Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 19 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
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10-year old Sarale’s math notebook, last page
–Roizy, what are you wearing to Elky Cohen’s wedding?
–My blue dress. And you?
–My mother got permission to take remnants from some sparkly pink fabric, the one that Morah Naomi’s Shabbos skirt is made of.
–What will she make for you from it?
–A shirt. She says that for a wedding at the manor house, we need to come dressed respectfully. Not regular.
–When is Morah Naomi’s wedding?
–They don’t know yet. And please, write lighter with the pencil so I can erase it later.
–Fine, sorry. I wonder if her wedding will be in the factory, as usual, or if it will also be at the manor house.
–Why should it be at the factory?
–My brother told me that her chassan told him that they didn’t decide yet.
The chuppah took place on the small balcony, under the open sky. In the hall of the impressive house, people stood and listened to Rabbi Schwartzbrod making the brachos. Naomi stood in the hall on the left side, which was designated for the women, leaning on an open window, near her mother, Rechel, and tried to hear every word.
But the distance, and the rav’s low voice, made it impossible for her to hear the words clearly. She heard the familiar voice, but the words were unintelligible. Perhaps it was because she was hearing only what kept replaying in her head over and over again in recent days, ever since the beginning of last week:
“If you say so, Binyamin, then I think your sister can trust you.”
“Is there really a reason to be afraid?” Binyamin had asked, stealing a glance behind him. She, Naomi, was standing there, near the door to the rav’s study.
“I don’t know, but you are a wise young man.” A sigh. “Don’t publicize what I am saying, of course, but we need to know that being close to evil people has, in history, never worked out well.”
“And this is called being close?’ Binyamin had asked hesitantly, fully aware of his sister’s deliberations.
“Celebrating on their grounds, in their house? Certainly,” Rabbi Schwartzbrod had replied firmly.
“So…Rabbi Schwartzbrod means that there is something dangerous about it? Should we update the Kush and Cohen families so that they shouldn’t either have their wedding there?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not sure it’s an actual danger, but….” And then the rav had turned with his chair, fixing his eyes on a small bulb hanging near the door. “Rebbetzin Schvirtz, your brother Binyamin is a real talmid chacham. You can trust what he says.”
Binyamin and Naomi had returned home quietly. “So you think they are really planning something bad? An experiment or something on all of the people going to Elky’s wedding?” She spoke in that peevish tone that was reserved for times when there wasn’t really whom to be angry at.
“I really hope not,” he replied. “But I’m telling you that…it’s better that your wedding shouldn’t be there.”
“Aha,” she whispered.
“Of course, you should do whatever you want; it’s your wedding,” he said suddenly.
“Yes…” she murmured. “But ever since we were little, I learned that it’s a good idea for me to listen to your advice. Not that I’m sure Mamme agrees with you one hundred percent…”
“She’s not sure, you heard that yourself. That’s why she said you should decide, because she doesn’t want to decide for you.”
“Fine,” she’d said resignedly. “Let Mamme talk to Aunt Chani, and let them know that I prefer to get married the old, accepted way. I’m tired of this whole story.”
She hadn’t met Elky since then. Now, a few minutes before the chuppah, she’d spoken to her. Elky had stood there glowing, at the front of a table laden with cakes, excitedly hugging and shaking the hands of her guests.
“Naomi!” she exclaimed as her friend drew closer. “I didn’t see you all week! There were so many things I wanted to share with you!”
“You’ll make it up after the wedding, b’ezras Hashem,” Naomi said with a laugh. She studied her friend. “You look…like a real kallah, Elky. May you build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael, and may you always have lots of good mazel!”
“Amen, thank you!” Elky’s lips drew close to Naomi’s ear. “Afterward, turn around carefully and look at Hauptmann Katarina near the left table with Gefreiter Helena, drinking wine in crystal goblets—you won’t believe it! They put on clothes suitable for a ball, just for us. And you have no idea what a fat envelope of vouchers she gave us as a gift… Naomi, did I hear right that you chose not to get married here?!”
“Yes.”
“But why? You have to see how excited they are that we chose to celebrate in their house. Hauptmann Katarina said they’ll take lots of pictures and they’ll develop them in the studio they have here at home, and then they’ll organize it all into a book of pictures for us!”
Two other guests had approached just then, saving Naomi from having to answer her friend. She moved aside, suspiciously studying the elegant cakes near her. Chani, her aunt and future mother-in-law, had cooked almost all the food for the wedding, together with the kallah and the chassan’s mother. There was no reason to suspect that someone had put something in the food. And still…
The warning look in Binyamin’s eyes flashed in her mind, causing her to turn her back to the beautifully setd table and search out her mother. Rechel was standing in a corner of the elegant room, looking around her. She was also being cautious, without knowing about what.
“Aunt Chani will be offended if we don’t stay for the seudah,” Naomi whispered.
“She won’t be offended; she’s not planning to eat either, although she has to stay to deal with heating the food and overseeing the serving and making sure they don’t mix up the dishes.”
“She’s really not eating here either? But why? She cooked most of the food.”
