Motti by Asaf Schurr

had already put her in the cabin three days before ignition. Georgi Grechko, who was a cosmonaut, said that the spaceship, the satellite that Laika was sent up in, didn’t separate properly from the missile with which it launched. Perhaps the systems were damaged, and therefore Laika was baked inside her skin. Forty years after this, her likeness was engraved on the monument to fallen cosmonauts, near Moscow. I doubt this did her any good.
    Look at her picture on the cover. A paw resting almost playfully, an ear bent mischievously, I think, or maybe because genetics made it so. It appears that she’s smiling, definitely smiling, I don’t see fear in that look, but who am I to recognize her fear.

40
    â€œYou listening?” Guard B made sure. “I’m standing there with that hat in front of Tom’s aunt. Middle of the heat wave, I’m telling you, and I feel the butter I put there start to drip. And she’s talking, the aunt, she goes on and on—and I’m feeling how it’s already starting to drip, you know? Onto my forehead and the neck and all that. And she stops speaking suddenly, starts staring at me, I thought I was going to die on the spot. Jumps on me and takes off the hat, I thought I was dead, suddenly she hugs me. God Almighty! she says. I thought the boy’s brain was starting to leak out on him here. Why are you walking around with butter inside your hat, you strange boy?”
    â€œFunny,” said Motti.
    â€œFunny?” Guard B was amazed. “I almost frightened her to death. What’s funny about that? You don’t know how awful that was for me. What, like I don’t know what it is to worry that someone’s going to die right in front of your eyes? Just like that, with my own eyes, I saw my mother die.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Motti.
    â€œIt’s not your fault,” said Guard B, “and it also happened a long time back.”
    â€œWhat did she die from?” asked Motti.
    â€œFrom the disease,” said Guard B.
    â€œWhat disease?” asked Motti.
    â€œThe disease, the disease,” said Guard B impatiently and meant cancer, which many people don’t call by its name out of fear that it’s an actual, proper name, like the kind you call someone with, so it (the cancer) might come. Just like you don’t speak the Name itself, you know the one, as though there’s a big eye in the heavens that will open up as soon as you call by name that which cannot be mentioned. (I too never speak that Name aloud. I never say, Yahweh —but look, I wrote it, that much I did. Which, actually, is a little defensive strategy I’ve put together for my book. Now, in certain circles, it will have to go straight to the geniza , thank God, to be stored indefinitely.) “Right in front of my eyes, she died on me.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Motti again, because what else can you say. “That’s tough, to see your mom like that for the last time.”
    â€œIf only, if only that was the last time,” said Guard B and lowered his voice. “In my dreams she still comes to me, that one. A few years dead already, and still coming. I’ve made myself sick over it,” he said. “Her and her underhanded death games. But, in any case,” he said philosophically, then cleared his throat. “Where was I?”
    â€œWith the butter,” said Motti.
    â€œYes, the butter. The whole hat was completely ruined. Did I already tell you what we would need that butter for?”
    â€œNo,” said Motti. “You didn’t say.”
    â€œC’mon,” said Guard B. “What kind of shitty person am I, anyway. Don’t know how to tell a lousy story. Did I already tell you about how Jimbo went to jail?”
    â€œNo,” said Motti.
    â€œWell, look,” said Guard B. “How can I expect you to understand anything? And what about the house that floats on the