See Under, page 11
As he was getting the cellar ready for Grandfather’s first visit, he felt almost cheerful. First he brought down the little duster with the colored feathers Mama had for dusting, and he used it to sweep the filthy floor. Then under a pile of junk he found the little bench they called a benkaleh and he put it in the middle of the room and decided this would be Grandfather’s benkaleh. He also hung Papa’s overcoat with the yellow stars from the nails that stuck out of the wall, and he ripped the empty sleeves, and then he tore out all the pictures he’d copied from library books into his fake Geography Notebook #3 and taped them to the wall, and when he looked around he said twice in Yiddish, Zer shoin, very pretty, and rubbed his palms together and said Whew over them as if he were blowing on a little fire, and then he went up to the house, and inside he locked the bottom lock too, and saw that Grandfather had fallen asleep after lunch with his head resting on the table next to the plate with the drumstick on it, and a fine thread of spit dribbling from his mouth. Momik woke him gently and they went outside and Momik locked the bottom lock too and they walked carefully down the stairs and Momik opened the cellar door and went in first to make sure everything was all right, and quickly, quietly he said, Here, I brought him to you, and then he stepped aside (his heart was pounding) and let Grandfather in, and only then did he dare open his eyes because nothing was happening as far as he could tell, and he led Grandfather to the middle of the room and turned him a little to the right and to the left so his smell would spread in all directions, and the whole time he kept watching the animals, thinking they seemed a little more alert than usual but nothing else, and Grandfather didn’t even notice the animals, he just wandered around muttering like a dodo.
Okay, Momik reminded himself that he couldn’t really expect anything to happen so fast. Maybe the Beast forgot what a real Jew smells like and Momik would just have to wait patiently for it to remember. He sat Grandfather down on the benkaleh in the middle of the floor. Grandfather did try to resist a little, to tell the truth, but Momik had lost patience with this kind of nonsense, so he put his hands around Grandfather’s neck and pressed slowly till he gave in and sat down. Momik sat before him on the floor and said, Now start talking, and Grandfather gave him a funny look as if he was afraid of him or something, and why should he be afraid now, all he had to do was to obey Momik with no nonsense, there was nothing to be afraid of, and suddenly Momik shouted as loud as he could, Talk, you hear? Start talking or else, but he didn’t know why he was shouting or what he meant by “or else,” and Grandfather started talking very fast, and that disgusting spit squirted out of his mouth, which is exactly what Momik had hoped would happen, and he said, Wave your hands too! And Grandfather waved his hands the way he does, and Momik watched him closely to make sure he was really trying hard and doing what he was supposed to do, and he also glanced at the cages and the suitcases and the torn mattresses and silently cried, Jude! Jude! Here, I brought you the kind you like, a real Jude that looks like a Jude and talks like a Jude and smells like a Jude, a Jude grandfather with a Jude grandson, so come on out …
In the days that followed, Momik did some pretty desperate things. They would sit on the floor together, eating pieces of dry bread, as Momik softly sang partisan songs, in both Hebrew and Yiddish, and recited prayers from Papa’s High Holiday prayer book. He even covered the far wall of the cellar with pages torn out of Anne’s book, but the Beast would not come out. It simply would not come out.
