Well, he must touch Mama sometimes when they’re jammed together in the lottery booth. And he always used to lift Grandma Henny in his arms and carry her to the table and back to bed again. And every Thursday he bathes Grandfather Anshel with a washrag and a little basin, because Mama is disgusted.
Okay, okay, they’re from Over There, so maybe that’s why he can’t hurt them. But here’s one important thing to think about: when he’s selling tickets in the lottery booth he wears little rubber thimble things on each finger!
Not to mention the most conclusive scientific evidence of all, the thing that happened with the leeches the time Madame Miranda Bardugo came to cure Papa when he had eczema all over his hands. Momik has worked out various theories like a serious investigator: a boiling kettle? To look at them, if you didn’t know, you’d think they were just ordinary hands. Or sandpaper maybe? Porcupine quills? Momik was having a hard time falling asleep. For a long time now, ever since Grandfather Anshel showed up, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep at night. Dry ice? A needle?
In the morning, before breakfast (Mama and Papa always leave first), he quickly jots down another guess: “Boldly charging from the camp, our valiant heroes surprised the savage Indians with Red Slipper, who had attacked the mail train. The Emperor galloped ahead on his faithful steed, bursting with splendor, also shooting his rifle in every direction. Sondar of the Commandos covered him from behind. The mighty Emperor shouted to me, his bold roar resounding through the frozen kingdom.” Momik paused to read what he had written so far. This was definitely an improvement over what usually came out. But it still wasn’t good enough. So much was missing. The main thing was missing, he felt sometimes. But what was this main thing? No, the writing should have more power, more biblical splendor, like Grandfather Anshel’s writing. Only how? He would have to be bolder. Because whatever it was that happened Over There must have really been something for everyone to try so hard not to talk about it. Momik also started including some things they were learning about in school just then, like Orde Wingate and the Night Platoons, and also the Super Mystère jets we’ll soon have, God willing, from our friends and eternal allies the French, and he even used the first Israeli nuclear reactor currently under construction in the sands of Nahal Rubin, and in next week’s issue, a sensation-something article with exclusive photographs of the pool where they actually do the atomic thing! Momik felt he was getting closer to solving the riddle. (Momik always remembered what Sherlock Holmes said in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” that what one man invents another can discover, so he’s sure he will succeed.) It’s afight for his parents and for the others too. Of course they know nothing about it, why should they know. He’s fighting like a partisan. Undercover. All alone. So that they’ll finally be able to forget and relax a little, and stop being so scared for once in their lives. He’s found a way. It is dangerous, to tell the truth, but Momik isn’t scared. That is, he’s scared, but there’s just no other way. Bella unknowingly gave him the biggest clue of all when she mentioned the Nazi Beast. That was a very long time ago though, and he hadn’t quite understood it then, but the day Grandfather arrived and Momik went down to the cellar to look for the sacred old magazine with his story in it, he understood exactly. And in a way that was when Momik made up his mind to find the Beast and tame it and make it good, and persuade it to change its ways and stop torturing people and get it to tell him what happened Over There and what it did to those people, and it’s been about a month now, almost a whole month since Grandfather Anshel arrived that Momik has been busy up to his ears, in complete secrecy, down in the small dark cellar under the house, raising the Nazi Beast.
That was a winter they would remember for years. Not because of the rain, it didn’t rain in the beginning, but because of the wind. The winter of ‘59, said the old people of Beit Mazmil, and no one had to say any more. Momik’s father walked around the house at night with yellow gatkes showing under his trousers, and a big wad of cotton in each ear, and he would stuff pieces of torn-up newspaper into the keyholes to stop the wind from getting in (which could get in even through there). At night Mama worked on the sewing machine Shimmik and Idka gave her. Bella fixed it so lots of ladies would bring Mama their quilt covers to mend and their old sheets to patch up and she could earn a little extra for the house. It was a secondhand Singer sewing machine, and when Mama sat working at it and the wheel turned and creaked, Momik felt as if she were controlling the weather outside. The noise from the machine made Papa jumpy, but he didn’t say anything, because he also needed the little extra, and besides he didn’t want to get into trouble with Mama and her mouth, so he would pace around the house, krechtzing and switching the radio on and off, saying, This wind and all the other troubles are from the government, choleria. He always voted for the Orthodox Party, not because he was Orthodox, he wasn’t one bit, but because he hated Ben-Gurion for being in power, and the General Zionists for being in the Opposition, and Ya’ari forbeing a Communist, pshakrev. And the winter with the winds and the
