And The Rat Laughed (14 page)

“Because in all your voyages you accompany yourself.” The implachip flashes the words of Socrates through the memory of Seneca.

Memory – a long convoy of amputees fighting for implants.

Children of the little girl, grandchildren of the little girl, children of the grandchildren...

Of the little girl.

All of the Stefans

Somewhere

Waiting for me too.

The Madonna of the Rat Church. I’m so close. Come with me, Stash, to the No-Net-Land. My hand digs through the dirt, leafs through a packet of dusty pages, but whenever I try to work out the writing, the pages crumble and the imaging dies out.

The pages are still there. I’m sure of it. I must touch them. I need to read those ancient pages with my very own eyes.

Over the past two days, I’ve crammed into my brain as much as I could from the submemoryfolders in Polish, Latin, Yiddish and Hebrew. They used to write that language from right to left. The implachip lost no time switching the lobes.

This struggle to cope with the overload is tearing my brain apart. Some of all this just has to remain with you.

The pages I’ll have to take in without the help of an implachip.

With my very own eyes I’ll read the ancient writing. Word by word. Slowly, slowly.

Bless me...

For I have sinned...

That little girl must have had something to remember if she was struggling so hard to forget.

And maybe I do too...

And I don’t even know what.

With my very own soul. I will remember.

Stash, I already know that you’re engaged in a top-secret mission at the Institute’s biotechnological lab to create a new body-part.

I had to break into your REMaker in order to get the password.

That is the most significant part of your future program, and you’re already in the process of screening transplant candidates. At the lowest level, in a tightly sealed container, it is ready – the prototype of the soulorgan.

From the deepest folds of the body... Rising...

Outwards...

There in the dark...

Someone is laughing. I can hear it clearly.

And I hope to put down my own discovery in writing too, just as the ancients used to do. My fingers will grasp the ancient writing implement, a pencil or a pen, and my other hand will hold the paper. Slowly, slowly.

Even without the implachip I can picture your lips twitching. Stash is smirking...

Maybe I am–

She

And you are–

Who?

If only I could understand that sense of humor.

Stash, if I write to you in my own handwriting, will you read it?

A page with words on it, stained with the involuntary drippings of the body. Perspiration, saliva, urine, blood, tears...

I’ve never cried. That was the first genetic repair they did on me. It’s imprinted on my card.

I want so much to cry.

***

I’ll sleep under the open skies.

Closeness

A body touching

A hand stroking – a hand hitting

I’m leaving.

Good-bye Stash.

It hurts so much...

My entire being is torn apart.

There will be light there. There will be darkness.

I pray to be able to tell the difference.

Pray?

What is praying?

If the little girl was laughing, then so can I...

Awakening

Part Five

The Diary

15 September 1943

Day of Our Lady of Sorrows

Do not bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Do not absolve me. I have been your faithful servant all my life, but now I am forsaking you and succumbing to the sin of despair. I feel sin welling up in every part of my body, and by sunrise it will permeate every cell. Do not forgive me, Father. I cannot fulfil my duty, and I have no faith. But pardon this little girl, who has no name. Because she is the unwitting source of my despair. Embrace her, and grant her salvation.

She is huddled in the wings of the church, mute as stone, and I pray in vain for slumber to engulf us both. Only the soft hand of sleep will succeed in dusting off tormented memory, suspending for a brief moment all that which had best be forgotten, and prepare the rememberer for a new day.

What new day awaits a little girl who is nothing but night?

I am Your chosen one. You have entrusted this girl-child to me, a little girl who is the source of my despair. When I first saw her, in the confessional, I asked myself whether this creature could be part of what You had wrought. Do not forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I doubted her being human. I stood there paralyzed. The black walls closed in on me, and my foot faltered on the threshold. I wanted to flee from the soundless body, with its stench of excrement, all its limbs dripping. I sought prayer, but found none. All I found was the cry that pierced through me.

My Father, what is this test that you are making me endure? Terrified, I crossed myself again and again. The farmer’s wife was shouting things at me, but I could not make them out. And yet, I could not help but steal a glance at her. A pair of eyes blazed at me through the lacework screen. As if I were standing under the cross at Golgotha, watching the man bleeding to death between two thieves.

If only I could have ripped the screen with my own bare hands, and reached out to her. Tonight, I kneel – not before you, Father, but before this child. Do not pardon me, for I denied myself to the soul floundering in the fetid flesh.

I carried her to my living quarters, but even the jostling did not elicit a sound from her. Five years old, or six. Emaciated, dishevelled, the rags sticking to her torn flesh. Her face I cannot quite discern.

A girl-child.

I had never held one in my arms.

I pray that I do not break her.

I sit in the dark, and the words pour out. A man is born into Your world as a creature of light, but other humans fill him with darkness. This is what I have preached all my life. Even
I
know full well what parts of the body tore through this child. My body has such a part too.

