Sometimes children kidnapped him from the fence and led him afar in merry processions. He would be returned hours later. They were always careful to put him back where they had found him, on the fence next to the red mailbox. And they carefully removed any hint of the last few hours — something stuck to his shirt or hanging from his neck or glistening in his hair. But when Brandy arrived, all trade in Moshe ceased. The children didn’t dare. Captain Moshe was left master of his own time. He sat on the fence when he wanted to and set off on voyages when he wanted to. Got up suddenly with no hesitation and started walking on his strong feet. Quickly, quickly. A lot to get done. Other plans null and void. Only an army of ants could steer him off his chosen path. Moshe, in his enigmatic way, was in awe of ants. Something about their motion, the unspoken command that drove these little creatures one after the other, imposed the same law of procession on him. With heavy, hypnotic steps, he veered from his original path to join the convoy. Sometimes the line circled around a yard, or traveled far away to the fields beyond the neighborhood, in front of the row of eucalyptus trees that hid the train from the residents (but not its whistle — oh, the whistle). Moshe marched, his soul gradually changing, filling with antness. He was accompanied by Brandy, who trotted along at a safe distance from the black line, the blind procession that gathered up anything in its way. Sometimes she would hurry over to Moshe to make sure all was well, lick a few of his new bruises, sneeze, and run back to follow alongside the procession. By that time, in the center of the line, Moshe had already become an ant. A giant, anonymous creature in a long row, and his roll was a crumb for the queen. Only when they reached the nest, at the point where the ants disappeared one by one into a little hole, did Moshe encounter the inadequacy of his human form. He stood bewildered on the edge of the nest while harried ants angrily passed him by. The body of a human, the soul of an ant. One could imagine that deep animal desperation would erupt from his sealed core in a chilling wail, a howl of anguish. But no. After a few moments, Moshe would set down the roll — a delight for the astonished ants — and, having done his part, go home. Brandy led the way.
Every other Tuesday afternoon, Grandpa Yosef would put on a nice shirt, dress Moshe up elegantly, and together they would go to see a movie, preferably something by Walt Disney. Sometimes Moshe protested, presenting Grandpa Yosef with an impenetrable line of thought until the expedition was cancelled. Then Grandpa Yosef, disappointed, would go and study a page of Gemara and Moshe would go out to the fence to sit in his rightful place.
We usually found him there. When we came to visit Grandpa Yosef, Moshe would be sitting motionless, sparrows perched on his roll, holding it with their tiny feet and pecking. They were not afraid of the holder of the roll, apparently attributing a lesser consciousness to him than to the scarecrow in the yard across the way. The scarecrow belonged to Adella Greuner and for a long time we believed that this was the creature to whom she shouted through the window, “Kalman, vi geystu? Vi geystu? ” The phrase was once clumsily translated for us as, “Kalman, where did you go?”—a fairly common shout among the bereaved neighbors. But Grandpa Lolek obligingly provided us with the more accurate translation of, “Kalman, where are you going?” This rendition testified to an ongoing dramatic state, a fixed presence in Adella’s world, an event unable to become past tense, simply stuck. We thought we would have to set up a rescue team to get Adella Greuner out of her unfortunate situation, but Grandpa Lolek beat us to it. He started going up to her apartment for tea between two and four every Thursday, and ever since then the shouting stopped. Kalman, apparently, had gone.
We also practiced rescuing Moshe. Using methods that had proven successful in the books we borrowed from Mrs. Gottmartz’s library, we furtively tried to cure him. We hoped to be able one day to present Grandpa Yosef with his new son: a cheerfully chattering, multilingual, musically talented Chief Mechanical Officer in the Navy.
“Here, this is your son, Moshe,” Effi practiced the great moment when our Pinocchio, the wondrous wooden child, would be presented to Grandpa Gepetto-Yosef. In the meantime, we read him books and whispered secrets in his ear. We drew him cards with letters and tried to hypnotize him and find hidden reflexes in his body. But we had gravely underestimated the distance between Moshe and the light.
One day, for some unknown reason, Grandpa Yosef decided to build us an igloo. Excited by something he had recently read, he hurriedly set about his construction project. In the yard, he spread out a layer of white plastic sheeting on a truss of cardboard. He worked hard, laboring with the helplessness of a man not designed to perform handicrafts. But finally he declared: an igloo. We squeezed into the igloo with Moshe and were left to enjoy ourselves. We sat there, slightly cramped, and Grandpa Yosef abandoned us. Our condition was one of being in an igloo. It was a state of consciousness.
The state continued.
We did not know what came next. What does one do in an igloo?
We tried to think back to the seals from our Tarbut encyclopedia, and Neeluk the brave Eskimo boy. We sat across from Moshe with our limbs cramped, dripping with sweat, sweltering in the heat, playing at igloo. Suddenly Moshe began neighing in a strange, animal voice. Then he switched to soft bleating. After that, following a brief pause, he yelled at the top of his lungs. Traversing great chasms of damaged consciousness, the yell cut across like a wilderness train. Someone pulled the stop bell. Someone shouted to pull down the crank wheels. Moshe yelled with all his might and tried to get up, flailing his arms in all directions. Frightened, we rolled away from him. For a moment we got caught up in his reality, growing as distant as he was. We were lost inside the white sheets of plastic.
Grandpa Yosef came to the rescue. We were saved, but from that day on we understood how great the distance was. Moshe was farther than the expanses of wilderness illustrated in our Brawer Atlas, beyond the Kazak plains, beyond Novaya Zemlya, beyond Franz Josef Land. Moshe could not be reached. Grandpa Yosef had been trying all of Moshe’s life, and had not succeeded. Professionals had tried. We had tried. Good people had tried. The Moshe Pole was beyond reach.
Once we saw Grandpa Yosef helping Moshe get dressed in his room. He caressed Moshe’s hair for a brief moment, and said, “My child, how shall I reach your inner sanctum?” in a desperate voice we did not know.
How strange, then, that the one and only person who not only could reach the darkness of Moshe’s inner sanctum, but could come and go there as he wished, was Grandpa Lolek. As soon as his car appeared in the neighborhood, Moshe would change. The slow-witted figure became an energetic creature with volition, to the great satisfaction of Grandpa Lolek, as Moshe’s primary desire was to wash the Vauxhall. Washing the car was his great love, one of his few privileges, and he kept a bucket and rag under his bed for the occasion. Moshe was so quick to sense Grandpa Lolek’s presence that the scene would sometimes blur and it would be hard to tell which came first — Moshe running sprightly with the bucket, or Grandpa Lolek driving up in the Vauxhall, struggling to park. With rebellion bubbling in his body, Moshe also tended to add a certain majesty to his persona as he fished a wet rag out of the bucket and waved it, dripping with soap, to demonstrate his serious intentions. Perhaps he wished to banish potential competitors, guys who might emerge from nearby yards, buckets in hand, and Grandpa Lolek’s car was willing to indulge them too. He would swing his bucket and run to the car like a crazed puppy. Then he would jump around the Vauxhall uncontrollably, interfering with Grandpa Lolek’s parking maneuvers. He would begin scrubbing the windows with a sponge while Grandpa Lolek, a cigarette between his fingers, exhaled angrily into the windshield as he struggled to subdue the car into a parking space. Moshe would open the door to greet the newcomer and try to empty the ashtray, and would be left almost with the door in his hand when the car spluttered backwards.