Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 37 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.
A letter that Binyamin wrote to his mother when he was seven years old:
To my dear Mamme!
I am lying in bed but I can’t fall asleep. I don’t like the end of the month, when there is no moon in the sky and everything is dark and you are also sleeping. Do you think that when Mashiach comes, the moon will be round all the time, or that we’ll be able to turn on as many lights as we want then, anyway?
Please tell me in the morning that you read this letter and that you are not laughing at someone who is afraid of the dark. Because the night is sometimes so long!
And also tell me what I can do so that I won’t be scared, because I already said Krias Shema and all the pesukim, and it’s just darker than ever.
From, Binyamin
The letter was kept in an upper cabinet in the house, with Naomi’s compositions and drawings by them both, along with a few other mementos of days past.
The door of the cabinet opened, and pages upon pages slid down in the darkness to the floor. He was again a little boy of seven, sad and hesitant, waiting for his mother to come and maybe sing something for him. He sat on the cold floor, with all the papers scattered around him. Maybe that little piece of paper was Tatte’s hospital card? It certainly looked like a medical document.
The card advanced in his direction, as if an invisible hand was pushing it. But when Binyamin leaned over to read it, he heard Babbe’s voice behind him: “No!” And the paper disappeared.
Binyamin turned around, but Babbe wasn’t there. Or maybe she was, but the darkness was covering her up?
The darkness was so thick. Binyamin tried to call to Babbe, but he couldn’t emit a sound “Mamme?” he tried instead, but this effort failed as well. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t even emit a moan from his mouth. His hand waved wildly, trying to slice through the terrible darkness, and it hit something cold and hard. The railing of the bed in the infirmary.
Binyamin sat up at once and looked around. There were no papers, and Babbe wasn’t there either. She hadn’t yet come to check if he was asleep. It was dark, but not as terribly pitch-black as in his dream.
His nightmare must have confused him, because he felt like his senses were deceiving him. His natural sense was that he had been sleeping for a long time already, but the darkness from the window told him it was not yet daybreak.
Or was it? There was something strange about the darkness.
Binyamin rose, washed his hands, and took his clothes from the chair. The new patients were still deeply asleep, as was the Elkovitz baby. Where was her father? Had he left in the middle of the night?
The big, rectangular glass that covered the window was dark, but the color was a bit different than usual. Perhaps it was snowing out, and the light of the moon was reflecting off the snow?
But the moon should be small now! And besides, it wasn’t cold enough to be a snowy night.
Whatever the case, it seemed that he had time until davening would start. He’d go to shul and learn a bit while he waited.
Binyamin raised his eyes to the big wall clock—and froze in his place. Nine? It was nine o’clock a.m.? After a moment, he recovered. The battery must be dead. It was not possible that the clock was telling the real time. It was still nighttime outside!
But what kind of strange night was this? He suddenly realized that he was hearing loud talking from the path, and noticed that the door to the infirmary was open. Someone was approaching the door, speaking animatedly. “It’s amazing,” the man was saying to whoever he was speaking to, “but there’s something unnerving about it, too…” He turned and walked into the infirmary, suddenly noticing Binyamin. “Tonight of all nights you slept really well, huh?” He smiled.
Binyamin couldn’t find his voice. He looked at David Elkovitz, who appeared as if he had been awake for hours, and then turned to the clock.
“The battery is dead, right?” he wondered aloud, studying the second hand, which was ticking rhythmically. “So how does it…”
“Why dead?” Elkovitz looked up as well. “It really is nine a.m.”
“Nine!” Binyamin looked at the window. “Nine in the mor—?”
His words were cut off by a familiar tune, one that they hadn’t heard in the camp for a long while. “Solar eclipse,” Elkovitz said, as he nervously hurried to his daughter’s bedside. “It came to our area about twenty minutes ago, and it’s going to reach a peak soon. I have no idea what the rules are here, in the clinic, when they play Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. Do the patients also have to go out and hide?”
“A solar eclipse!” Binyamin gaped at the window, his ears hardly registering the notes slicing through the air, rising and falling and sending all the residents dashing for their hiding places. “So that means the sun rose already? And I slept through it?”