I do not know how to nurse her. It would have been better if...

No.

To pry out the nails, and to wipe away the blood.

What You are demanding is beyond my power.

I am trying to grant her some respite. Her weightless body is quivering. With whatever strength she can muster, she resists, and kicks me. For a moment I imagine myself removing Your Son from the cross.

Our Father in Heaven, O Blessed One, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Thousands of times, I have recited this prayer, but tonight the words turn into a meaningless jumble.

Our Lady of Sorrows, we call this day. Instead of remembering the sorrow of the Mother, I am immersed in the despair of the daughter.

The farmer’s wife fought me, refusing to hand the girl-child over. An asset, a steady income. Her voice dripping like honey, she said: Father Stanislaw, she will defile the House of the Lord.

I’ll pay you, I told her. The farmer’s wife said: We are not about to slaughter the cow that gives us milk. Then she laughed: Soon there will be no trace of the Christ-killers in this world. If it weren’t for our Stefan, we would have turned her in long ago. A good lad, Stefan. Knows how to appreciate a good thing. But now the Germans are offering ten thousand marks for every Jew. They posted a notice at the community house. Didn’t you see it, Father Stanislaw? That’s quite a sum, isn’t it? We could mend the roof of the church, so it doesn’t leak in winter.

To soften her heart, I addressed the farmer’s wife as “My Daughter”. From a secret shelf, I pulled down a golden candlestick, its base embossed with crosses. Give me the child, I said, and I will reward you.

Years ago, someone in the big city told me that Jews regard the ransom of captives as a sacrosanct commandment. Even the least remembered, after all, the unloved, are Your children. But I kept all this to myself. In a servile voice, I pleaded: Give me the child. I will know what to do with her.

The farmer’s wife had trouble making up her mind, but finally she pushed the girl-child towards me. Slaughter the little Jew with your own hands, and avenge the blood of our Savior. But be careful, Father Stanislaw, make sure she doesn’t infect you when you use the knife. Soon we will be celebrating a solemn mass for a world cleansed of Jews.

Her laughter thundered as she lit another candle by the altar.

Her only son was also with her in the church. A huge fellow. Big hands. Doesn’t say much, darting eyes. He always kisses my hand submissively, making sure his mother sees. I baptized him on Saint Stephen’s Day. He always knelt before the large crucifix, a devout expression on his face. Every Sunday, he would take his place at the head of the line leading to the confessional. May God be in your heart, and may you be truly contrite as you confess your sins – and he would whisper about small thefts. Trifling transgressions. Last week he drank too much and got into a brawl in the neighboring village. He always confesses some service he missed, and I pardon him and send him on his way.

A girl-child.

He never mentioned her.

What he did to her in the dark was with the knowledge of his father and mother. Perhaps he bought their silence. Do not forgive me Father for my sinful thoughts. By surrendering to despair I am defying You, but as I look into the future I see nothing but death. They pushed this little girl along the path to her death, wrenching her away from her mother and father, and from everyone who loved her. I cannot fight off this despair.

Tonight I will be the message-bearer. I will announce: In the face of absolute evil, there is no escape from despair.

And yet before sin conquers me completely, I offer You a bargain. If You perform a miracle, and erase the horror from her memory, I will atone for the sin.

A sign.

I am waiting.

In vain.

A man can make a bargain with the Antichrist but not with You.

16 September 1943

I try everything. Water, bread, a blanket, but she will not let me near her. All night long I watch her, contorted in her strange position – half lying, half sitting. Protecting every part of her body, trying to keep from being noticed. Whenever I approach her, she shrinks into the little niche in the wall adjoining my quarters. I yearn to tell the huddled soul: There is a place for you in this world. If only I could promise her a place in the next world.

I kneel before the little girl who was violated in the dark. My Father, did You not see what was happening underneath the soil, or did You turn your back?

My entire life was devoted to You, drawing on my deep belief that Yours is the compassion and the goodness that I preach. It would have been better had You not separated light from darkness. If only You had left the
Tohu
and the
Bohu
– the Chaos – as they were, and not separated darkness from light, because the order you created is nothing but a delusion, luring us to believe that justice will be meted out at some other time and place. But if You do not love Your creatures, how dare You demand of us that we love one another? The true Hell is not in the world beyond this one, on the Judgment Day that I rant about from the pulpit. It is here on earth. Hell is a legend that I trade, so we can deny the Inferno we create right here with our own hands.

Empty words, spat onto a piece of paper. If I had the courage, I would demolish the church in the heart of this beautiful village. I would stand on the ruins and proclaim, for all the world to hear: Father, You have failed, and because of You we are beyond repair! You know that I have spent my entire life in awe of You. I have submitted to You at all times, accepting Your authority without question. The distance from a fear of God to a fear of men is not great, after all. Acquiescing to You or acquiescing to them – it’s all the same. Perhaps I was more eager to acquiesce to them than to You. Now, despair consumes whatever fear remains within me, and sin sets me free. Tonight, and on the nights to come, You and I will conduct our reckoning.

