And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,18

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