Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 51 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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Naomi’s eyes were fixed on the single voucher that fluttered down from the closet, right next to her. She’d never held a voucher for such a huge sum of money. Fifty marks!
“Elky…” She forced herself to look away from the small rectangle on the floor. “Elky, h-how are you doing?”
“Not good,” Elky said, breathing heavily, in an apparent attempt to stem her sobs. “But why did you come into my house without being let in?”
“She’s not in your house; she’s standing outside,” Dror clarified. “We opened the door because you didn’t answer when we knocked. Do you have a sugar cube? If you have so much money”—he hadn’t missed the sight of those vouchers either—“then you probably buy sweets all day, right?”
To Naomi’s surprise, Elky stood up, closed the door of the closet, and went to the other room. A moment later, she returned holding a sugar cube in her hand, which she wordlessly handed to Dror.
“Thanks!” he exulted. “You’re so good. Right you have all this money to give to poor people?”
Elky didn’t respond. Her eyes blinked rapidly, and Naomi didn’t know what to say.
“I was worried about you,” Naomi said finally, simply. “I’m sorry for opening the door.”
“It should have been locked.” Elky’s voice was low. “But right now I’m just so confused, I don’t know what I’m doing. And if the blood tests show that my husband’s liver has been damaged, it will be…” She burst out crying again. “It will be the worst thing in the world. Especially if it’s my fault!”
“Why should it be your fault?” Naomi asked. Not waiting for more of an invitation, she stepped into the house with the children and closed the door behind her. “Did you hurt him?”
“Not exactly.” Elky sniffed. “But Dr. Annie said that he has an infection, and it’s because his body has been very weak lately. And that is my fault!”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t serve fruit or vegetables to him, or fish, or chicken, and no—”
“What?” Dror’s eyes opened wide. “My mother always tells me to eat my fish, even when I don’t like it! Because it’s healthy! Why don’t you eat healthy things?”
“Do you know how much everything costs?!” Elky ignored Dror, speaking only to Naomi. “And how hard I work for every single voucher?! I add as many extra hours at the office as I can, and at night I do laundry for people who don’t have strength to do it themselves.”
Naomi remembered the ad she’d seen in the dining room. “Is that…uh, service…a popular thing?”
“Yes, very.” She glanced at the closet behind her. “I earned lots of money, and so did Mottel, and we’re saving it so that we should have it for later in life. So we managed with food that is…very simple. And now…the doctor just told me that Wangel might have a medication at home that helps heal this issue, because they once had someone sick with a similar infection. But do you know how much I’ll have to pay them for this medicine? Two hundred marks!”
“It’s good to know that the Wangels are ready to give medication in exchange for our vouchers,” Naomi said slowly. “Just…Elky, I’m sorry for asking, but from what I managed to see, aren’t you able to afford it? I mean, it looks like you have lots of money here, no?”
“Yes, and I will use it to pay for the medicine…” Her eyes reddened again. “But it’s terrible. Two hundred marks!”
***
Binyamin was not sure: Was David Elkovitz on his side or not?
The fact that he had kept Binyamin’s nighttime searches in the infirmary a secret, along with Naomi’s stories about Dror Elkovitz, made Binyamin feel that David was trustworthy.
And yet, to go and ask him about this directly…
Binyamin’s steps slowed. The people were chatting, as always, on their way home from work, before they all dispersed to their own homes. Where was David? Could he try to ask him gently now what he knew about the black word on the headstone?
Binyamin was spared the dilemma. A few feet before he turned to the path leading to his house, he saw Yanku in a corner, under one of the trees, talking animatedly to his father. He was red-faced and agitated, and his father—who looked very displeased—kept motioning for him to lower his voice.
Their gazes suddenly met. Elkovitz motioned to him subtly, and Binyamin changed directions and approached the pair. David nodded at him briefly and said, “A secret for a secret, huh?”
Binyamin was thrown off for a moment. “What?”
“You don’t want anyone to know how exactly you used those nights in the infirmary, right? And certainly not that you pretended to be weak, and that your grandmother helped you with the whole plan. And so, I also don’t want anyone to know that my son heard what he was not supposed to hear and did what he was not supposed to do.”
