See Under, page 6
And another thing worth mentioning is that Momik never slouches on the prophecy job, and he always tries to be a genius like Shaya Weintraub who calculated the minutes till Passover, and for the past few days Momik has been experimenting with numbers, not something really big, but fairly interesting all the same—it goes like this: he counts the number of letters in words people say on his fingers, and it could be that Momik Neuman of Beit Mazmil, Jerusalem, is the inventor of a spectacular new method of counting on your fingers, faster than a robot, and no one could ever guess how it works, because it looks as if Momik is just listening to what the person is saying, his teacher for instance, or Mama for instance, but in his head and on his fingers something else is going on. Not every word though, every word, what, is he crazy? Only words with a certain ring to them, if he hears that kind of word, his fingers start running up and down as if they were playing the piano, and they count at Super Mystère speed as if they were jet-propelled and could break the sound barrier. For instance, if someone says the word “infiltrators” on the radio, right away his fingers start running automatically, and he makes a fist which means five fingers and another fist which means five fingers and another two fingers which makes twelve letters all together. Or “national league coach,” and the fingers calculate it right away, nineteen letters, or how about the magic word “uranium” which is the most important element in the atomic reactor, bzzz! One fist, two fingers, that’s seven letters altogether. And Momik’s had so much practice now that he can calculate whole sentences on his fingers, especially juicy ones like “Our forces returned safely,” four fists, three fingers; it’s really fun too, a very interesting, quiet game, and it also strengthens your hand and finger muscles, which is important because Momik’s a little on the short side, and even skinnier than he is short, but—(1) short people can be strong, look at Ernie Tyler who’s a dwarf (a midget, that is) and he saved Manchester United, and this year they traded him off again to save Sunderland, and (2) with the help of finger exercises and willpower like Raphael Halperin, Momik may soon become stronger, God willing, than the famous Jewish wrestler Over There, the one and only Zisha Breitbart, feared even by the goyim, may-their-name-be-blotted-out, which must be what they call a deterrent, one fist, four fingers, and by the way, according to the rules of Momik’s new game, a word that ends with the middle finger is a word that brings good luck, and that’s why he sometimes adds on a “the” to a word to make it come out on the middle finger. Why not? You’re allowed to use strategy. In war you have to use strategy.
He waits in the cellar a little while longer. Maybe it’s not long enough for the Beast, but it’s still pretty hard to stay down there the way you really have to if you want to make it come out. But then he has to go so bad he wets his pants like a baby, and runs home to change. He still hasn’t found a way to keep it from happening. The raven flutters its black wings—and before you know it, his pants are wet. And his undershirt is damp too, and it stinks like sweat after two hours of gym class, and meanwhile the cat is yowling, and Momik’s eyes are half closed. The first night they could hear the cat all the way up in the house, and Papa wanted to go look for it down there and throw it to the devil, but Mama wouldn’t let him go out by himself in the dark, and they just got used to it eventually and didn’t even hear it anymore, and pretty soon the yowling got softer, as if it was coming from the cat’s stomach. Momik does feel kind of bad about that cat, and he even considered setting it free, only the trouble is, Momik is scared of opening the cage door because the cat might spring at him, so the cat stays, but Momik feels more like the cat’s prisoner than the other way around.
So he forces himself to stand there with his eyes shut, his body tense with battle alert, two fists, one finger, in case, God forbid, something happens, and the raven and the cat are watching and all of a sudden the raven opens its beak and makes a terrible croaking sound, and in less than no time Momik finds himself outside with his leg wet all the way down.