The poor animals howled and shrieked and scratched, and the cat was dying now, but Momik wasn’t afraid of the animals, he was afraid of the Beast which was here in the cellar, you could really feel it flexing its huge muscles, ready to pounce, only how could you tell where it was going to pounce from, darn it, and Momik sat looking at Grandfather Anshel and didn’t know what to do. He was fed up with this stupid grandfather who did nothing but drawl out his crummy story in a whiny voice. Sometimes Momik felt like going over to him and snapping his mouth shut. Once when Grandfather made a sign that he had to pee, Momik didn’t get up to take him out but sat staring into his eyes instead, and he saw how confused Grandfather was, howling like some crazy cat and grabbing himself there and writhing desperately and then he wet his pants and they smelled revolting, but Momik wasn’t the least bit sorry for him anymore, on the contrary, when Grandfather looked up at him with a dazed and pitiful expression on his face, Momik just got up and walked out, leaving Grandfather all alone in the dark, and he went back to the house and locked himself in and listened to the radio and heard how our team lost the game against the Poles in Yaroslav 7 to 2, while the Poles jeered at our boys, and Nechemia Ben-Avraham the sportscaster described how Yanush Achurak and Liberda and Shershinsky are walking all over our boys Goldstein and Stelmach, so Momik could see he was losing right down the line, as they say, though on the other hand, as everyone knows, Momik isn’t the kind of boy who cares about losing or jeering or harassment or extortion, but there is one thing he will never allow himself to lose at, because there is no other way, and that’s why he had a new plan, more daring than anything up to now, which he worked out because Grandfather Anshel was apparently too small to bring out the Beast wherever it was, and as always, Momik had to think this through like a good shopkeeper (Bella was the one who taught him this even though she herself was a regular shlimazel when it comes to business things), and get some more Jews in, enough to make the Beast think it was worth coming out, and this seemed so funny to him that he laughed a weird laugh which startled him and he shut up and listened to the game on the radio, and thought about Grandfather who might be gobbled up any moment down there, and in his mind, which he could no longer control, Momik planned to ask his classmates to lend him their grandmothers and grandfathers for a little while and bring them down to the Beast in a big group, and he let out another laugh like a high-pitched squeak on the radio, and then stifled it and looked around to see if anyone had heard.
And he didn’t even wait to hear the end of the game because he stopped believing a miracle would happen and some wonder boy of a soccer player would leap down from the stands past the jeering crowds and join our eleven-man team on the field and show those Poles a thing or two, and run circles around them and save the day and clobber them 8 to 7 (the last goal with the final whistle), and he stomped out of the house and locked the bottom lock and went down the stairs and waited at the door for a second, listening for the victim’s screams, but all he heard was Grandfather’s tune, and then Momik went in and sat down facing Grandfather, feeling all tired out; he must really have been tired out because sometime later he found himself stretched out at Grandfather’s feet, and decided that maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to bring any more Jewish grandfathers in, because it sure was getting harder to put up with people lately, they were simply impossible, with their secrets and ideas and the craziness darting out of their eyes, and how come there’s the other type of people, like the kids in his class, everything seems so simple to, only Momik knows how not simple it is, because once is enough; once you know how not simple it is and how frightening it is, you can never believe in anything again, oh what an act it is, but even though he was asleep now he couldn’t stop fighting, and he heard someone calling, Get up, get up, if you fall asleep now, you’re done for, and maybe it was this voice that kept him from falling asleep, no, it was something else too, hard to remember what exactly, maybe he got up, yes, and he walked out of the cellar, and wandered around in a fog, dragging his feet, till he got to the green bench where he stopped a while; he just sat there and waited, thinking of nothing, watching a big brown autumn leaf that had fallen from some tree long ago, and he saw the veins sticking out of the leaf like the veins on Mama’s legs, and down the middle there was a long line that split the leaf in two, and he thought what would happen now if he tore the leaf in two and threw each half in a different direction, would they miss each other or what, and as he sat there his old people approached, and they didn’t have to ask any questions, they knew, they looked at his face and saw it was time to do what they’d planned all along, and Momik waited another minute till they all had the same smell, and then he said, Ah well, nu, and they all followed him, Hannah and Munin and Marcus and Ginzburg and Zeidman, like sheep they followed wherever he led, they traipsed down the street forever along the paths with the snowdrifts and the black forests and the churches and haystacks with the fresh smell, and someone who saw them on their way asked Momik, Where to? but Momik didn’t look up to see who it was, and he didn’t answer, he led his Jews onward to the cellar, and heard Grandfather talking to himself inside, and Momik opened the door for them and beckoned them in and shut the door.
