And The Rat Laughed (17 page)

Tell me a different story.

She shakes her curls. I want to stroke them, but do not dare.

I mustn’t evoke any memory of the Stefan.

There is no other story. That is how it all began. In the beginning, our Father created...

She cuts me short.

Stash, promise me He isn’t a Jew.

I reply: He is what He is, and He has no name.

16 February 1944

Ash Wednesday

On the day marking the commencement of Lent, I sprinkle ashes on the heads of the congregants, and make the sign of a cross on their brows. My body performs the ritual perfectly, but my spirit wanders. Who is this strange man carrying out his duties so cordially? They know nothing of my true nature.

My inner self was aflame at the thought that they were branding their fellow humans. Abstaining from eating meat, yet devouring human flesh.

For a moment I imagined You, Father, covering Your body in the dirt.

When I turn the pages of my diary, I discover the passage of time outside, so different from the clock that the little girl and I share. With all the power that I possess, I will try to drive the timepiece of her memory off course.

22 February 1944

Day of St Peter’s Chair

What is a miracle? she asks.

Something unusual, that never happened before.

Who causes miracles?

God.

And who is God?

Our Father.

And where is He?

In Heaven.

Heaven – is that above us or below us?

I don’t know.

When does He make the miracle?

When He decides to intervene.

And if we become Father and Mother ourselves, will we be able to intervene?

I say nothing.

23 February 1944

And where are His father and mother?

I dig in.

You don’t know anything, Stash.

She is so disillusioned. She pushes me into the niche. I lie there. My ears are always attuned to echoes, so I will be able to detect the enemy.

29 February 1944

I hop.

I sniff.

My whiskers twitch.

My ears are upright.

I beat my hairless tail against the walls.

I am her human rat.

I pad our den with leaves – a warm cradle for our young. My teeth keep growing, which is why I must keep gnawing.

All this time I go on looking for escape routes, because our very lives depend on them.

7 March 1944

St Thomas Aquinas’ Day

When he was the age of the little girl, Thomas Aquinas asked his teacher: What is God? He too had been forcibly separated from his mother, and had been taken captive.

So what? Is this a way of telling me that there is nothing new under the sun?

19 March 1944

St Joseph’s Day

If those are the questions that children ask, what do their parents reply? I don’t know what the carpenter Joseph told the little boy that he adopted in Nazareth, when the child asked the meaning of a nasty word whispered behind his back. Maybe the boy shed his tears in secret. There is nothing in the Evangelists about the child’s hurt.

All winter she asked. Plainly, matter-of-factly. Where do we come from? What was here before us? What will there be here after we’re gone? And I did not have the answers.

We climb up the stairs to the belfry. I want to show her the world. First, she walled herself in. I devised ways of luring her out of the niche. As we climb up, her body starts to tremble. I recognize her fear of heights immediately. She is dizzy, and her body reaches out for something to lean on. When I hold out my arms, she turns her back and starts running down the stairs. I swear, Stash will not let you fall, child.

She walks by my side, apprehensive. Are we there yet? she asks. When will we get there?

From behind the belfry wall she watches children skating on the icy lake. A bevy of spots circling on the glaring white surface. We cannot see their faces, but I recognize them anyway. That’s the blacksmith’s son, and that’s the innkeeper’s daughter. I baptized all of them. A child needs the company of other children, which is why I try to be a child to her as well.

The parents of the children in the village where I grew up forbade their children to include me in their games. They pointed at me, and whispered. For many years, I had no idea what they were saying.

Bastard. A boy with no name. Now the dagger of memory returns, stabbing me.

“Mother hen cooked some porridge. She fed this one. And this one. But she pulled this one’s head off. And fru-fru-flew away...” How can I remember what nobody ever told me? I was the shameful evidence of my mother’s corporeal sin.

Although the little girl is fascinated with the sight of the children skating, she wants to go back down. And I did not tell her that there are places that one should avoid because the ice is too thin.

25 March 1944

Day of Annunciation of the Lord

This day will be called The Day of Our Lady of the Brook, because the ice is beginning to crack. The Holy Mother will open up the covering of the earth, and will breathe life back into all those who sleep below.

Sleeping below?

Whenever I think that I’ve succeeded in prodding her onto the road to recovery, suddenly the malignant memory slashes through and pushes her all the way back.

How will I find a message of hope to convey to this child?

27 March 1944

Nothing will make them abandon their rituals. This year, like every other, they set out for the carnival, carrying likenesses of the horse and the goat and the rooster, and with them the effigy of Marzanna, Goddess of Death. Generations of Christian faith have not succeeded in eradicating that ancient memory. I often think that my mission was futile from the very start. In the evening, men and women will gather at the inn for an auction of matings. Years ago, my father chose an innocent girl, and took her to the haystack, where he inspected her teeth and her nose and later her other parts too. I do not know whether upon returning to the inn they exchanged coins and colored Easter eggs, as evidence that the transaction had been finalized, nor at what point she was banished in disgrace, leaving me in the care of her mother. The stories that a child seeks are precisely the ones not intended for his ears.

I will not let You hurt this child, Father. If I cannot erase the evil deeds from her memory, I can at least rid her of the nasty names.

Even while she seems to be healing, I am in a constant state of despair.

2 April 1944

Palm Sunday – a week before Easter

The children of Jerusalem greeted even the donkey of Christ by spreading out their coats at the gate to the city. Commotion in the church. Today the farmers come and go, willow branches in their hands, and I say the blessing. They were picked in the first week of Lent and left to soak so that their buds may open on this very day. St Jerzy opens even the jaws of the frogs with his keys, as I explained to the little girl who was frightened by the croaking.