And then he runs upstairs and opens the door and locks the bottom lock too and shouts, “Grandfather, I’m here,” and changes his pants and washes the disgusting pee from his leg, and sits down to do his homework, but first he has to wait till his hands stop shaking. Okay. Now he can draw an equilateral triangle and answer the who-said-what-to-whom questions in the Bible homework, and things like that. This he finishes pretty fast, because homework is never a problem for Momik, and he also hates to put off doing homework so he does it the same day, because why should he let it burden his mind? Then he sits down and times his breathing with his watch (a real watch that used to belong to Shimmik), and he practices so that someday he’ll be able to enter a contest and sing in one breath against Lee Gaines, the Negro singer from the Delta Rhythm Boys, who are currently performing in our country bringing us their new kind of music called jazz, and just then he remembers that he forgot as usual to ask Bella for a recipe for sugar cubes to give to Blacky, the horse that belongs to his secret brother Bill, and he decides to do the homework his science teacher is going to assign three lessons from now, the questions are at the back of each chapter and he likes to be three chapters ahead, too bad he can’t do that in the other subjects, and he finishes his homework now and wanders around the house, has he forgotten anything, yes: what do you feed baby hedgehogs, because the hedgehog seems to be getting fatter so maybe it’s a female and you have to be prepared, because the Beast can come from anywhere.
He ran his fingers over the large volumes of the Hebrew Encyclopedia Papa subscribed to with the special discount offer and installment payments for employees of the National Lottery. These were the only books they bought, you can always find books to read in the library. Momik wants to save up his money to buy some books, but books are very expensive and Mama won’t allow him to buy any, even with his own money. She says books attract dust. But Momik simply must have books, and when there’s enough money saved up in his hiding place from presents and what he gets from Mr. Munin sometimes, he hurries down to Lipschitz’s to buy a book, and on the way home he writes in the jacket in deliberately crooked handwriting: To my good friend Momik, from Uri, or in big, grown-up-looking letters like Mrs. Govrin’s he writes: Property of Beit Mazmil Elementary School. This way, if Mama should ever happen to notice a new book with his school things, Momik has a cover. But the Encyclopedia was no use this time, because they weren’t up to P for pregnancy yet, and there was nothing under Cubs either. There seemed to be an awful lot of things the Encyclopedia was trying to ignore, as if they didn’t exist, some of the most interesting things of all in fact, like the thing Mr. Munin has been talking about more and more lately, “Happiness,” the Encyclopedia doesn’t even mention it, or maybe there’s some good reason for this because usually it’s very very smart. Momik loves to hold the big books in his hands, and it makes him feel good all over to run his fingers down the smooth pages that seem to have a protective covering that keeps your fingers away, so you won’t get too close, because who are you, what are you compared to the Encyclopedia, with all the little letters crowded in long, straight columns and mysterious abbreviations like secret signals for a big, strong, silent army boldly marching out to conquer the world, all-knowing, all-righteous, and a couple of months ago Momik vowed he would read an entry a day in alphabetical order, because he’s a very methodical little boy, and so far he hasn’t missed once, except for the time Grandfather Anshel arrived, so the next day to make up for it he read two entries, and even though he doesn’t always understand what they’re talking about, he likes to touch the pages and feel deep in his stomach and his heart all the power and the silence, and the seriousness, and the scientificness that makes everything so clear and simple, and best of all he likes Volume VI, which is all about Israel, and from the cover you might think it was an ordinary volume like the others, because it looks serious and smart and scientific, but in this volume, right before the end, you suddenly see a burst of fantastic colors, two fantastic whole pages of pictures of all the stamps issued by the State of Israel, and Momik gasps when he turns the pages in this volume slowly and all the beautiful colors leap out at him and take him completely by surprise like huge bouquets of flowers or a peacock’s tail fanning out in his face and all those pictures and colors and the wildness of it, and the one thing that reminds him a little of this is the red lining that looks like fire in Mama’s black evening bag.
