Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 66 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.
By the time Hinda and Dov returned to Haifa, it was after nine that night.
“Hinda?” Mrs. Schneelbalg, the neighbor upstairs, stopped her in the stairwell. “Do you mind dropping in by me for a moment?”
“Sure,” Hinda replied, throwing a glance at Dov. He should go inside, see how Yosef’s day had been…if he was even home. Her husband nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Thanks, that’s so nice of you,” said Mrs. Schneelbalg. “I know I can always ask you for a favor.”
Hinda smiled.
“I’m sewing a dress for myself, for my son’s wedding, and something about the cut reminds me of your Shabbos suit, the black one. You know which one I mean, right?”
“Yes.” Hinda followed her into the small dining room, which was crowded with fabric and patterns spread out over every flat surface.
“Do you know anything about sewing?”
“Years ago, I sewed a little.” Hinda chuckled as she put her bag down on the messy table. “But I haven’t touched a machine in years.”
“Really? I thought you sew your own clothes. You have such good taste, in my opinion, and I wanted you to advise me about how to connect the skirt to the top part. Should I put in a belt? I saw you don’t have one.”
Hinda quietly studied the two pieces of fabric. She felt a bittersweet taste in her mouth. Once upon a time, years ago, she’d had friends who had liked to ask her opinion about clothes. But after Shmuel had passed away, they’d all grown distant—or perhaps it had been she who had withdrawn. When she’d begun collecting money for Michoel’s organization, and had taken upon herself the first year to say something encouraging to everyone she met, she used to offer compliments on people’s taste in clothes. Women always thanked her with a smile, but no one ever asked for her advice on the subject. Maybe it wasn’t appropriate for a contributor to the organization to ask the collector about these things, or perhaps she still came across as being distant.
This was the first time in years that someone was asking her about clothes, and she didn’t know how to digest it.
She lingered in the Schneebalg home for about twenty minutes, looking, asking, answering. Finally, she went home, tired after serving a whole day as a devoted wife and mother, and a good step-grandmother, and a soothing stepmother and mother-in-law, and to top it off, a style consultant.
Yosef and Martin weren’t home. “They went to Ma’ariv,” a sleepy Dov murmured from the recliner in the dining room.
“What did they do all day?”
“Don’t know.” He opened his eyes. “And Yosef looks to me a bit…out of sorts.”
Hinda walked into her son’s room. The package of pills was on the top shelf, and she counted quickly: there were two extra pills, according to her calculation. That wasn’t terrible, but it meant that once again, Yosef was making shenanigans with his medications.
She put the package back on the shelf.
“What’s with supper?” she asked Dov.
“I’ll prepare for you this time,” he said, his eyes once again closed. “What do you want to eat?”
“Nothing. How about you?”
“We have the same taste tonight.” Deep breaths between each word. He was already sleeping.
Hinda prepared herself some lemonade, stirring in the sugar slowly. The kitchen showed clear signs of two young men having prepared supper for themselves. From the clues, she guessed they’d eaten bread, eggplant dip, chocolate spread, and hard boiled eggs that had burned. She ignored it all for now. A clean kitchen was one of the things that helped her think clearly, but she couldn’t always have the luxury of a clean kitchen. And tonight, she was too exhausted to even think about it.
The door opened quietly. Only Yosef came in.
“Hi, Yosef,” she greeted him.
He grunted in response.
“How are you? Where’s Martin?”
“He went up to his room to sleep. He had a tiring trip today, because you didn’t want to come with me.”
Hinda didn’t deny the accusations. It was both unnecessary and futile. “You went?” she asked. “You renewed the passport?”
He dragged his feet toward his room. She put down her half empty cup and followed him. “Yosef, did you manage with the passport?”
“Yes.”
“Great, I’m happy for you. When is it supposed to arrive?”
“In about ten days.”
She followed him into the room. “But Yosef,” she said quietly, “if you’re not going to be on top of taking your pills, you won’t be able to go to Michoel. As it is, I want to consult with Dr. Brand.”
He raised his voice. “I’m very good about taking my pills!”
Hinda did not retreat. Her eyes wandered to the high shelf. “To me it seems that you’re not being as good about it as you have to be.”
“Fine!” he yelled. “I’ll take one now. Then you’ll be happy?”
She watched him go over to the shelf and take out the white and yellow box of Risperdal. “You touched it?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t stand it when people touch my things!”
“I know.” Hinda walked over to his bed and sat down on it. “And I usually don’t do it. But you seemed very restless this morning. Was the trip okay? You felt good? You weren’t nauseous?”
“It was fine, except for those people who wanted to see who the guy in the picture from Boaz’s photo store was.”
