Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 30 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Binyamin leaped off the couch, disoriented. Something had hit him, he was sure.

He looked left and right, and then caught Meir’s eye. His eight-and-a-half-year-old brother was blushing, his hand on the handle of the closed door. “Sorry,” Meir muttered. “It was my ball. You’re not angry, are you?”

“Your ball?” Binyamin picked up the round object that was resting near his hand. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Five fifteen. The little kids are eating supper in the kitchen, and Ima closed the door to the dining room. She said not to bother you because she thinks you have fever.”

“Fever?” Yes, maybe that was it. His head was pounding, and his whole body ached.

Meir nodded. “But I like playing here when the room is empty. I go in and close the door. I didn’t mean for the ball to land on you.” He came over to take his ball, gazing at his older brother. “I forgot that you were sleeping here on the couch. You said after lunch that you were going to sit down for a few minutes because you were dizzy, and suddenly we saw that you were sleeping really deeply.”

“It’s five fifteen already…” Binyamin murmured. “Oh, no. I’m missing seder!” He got up to get his jacket, which had been tossed onto the end of the table.

The dining room door opened, and Elisheva peeked in. “Is everything alright, Binyamin?” she asked worriedly. “You’re very flushed. Sit down; I’m making you a tea.”

“No, Ima, thanks, but I have to get back to yeshivah. I didn’t mean to fall asleep; I just sat down for a minute…”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 29 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

When Binyamin opened his eyes, his roommates had already left. He leaped out of bed groggily, washed his hands, and hurried to get ready.

Somehow, he got through the morning in a hazy fog of exhaustion, though he did notice that Shabsi was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s up with you, Potolsky?” his chavrusa, Zilberman, probed after a while. “You don’t look very with-it today.”

“Exhaustion,” Binyamin said, passing a hand over his forehead. This hadn’t happened the other times. He was an energetic person by nature, not someone who needed lots of sleep, and if he missed a night or half a night of sleep, he usually managed until he was able to catch up.

“Looks like more than just exhaustion to me…” Zilberman studied him closely. “Your face is very red.”

“Could be,” Binyamin said. Suddenly, he stood up. “I’m going to get a cup of water, and then I’ll be back.”

“What’s been going on at night that’s making you so tired?”

Had he blushed because his face had somehow predicted Zilberman’s question and the discomfort it would cause him?

“At night?” Binyamin echoed. “Nothing special.”

Zilberman looked at him skeptically. Binyamin knew he’d have to tell him at one point; otherwise, Zilberman was likely to imagine all kinds of dreadful things his chavrusa was up to at night.

“Nothing special? And last night?”

“Really, nothing much.” Binyamin had already taken a step backward. “I went to learn someplace.” Let someone say that wasn’t true!

He strode out of the beis medrash. Ugh, why did he have the feeling that this was happening to him now only because Yaakov had told him that he would yet see the damage these nights were causing him? Who had asked Yaakov to get involved?

He would try to skip lunch and catch up on some sleep. Over the last month, he must have accumulated enough of a sleep deficit to make his body rebel. Energetic or not, Binyamin realized, he hadn’t slept for four nights over the past three and a half weeks, so it was probably taking its toll now.

Did that make Yaakov right?

Wrong?

Maybe he just needed to set some more boundaries for himself. Just as he hadn’t been embarrassed to tell Shabsi that he could only do this job when the niftar was an elderly person, he could also tell him, with the same firmness, that he could only do it once in two weeks, at most once in a week and a half. Maybe that would help him in the future.

For now, though, he really needed to sleep.

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 28 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The man who left the airport of the M.R. Stefanik Airport in Bratislava shifted his small valise to his right hand. Even its relatively little weight was heavy for him.  Either his age was catching up to him, or this trip was just not doing him very much good.

But he was the one responsible for the fact that he had come here, so he had no one else to blame.

“Mr. Joe Ludmir?” A taxi driver leaning on his car stood up when he approached. “That’s you, right?”

“Right.” The man nodded at him. “I see that you recognized me, despite the years that have passed.”

“Sure,” the driver, a local, replied. “You’ve hardly changed.”

Sure, only fifteen years had been added to his age since his last visit here, but giving compliments to a tourist who hires you as a driver for his entire trip is surely very profitable. Joe’s lips curved into a half smile, and he let the driver put his valise into the trunk. “Is that all?” the driver asked in surprise. “Like then?”

“You remember well; I don’t like traveling with too many things.” He ran his fingers through his gray-white hair and straightened the little yarmulke. “If I lack for something, I’m sure you’ll be very happy to buy it for me.”

The streets hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen years, and Joe couldn’t decide if he remembered them so well from his wandering around during that visit, or from the many photos he had taken then to capture every single corner of the city of his birth. He leaned back and looked out the window in silence. Every so often, between the buildings, he could see the glistening waterline of the Danube, with the Bratislava Castle rising up behind it.

“Did you visit it last time?” the driver asked when he saw his guest gazing at the castle’s famous turrets.

Joe nodded. He didn’t know what it was, but something about this city enveloped him in a cloak of depression.

“We’re going to Mamaison, right?” the driver confirmed. “You reserved a room in that hotel, yes?”

“Yes, I have a confirmed reservation,” the tourist answered heavily.

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