And The Rat Laughed (9 page)

My legs ran up the stairs. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know why myself, but I shut my eyes. I went up in the dark and it was my own darkness. I could taste it, chew it even. That darkness got stuck between my teeth, in my throat, in my stomach, between my legs...

I wanted to throw up.

And even when I really wanted to open my eyes I couldn’t, as if something stronger than me was keeping them shut. I didn’t even have enough power left for my own soul.

I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I don’t know how to explain it. I kept running up the stairs. I wasn’t even sure I hadn’t run too far, right past her floor. The fear and the darkness made me feel somehow that there was a light beyond my own body. Maybe that’s what kept me from falling.

Why did the rat laugh?

It seemed as if I was hearing that laughter rolling through the stairwell.

As far as the bomb-shelter underneath the house.

I have a question for you, Miri. Would you happen to know what
Stash
means?

Have you ever heard the word
Stash?
Because it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Though it does kind of reverberate. As though I’ve heard it lots of times and I simply can’t remember it.

I’ll tell you the truth. I thought I was hearing
Stash
in the stairwell, but I wasn’t really sure it was my grandmother’s voice, because she was upstairs and I was downstairs, so how could I have heard it at such a distance? Maybe it was just my imagination. You know. Being afraid and everything.

Her door on the third floor was wide open, and the light was trickling out. Dim, pale, trembling, but still it was light.

She was standing in the doorway and I couldn’t make out her face because I was blinded from opening my eyes all at once. Now they opened without difficulty, as if they’d never been shut tight.

I said Grandma, Grandma, and that name seemed real to me. As real as can be.

Grandma, give me your hand. I can’t see you.

Then I hugged her, and I felt her hugging me back, and her face was so close.

And I could feel her beads too, close to my heart.

But then I had the strangest thought. Stefan the Rat. Now I called him by his name. You see, Miri, I’d found ... a kind of consola ... I was so happy that there was something human in the pit with her.

Part Three

The Poems

From: [email protected]

Sent: Thursday, December 31st, 2009, 5:48a.m.

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: death&life

Listen, Cookie, last night I hit on this site – really weird, horrible, disgusting – you’ve got to check it out. The poems are totally crazy, I mean they have nothing to do with anything, at least not anything we know. I have no idea who wrote them or why, and maybe it doesn’t even matter.

The poems – or maybe they’re words that have come undone – just showed up while I was surfing some house-pet sites. I always wind up discovering the most important sites by accident. I tried to resist at first, even tried some evasion tactics, but it was stronger than me, and against my better judgment I found myself inside. Then, curiosity got the better of me and I tried to figure out who was behind the little girl and the rat, but I couldn’t. And it isn’t that tracking people down is a mission impossible, but I don’t have the right qualifications. Maybe you can crack it. I mean, you’re the real hacker around here.

The poems are in Hebrew, but in Latin fonts, from left to right, and you’ll see that the order keeps changing. Only the last one is always last. I translated them for you, though I’m sure you’d be able to understand them even without my help.

The writer – I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman – decomposes the world into the most basic concepts, but presents them the other way around. You’ll sense it – the innards pouring out.

And there’s no going back.

The little girl and the rat are deep inside me now, and I can tell I’ll never be able to put them behind me. Couldn’t even eat or drink since I fell into it. All day long I sat there at my PC and sent it out to my whole address book. And once you go into the site, I’d like you to pass the poems on, to your own mailing list.

I think it’s important for as many people as possible to get to be the other way around.

It’s really easy to get into the site. Simply write
www.girl
&rat.com, and you’re in.

On second thoughts, I have an idea about how to get this material to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Remember the chain letters, where all sorts of people you don’t know send them to you and you just delete them? My grandmother told me that when she was little, in the last century, they used to send them by snail mail. If you wanted to make sure the message got passed on, you’d add a header and a footer saying: “Unless you pass this on, you will suffer a terrible fate.”

You’ve got to admit, intimidation is a very effective way of making sure that things don’t get lost.