They waited patiently inside for their eyes to get used to the dark, till gradually they could make Grandfather out on his benkaleh, and the white pages on the walls, and Mr. Munin was the first who had enough nerve to go to the wall and look at one of the pictures up close, and it took him a while to figure out what he was looking at but when he did understand he stiffened and backed away and he must have been frightened because you could feel his fear run through them like an electric current, and they huddled together, but then slowly they spread out through the cellar and started to file past the walls, looking at the pictures as if they were at an exhibition, and the more they looked at the pictures like that, the more they gave off the sharp, old smell which nearly suffocated Momik, but he knew this smell was probably his last chance, and inwardly he screamed, Show it, show it, go on, be Jews and show it, and he crouched down with his hands on his knees as if he were coaching the players on the soccer field and inwardly shouted, Now, now, go on, be wizards and prophets and witches and let’s give it one more battle, one last fight, be so Jewish it won’t know what to do with itself, and even if the Beast was never here before, now it’s got to come out, but nothing happened, except that his poor animals were getting even jumpier; the raven flapped its wings and made swooshing sounds, and the cat yowled horribly, and Momik went down on his hands and knees and drew his head in and thought what an idiot he’d been to believe in wizards and witches and all that, a nechtiger tog, as Bella would say, there’s no such thing, look at them, this poor bunch of crazy Jews who stuck to him and ruined everything, his whole life they ruined, and what made him think they could ever help him, huh, he could teach them a few things, come to think of it, every single one of them, what you do in an emergency, one fist four fingers, how to run circles around the world, but what do they care anyway, they seem to like it even when you hurt them and when you laugh at them and they’re miserable, they’ve never done anything in their whole lives to fight back, they just sit there bickering about those stories no one gives a dam about, what the rabbi said to the widow and how a piece of meat fell into the milk soup, and meanwhile more and more of them were killed, and they always have to get the last word in too, as if the one who gets the last word in stays alive, and all those stupid exaggerations which are a pack of lies, the genius in Warsaw everyone supposedly knew, and the nobleman Munin claims kissed him and hugged him like a brother! and the Polish government minister who bowed to Mr. Marcus once, oh yeah, sure, sure! And even Bella, believing she’s prettier than Marilyn Monroe, really! And even when they talk about what the goyim put them through, the pogroms and expulsions and tortures, they talk about it with a kind of krechtz, forgiving it all, like someone who makes fun of himself for being weak and a nebuch, and anyone who laughs at himself gets laughed at by others, everyone knows that, and slowly Momik raised his head from the floor and felt himself fill with hatred and rage and revenge, and his head was on fire and the room danced before his eyes, and these Jews were scurrying along the walls and pictures so fast he could hardly tell what was real and what was a picture and he wanted to stop them but he didn’t know how, once he had a magic word but he couldn’t remember it, and he raised his arms and begged, Enough, stop it now, he raised his arms as if to surrender, like a boy he saw in a picture once, but a terrible scream escaped him, the cry of a Beast, and it was so frightening that everything stood still and the room stopped dancing and the Jews fell down and lay panting on the floor, and then he got up and stood over them, and his legs wobbled and everything was fuzzy, and then he heard Grandfather humming his tune in the silence like an electric pole, only this time the story sounded clear and he told it nicely with biblical expression, and Momik held his breath and listened to the story from start to finish, and swore he would never-ever-black-and-blue forget a single word of the story, but he instantly forgot because it was the kind of story you always forget and have to keep going back to the beginning to remember, it was that kind of story, and when Grandfather finished telling it, the others started telling their stories, and they were all talking at once and they said things no one would ever believe, and Momik remembered them forever and ever and instantly forgot them, and sometimes they fell asleep in the middle of a word and their heads drooped down on their chest and when they woke up they started where they left off and Momik went over the pictures he’d copied in pencil once out of those books, and he remembered that each time he’d copied a picture he felt he had to draw it a little differently, like the one with the child they forced to scrub the street with a toothbrush, well Momik drew the toothbrush bigger than it was in the photograph, and the old man they forced to ride on the other old man, Momik drew him half standing so he wouldn’t be so heavy, yes, he felt he had to make these changes, but now he couldn’t remember why exactly, and he was kind of angry with himself for not being precise and scientific