And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,6

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, his legs heavy, the wooden ladder creaking. The ninth rung