And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,64

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.