Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 65 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
Yosef’s face was almost as gray as the silvery gray chairs in the room. “No,” he said suddenly. “No, I can’t breathe here. Come, Martin, let’s go.”
“Huh? You can’t breathe?”
“I’m going to get an attack in another minute.” Yosef’s eyes were hard. “It’s because of that horrid photographer. I saw him on the way here, before we came in. He came to tell everyone that it’s me.”
“That what’s you?”
“That it’s me from the picture. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“I don’t understand. Don’t you want to renew your passport?” Martin asked. Maybe it was a good idea for him to learn psychiatry, although the computer world still captivated his interest.
“I really do want to renew it, but we can’t put my picture on it. We can’t! They will catch me, I know!” His eyes flitted around rapidly, and he appeared to be trying to look in a few directions at once. Martin was not able to discern who or what Yosef was looking at; maybe he wasn’t even looking at anything.
“There’s no such thing as a passport without a picture,” Martin said patiently to Yosef.
“But I can’t.” Yosef sounded breathless. “They cannot use my picture inside.” He took out his Israeli ID card and opened the flap. A seventeen-year-old boy, smiling into the camera, fixed his gray eyes on Martin from the photo.
“That’s you?” Martin asked, suppressing the urge to remark, “I would never have guessed.”
“Yes. Now where is the photo that they took of you in the photo store?” Yosef asked, panting as if he’d just run a fifty-mile marathon.
“Mine? In my passport.”
“No, when you took a picture the same time as I did.” Yosef rummaged in his pants pocket and pulled out a collection of little things. “Here,” he said, choosing the little packet that contained the six copies of the picture of Martin and sticking it into Martin’s hands. “Tell them to use your picture inside, not mine.”
“My picture in your passport? But you can’t travel with such a passport!” Martin laughed. “You’ll get to the airport, they’ll compare you to the picture, and tell you that your passport is forged!”
Yosef looked at him a bit blankly. “I’ll tell them it’s me. You have gray eyes, like I do, even if you’re thinner than me. It makes no difference. You won’t come with me to the airport, and they won’t see you or get confused. Look, it’s almost our turn. Go tell them it’s you, Yosef Schorr.” He coughed. “And let them use your picture. That will mix up all the people who are following me. Now, I’m leaving, and soon you’ll bring me out my new passport. You got it?”
“I don’t know if you get it on the spot.”
“Well, just tell them you need it urgently!”
“Wait, where are you going?” Martin grabbed his arm.
“Leave me alone! Enough!” Yosef barked at him as he stumbled toward the exit, leaving the bag with all the documents on the windowsill.
Martin looked alternately at Yosef’s receding back and the bag on the windowsill. Yosef’s mother was right; he couldn’t travel anywhere. Not like this. Even if the thought of rescuing his suffering uncle infused him with positive energy, it probably came on account of something else.
He bent down to pick up the bag.
Yosef suddenly appeared from behind him. “You’re doing it?”
“I don’t know,” Martin whispered. “What for? It won’t be a usable passport.”
“It will be!” Yosef’s voice rose, and his face reddened. The security guard raised his head to look at them, and Martin had the feeling that if he would come over to find out what the animosity was about, things would only get worse. “Go! To! The! Desk! And show me afterward all the photos and the copies of the documents that they prepare. I want to see that you don’t dare use my picture!”
Martin nodded, hoping Yosef would calm down quickly. The security guard was not the only person watching them closely.
He looked at his picture. There was no similarity between him and Yosef, but if he submitted Yosef’s Israeli ID card, and his passport from age eight, they would not be able to decide with certainty that it was someone else.
And truth to be told, if there was a chance of Martin getting a passport with his picture and someone else’s name, it certainly would be easier for him to get into Canada. Of course, as long as he didn’t circulate in those areas that he’d frequented before he left. Not that Yosef’s mother would agree for him to take a passport in her son’s name, but if he would promise her that he’d go first to America, to see what could be done for her uncle, perhaps she’d be convinced…
At worst, they would report afterward that the passport had gotten lost, and if it was urgent, they would issue a new one with the right picture. Now, in any case, it did not seem to him like poor Yosef could fly anywhere, and Martin’s prediction was that, with things the way they were now, even ten years might not be enough to get Yosef to a state where he could fly—and by then the passport would expire.