She looked at him as he put the capsule on his tongue and swallowed it, without water. “Do you want some lemonade?”
“No. That yucky feeling in my throat will pass in a few seconds.” He lay down on his bed, fully dressed. “I can’t decide if I should go tomorrow to Tirat Carmel or Bnei Brak.”
“You think it’s a good idea to check into the hospital?”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “In Tirat Carmel they won’t let me go home so fast, with all their annoying therapy sessions. But in the hospital in Bnei Brak, they don’t know me so well yet; I’m more of a guest there, you know what I mean?”
***
The new passport arrived by registered mail a week later, when Yosef was in the hospital. Hinda signed instead of him and opened the envelope. She gaped at the photo in disbelief, and remembered that Martin had not been in the house for at least two days already. Did this have something to do with that?
“Dov,” she said into the phone a few minutes later, “I’m sorry to bother you at work. When are you coming home?”
“Regular time. Why, do you want me to come home earlier today?”
“Tell me, when’s the last time Martin spoke to you?”
“Yesterday.”
“And why hasn’t he been around much lately?”
“He told me that he wants to use these final two weeks to do some touring. He went to Nahariya and Rosh Hanikra today.”
“Without Yosef?”
“He told me that he’d offered to take Yosef with him, but Yosef didn’t want to come.”
“Right, Yosef is really not up to traveling…but Martin’s outings are looking to me like a bit of an escape.”
“An escape? From what?”
“From us, and our questions.”
“Huh? Questions about what?”
“Well, we just got something strange in the mail that I think we’ll want to ask him about…” She paused. “It’s not very urgent, but I want to speak to you about it first.”
“I’ll try to come home as soon as I can,” Dov promised.
Two hours later, they were sitting together and staring at the passport issued in Yosef’s name, with a photo of Martin Posner. “What is this supposed to be?” Hinda asked, for the third time.
“Do you want to ask Yosef about it?”
“No. He’s so edgy as it is. Do you think…this is a mistake?”
He smoothed his eyebrows with his right hand. “I don’t know, but I think the simplest thing to do is just to ask Martin about it himself.”
“And if he says he doesn’t know anything about it?”
“We’ll return the passport and say that something very strange happened, and we don’t know how. Let them cancel it.” He sighed. “You don’t think Yosef is up to traveling now anyway.”
She nodded, and he took his phone and looked up Martin’s number. Six tries with no response. On the seventh, someone picked up.
“I just passed the opening of a cave!” Martin’s voice shouted, amidst the powerful winds. “There’s no reception here. Who is this? Dov? I’ll call you back later!” The call disconnected.
Dov closed the passport and stuck it back in the envelope. “Put this away in a safe place,” he said. “Not that I suspect Martin will try to steal it, but I have a feeling that you are right. Martin knew this was supposed to come, and he’d rather evade our questions.”
“It’s possible that right this minute, he’s saying the truth, and there’s bad reception there.”
“It’s possible,” Dov agreed. “I’m going to Ma’ariv now. If he doesn’t call in the next two hours, I’ll try to call him again. I wouldn’t want to call before that, because if he gets the sense that we’re after him, he’ll just abscond.”
He went to daven, returned, they ate supper, and each one spoke to one of their daughters who called – Hinda with Chani (“Ima, can we come to you for Shabbos? It won’t annoy Yosef?”), and Dov with Penina (“The pediatrician says she’s fine, baruch Hashem. And can we come to you for Shabbos, Abba? I feel like this whole hospital thing and the cast has just drained me.”)
Then, just as Dov sat down to learn the daf, someone knocked at the door.
Martin.
He came in, sweaty and tired, but turned down all offers of refreshments or supper. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you,” he apologized. “I fell asleep on the trip home. I was so finished.”
Dov murmured something. “So take a drink.” He pointed to the glass of orange juice that Hinda had set down.
The boy took the cup, but didn’t drink. He held it, looking like he was going to fall asleep on the couch. Then he put the cup down and turned to Dov. “I don’t remember the last time you called me so many times,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Did something happen?”
“I don’t remember the last time you disappeared on us for so many days,” Dov replied pointedly, but lightly. He stood up.
“Not so many days. Just two days.”
“Exactly the two days when the passport was supposed to come here by registered mail?” Dov reached up to the top shelf in the bookcase and took down the envelope. “We received this today, and something here is very strange.” He glanced at Hinda, who was sitting rigidly on a chair, her back very straight. “It seems to be Yosef’s passport, with his information, but—” He slowly opened the passport to the photo page.
Martin nodded at the sight of his own face staring back at him.
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