Free And The Rat Laughed by Nava Semel Page A

it was a lair...
    She must have screamed, poor thing, and they probably had to calm her down. The farmers, I mean, and I hope it didn’t bite her or give her some horrible disease like the plague or typhus, because in Bible class when we read Samuel I, I remember the part about the Philistines who captured the Holy Ark, and when they gave it back they put some golden rats inside. As a penance, our Bible teacher told us, to rid themselves of the plague that God had afflicted them with. We even had a test on that chapter, and I remember the verses because I felt sorry for the Philistine artisan who had been forced to make a statue shaped like a rat, and I even wrote the word disgusting! in bold print, and the teacher almost gave me a zero and wrote a note on my paper. After class she called me in and said I didn’t have enough respect for our sacred forefathers and said I ought to apologize, but I didn’t. And my grandmother had to be locked up down there with that ugliness – it’s one of the eight vermin that cause the desecration of humans and dishes. That’s what it says in the Talmud. And I’m quoting the exact words that the Bible teacher used, even if she thinks I don’t remember the material. And it’s a creature that multiplies very quickly, and lives deep inside the guts of the earth and only comes out at night to do its ugly stuff. That’s what my grandmother had to live with.
    I felt sick.
    You see, I do remember, Miri?
    The farmer’s wife did try to get rid of the rat, probably to protect my grandma, even though they couldn’t yet hide her above ground in their own house, because it would have been too dangerous. So the farmer’s wife took a piece of paper and wrote: “I hereby order the rat living in this place never to do anything bad to me. And if you ever come near me again, I swear on the Mother of our Lord that I will cut you in seven pieces.”
    Then the farmer’s wife put the note over the pit, before sunrise. And for this in itself I’d like a chance to thank her, if only I could find out her name. The note my grandmother did remember, but not the name.
    And I wanted to hug her, but that’s when she turned and faced me unexpectedly, and suddenly she seemed so far away that I didn’t try any more.
    Maybe it was just a certain mood, or maybe it was the wrong timing, or maybe I’d asked the wrong questions. And maybe she’s suffering from some unusual disease, not amnesia where people get all confused and don’t recognize the ones they love or get lost in the street, but something that scientists haven’t even started studying yet so they don’t even have a name for it. Maybe “surplus memory” is what she has, and maybe that’s why it jams up and gets stuck. The idea that memory may have a will of its own suddenly gave me the creeps.
    I looked at my empty notebook and realized that I didn’t have a thing – no story, no testimony, nothing that could be used to teach the coming generations a lesson, which is what you teachers are always after, and I knew that it was due the following day and that the whole class had already put together a tree and a genealogy and that they have everything they need, and I don’t have a thing.
    She insisted: Just a legend. Take it or leave it.
    I don’t understand where that legend idea came from, because she’s not one of those grandmothers who tell you a bedtime story or sing you a lullaby. I can’t remember so much as a single story or even half a lullaby that she ever ... just Grandpa. He was the perfect storyteller. He used to say it was for all the ones who weren’t able to tell, and he meant her.
    OK, a legend. Whatever.
    I had to go along with it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had anything to hand in, because if this was all I could get out of her, then either it’s a lack of talent that I’ve inherited from her, or else I just don’t have the patience or the technique.
    One name at least. That’s all I wanted. Damn you, memory. Just