See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

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 aboutlately, 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 theirwillingness 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?”

BRUNO

[ 1 ]

AT THE DEEP-WATER PORT OF DANZIG he jumped into the sea. It was a drizzly evening, and the handful of people on the dock were too busy to notice him. Stevedores had built a fire under a tin lean-to, and he could smell the coffee brewing: real coffee! He walked briskly through the rain. He had been forced to leave his hat behind in the gallery cloakroom, as well as his black briefcase with the manuscript