Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 52 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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A note that David Elkovitz slipped under his Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, which he brought with him to the field early in the morning, for his learning session with Binyamin:
Don’t speak about the subject in Polish or Hungarian. Bernard showed up yesterday. My wife saw him, and as we know, he loves surprise visits to the camp. Let’s start learning, and we’ll switch to Lashon Kodesh.
Both of them drew on sifrei kodesh for their grasp of the language, but Elkovitz’s fluency was very weak. They quickly discovered that it was difficult, if not impossible, to communicate this way.
“Lo re’isiv—I did not see him.” Binyamin glanced over his shoulder into the fading moonlight that was clearing way for the soon-to-be rising sun.
“But I did see him.”
“He’s surely sleeping now.” Binyamin was sick of the stilted talk and switched back to Hungarian. “Meanwhile we’ll whisper, over the sefarim, and we’ll sway a bit. If he comes, we’ll see him from far, and we’ll know to be careful.”
“Fine,” Elkovitz capitulated. Binyamin hoped the older man wasn’t completely regretting his agreement to talk, but it seemed that in a way, Elkovitz had been looking for years to unload the information he was carrying, and when he did start talking—he couldn’t stop.
“My wife has been fixing stuff for the Wangels ever since she was very young,” he said. “She has really good hands, and they always give her their watches and jewelry to fix. She once even fixed their old record player, when she was a girl. And also—” He took a deep breath. “You know that your father built a whole sprinkler system for the Wangels’ garden? So she once fixed something that wasn’t working properly there; it was a few years into our marriage.”
“I didn’t know about this.”
“And it’s better that you don’t know now either, because that’s the day it all happened.” He swallowed. “For the next few days, she was afraid that they suspected she knew something, but…” He hesitated for a moment. “Either they didn’t suspect her at all, or they decided that she was too important to them to kill her. I think the first option makes more sense, because your father was also important to them, and yet, look what happened.”
“What did my father know?” Binyamin could barely speak.
“I don’t know, but before I tell you what I do know, you have to promise me again that you won’t publicize anything of what I’m telling you now. You could really get me and my wife in trouble, and who knows who else.”
“Obviously. You have my word.”
Elkovitz paused for a moment. “Josef Wangel came to call her to fix something in the faucet of the sprinkler system. Bernard, who was a young teenager at the time, still lived here in those years, and he was drunk that day. My wife saw him standing at the window on the ground floor, red-faced, talking on the telephone. Your father was bent over a flowerbed, and Bernard was screaming and laughing, and he quoted a few words from an anti-Semitic song. Your father didn’t respond, and Bernard shouted at your father to come to him.”
“Go on,” Binyamin whispered, feeling his fingers start to tremble.
“My wife walked into the garden just then, and she saw Josef Wangel on the other end, trying to kick at the broken sprinkler. There was a huge puddle of water around it. She went toward the back of the toolshed to check why the main faucet wasn’t turned off, and saw your father stand up and politely go over to the window. Bernard said something to him; she didn’t hear what it was.” He studied Binyamin.
“And then your father said to Bernard, ‘You’re surely joking, young Mr. Wangel.’ At this point, the Hauptmann suddenly realized something was going on, and he left everything else and leaped toward the two of them. Through the window, he gave Bernard a push into the house and hollered for him to keep quiet. He looked like a man possessed, and my wife was terrified. She dropped to the ground and crawled behind the hedge to the gate, and then fled from the garden.”
“And what happened to my father?”
“My wife stayed at home, alone, not sure what to do with herself, and then fifteen minutes later, Katarina Wangel suddenly knocked at the door; she wanted to know where she’d disappeared to. Baruch Hashem, my wife was composed enough to say that after she’d come to the garden, she remembered that she’d forgotten one of her important tools at home, and she was looking for it but couldn’t find it.”
“Nu?”
“Katarina yelled at her that the water was still running, and that there would be a deduction from her wages for being lax about taking care of the property. My wife ‘found’ some silly wrench and went back to the garden. She dealt with the main faucet, which really was broken, and replaced what needed to be replaced, while the whole time, your father was working on the other side of the garden as if nothing had happened.”
Binyamin ran his finger along the binding of his sefer. “And that was it?”
“No. That evening, we heard that your father was hospitalized in the infirmary; they said he’d tripped on a stone and fallen, that he’d gotten a bad blow to his head.”