Flogging the congregants. For them, it is a way of inducing health and prosperity. The women will beat the members of their family with gooseberry twigs until they cry in memory of the crown of thorns. I flog them till they bleed. Despair has its rewards, Father. It gives me strength.

At the pig-slaughtering ceremony, the men place the animal on a special platform. They turn the suckling pig on its back, and grab it by the legs. The farmer gave me the honor of holding the tail of the floundering animal as he stabbed a sharp knife in its throat. The farmer’s wife presided over the women who were draining the blood into a bowl, to be used in the preparation of sausages and salty meat delicacies. In the evening, they sent me pig’s liver mixed with buckwheat. I buried it in the bed of nasturtiums. The little girl’s eyes looked longingly, but I was determined.

We will have no part of this forbidden meat.

3 April 1944

Monday before Easter

Late at night they came banging on the church doors. Instantly, the little girl hid in her dugout and was silent. She knows how to keep her very breath from making a sound. In haste, I put on my habit. I could barely button it. I kept thinking that someone – whoever it may be – has found out and informed. But I discovered that I was being summoned to perform extreme unction.

I retraced my steps. This was the first time I had no choice but to leave her alone at night. I promised her: Stash will return. I let my tail swoosh loosely along the ground, but she turned her back.

At the dying man’s bedside I was asked why my habit was covered in dirt. The farmer’s son was there in the doorway too. Murderers can be recognized by their lack of a shadow, but behind Your back a new breed has evolved, with shadows larger than their bodies.

4 April 1944

Tuesday before Easter

Inside the coffin lies the oldest man in our village, and beside him is the comb he used on his hair, and the needle used for sewing his shrouds, as well as a handful of coins – entrance fee into the next world.

The mourners are delighted, since these are the most auspicious days for dying. All of the graves are wide open, and the soil will not weigh down on the dead person. That was one lucky man, that Antek, they tell each other. Dying in the week that commemorates the dead – that’s no trifling matter.

People here tell the story of a farmer who disobeyed the rule about refraining from all work during this Holy Week, and was swallowed up by the earth, plow and all. Whenever a carriage enters the cemetery, the mourners riding in it cross themselves, because they imagine that the dead man’s shouts for help are rising from under the wagon wheels.

Three times I sprinkled dirt on the coffin and extended my wishes to the dead man. After leaving the cemetery, the mourners did not look back. I refused to attend the wake. I remained on my own by the fresh grave, thinking about death, in the form of a tall woman draped in white. Once a farmer locked her in a tobacco box for seven years, until the earth complained that it could no longer bear the weight of the humans, and the farmer was forced to release her. These are stories I never tell the little girl.

Through the crack in the wall, she followed the coffin adorned with flowers, watching as it was lowered ever so slowly.

Where are the dead, Stash?

I don’t know.

She rummaged in the dirt, pulled out a piece of charcoal, and drew a line on the wall.

Who knows?

I don’t know.

If they are below, then why didn’t I see them?

I would like to console her by saying that her father and mother still exist too, somewhere, but I must obscure them in her memory to keep her from being engulfed by her grief over their loss. And as I make my notes, I realize that perhaps it is the sin of despair that causes me to pillage her parents’ memory in such a way, because I am competing with them for her love.

This love I want to keep to myself.

Do not forgive me, Father. I am not worthy.

7 April 1944

Good Friday

They brought their food to church in baskets. Then I went from house to house, from table to table, bestowing my blessings.

The more I become Stash, the emptier her memory becomes, and the fuller my own. What was wrought upon her in the dark is branded into me. I carry the burn for her now.

I force myself to refrain from vomiting in her presence.

9 April 1944

Easter

Before the Resurrection Mass, the men fired in the air as a sign of rejoicing. I covered the little girl’s ears.

At dawn, right after the service, they burst through the gate, led by the farmer’s son who pushed all the others out of the way. After all, the first one to reach home will harvest his crop before all the others.

The little girl and I sit on the ground eating Easter eggs. The shells we will hang from my pear tree as a symbol of fertility.

The customs are ingrained in me, Little Girl. If I deviate from them, I will be endangering your life. If only I knew how to figure out the dates of the Jewish holidays. My memory is too sparse, and I have nobody to ask. There are rumors ... unthinkable. The mind cannot grasp such horror.

Let Easter be Passover, Little Girl.

Let Pentecost be the Jewish Feast of Harvest.

Let the Sunday be the Sabbath.

1 May 1944

The farmer’s wife came to church this morning. People in the village gossip about the couple’s new wealth. They’ve bought another plot, and now their land extends all the way to the forest.

With a proud stride she marched right up to the altar, and announced that she had found a worthy mate for her son. Having searched in vain in our own village, she had turned to another nearby, and discovered a bride who was in a class befitting their own newly acquired status. She had sent her son to lay soft birch branches on the threshold of the girl’s house, a symbol of his intentions. The farmer’s wife asked me to schedule the ceremony.

How can I pronounce the wedding vows for this man, whose very name is too profane for me to utter.

What he did to the little girl in the dark.

The farmer and his wife had been childless for many years. For the sake of procreation, they had fasted and had given generous offerings and other gifts. Eventually they made a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, who answered their prayers. There isn’t a soul in the village who does not remember the baptism of this son.

If only I could add to the Scriptures “a seed for a seed”. How can you ask me to bless him and his wife-to-be? May his children be damned, and cursed be his name.

The farmers are celebrating outside. They have tied scented reeds and ash branches to their hair, and have launched a procession, carrying an effigy of the Princess of May, in green clothing.

Come out to us, Father Stanislaw. The fragrance of spring is in the air. Everything has been created anew. Their spring is my eternal winter. Do not forgive me, Father. I am beyond hope.

I hide between the branches and relieve myself.

3 May 1944

Feast of the Virgin Mary