“Apparently, Binyamin has managed to get Aryeh on board with some of his suspicions.” Mamme pressed her lips together in disapproval. She didn’t like Binyamin’s approach to the issue, but she would not allow her family to separate themselves from the tzibbur without her. “In any case, we can say that as a too-excited kallah, it’s hard for you to take part in an event that lasts a whole evening.”
When the chuppah ended, the gramophone positioned near the wall began to play music. The chassan and kallah were led amidst the dancing to one of the other rooms in the manor house, and Naomi and her mother turned the other way.
“Here is Babbe,” Naomi said quietly. “I see she is leaving, too.”
“So go with her, Naomi,” her mother said, also in a low voice. “I’ll stay. I don’t want them to notice that our whole family didn’t participate. I don’t want them to realize that one of us suspects them of something.”
“But you’re not eating anything, are you, Mamme?”
“That’s right,” Rechel said, as they stopped at the doorway. “But as much as I look up to Binyamin, Naomi, it’s hard for me to believe that we’ll wake up tomorrow morning to discover that everyone besides us was struck with a virus of some type. I don’t know what Binyamin heard and what he didn’t hear, and like I keep saying, I agree that the whole story here is strange, but still…” She groped for the right words. “For years, things have been done the same way around here, with no changes. I just can’t believe that they’d suddenly wake up one day and decide to make things worse for us.”
“But there are changes,” Babbe Sara Liba said as she joined them at that moment. “There are changes here that I don’t like at all. This wedding doesn’t sit well with me, Rechel. Nothing here is like our regular, beautiful Jewish weddings.” She looked behind her, and Naomi noticed two girls, one of them Mila, her former assistant. Both girls were wearing identical black and green uniforms and were walking around with loaded trays, distributing meals to the guests seated at the tables. There was fast-paced music in the background, and some of the girls were dancing vigorously in a circle of their own.
“It…it reminds me of a gentile ball celebration, not a wedding of ours,” Babbe whispered. Naomi was quiet, unwilling to reveal that Elky had used the exact same word about her wedding.
Mamme remained on the estate, and they went home.
“Don’t feel bad about your choice, Naomi,” Babbe said. They walked through a well-tended garden, from where they reached “their” territory, the wide path that wound around the wheat field. In recent years, the field was producing less, and they used the wheat primarily for Pesach matzah. The Wangels provided them with sacks of flour from the outside for the bread they made year-round.
“I just hope Aunt Chani doesn’t feel bad.” Naomi’s face looked contorted, as if she’d just swallowed a big lump of something.
“She doesn’t.”
“Even when she’ll hear about the monetary gift that Katarina gave Elky as a wedding gift?”
“Chani appreciates you without any connection to gifts or salaries,” Babbe said vehemently. “She knows you since you were born, she knows your ma’alos and your chesronos, and she wanted the shidduch.”
“She…” Naomi was quiet for a moment. “She deliberated about it. I know. She herself told me that she was deliberating about something important. I’m sure it was this.”
Babbe put her hand on Naomi’s arm. “The zivug of a person is as hard as splitting the sea,” she said, “but I promise you that she has no regrets about this shidduch. Even if she’ll hear about the envelope of marks that Elky just got.”
***
As a symbolic wedding gift from her sisters, Dena had received a shtender—a rather funny gift from the sisters of the kallah. But that was a tradition in the family. It began when Margalit, who was twelve when Toby, the oldest, got married, took all the money she had saved from Chanukah and Purim, and some money that her parents supplemented, and without asking the kallah, went to a furniture store and bought a shtender for Toby. “It’s because I heard you talking to your friend one day about how you can’t wait to hear the kol Torah in your home,” she’d explained earnestly.
“And besides, that’s all I had enough money for,” she’d whispered that night to Dena, her younger sister, as they were both lying in bed, schmoozing with each other. “But did you see how happy she was with it?”
Toby really had been happy with the shtender and had thanked Margalit for it over and over again. And since then, the shtender had become the traditional gift given upon the marriage of one of the Weiss children.
Where was her shtender now? Or rather, Bentzy’s shtender? Not that he had ever used it much, but now he didn’t use it at all. The shtender had gone down to the storage room when they’d organized the apartment in order to rent it out, and she hadn’t asked whether or not it was a good idea to pack it up with the rest of the things that would be shipped to Austria. It was a shame. She should have brought it with them, to this apartment they had finally moved into this week. Duvi read his Chumash and teitsch each day with a sparkle in his eyes, and she had to do what she could to preserve that enthusiasm.
Everything was so strange and unfamiliar here; she didn’t like it at all. It was just…cold. The kitchen was actually nice, a European style that she could have only dreamed of in Israel. But there was no one to see it in any case, other than her husband, kids, and in-laws, and she was hardly in the mood of cooking and baking. Her mother-in-law invited them to come whenever they wanted to, and she hadn’t even made one Shabbos here herself. So why did she need that big kitchen? Why did she need this whole big house?
Maybe the shtender would have infused her with a bit of warmth here.
Could she even get such a thing in Vienna? Surely she could. Duvi would be thrilled to learn over it.
At least someone would.
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