Show me a sign, Father. Even from my abyss of despair, I have no other Father but You.

You are tarrying. Night proceeds along its tracks, dragging the wagonloads of darkness, while the little girl sprawls here, hovering between life and death.

17 September 1943

Her eyelids are shut tight. She shies away from my touch. Let her not die in my care. I pour water on her head and prod a few drops into her mouth. She hunkers in her niche like a clump of mud, but it is I who wallow. Where shall I lead despair? I who thought that suffering was not beyond my ken. In my sermons, do I not dwell on the sufferings of the Son, and insist that my flock share in them? But tonight, I confess my ignorance. Even Your Son was not a little child when He was made to suffer.

As You led Him down the Via Dolorosa, You provided for Him. A mother to console him, an embracing father. The arms of Mary Magdalene were etched in his memory. Not a five-year-old child, but a man of thirty-three, His years as numerous as the buttons on my habit. Even then, on His final journey, He was not alone. Veronica emerged from her house and wiped His brow with a handkerchief, and Simon of Cyrene bore the cross for Him when He stumbled. His own mother fell at His feet, and mothers that He did not know lamented. “Do not weep for me, Daughter of Jerusalem,” He told them, “but for your own children.”

So many times I have tried to envisage the scene, always seeing myself as a Daughter of Jerusalem. Fortunate was Your son with so great a crowd to comfort Him in his last hour. But the little girl whom You sent to the pit is a hostage of her own loneliness. If it was not You who created this suffering, perhaps the Antichrist has prevailed, and it is his kingdom rather than Your own.

I am afraid to find out.

18 September 1943

The village is asleep. My window overlooks the hill nestling below. Wooden houses, with thatch-and-shingle roofs. Their walls are painted white, and the cornices red, like the colors of our Polish flag. All around are fields of rye and sugar beet, oats and potatoes.

My church stands in the centre of the village. Storks nest in the belfry every spring. In the shade of the pear tree I compose my sermons. For hours I observe the foliage changing hues, and I am filled with awe at the cycle of the seasons. I see the bed of nasturtiums that I planted in the garden on the day I came to serve here, many years ago. The community house and the school are on either side of the church, and on the outskirts of the village is the roadside chapel. Passersby stop, say a prayer and hang some green branches and flowers on the statue of “The Troubled Christ”.

A small place. There are many like it. Who will know its name? Who will remember? And it moves along as if there were no War raging on at all. The pigs have been fed, the cows milked, the eggs gathered from the henhouses. The people eat their little meals. But what do they hide in those basements and pits, behind their
Ave Marias?
Their daily routine deceived me, and I too was immersed in my duties and did nothing to stop the scourge.

When the German tanks arrived, I went out to greet them by the roadside shrine. I rode in the first one to the village square. There they stayed. I shook hands with the German
Commandant,
welcoming him. The entire village cheered. Conquerors come, conquerors go. How are these conquerors different from the ones who came before? I have put my trust in the Church, and I believed that if I preached mercy and compassion, I was fulfilling Your most important tenets. I pretended that there was no horror being committed – anything to spare myself the sin of despair.

And now, despair swallows me. If these are the people who sat through my sermons, and seemed to follow in my footsteps, then I am the one who deserve to be condemned: they have absorbed nothing of my preachings. Every Sunday, that farmer and his wife have been coming here, and I have given them the bread and the wine so that they may enter into Holy Communion with Your Son, but all this time they were devouring the flesh of that child, sucking her blood. And I knew nothing of it.

I chose not to know.

19 September 1943

St Thomas Aquinas was right: despair leads to hatred, unbridled fury and bloodthirstiness. I kneel at her side, and imagine my hands around the neck of the farmer’s son. I take pleasure in envisaging his death, watching as he flails his arms and gasps his last. And You too, why didn’t you just kill her, and be done with it? You would have spared her a life filled with the memory of the Stefan inside her.

I refuse to grant pardon. I will not turn the other cheek.

I close the pages, and cover the child with another blanket. The support of the body I can attend to, but not the needs of what lies inside it.

Whom should I pray to?

20 September 1943

Another day has gone by, and her condition is unchanged. I carry out my duties, hearing confessions, performing rites. And from time to time I return to my quarters in the back, kneeling at her side, and listen to her breathing. She is still alive, but it is as if she has lost consciousness. I listen. Maybe she will mumble something. But her lips are sealed. I give her some water. Her lips do not move. I push a spoon into her mouth, trying to feed her some potato soup. She convulses and spits it out.