***
“You approved it! He told me!”
Dr. Jerry raised his eyes from his loaded plate. “I’m sorry, Mike, but it’s not acceptable for patients to enter my dining room.” His brother also gazed upon the young man who’d burst into the room, with wide, cold eyes.
“Okay, but it’s not acceptable to me that Perl’s Israeli relative gets to come here for treatment and not my sister!”
“This is a twenty-four-year-old man we’re talking about, not a six-year-old child,” the doctor said firmly. “He’s not a minor.” And with that, he turned his attention back to his plate.
“Minor or adult, it makes no difference to me. My sister is going to die, and you’re not doing anything about it! You promised me a meeting, and you did nothing in the meantime! Tell me, if my parents approve it, then will it be okay?”
“Will they approve such a thing, Mike?” the director asked, a thread of cynicism lacing his voice.
“Maybe.”
“And maybe not. And I think that my ‘maybe not’ will win over your ‘maybe.’ Really, will they let their daughter disappear into the same hole that her big brother disappeared into? They did everything to find you, you know that.”
“And then they stopped.”
“Because they realized that they can’t force you to return as long as you are here of your own free will. Mike, how many times have we had this conversation, in one way or another? Aren’t you sick of it already?!”
Mike stood there, staring down at the carpet, like a child sent to the principal’s office. The Skulholt brothers exchanged triumphant glances, not realizing that he had chosen this position only to conceal the fury in his eyes. Mike took a deep breath and forced his fingers to relax.
“Okay,” he murmured after a few minutes, wrapping the word in a deep sigh of resignation.
“And we expect an apology, Mike,” the doctor said in a strident tone. “You’re acting rather ungrateful.”
“I’m sorry,” the boy replied.
The director smiled. “Apology accepted,” he said. “Go and do you exercises, and don’t think about your sister too much, okay? Children don’t die so fast.”
Mike smiled weakly and left the room.
Once downstairs, he fixed his eyes on the faraway gate. Let’s say he would be able to escape, get home, take Becky, and bring her here. They wouldn’t let her stay even one day, those cowards.
Okay, so Plan B. Let’s say he would steal a bit of medical information from their files, escape to his house, and try to heal her himself.
And what would he do afterward? Return to his boring life?
Maybe if he would succeed with Becky, he’d start learning psychiatry.
But without a good high school diploma, he wouldn’t be accepted to anywhere respectable, and where would he get a good diploma from?
“You look a bit out of it, Mike.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“My sister.”
“I hope that what I told you about my nephew coming didn’t open the wound all over again.”
“And if it did?” Mike shrugged. “The wound is there, and so is their dumbness about this. So maybe your nephew will help me get out also.”
Michoel glanced around, alarmed. “Will help you get out? What do you mean?”
“In one of our conversations, I understood that more than you want to heal him, you want contact with the outside world.”
Michoel was quiet for a few long moments. “I don’t remember saying such a thing,” he said slowly, in defeat. “But that’s not exactly right. I’d be very happy if they would heal him. The question is how much I believe in their ability to do it. But please, Mike, have mercy!” He grabbed the young man’s arm. “Don’t tell them what I told you, okay? It’s only because of the absolute faith I showed in their methods that they were convinced to let me invite him here!”
“Of course,” Mike replied, a bit miffed. “Do you think I planned to go and tell that to them?”
“Not with bad intentions,” Michoel explained, weighing his words. “I meant that you should be careful not to blurt something out unintentionally, maybe during one of your session with Dr. Skulholt, for example.”
“We hardly speak.” Mike’s face was expressionless. “I do my mental exercises myself. They’re too busy trying to get new patients here.”
“Who will pay them tons of money, huh?” Michoel muttered. “Don’t ask how much they asked for my nephew.”
“And his parents are ready to pay it?”
“I didn’t even talk to them about it. I signed that I’d pay it all.” His lips curled. “When I get to the point that I can, of course… They think I’m a gold mine.” And that’s the only reason I’m here, he added to himself.
thenextpage-israelbookshop.com 