Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 21 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.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
Letters etched into the ground, in front of the preschool door:
Mazel tov to our teacher Naomi on your wedding!
“They will sing mazel tov in kindergarten for me today, too!” Dror skipped over to her as she approached the building, accompanied by all the little girls with flowers in their hands. “Right you let them sing also for me and not only for you?”
“Of course, because of your new baby!” Naomi smiled at him. A new baby sister had been born to Dror nearly a week earlier, and he was extremely excited.
“I saw her two days ago, and she’s this tiny, like this.” He demonstrated. “And do you know why they will sing mazel tov for me?”
“Of course, because you have a new baby sister,” Naomi answered patiently.
“Not only because of that, but also because she already has a name! Do you know that my father went yesterday to shul, and they read in the Torah there, and they said her name? Her name is Ch…Cherut.” He struggled with the first consonant.
“That’s a very special name,” Naomi said, and glanced cautiously behind her. Who was around? Only Katy and the children. Because it looked like those in the Elkovitz home were yearning for freedom—that much was clear. But freedom from what?
“My father and mother said it’s Hebrew for ‘freedom.’”
“That’s right,” she whispered.
“It’s like me,” he said obliquely. “My name is also like that.”
“Do you want freedom, vacation from kindergarten?” Katy interjected with a laugh. “So go home, to your mother!”
“Maybe I’ll go visit your mother after work,” Naomi said.
“Yay! She’ll be so happy!” the boy promised. But his teacher wasn’t all that sure. Suzy Elkovitz was making an effort to keep a distance from her. Before the class was officially divided, it was natural. But now, why shouldn’t she become friendly with someone from the Orthodox group?
Whatever the case was, Suzy and her husband sure chose interesting names for their children.
The excited, flower-carrying entourage walked into the building, and Babbe Sara Liba peeked out of the kitchen with a smile. “I also get a mazel tov!” Dror called to her, as he skipped along and hummed to himself. Babbe smiled at him and waved in greeting, but her eyes clouded over for a moment, and Naomi noticed.
It wasn’t her job to worry about lunch, but she could not help herself, and came into the kitchen during a quiet moment. “Babbe, how are you?”
“Baruch Hashem, I’m zocheh to see more grandchildren building Jewish homes.” Babbe didn’t try to hide her tears. “Is there anything more beautiful than that?”
“Give her the oatmeal cookies, Sara Liba,” her friend Tziporah urged her. “Let her not think that just because she’s gone and gotten married, she can’t be pampered by her grandmother anymore! Especially as she has no other grandmother.” She turned to Naomi. “Do you remember Babbe Shifra, Naomi? Your father’s mother?”
“No, unfortunately. She passed away before my parents got married, and her husband, Zeide Binyamin, was niftar a few days before my brother Binyamin was born.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Oy, Shifra, what a tzaddeikes she was… Well, let’s not speak to a kallah about sad things. When you meet my Elka’le, Naomi, tell her that I miss her.” She turned back to the vegetables in front of her.
Naomi’s grandmother looked at her granddaughter. “How do you feel, Naomi?”
“Baruch Hashem, wonderful. Babbe…?”
“Yes, meidele?”
“What’s going on with the Elkovitz family?”
“With the baby? Hashem yerachem, she’s very weak.”
“Do you think that—”
“We don’t think anything.” Babbe’s voice was firm. “It’s what Hashem thinks that is important.”
“So should I go visit Mrs. Elkovitz after school?”
“Right now I wouldn’t. Anyway, your priority right now, after you get home from work, is to cook a good supper for your husband, you hear?” Babbe wagged her finger.
Naomi giggled. “Of course.”
“Aryeh is not Binyamin, Naomi,” Babbe whispered. “Binyamin also works very hard, but his work is much…cleaner. More…elegant. Aryeh works in a very hard, black job that requires a lot of energy—physical and mental. He needs to be taken care of so that he can feel good. I’m sure you’ll do that, right?”
“She will do it very well,” Tziporah chimed in as she cut up some radishes and tossed them into the big pot. “That’s what grandmothers are for, to teach their granddaughters what a good wife is all about! We weren’t zocheh to that, Sara Liba, huh?”
Her friend nodded, but her eyes were still locked with Naomi’s. “And a kallah mustn’t have sad thoughts,” she added quietly. “You just got married two days ago, Naomi. And Baby Elkovitz won’t be helped by sadness or your worries about the future. Only tefillos will help.”