“It rose.” Elkovitz gently lifted the baby. “About two hours ago, like every day. But your grandmother didn’t let anyone wake you up. I just came in now, because I figured you would feel bad if you didn’t get to see the eclipse.”
“But I didn’t daven yet!” the boy groaned. “And I missed zman Krias Shema!”
“You should hurry before you miss the second zman too,” Elkovitz said, and headed for the door with the blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. Binyamin studied his bare head from behind.
Dr. Annie Katzburg bustled in. “Quickly, quickly,” she said. “The two new ones will stay here. We’ll close the door and the broken shutters, and it will look like an abandoned structure.”
Babbe peeked in from behind her. “Binyamin?”
“Hi, Babbe, I’m running to get tefillin.”
“I don’t know if there’s ti—” She stopped when she saw his eyes. “Run quickly and then go to the nearest shelter before they lock it. No games, Binyamin; they are very tense. They just received word that spectators have come to the area to watch the eclipse, and it can be dangerous for us.”
He dashed outside. In the distance, he could see small figures scurrying every which way. The sky was very dark, and somewhere above the trees, he noticed a feeble light peeking from behind a big black blob. He didn’t even have a minute to stop and watch what it looked like when the sun is eclipsed after it rises.
He burst into the shul and found it empty. There were a few pairs of tefillin in the cabinet; he took the one closest to him.
A scream outside the building suddenly made him freeze in place.
“I hope you’re the last one! If I find someone else here who hasn’t gone to the shelter, he will be severely punished!”
Binyamin stopped a second before his foot crossed the threshold of the shul. Were they talking about him? He peeked carefully outside. It was very dark; the eclipse must have been at its peak. Hauptmann Josef Wangel was standing about five meters from the door, dressed in civilian clothes. He looked very strange standing there and pointing angrily to David Elkovitz, who was facing him, cradling his baby.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wangel,” David said in a low voice. “I didn’t know if it was better to stay in the infirmary or leave. So we just came out now.”
“No excuses now!” the Hauptmann yelled. “Just get to the shelter!”
Binyamin retreated slowly into the shul. He dropped to the floor and crawled under the bimah, hugging the tefillin bag in his right hand. He carefully straightened the cloth covering on the bimah, which reached the floor, and opened it a crack to be able to peek out between the cloth and the wooden leg. He was facing the doorway, and he could see the path leading to Shelter A. Who was that hurrying toward it? Babbe?
She’d see that he hadn’t managed to get there.
Should he get up and run now? He didn’t think that the Hauptmann would really punish anyone who was late, but still, it was a risk. They were not searching each building. Would someone notice that he wasn’t in any of the shelters? It was unlikely. In the factory they knew that he hadn’t been coming to work these past few days, so he wouldn’t be missed there. And the people in Shelter A? The regulars there wouldn’t notice his absence, of course, but what would Dr. Katzburg say? And Babbe? And Elkovitz?
And Mamme?
These were the people who knew he hadn’t gone to the factory this morning and that he was supposed to be hiding with them. But he could probably trust them all. With the hope that Mamme wouldn’t blurt out a panicked question like, “Where’s Binyamin?”
How many minutes had passed? Four? Five? He peeked out again from behind the velvet cloth. Wangel’s figure was retreating on the path that went up the hill, to the factory that was hidden between the trees. Excellent. Now he had to find a way to sneak into Shelter A without anyone noticing that he had come late. Did Hauptmann Katarina stay there the whole time they had to hide?
From Mamme’s stories, it seemed that she sometimes did and sometimes did not.
He would take the risk and get closer to the place, try to check it out. Somehow, when a raging Josef Wangel wasn’t around, it seemed less scary. At worst, he’d be soundly rebuked.
He got up carefully, the holy bag in his arms, and emerged from under the bimah. With silent steps, he headed to the door of the shul and looked out. The camp was deserted, as if there really wasn’t a living being in the whole place.
The sky spread out above him, dark, and Binyamin’s mouth opened as he saw the black blob over the forested hills slowly sliding aside. The halo of light that peeked out from behind the darkness grew, and as the black shadow moved off and weakened, the light grew stronger, until its rays once again shone full force.
The sun had risen, once again, over Samson Lager.
thenextpage-israelbookshop.com 