Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 10 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

I only get to the Shabbos dishes on Sunday morning. My two daughters were here for Shabbos, and it was quite the ruckus. We hardly had time to sit and talk, just the three of us, and deep down, I was happy about that. I didn’t have the energy for questions like, “How are Yudi and Ruchi?” and, “When did you last speak to them?” After candle lighting, they both sat and chatted on the couch, with their children around them, and I rested in my room as my oldest granddaughter told me her stories about eighth grade and the mother-daughter program that the school had just hosted. For the rest of Shabbos, I didn’t even have time for that much schmoozing.

My phone rings from its perch near the stove, and I use a wet finger to connect the Bluetooth.

“Hello, Mommy?”

“Hi, Yudi, how are you?”

“Mazel tov, I’m a father!” he shouts happily. “We have a baby boy!”

“A boy!” I say with wide eyes as I move away from the sink. “Baruch Hashem! Mazel tov, Yudi’le! How beautiful!”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 9 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The linen was clean, at least, and the bed was fairly comfortable. Shimmy turned to the other side and pondered his situation. He’d spent the last two days idling his time at the hotel. He couldn’t go to the factory to check the sample of Tanchum, because Jang refused to let him in without the payment. He also couldn’t tour the city with his interpreter, because the hours spent with him were also a costly undertaking. Gedalya’s friend had agreed to do a bank transfer to pay for the hotel, but it was clear to both of them that it was a loan, and that Shimmy would be the one who would have to pay it off.

So was that it? Had he come for nothing, and would go back the same way? All the cyber experts at Citibank were working hard to solve the problem. But what would happen if they would not be able to fix things until Shimmy’s return flight? And…would they even be able to revert those accounts to their previous status?

The phone rang—Gedalya was calling. Shimmy reached for the phone in slow motion. His last conversations with Gedalya hadn’t been very upbeat. And he could understand him; the man had lost tens of thousands of dollars in a minute. The fact that he was not alone in this problem was not particularly encouraging.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 8 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

This time as well, Shimmy had to go to the fish market, but at least Shio Ching’s stall was already closed, and the man was standing and waiting for the taxi as he spoke animatedly into his phone.

“Hello,” he said as he slid into the car. “So, you came back to us, huh? I understand that your Tankum came out something special.”

“Tanchum,” Shimmy muttered. “That’s exactly what I want to check. Should we go to the factory now?”

“I’m just on the phone here with Sun Jang, and he says that you have nothing to come for before the first payment is transferred.”

“What does that mean? Gedalya already sent him eight thousand dollars!”

“That’s what you say, but Jang claims that he didn’t get anything. Should we go to the hotel?”

“Not to the hotel, to the factory,” Shimmy snapped stubbornly. “And tell him he shouldn’t lie. If Gedalya said he sent the money, then he sent it.”

“And if Jang says he didn’t get it, then he didn’t get it.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 7 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Your mother is not going to come here, is she?” Ruchi asks worriedly as Yudi paces the small kitchen space, opening cabinet doors, closing them, and then opening them again. Ruchi’s mother is putting some fresh dairy products and breakfast for tomorrow into the fridge.

“Yudi!” his father-in-law calls loudly from the dining room. “Yudi, do you know who I met today?”

“She won’t come,” Yudi answers his wife tersely, and then steps out of the kitchen and into the dining room. “Who?” he asks, sitting down on the edge of the couch. His father-in-law is sitting at the table, his eyes tired as he sips a cup of cold Coca-Cola and looks at all the stuff lying haphazardly on the floor around them.

“I meet your boss, Blumenfeld. He said that because of some financial trouble, he had to fire some workers, and you are one of them.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“You didn’t tell us anything.”

“It only happened about two days ago, and you were very busy with Ruchi and the hospital.”

“But still, we want to know what you are going through.”

“Okay.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 6 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Even after I got out of the taxi, it was above me the whole time, circling in the air like an annoying little drone.” Shimmy swung back on the metal legs of the kitchen chair. “You know what it reminded me of, Mommy? That little baby duck that stuck to me when I was little, in Lakewood. Remember how it ran to me every time we went for a walk near the lake?”

“Sure, because you gave it food all the time. Did you give this bat anything?”

“He took by himself,” Shimmy said in a joking tone, as he sipped from the coffee his mother had placed before him.

“Maybe it really was that duck from Lakewood!” His mother laughed. “What color was it?”

“It was not a duck,” Shimmy said. “It was clearly a bat, with a very mousy face, and wings. Did you ever realize that bats know how to smile?”

“No. And whatever the case is, it’s a really strange story.”

