Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 48 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 note, written in the secret code that Binyamin and Naomi had made up together years earlier, was waiting for Binyamin at home at the end of the workday.
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“You just got here, Binyamin.” Rechel was worried. “Again you’re taking extra hours of work? Where are you going now?”
Binyamin lowered his gaze. “Naomi asked me to come,” he said quietly.
“Naomi? What does she want?”
“She didn’t write exactly what it was about, but I’m assuming it has something to do with Kush.” He showed his mother the note that he’d just deciphered.
“I have no patience to decipher your secret codes…” His mother smiled. “She wants you to come? Now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so good luck then.”
“Maybe you should go to sleep in the meantime, Mamme.. You look tired.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “We’ll see. You…you don’t look so relaxed, Binyamin.”
“I guess we won’t be relaxed until Mashiach comes, and we can sit under our fig trees and grape vines.” He smiled back. “I’m going now, Mamme, okay?”
“Do you have your permit to be outside?”
“Yes.”
“But don’t wander around for no reason, of course. Go safely and come back safely.”
Binyamin quickly covered the distance between his home and his sister’s. He knocked at the door of the small house, and Aryeh opened it.
“Hi,” Aryeh said in a friendly tone. “Nu, were you able to clean what you wanted to?”
“It’s a whole story…” Binyamin was vague. “But yes, I was able to clean it up. Thanks.”
“What was it?” Aryeh asked, just as Naomi came out from the other room, also looking questioningly at her brother.
“Something not so clear, and pretty complicated,” he said evasively. “And I had a conversation afterward with someone who said he knows who wrote it, but he won’t tell me who it is.”
“What?”
“Look, you invited me over, Naomi.” Binyamin sat down on the chair that had been prepared for him. “So you can start first. Why did you call me?”
“What I want to tell you can also be defined as ‘something not so clear, and pretty complicated.’”
“I’m all ears,” he brother said.
“So here’s a riddle: Who do you think would write such a sentence on a food package:” She closed her eyes and recited, almost verbatim: “‘There is the rare possibility of insects getting into the product after it leaves the factory. Checking is necessary.’”
Binyamin nodded. “Interesting question,” he said. “That’s what it says? Insects? And that it needs to be checked?”
“Yes.”
The two brothers-in-law exchanged glances.
“But what is this written on?” Binyamin asked. “What kind of food do we produce and send out from a factory?”
“It’s not something that we produce!” Naomi whispered. “It’s something that came from the outside! I saw it in Wangel’s kitchen.” She fiddled with the knot on her tichel, and in the dimness, she suddenly looked very much like her mother, to Binyamin’s eyes. “So, Binyamin, do you think Jews wrote it?”
“Could be,” he said slowly, and then fell silent. After a pause, he added, “Question is, which Jews.”
“From the newspapers that we get from time to time, it doesn’t seem to me that there are any living Jews left in the outside world,” Naomi said.
“Look, we don’t read all the newspapers, right? They throw us one paper every few weeks…and it is possible,” he was thinking as he spoke, “it’s very possible that there are still a few official concentration camps left, like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen…”
“They were liquidated!” Aryeh exclaimed. “Don’t you know the stories from the older people?”
“I said like those camps,” Binyamin repeated slowly. “Maybe there are still a few labor camps left under government supervision.”
“So what’s the big secret? Why do the Wangels lie to us about it?”
“Maybe the conditions there are better, and they are afraid we’ll rebel?”
“In government camps? That’s not possible. The hatred that drips from their newspapers is frightening. It’s hard to believe that if Jews would be working for them, they’d treat them nicely. And it’s hard for me to believe that camps like those still remain in our days.” Naomi was very firm. “I’ve been thinking about this all day—believe me.”
“So what’s your guess?” Her brother stretched in his chair.
“That there are other families like the Wangels who also decided to secretly hold on to the forbidden goods: Jews,” she said bitterly. “And while we’ve been producing furs for Wangel for decades, the Nazi Hanter family is holding Jews who produce spices for them.”
“And they let them just write such a sentence, and it gets shipped out to the world so that their secret will be given away?” Aryeh asked.
