Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 16 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. 

Batya walked out to the path, pushing Shmuli’s carriage. She basked in the sun’s gentle warmth, and when she glanced at the baby, she saw that he was also gazing wide-eyed at the brilliant blue sky.

“A bit of sun, an outing, and some wind won’t hurt us right now, right?” She smiled at him. “We have nowhere to hurry. Abba will be back for supper only in five days, at the earliest, b’ezras Hashem, because China is a country that keeps people very busy. So we can walk calmly to the grocery to buy some cheese and a few nice cucumbers. Who needs cooked food? You certainly don’t.”

She walked into the store and meandered down the aisles. She’d never loved to cook, and didn’t particularly care for cooked food either. Bread, cottage cheese, and a tomato were a perfect meal in her view, especially in the years when she’d come home late from school and didn’t want to become fleishigs. One of the hardest things she’d had to adjust to after her marriage was getting used to eating “real” meals, and, even more than that, cooking those meals.

The phone rang. Batya was surprised to see her mother-in-law’s number on the screen. In middle of the week? Even when Shimmy was in town, they hardly spoke by phone, and when such a conversation did finally take place, she was usually the one to initiate it. She was the one who remembered to call to say good Shabbos once in two or three weeks, or at least, a gut voch. But since when did her mother-in-law call her? When she needed something urgently, she called Shimmy, and even that was quite rare.

“Hello,” Batya answered the phone, while putting a few vegetables, a can of tuna, and a package of yellow cheese on the register counter.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 15 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. 

“How do you feel, Yaakov Shlomo? What’s with your legs and the walking?” Rubinson’s tone was not very sympathetic, and Yaakov Shlomo was not deceived by his solicitousness.

“Baruch Hashem, fine,” he answered. “Hashem should have mercy on all of us.”

“Yes, yes. Listen, I’m sorry that I’m pointing this out again, but we are going back to that same point: You are emphasizing your Yiddishkeit too much again, and I don’t like it. As it is, your talks are not such a popular option on my hotline, but there are a few people who do listen to you, and some even ask questions. Isn’t it a shame that they should stop listening only because they feel you are too lofty and abstract?”

“Abe.” Yaakov Shlomo sat up straighter on the couch. “It’s not abstract. I speak about emunah on a very real and existential level. Believe me that I don’t speak too loftily. Have you ever heard one of the shiurim, beyond just a few minutes?”

“Not really. I don’t have extra time.”

“So if you’d sometimes listen to a whole shiur from beginning to end, you’d be able to hear for yourself. I speak from my own life, and that’s exactly my life, do you understand?”

“But that’s not the life of some of your listeners! Don’t you get that?”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 14 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 don’t understand what you want to pay me for,” Shimmy said. “A compensation of sorts?”

“I want to understand how you were able to cause this bug in it.”

“Which bug?”

Yang Yang sighed. “Christopher is the beta edition of the next generation of robots. The beta edition can sometimes have glitches, but the degree of problems that cropped up when he encountered you was higher than expected.”

“Yes, I remember them very well,” Shimmy affirmed darkly.

“And the biggest bug is that it suddenly does not compute basic instructions that are sent to it. It’s functioning completely independently, and it hasn’t returned to us since then. It looks like there’s been a program lock on a mistaken object.”

“I’m the mistaken object?” No one ever said that Shimmy’s brain wasn’t sharp enough. All the things that had been told to him and his father over the years, regarding his scholastic performance, always referred to his willpower, effort, or interest. But somewhere deep down, Shimmy had always felt that no one had ever really understood him.

“Yes, you,” the Chinaman, robotically translated, affirmed. But Shimmy felt that there was still something here that he wasn’t sufficiently grasping.

“What does that actually mean?”

“It locked on you as a significant target for surveillance, and all my programming experts have not been able to get it to come back to us. Since then, it’s hovering in the area, as an independent robot, and it is not returning to its owners.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 13 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. 

Yang Yang was a tall, fat Chinaman carrying a gray suitcase.

“No, no.” He tightened his grip on the handle and shook his head vigorously when Shimmy pointed to the chairs upholstered in a horrible red fabric in the corner of the lobby. “Where?”

“In the message you sent me, you knew a very good English,” Shimmy said aggressively.

The man genuinely seemed not to understand. He just nodded when he heard the word “English” and pointed to his suitcase. “English,” he said, as if confirming the word.

“We’re going to need a translator, I see,” Shimmy said, stubbornly keeping his eyes on the red chairs.

“Translator,” Yang Yang echoed, and pointed again to his gray suitcase.

“So you want us to go to the room upstairs?”

The man blinked rapidly, as if trying to understand.

“It was just a test to see if you’d point to your suitcase and say ‘upstairs’ or ‘want.’ In any case, even if you understand me and are just pretending not to, I am only willing to meet with you here, in the presence of other people.” And without adding a word, he walked over to the chairs.

Yang Yang stood in his place for a moment, and then followed. He studied the corner, examining a stone pillar that somewhat blocked the view of visitors and the reception desk, and positioned his suitcase on the floor near it. Without a word, he leaned over to it, opened it, and took out—

A dead bat?

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 12 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. 

It’s not you who is important. It’s a glitch of sorts.

Shimmy looked at the note that the clerk at the reception desk handed him, and raised a pair of questioning eyes.

“What is this?” he asked, rather impatiently. The robotic bat had completely frustrated and unnerved him. It had croaked in Chinese over and over, had taken pictures of him from every angle, and had then flown off, leaving the feeling that it would be back.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling to know that someone had put an irritating surveillance device on you. Too bad he didn’t know Chinese!

“What is this?” The clerk looked at the paper he had just handed over. “I don’t know—that’s what they told me on the phone.”

“Who told you?”

“They just called here,” the clerk tried to explain in decent English, “and said to give you this message.”

“Oh.” Shimmy studied the note again. It’s not you who is important. It’s a glitch of sorts. A very irritating and annoying glitch—and a repulsive one, at that. And it had invaded his privacy! And taken pictures of him! And thrown cookie pieces at him!

At least this time, the bat hadn’t been quite as impolite as the time before.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 11 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. 

What’s there to be afraid of?

In a sudden burst of confidence, or perhaps youthful audacity that still lingered inside him, Shimmy left the room, making sure that the door was locked well, and went down to the ground floor. Behind the hotel was a huge flower garden. Here, as well, Shimmy could see the results of the relatively low rate he was paying per night in this place. It was obvious that the flower bushes hadn’t been pruned in a long time, and the pathways were littered with dry leaves.

He turned to the east side of the hotel where, on the fourth floor, his room was. At first, he had a hard time identifying his window out of the rows of dreadfully identical rectangles. But then he saw the dark, flying creature stubbornly adhering to the glass pane, as if trying to peek inside—and he knew that this was “his” window.

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.”