The more I read, the less I understand, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ve already linked up with whoever lives in this upside down world, and you don’t have to understand everything. It’s enough to feel things. Like the two of us do, even though we’ve never met.

You won’t believe this, but I even printed the poems out. Hard copy. Which I never do. Because I had this urge to feel the words themselves, to know that whatever appears in writing really does exist. I turned off the PC. I even unplugged it and lay there in the dark. Suddenly it seemed as if the words were actually appearing on my body – like a luminescent tattoo.

The nausea didn’t stop until daybreak.

In the morning, my parents found it all, and freaked out. My mother screamed that the material was warped and that the poems were sick. And as far as my father was concerned, whoever had created the site was a basket case, and should be kept as far away from human society as possible, because whoever it was had been an accomplice to a sordid plot. My parents even threatened to go to the Internet Squad and have them block access – which is why I’m writing to you right away, to make sure we circulate these poems to as many people as possible before they close in on us.

When they scream at me, I simply turn my back.

I sit there looking at the pages – real paper – and read it from the end to the beginning and back again, even though it’s obvious that the end isn’t really the end. I lie there, and someone is digging. At a depth I’ve never seen before. And I didn’t really mean to ... I mean, it isn’t mine, and suddenly it is. Without meaning to, I saw my own world decompose into the most basic concepts, and I’m a little girl and a rat too. I can remember it all by heart already, just in case it gets erased, though it doesn’t make sense for anything that’s been transmitted from person to person to ever be erased.

I couldn’t resist adding a line of my own because I have a strange feeling that that’s just what the poet, or the owner, or whoever it was would have wanted. Because only by reacting will we remember.
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I think people can hear me all over the world. All day long I’ve felt like crying, but I’ve got to tell you, Stash, that I’ve never laughed like this in my whole life. Suddenly, I could hear a strange sound coming out of me, as if a weird creature was laughing somewhere in the dark.

Ending

I so much want to be dead

How can I get to be dead

It isn’t enough to want to be dead

And it isn’t enough to be dead

Because even when I am dead

It won’t be over

Arithmetic

One two. That’s that.

One child. One rat.

More Arithmetic

Guess what it found:

One child in the ground

Addition – Subtraction

Mother, Father, Servant – three

A little girl – a family

Servant’s gone

And Father, Mother

Gone one after another

Little girl, no one’s around

Lives alone beneath the ground

Big – Little

I have a big pit outside me

I have a little pit within

The big pit is mine

The little pit is the Stefan’s

Why

Why potatoes?

Because.

Why lice?

Because.

Why darkness?

Because.

And why the Stefan?

How Many

How many potatoes?

This many.

How many lice?

This many.

How much darkness?

This much.

And how much the Stefan?

Male – Female

Lucky you’re a he-rat

And not a she-rat

Lucky you’re a he-animal

And not a she-animal

Because only a he-rat

Can get out and move on

And every she-rat

Is prey for the Stefan

Up There – Down There

Up there

Farmers

Further up

Birds

Furthest up

Parents

Down here

Jews

Further down

Children

Furthest down

Children

Of Jews

Mother – Father

Mother said be a good girl

And Father said nothing

Father Rat kept quiet

And Mother Rat said nothing

Too bad I wasn’t born to them

Far – Near

Jesus is distant

The Stefan is close

And Mother

I have to forget the most

The Other Way Around

What is better

A pit with a living child

Or a grave with a dead child?

Or maybe the other way around –

A pit with a dead child

Or a grave with a living child?

Easy

It’s easy

To get rid of a child who is small.

With a rat

It’s not so easy at all.

Body Parts

Mother

Has no eyes

Has no arms

Has no legs

Has no lips

Mother

Just has a back

The Stefan Has

no eyes Has no

arms Has no

legs Has no lips

The Stefan just has a tail

A Hug

The lice are free

To roam the place

From my hair

To my forehead

And all over my face

I lie there

And I feel them tug

On my face

On my body

For me that’s a hug

Mouth

I give you the name

First just Rat

Then My Pet

Then I give you one with panache

Like Stanislaw or Stash

Tell me yours, Little Girl

You implore.

