And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,11

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