“Look, after all is said and done, it’s not…” She searched for the word. “It’s not a sentence that gives away very much, right? Assuming that I’m right, and Jews formulated it, then anyone who isn’t familiar with the Jewish laws won’t notice how obvious the emphasis on the insects is. It’s just a sentence about preserving freshness and quality and all that.”
“Yes,” Binyamin said, lines creasing his forehead. “So what are you trying to say?”
“That maybe we can make contact with them, with the Jews who work for Hanter,” she said quietly.
“What for?” Aryeh asked.
“So that…first of all, to know what is really happening.” Naomi took a deep breath.
“I agree,” Binyamin said. “For years we’ve been living with this feeling that we’re the last survivors. Maybe there are other families in the world? Maybe we can make contact and find a way to escape together… Alright, that’s already my imagination running away.” He smiled in resignation.
“Your theory really does sound interesting, Naomi. Although it’s very possible that it’s a totally innocent statement that a real goy made up, someone who has no problem with eating insects, but he’s just very into details or whatever. I want to think about this a little.”
“And if you reach the conclusion that I’m right?” his sister asked.
“That maybe you are right,” he clarified. “Because until we look into it, we won’t know.”
She bristled. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
Her husband was the one to respond. “If we get to the conclusion that it’s worth looking into, we’ll think how to check it.”
“But wait a minute.” Binyamin drummed on the wall to his left. “Why did they write it? For whom? If it’s like we thought until today, that we are the only Jews in the world, then in their view, they are the only Jews in the world—so who are they warning about insects?”
“Maybe they are one step ahead of us,” his sister offered immediately, “and they know for years already that Wangel is hiding Jews.”
“Oh, our lives here are a known secret?” Binyamin refuted as his thumb arced in the classic questioning motion. “So we are actually in danger every minute?”
“Don’t be like that!” Naomi snapped. “The whole world doesn’t know, okay? For my part, Mr. Hanter and Mr. Wangel have been good friends since they were two years old, and for years they exchanged experiences and work methods and ways of hiding, and they help each other when it comes to the authorities, okay? Hanter revealed to his workers that we exist; Wangel preferred not to. Now does it make sense for you, or do you have any more annoying questions?”
“Don’t get angry, Naomi,” her brother said with a yawn. “I also had a very confusing day. And do you know what I think now? That maybe our two stories are somehow connected at one point.”
***
“Dena?” A car stopped with a slight squeal on the quiet street.
Dena turned her head, forcing back her tears. “Charna!” she exclaimed hoarsely.
“What are you doing here, Dena?”
“I-I got lost.”
“Lost!” Charna echoed. “Oy, I’m glad I could help you out, then!” She said something to her husband who was behind the wheel, and the car inched closer to the sidewalk. Dena opened the back door and climbed into the heated vehicle.
“Where do you have to go?”
“I don’t know,” Dena said. “To the factory, in theory.”
“We’ll be happy to take you wherever you want,” Charna offered.
“Fine, so let’s go to the factory.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go home and recover a bit first?”
“Fine, I’ll go home.”
“Dena!” Charna chided. “Don’t say ‘yes, yes’ to whatever I suggest. Can you tell us where you want to go?”
To Eretz Yisrael, her lips mouthed, but then she said, “To my house—that’s a good idea. I really need to recover from the fright I had…”
“Oy,what happened? Did you meet some drunkards or something?”
“No, nothing like that. The streets were very quiet. But…”
“Getting lost is never a pleasant experience,” her friend said sympathetically. “Do you want us to just turn around and go to your mother-in-law?”
“No, I’ll go home, and I’ll call her to tell her that I arrived safely and everything is fine. She has my kids now, but my husband will bring them back in the evening.”
“Okay, no problem,” Charna said, and the car drove ahead.
“Hey, one minute!” Dena suddenly cried out when she saw the familiar signs. “Here’s the factory!”
“That’s right. You were very close to it.”
“And I kept going back to these streets and walking in circles?!”
“It can happen, when you’re not familiar with the area,” Charna said reassuringly.
“You know what, maybe I will get off here. Don’t laugh at me!”
“Of course I won’t laugh at you. I want you to go wherever is good for you.”
“So then I’ll get off here,” Dena said briskly and opened the door. She didn’t know if Suri, the secretary, was still there at this hour, but she had to find out what was going on here.
Maybe she had just been walking herself in circles for too long already.
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