of them.

  3 November 1944

  Stash!

  You’re bad, Stash!

  The worst, Stash!

  Her cries cut through me. I will know no peace, day or night. The beast of memory will remain trapped in the lair of my body, sinking its teeth into me and biting. But I am grateful, because the bleeding wound will keep
me from forgetting her.

  Mother, Mother, why have you forsaken me!

  Thus cry all of the nameless children.

  6 December 1944

  “Parents, do not mourn your children too much.” If the village elders knew of the rupture in my world they would try to comfort me with the banal saying and throw in the story about the daughter who was sentenced to carry buckets upon buckets of her mother’s tears in the world to come. And about another daughter who was said to return to earth just so she could beg her mother to stop crying, or else her grave would be flooded.

  For the child’s sake I will keep silent.

  My grave will remain dry. This is a promise I will keep.

  25 December 1944

  Christmas Day

  I sit in the niche, facing the drawing of the Madonna with the rat. She has a Star of David around her neck, which I added using a twig that had been covered over with dirt. It seems as if I can feel laughter taking form in the darkness. The rat is not laughing out of joy or derision. The rat’s mouth is gaping at the horror of that which will be and that which has been. It is the laughter of those who accompany the dead, as they stare into the pit.

  People around are hushing them. A disgrace. A desecration. But against their will they are rolling with laughter.

  1 January 1945

  I am sealing the diary because I cannot trust the memory of humans. It is not a part of Creation, because Adam was born without a memory. But memory is the only thing that was created in Your image. Both You and memory are a decaying image, hobbling along on crutches and tagging behind all the others.

  Little Girl, if only I could see you before I leave this world, because there is no other.

  You are flesh of my flesh.

  To embrace you, one more time, body to body.

  28 February 1945

  Thomas Aquinas put down his pen and said: “I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.”

  As for me, I feel that everything that is of value has already been written, and I have nothing to add.

  I seal my diary, and bury it deep in the empty lair. The farmers have set traps and placed poison bait at all the openings, and the scourge has been eliminated.

  For now.

  But the rats will come back, sooner or later, because they follow us everywhere. The stowaways who travel along with us are not monsters, because they were created in order to survive.

  They will survive when we are gone too.

  Maybe history is a kind of story, a kind of poem, a collection of legends or dreams that people tell themselves at night. And these stories and legends and poems and dreams embody the truth, in a code that few will want to decipher.

  Some day in the future, memory will be packaged like merchandise, turning into nothing more than a thick cloud, and the story of one little girl will be swallowed up within it.

  And I cannot count on the little girl’s memory either, because I did everything within my power to erase it. I destroyed it, knowing full well that this would preserve her body and her soul for the rest of her life, which had been entrusted to me for safe keeping. But I do not absolve myself of responsibility for doing so, which is why I bury the memory in a box outside the boundaries of her body, a kind of light-giving heavenly body that will circle her and shed its reflected light – so long as she herself is not branded by it. This testimony will lie in the darkness until such time as the girl is no longer with us, and I too will have gone the way of all flesh. And perhaps I will then be in a place where I can confront You with my reckoning and demand that You pay.

  And I will be closer to You than ever before.

  I tear my clothing as mourners do. Bury my head in the dirt. Her novice’s outfit lies on the ground beside me. I lie in the lair breathing in the smell of her, and ask myself how much longer I can rely on such a flimsy means of regaining my memories of her.

  Like a blind man, I feel the charcoal drawing with my fist and try to create laughter. This memory will live on, I promise myself, just as the laughter of the rat will always be there. It is a laughter that evolves in such utter darkness that we cannot even suspect it exists. Even if we ourselves never laugh it, we will always hope that someone else might, no matter what happens, in spite of everything.

  I bury this testimony and seal it shut. Lazarus in shrouds. Some day it will rise from the dead.

  The Jews did exist.

  The little girl does exist.

  Against all forgettings, this memory shall prevail.

  I hoist everything that I am and brandish it beyond my corporeal self, beyond my spiritual self too. St Stanislaw knew that his death was near, while I know that mine has already taken place.

  Maybe Your death too, Father.

  I lost not only the little girl, but even her memory in days to come. And her love too. This will be my punishment.

  She will despise me, and will justly sentence me to oblivion.

  You and I are both in mourning now. Bereaved parents. You are my Father and I am not Your son. I am her Stash, and she is my daughter.

  Daughter. This is your true name. I had a daughter and I lost her.

  And perhaps some day a miracle will happen, and you will find the strength to remember me. One vibrant moment of razor-blade memory. That is my only wish. I will rise out of the Tohu and Bohu within you, I will stretch out my rat tail, and I will laugh to you.

  Before the end – forgive me, my daughter, bless me, for I have sinned.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  And the Rat Laughed

  Part One The Story

  Part Two The Legend

  Part Three The Poems

  Part Four The Dream

  Part Four The Diary