“Right. The main thing is that at one point, before I entered the terminal, it just disappeared—baruch Hashem!” Shimmy yawned. “Thanks, Mommy. This coffee is great.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 5 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Shio Ching, the interpreter, listened with interest to the story about the bat while he was waiting with Shimmy for the taxi that would take him to the airport. Now, as well, Shimmy censored out the part about the cookie pieces that were thrown at him, because even without that juicy detail, the story sounded delusional.

“The hotels can deny it as much as they want,” Shio said when the story was over. “But when animals lose their fear of people in certain areas, there’s almost nothing to do. And I’ve heard stories like this before.”

“So there are other incidents like what I just told you, in the area where I was? I’m not the first guest in the hotel to have a bat invade his room?” Shimmy scowled. “When Gedalya described to me what goes on in China, he didn’t talk about bats in the room. I thought it was a good hotel!”

“It’s a very good hotel, but not exactly the top tier. You asked for something inexpensive, right? Next time, if you want, go for a better hotel.”

“If I would have known this was what was waiting for me, I would have agreed to pay even another hundred dollars a night.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 4 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Listen, Jacob,” Abe Rubinson said as he filled his glass with soda. “You speak beautifully, but you can’t use the word ‘Eibishter’ in your shiurim. Haven’t I made it clear to you that a large part of our listeners are people who are just starting to get closer to Judaism? Unfamiliar words might distance them. From now on, please, only straight English.”

Yaakov Shlomo looked at him. “I think you are making a mistake.”

Batya was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, rocking Shmuli’s carriage while listening silently to the voices from the dining room. Shimmy hardly spoke about what his father did. It sounded like even her own father’s job, as a cheder secretary, interested him more. Maybe it was because of this unpleasant employer?

“And I think that I’m not making a mistake.” Rubinson sipped slowly. “In any case, it doesn’t matter what you think. It matters that as long as I am the operator of these shiurim, I would like you to follow the guidelines I’ve established, okay?”

“And you think that if I say ‘Eibishter’ in a shiur, that might turn people off? Even if they understand very clearly Whom I am referring to?”

“Yes.”

Yaakov Shlomo fell silent.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 3 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The wrinkle-faced Chinaman, who was happy to partake of the Osem cookies that Shimmy had placed on the table, seemed a bit detached. He was largely engrossed in his thoughts, and more or less looked only at the cookies that he was slowly consuming, as he laconically answered the translated questions that Shio Ching was asking in an attempt to mediate between the two sides.

“It won’t work out too expensive for you,” Ching translated patiently to Shimmy. “Only seventeen hundred dollars for all the shirts. Do you know how much you can charge for them in Israel?”

The old Chinese man suddenly nodded, as if he’d understood the English, and Shimmy felt distinctly uneasy.

“You know English?” he asked the man directly, and the man gaped at him for a moment, before going back to chewing on cookie number eight or nine.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 2 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The office was elegant and upscale, but that was not the reason he had come specifically here. The two reasons that had led him to contact Sun Jang, the owner of this factory, were his finely tuned production line and his reputation for honesty.

“When you catch a Chinese person lying, he won’t even blink,” Gedaliah had explained to him when they’d first spoken. “He’ll immediately say, ‘Okay, right. You want us to agree on something else?’ But everyone says that Sun Jang is very okay—reliable, diligent, smart. He gets it.”

The meeting at the office of the manager of the ‘Factory for the Production of Motorized Toys,’ the translation of the long, convoluted name in Chinese, went very well. They agreed on an adorable upsherin boy doll that would daven, sing zemiros, recognize the names of the aleph-beis, ask for a ‘nosh with a hechsher,’ and do a few other shticky things along those lines. The deputy manager sat in on the meeting, and at one point, Gedaliah joined by phone. Things were falling into place. Aside for one thing, which Shimmy and Gedaliah had not taken note of before the flight.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 1 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The Chinese-English dictionary turned out to be superfluous when it emerged that the Chinese taxi driver spoke a decent English.

“I bring lot of people to market,” he said.

Shimmy sat in the front seat with his hand luggage on his lap, alternately glancing out at the streets of Beijing and at the note in his hand.

“Why are the windows closed?”

“Soon is a smell of fish. Not Chinese person…not like smell of fish.”

Shimmy was ready to argue about the accuracy of this statement, but a moment later he discovered two things: Firstly, they were apparently very close to the fish market already, and second, Chinese fish were not at all like his mother’s gefilte fish, or Batya’s tilapia. Not the smell, at least.

“You want to meet in the market Shio Ching, the translator.” The driver stopped at a place where the road suddenly ended. “I bring lot of people to him. He knows also Hebrew a little, and he works with Israelis.”

“Yes, I know.” He looked out to the narrow street. “What is this?”