Binyamin sized him up for a moment. “Hey, Mr. Elkovitz,” he whispered calmly, “why start with threats?”
“It’s not a…threat.” The man passed a hand over his forehead.
“And why get my grandmother involved?”
“Again, it’s not a threat, just a simple warning.”
“So relax, because I’m not going to tell anything to anyone. On the contrary, I more or less cleaned up what your son did, so that there won’t be any claim against him or anyone else.”
It looked like the older man was breathing easier. A small smile twitched across his lips. “I told him that if he had to unload his anger in such a reckless, irrational way, it was a miracle that the one who had discovered it was you and not someone else.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Binyamin replied with his own crooked smile. “But something here makes no sense, Mr. Elkovitz.”
“What makes no sense?”
“Your son heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear, okay. But being that it’s about my father, I am supposed to hear it!” He kept his tone low, aware that people were almost certainly still passing on the path behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Elkovitz said, and took a step back. Yanku just stood there, his face lowered. “I cannot speak about this subject, good or bad.”
“But I need to!”
“You don’t need to, and for your good, it’s better for you not to. Certainly not here, and certainly not now.”
Something about those final words gave Binyamin some hope. “So when?” he insisted. “Because if it’s for my good, I’m mature enough to decide myself what is for my benefit and what is not.”
“And what if it’s not only about your good? People’s lives depend on this!”
“You should have told that to your son before he went to write what he wrote. Mr. Elkovitz, please understand me. I…” He clenched his fists without intending to. “I cannot remain with this lack of information. I need to know what really happened to my father.”
“And what then? Will you avenge his death?”
“Oh, so it’s clear to you, then, that it was not a natural death?”
Elkovitz stared at him for a long moment. “This is not the place to speak,” he whispered. Binyamin felt an urge to grab the man’s sleeve, but he knew that such a movement would come across as suspicious to the few people still walking on the path, and would also give Elkovitz the impression that he was dealing with a young, agitated, vengeful teenager.
“In any case, I’m not looking for revenge,” he said steadily. “I’m looking for the information, that’s all. So all we need to do now is figure out the time and place to talk, right? Don’t worry, Mr. Elkovitz, nothing bad will come out of the fact that I’ll know what exactly happened to my father.”
“Why do you want so desperately to know?”
“You can’t understand me?” Binyamin fixed him with a long, gray-eyed stare.
“I can understand,” the man said, clearly discomfited.
“And don’t worry, I’m not going to write anything on someone else’s headstone,” Binyamin added, and Yanku and his father exchanged glances. “And like I told you, whatever was written has been cleaned off, and I personally am making sure that the few people who learned of the incident will not convey the information to anyone else. But in exchange, I want some information for myself.”
The man was silent for a long moment, and then said, “What did we just talk about now? That I want you to teach me some halachah?”
“Okay…” Binyamin was trying to catch on to David’s train of thought.
“Does a chavrusa before davening work for you?”
“I have a chavrusa with the Rav then,” Binyamin said slowly.
“Can you give it up for one morning?”
“If we want it to be believed, then we can’t only get together to learn one time.”
“Why? We can say we tried, and I decided that you don’t explain things clearly enough for me.” He smiled. “I can also let my father-in-law know that I decided to learn some halachah, and then half a day later, I’ll make it known that he objected so adamantly that I stopped.”
“That won’t be believable. Everyone knows that you do what you want.”
Elkovitz smiled again. “So what do you suggest?”
“That we set up a short chavrusashaft, a real one, let’s say for a month. I’ll come ten minutes earlier than I usually do.”
“Fine.” David turned, and suddenly, a little hand appeared and began tugging at his clothes.
“Papa!” Dror hollered happily. “Mama went to fix the Wangels’ telephone, so my teacher Naomi is watching me and Cherut till you get home. Is this called that you’re coming home? Because you’re talking for so long to my teacher’s brother.”
“But we’ll have to decide where to learn,” Binyamin said, lowering his voice again. “Because if we want to talk about other things, I’m not sure we should do it in shul.”
“We can do it in the fields. It might be very pastoral.”
“Isn’t there a risk that Wangel will see us together?”
The man shook his head from side to side. “They won’t suspect me. They do not fathom that I know something.”
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