“I don’t think Dror knows anything about the baby being unwell,” Naomi said as she fiddled with her new kerchief. “If I say some Tehillim with the children, I shouldn’t say who it is for, right?”
“No, it’s better that you don’t,” her grandmother replied. “Because he likely doesn’t know… Daven with the children, for sure.”
***
It was a good thing Babbe had prepared her, because Aryeh’s face really did look exhausted when he came into their tiny hut that had been allocated to them for starters. “Hi,” he said, trying to smile. Without another word, he turned and collapsed onto the chair near the wall.
“Hi,” Naomi returned, as she quickly turned off the gas knob. The soup was already boiling; there was no reason to keep the flame on until it spilled over.
“How was your day?” he asked, with closed eyes.
“Baruch Hashem, almost regular.” She wouldn’t speak about the weak baby now. She took one of the bowls to ladle some soup into it, and then noticed his eyes were closed. “Do you want to eat?” she asked. “It’s really good, thick soup, with lots of vegetables. Can I serve you some?”
“Maybe soon. I don’t feel so good… You eat.” He could barely move his lips. And then he fell asleep.
Is this what Babbe had meant?
No, she would not be selfish now and think about her own misery when her husband felt so awful. Naomi filled a bowl for herself and ate their first supper in their home as a married couple. Last night, they’d gone to her mother for supper. They had received special permission, and a few people had come in at the end of the meal and joined them for sheva brachos, similar to at the wedding.
And today, she was already eating alone.
Then two things happened at once: Aryeh moaned slightly, and there was a knock at the door.
Naomi got up to open the door. There stood her aunt/mother-in-law, holding a plate covered with a cloth napkin. “Delicious nut cake for your first supper at home!” she announced and walked in. “Hey, Aryeh? Is everything alright?”
“He doesn’t feel so good,” Naomi replied quietly.
Chani’s forehead creased.
“It’s a good thing the wedding wasn’t at the manor house,” she said suddenly. “Otherwise I’d be afraid that it was from something that happened there!”
“Can I have a drink of water?” Aryeh asked suddenly. Naomi hurried to get a cup, but by the time the slow flow of the faucet filled it up, Aryeh had fallen asleep again, his head slumped on the table.
“It looks to me like he caught it from Wechselman, the one who works next to him,” Chani said, gazing worriedly at her son. “I heard this morning that he has pneumonia, and I know that lately the two of them have been working most hours together, very close to each other.”
Pneumonia! Naomi shuddered. “Now? In this season?”
“I also heard about Wechselman.” Aryeh’s weak voice surprised them both. “He’s been sick with fever for a week already. I…I hope that if it’s that, I’ll get better faster than him…”
“Amen,” his wife and mother said together.
“Do you want some of the soup that Naomi made?” his mother asked him. “It smells delicious, and soup is a great remedy for all kinds of illnesses.”
“I can’t right now,” he said weakly. “Maybe in the morning…”
***
“If you don’t bring us some serious doses of antibiotics, we can say goodbye to the business and close it all up,” Katarina Wangel declared to her husband, Herr Josef Wangel. “What more do we have to wait for until you and your friends in Vienna realize that there’s a pneumonia outbreak here, or something else contagious? We’ve counted seven patients in three weeks. That’s a lot!”
“Are they all still alive?” he asked apathetically.
“Yes, but it’s only a matter of time! Sherer’s new granddaughter is in serious condition; Erno Batarah’s older son; the son of Chani, our cook…”
He was busy peeling his apple. “Don’t we have something in the storage rooms?”
“There was one dose there. We gave it to Chani’s son. Naomi Schvirtz’s husband.”
“Why not to Leo’s granddaughter?”
“She’s a baby—she needs intravenous!”
“I’ll try to get more,” he said icily. He suddenly raised his voice. “You know it’s not simple to get medications without prescriptions. It’s enough that we feed false records to the Austrian labor ministry, and we falsify the income and expenses for income tax purposes. Don’t demand now that I fall into the talons of the health ministry!”
“Hans helps you. Just pick up the phone, and he’ll arrange for a doctor to sign all the prescriptions that you need.”
“Hans mostly talks,” he said bitterly. “You know that it’s not so simple. Do you remember how much trouble I got into then, with the warfarin for Rabbiner Schwartzbrod?”
“Okay,” Katarina said, resignedly. “So just get as much as you can. But make sure there are at least three intravenous doses, for the baby.”
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