And another secret which can be told now is that those were the stamps that gave Momik the idea of drawing his stamps from Over There. In the past few days, thanks to everything the old people have been teaching him about Over There, he managed to fill nearly a whole album. Once, he had to make do with what he knew already, which wasn’t that much, and which wasn’t that interesting either, why not admit it; for instance, he used to draw Papa the way they draw Chaim Weizmann our first President on a blue three-piaster stamp, and he drew Mama holding a peace dove, one fist, four fingers, wearing a white dress as in the 1952 Holiday Greetings stamp, and Bella as Baron Edmond de Rothschild, she’s a famous philanthropist too, with a bunch of grapes on one side, just like the real stamp. There didn’t use to be that much to draw before, but now everything has changed. Momik draws lots of stamps with Grandfather Anshel as Dr. Herzl, Seer of the Nation at the Twenty-third Zionist Congress (because Grandfather Wasserman is a seer and a prophet like that), and little Aaron Marcus as Maimonides with the beads and the funny hat on the brown stamp, and Max and Moritz like the two people carrying the pole of grapes on their shoulders, Ginzburg in front, with his head bowed, and a little balloon coming out of his mouth with his three words, and behind him, Zeidman, small and pink and polite, carrying a tiny briefcase in one hand, with Ginzburg’s words coming out of his mouth too in a balloon, because he always does what he sees someone else doing. But the best idea of all is the one with Munin. It’s like this: on the Holiday Greetings stamp for 1953 there’s a picture of a white dove flying nobly in the air and it says on the stamp, My dove in the mountain clefts, and for three days Momik sat down and drew maybe twenty sketches till it came out the way he wanted, a picture of Mr. Munin flying in the air with a bunch of other little birds that always fly around with him because of the bread he crumbles, and Momik drew Munin just like he is in real life, with his black hat and his big red nose like a kartofeleh, only in the picture Momik gave him white wings too like a dove, and in the corner he drew a little white star and wrote Happiness, because that’s where Munin wants to go so much, isn’t it? And there were a lot of other pretty and interesting stamps in his collection, like Marilyn Monroe with her blond hair, as pretty as Hannah Zeitrin’s wig, and in the margin he wrote (Bella helped him translate), Marilyn Monroe redst Yiddish, because she did promise, but the one with Marilyn is just for fun, and the important stamps in the collection were the new ones from Over There and all the places and historical things like the Old Klauiz (he drew it like the new Cultural Center), and the annual fair at Neustadt which the Prophet Elijah in person used to attend, they said, disguised as a poor farmer, and the hanging pole in Plonsk with the terrible criminal Bobo hanging from it, and he also drew the Jewish Olympics, and even Elijah Leib the miser from Hannah Zeitrin’s shtetl who they said wouldn’t give his wife any lunch to eat (he was such a miser), and in the stamp you could see where the miser drew a Mogen David with his knife on a loaf of bread so no one would take any while he was out, and then Momik made another series, very well drawn, with all the animals from Over There. He was pretty lucky with that series because by chance he found statues of all the animals on the glass buffet in Bella’s living room. He’d been there a thousand times and he never understood what they were till Grandfather Anshel arrived and Momik started to fight and then suddenly he realized that those tiny colored-glass figures were obviously the kind of animals they used to have Over There, because that’s where Bella brought them from! On Bella’s buffet there were blue gazelles, green elephants, purple eagles, and fish with long, bright, delicate fins, and a kangaroo, and lions, all dainty and tiny and transparent, trapped inside the glass, and you’re not allowed to touch them because they’re breakable, and they look as if they froze in motion, which is just what happened to everyone from Over There.
Anyway, that afternoon Momik drew a picture of Shaya Weintraub with a head like an ear of corn, with a wrinkled forehead from thinking so much, and over him he drew a bottle of Passover wine and matzo, and then he drew good old Motl as the parachutist on the Tenth Anniversary of Hebrew Parachuting stamp, and he cut out little teeth on the new stamps and pasted them in his stamp notebook, and looked at his watch and saw that it was six already, and then he turned the radio on because it was time for Children’s Corner, and they told the story of King Matt I, and Momik listened, but he jumped up every other minute because he remembered something or other he’d forgotten to do, like sharpening his pencils till they were sharp as a pin, or shining Mama’s and Papa’s shoes and his own shoes too on a piece of newspaper till they glistened and gave him naches, or making a note in his geography notebook, the secret one, about what he read in the paper yesterday, that the first two mares at the Hebrew Agricultural Exhibit at Beit Dagan are already pregnant, and everyone’s waiting, and after the program was over he turned the radio off and picked up Emil and the Detectives which he likes to read because of the suspense but also because of the five printing errors he enjoys finding and then he can check to see if he’s entered them in his notebook of printing errors from books and newspapers (he’s collected almost a hundred and seventy errors already), and even though he knows those mistakes from Emil and the Detectives have been in his notebook for a long time, it’s 6:33 already, and now Momik goes over to the living-room couch and lies down under the picture his parents got from Idka and Shimmik, a big oil painting of a forest and snow and a stream and a bridge, which must be what Neustadt looked like or Dinov where his old friend once lived, and if you lie down in a certain way, kind of curled up on the couch, you can see when you look up through the branches of the tree in the corner there’s a face almost like a child’s face which only Momik knows about, and maybe that’s his Siamese twin, but you can’t tell for sure, and Momik looks at it very hard but the truth is that today he can’t concentrate because his head’s been hurting badly for a few days now, his eyes too, but don’t get tired yet, because today’s war has not even begun.