enough, because if he had been, maybe his latest problems would be over by now, and he leaned against the wall, because he couldn’t stand up anymore, and his Jews were still talking and bobbing around as if they were praying, and sometimes it seemed to him that he was imagining all this, and his eyes kept darting around in search of where it would pounce from, and then Grandfather Anshel started telling his story from the beginning again, and Momik squeezed his head because he didn’t think he could stand it anymore, he wanted to vomit everything, everything he’d eaten for lunch and everything he’d learned about lately, including himself, and now these stinky Jews here too, the kind the goyim called Jude, before he thought that was just an insult, but now he saw it suited them perfectly, and he whispered, Jude, and felt a warm thrill in his stomach and felt his muscles filling out all over, and he said it again out loud, Jude, and it made him feel strong, and he shook himself and stood over Grandfather Wasserman, sneering, Shut up already, enough already, we’re sick of your story, you can’t kill the Nazikaput with a story, you have to beat him to death, and for that you need a naval commando unit to break into the room and take him hostage till Hitler comes to save him, and then they catch Hitler and kill him too with terrible tortures, they yank his nails out one by one, shrieks Momik, leaving Grandfather and approaching the cages, and you gouge his eyes out without an anaesthetic, and then you bomb Germany and wipe out every trace of Over There, every good trace and every evil trace, and you liberate the six million with a spy mission the likes of which have never been seen, you turn back the clock like a time machine, sure, there must be someone at the Weizmann Institute who could invent something like that, and they’ll bring the whole world down on their knees, pshakrev, and spit in their faces, and we’ll fly overhead in our jet planes, war is what we need, screamed Momik, and his eyes were like the eyes of his cat, and his hands ran down the cages and opened the metal latches, and once again he turned and saw his little shtetl, and he stood there motionless, watching the raven and the cat and the lizard and the others slowly leave their cages; they didn’t understand what was going on, they didn’t believe this was it, that it was over now, but the Jews understood all right, and got up from the floor and huddled together with their backs to the animals and whispered fearfully, and the animals made noises at each other and wouldn’t let each other move, when anyone moved even the teensiest bit, there was shrieking and howling and feathers standing on end, and the cellar was filled with the sounds of danger and fear, and it seemed incredible that only half a minute from here there was a city and people and books, and Momik who thought he might be dead or something, closed his eyes, and, risking his life, passed the raven and the cat and didn’t feel them scratching and pecking him, what was that to him after all he’d been through, and he went over to his Jews, and they looked at him with sad, worried faces, but they moved over all the same and made way for him, and he was still laughing at them in his heart for their willingness to forgive him so soon after what he’d done to them, but it felt good when they closed in around him and he was standing in the ring, and he thought the Beast would never be able to get him in the ring, it would never try to get in, because it knows it wouldn’t stand a chance, but when he opened his eyes and saw them all around him, tall and ancient, gazing at him with pity, he knew with all his nine-and-a-half-year-old alter kopf intelligence that it was too late now.
There are just a few things more worth mentioning here in the interest of scientific accuracy: Momik couldn’t say goodbye to his cellar just like that, and though he never brought Grandfather or any of the others with him, he still went in sometimes to be alone in the days that followed. The animals he let go, but their smell lingered on and the smell of the Jews did too. His teacher Netta came over to talk to Mama and Papa, and they agreed about certain things. Momik didn’t care. He didn’t even ask. He didn’t make a note that Yair Pantilat broke the record for the 800-meter dash, or that Flora and Alinka, the two mares at the Beit Dagan Agricultural Fair foaled, and the foals were given Hebrew names, Dan and Dagan. At the end of the school year Momik’s report card said Promoted, but not at our school, and Mama told him that the following year he would attend a special school near Natanya, and he wouldn’t be living at home, but this was for his own good, because there would be fresh air and healthy food there, and once a week he could visit Idka and Shimmik who lived nearby. Momik said nothing. That summer, when he went away to visit his new school, Grandfather walked out of the house and never returned. This happened exactly five months after he arrived in the ambulance. The police searched a while but they never found him. Momik used to lie in bed at night in boarding school, wondering where Grandfather was now and who he was telling his story to. At home Grandfather was never mentioned again, except one time when Mama thought of him and said to Idka angrily, “If there was at least a grave to visit, but to disappear like that?”