The Stefan’s mouth

Calls me the Whore

Skin

A hole-child

Is running out of skin

Tail

I have a friend with a tail

And he has four legs

The Stefan also has a tail

It’s between his two legs

Head

When The Stefan climbs down

This is what I do:

I bang my head and hope

There’s a child on the other side

With a rat-pet too

Porridge

Mother pig

Cooked some porridge

And this little piggy had none

Food

Dear Rat,

Make sure you eat it all

To keep from being small

Might makes right

And a giant bite

You’ll swallow every crumb

For me you’ll have your fill

Eat straight out of my hand

And show me you can kill

Hide And Seek

Hide and seek

Just count to ten

No one will find me

Ever again

Catch

If I run away

He gets even more wild

That’s the game that we play

The Stefan, the child

Pretending

Let’s pretend

I’ll be the rat

And the little girl’s you

Cause I want to be

The scary one too

Isn't It Lucky

Isn’t it lucky the rat can bite for me

Isn’t it lucky he can scratch for me

He can pass on diseases

He can crawl around too

And do all the things that I can’t do

Colors

Green is what comes out of your mouth

Red is what comes out of your legs

Brown is what comes out from behind

Black is light

Cold – Warm

I’ll never be cold

For dirt is my blanket

I’ll always be warm

For I’m covered with blood

Dolly

I once had a dolly with braids

Who knew how to close her eyes

They cut off her braids

They gouged out her eyes

And now she’s a dolly that’s bald and blind

Looking for a girl of a different kind

Lullaby

Once upon a time

There was a little Jewish girl

And she had

Little Jewish hands

And little Jewish eyes

And a little Jewish mouth

And a little Jewish body

And a big hole

A Riddle

Where’s the little girl?

What little girl?

Was there ever a little girl?

Saint

When Stefan the Saint

Was as small as an elf

He was snatched from his bed

By Mister Satan himself

A horrible monster

Was what his parents found

Their sweet and cuddly baby

Disappeared in the ground

I want the first Stefan

To come and hunt down

Mister Satan who owns

The bed-pit in the ground

Cause if rats were creatures

That Saint Stefan adored

He’d have Heaven summon

A hundred saints or more

Silence

When the Stefan thrashes

Bashes

Slashes

The animal sounds

Come out of the ground

And I

Vomit in silence

A Ladder

Up

And down

And up

And down

See-saw

See-saw

Time

The Stefan comes down

The Stefan goes up

Yesterday is what came before

Tomorrow is what comes next

Down comes the Stefan

Up goes the Stefan

That’s how time marches on

Sun

Maybe the sun doesn’t go up

And the night doesn’t go down

Maybe beyond the pit

The world doesn’t go round

And darkness isn’t black

And the sun doesn’t set

And I’m the only one left

But I don’t know it yet

A Tree

At the tip of the root–

The one close to the sky–

There’s a bird made of sand

Up and up it will fly

And tell them everything

Rain

If anything grows there

It’s all thanks to me

Cause my body

Makes

Rain

Water

When you flow over me

Tell someone

That the little girl...

A Name

A little girl without a name

A place without a name

People without a name

Clean

Clean is when a rat licks me

Clean is when no lice hug me

Clean is when nothing comes out of me

And the cleanest I’ll be

Is when I cease to be

A Promise

I’ll pee

I’ll shit

I’ll die

I’ll give off a stench

That’s all I can promise

Afraid

I don’t know any more

If I’m afraid

Because if I stop being afraid

I’ll no longer be

Happy

The happiest day that lies ahead

Is the one when I find out

The Stefan’s dead

Steps

Three steps

Forward

Three steps

To the left

Three steps

Back

Three steps

To the right

That’s how you cross yourself

That’s how you’re blessed

Maybe if I do it

The pain will be less

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Even if we don’t quite know what it is that we’re supposed to remember.
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