And then Momik suddenly remembered that it was a couple of hours already since he’d decided to become a writer and so far he hadn’t written anything, and the reason was that he hadn’t found anything to write about. What did he know about dangerous criminals like in Emil and the Detectives, or about submarines like in Jules Verne, and his own life seemed so ordinary and boring, all he was was a nine-year-old kid, what’s there to tell about that, and he checked his big yellow watch again, and slid off the couch and walked around in circles saying comically, It makes my head ache to watch you krechtzing and spinning like a top, Tuvia, as a certain person we know says to another person, but it wasn’t really so comical, though at least when he looked at his watch again it was twenty-one minutes to seven already, and in his head he started broadcasting the final minutes of the big game soon to take place in Yaroslav, Poland, between us and the Polish team, and he let them win by four goals, and then with only five minutes to go and the situation looking kaput, our coach, Giula Mandy, raised his sad eyes to the bleachers full of cheering Poles, when who should he see there but a boy! And one look is enough to tell him that this boy is a born soccer player, the player who will save the day, and if only they had let the boy play at school he would have shown them too, oh well, and Giula Mandy stops the game and whispers something to the referee, and the referee agrees, and a hush falls over the crowd, and Momik wends his way down the stairs to the playing field where he plans a really spectacular defense and offense (he had some experience training Alex Tochner), and in less than four minutes Momik has turned the tide, as they say, and our team wins 5–4, please God, amen, and the time was now fourteen minutes to seven, nu, pretty soon now, and Momik went to the bathroom and washed his face with warm water and held his head exactly where the long crack runs down the middle of the mirror, and he heard the rain start falling outside and the police car that went around the block warning people to drive slowly, and all of a sudden Momik remembered he forgot to give Grandfather his tea and laxative at four o’clock, and he felt a sting of conscience, you could do just about anything to Grandfather and he wouldn’t even notice, like a baby, and lucky for him Momik was so goodhearted, because other children might take advantage of a dodo like Grandfather and do mean things to him, and Momik stuck his head out the bathroom door and heard Grandfather waking up and talking to himself as usual, and with nine minutes to go, Momik removes his braces and brushes his teeth with ivory toothpaste which is made from special elephants they grow at the Health Clinic, and meanwhile he practices saying words that have the letter S because when they put braces on you, it ruins your S and you have to make sure you don’t lose it, and then finally the living-room clock strikes seven, and in the distance, from Bella’s house maybe, comes the sound of news beeps, and Momik’s heart races and he counts the steps from the lottery booth to the house but more slowly because they have trouble walking, and the sweat behind his knees and elbows itches, and exactly when he predicted it (almost), he heard the gate creaking in the yard and Papa’s cough, and a moment later the door opened and there stood Mama and Papa who quietly said hello, and with their coats still on, and their gloves and the boots lined with nylon bags, their eyes devoured him, and even though Momik could actually feel himself being devoured, he just stood there quietly and let them do it because he knew that was what they needed, and then Grandfather Anshel came out of his room all confused in the big coat and Papa’s old shoes on backward, and he tried to go outside in his pajamas but Papa stopped him gently and said, We’re going to eat now, Papa; he’s always gentle with poor things like him and Max and Moritz, he’s nice to them and he feels sorry for them, and Grandfather doesn’t understand what’s holding him back and he puts up a fight, but in the end he just gives in and lets himself be seated at the table, but he doesn’t let them take his coat away.
