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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 whichnearly 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 whatwas 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