“Tripped on a stone?”
“That’s what they all said.” He studied the horizon. “My wife cried the whole evening. She was so frightened from the whole strange incident, and of course I warned her not to say a word to anyone.”
Binyamin had no idea what time it was and how many minutes had passed since they’d started speaking. The darkness around them was still thick, and if he was not mistaken, he could see the figure of Rav Schwartzbrod walking across the empty field toward the shul building.
“That night, I got up and went to the infirmary. Dr. Baruch Grodotzky, z”l, was there, and I told him that my stomach was hurting badly. He checked me, didn’t find anything wrong, and told me to wait a bit. I wanted to ask your father exactly what had happened to him, but I was afraid to do it when the doctor could hear. I also imagined that when he was present, your father wouldn’t tell me the truth anyway. I waited on the side, and heard the doctor tell your father that it didn’t look like anything serious, but because of the pain, he’d keep him for rest and observation and he would give him a pill.
“Then he came over to me and checked me again, and said that it looks like nothing and I should go home. I went out with a signed permission slip, and turned toward my house, limping along slowly. The doctor also emerged after me, and left.” His eyes suddenly welled up. “I wanted to wait for the doctor to move off, so I could go back and ask your father what really happened, but I suddenly heard voices, and I saw Josef Wangel and Bernard walking on the path.”
“Toward the infirmary?”
“No, to the factory. But I was afraid they’d also stop at the infirmary, and I knew that I must not be seen in the area, when according to the hour written on my permission slip, I should have been home already. I was afraid they’d figure out what I was trying to learn, and that they’d realize that my wife had been in the garden and had seen that something had happened. So I ran before they could see me, and returned home.”
Binyamin’s eyes were wet. “And then?”
“I don’t know exactly,” David whispered. “But the next day I heard that when Dr. Annie arrived in the morning, your father was no longer among the living.”
Binyamin sat up straight. “But it’s possible that he really did fall in the garden, and something serious had happened—just the staff at the infirmary was not able to detect it.”
“True,” Elkovitz agreed. “The infirmary’s diagnostic resources are not all that sophisticated, as we know.”
“So maybe they didn’t do anything to him?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Elkovitz replied slowly. “But the confluence of events is a bit strange, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. When your wife saw Wangel in the garden running to Bernard and to my father, did he do anything to my father?”
“No, he only shoved his son.”
“Could it be that Bernard, in his drunken state, revealed something to my father? Something that they don’t want us to know?”
“That’s exactly what I thought all these years,” Elkovitz whispered. He stood up. “We really should hurry, because Shacharis is starting soon. So, what should I tell you? After that night that you and I spent together in the infirmary, I spoke to my wife, and we remembered the incident all over again, and brought up different theories about what had happened. Unfortunately, we weren’t careful enough, and we didn’t realize that Yanku was listening to our conversation. He was horrified, and he has a rather agitated temperament.”
“I’ve noticed.” Binyamin smiled mirthlessly. “But you should tell him that he needs to calm down, and that he shouldn’t write anything more about this, anywhere.”
Elkovitz’s eyes were steely. “He won’t do that again, of course.”
“You can also tell him that I’m not sure this is the only interpretation for what happened.” He raised his hand when he realized that Elkovitz wanted to say something. “And don’t tell me I’m naïve. I hear the facts, and I also know that my father’s hospitalization card disappeared in a most mysterious way. But…if there is nothing we can do about this anyway, why should we think in such a malicious direction?”
The two began walking into the muddy field, both of them deep in thought. After a moment, Binyamin sighed. “The fact is that my father had notebooks in which he wrote his divrei Torah, and there’s a secret around those notebooks.”
“Have you ever seen them?”
“I’ve seen lots of his notebooks, and there was nothing suspicious in any of them.”
“So why are you mentioning them now?”
“Because Wangel also once blurted something to me about things that my father may have written, and my mother is super sensitive about the whole subject of my father’s writings.”
“But you didn’t find anything suspicious in any of the notebooks.”
“Nothing.” Binyamin didn’t know why he was saying all of this. “But my sister found a suspicious sentence, in the Wangels’ kitchen, of all places. It may be suspicious—I don’t know for sure. You won’t believe what it’s about.”
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