Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 54 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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“What’s this?” Binyamin asked his mother when he noticed a note on the table, next to his supper plate.
“Naomi popped into the sewing shop today and gave this to me. I thought it’s in your secret code.”
“No, no.” Binyamin studied the numbers for a few long seconds, then folded the paper and stuck it into his pants pocket.
“Is everything alright, Binyamin?” Rechel asked.
“Yes, baruch Hashem.”
“I’m a bit worried about you.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been looking very uptight lately.”
“No, not uptight,” he said carefully, as he watched her face. “It’s just that I’m not a kid anymore, and it happens to be that I think about things.”
“Like about what, for example?”
“Like about our lives here.”
“What’s there to think about? We are alive, baruch Hashem, and we live with miracles.”
“Yes. Mottel Kush came back to work today. It was very exciting.”
“Baruch Hashem!” Rechel remembered hearing others talk about that today over lunch. “How is he?”
“Still weak, but it looks like he is slowly getting back to himself.”
“Nu, so after you see how much rachamei Shamayim we are surrounded with, why do you have to think about such serious things? It makes me worried.”
“Rachamei Shamayim is the only thing that calms me down in this place.” He didn’t look at her, but rather at a piece of sautéed onion on his plate. “And that tells me that if we are here today, this is the best place for us.”
“Do you have any doubt about it? In which other place are Jews even living, let alone serving Hashem, living independent lives, earning a livelihood?!” She was almost angry.
“That’s the question,” he said quietly. “In which other place do Jews live today.”
“And isn’t the answer clear to you?”
“No.”
“So I’ll clarify it for you: there aren’t any living Jews besides us.”
“Who told you?”
“What do you mean who told me?” She sat down next to him. “I wasn’t born today, Binyamin. It’s been the reality of our lives for decades already, and until Mashiach comes, that’s how it’s going to be.”
“But who said that this is the reality?” he insisted. “The Wangel family? The few Wehrmacht officers who are in on the secret that we exist here?”
His mother fixed her eyes piercingly on him for a long moment, and again he lowered his gaze to his plate, but when she spoke, her voice was casual. “Look at these walls,” she said, pointing to the window behind him. “Doesn’t that show you how awful and threatening the world out there is?”
He was quiet.
“Binyamin,” she said, and he noticed that she was suddenly pale. “Binyamin, please tell me—what is it that’s making you think these thoughts?”
“All kinds of things.” He flipped the onion with his fork. “Like, for example, the candidate to be the new cosmos-fuhrer. He knows about our secret. He visited here a few years ago. So why are the Wangels still so afraid? He’s the highest-ranking official, so won’t he protect them even if we are discovered?”
“What do you think, that he’d go and publicize the fact that for years he’s been a party to the crime of hiding Jews? It’s obvious that there are, in the global Nazi regime, people who are more radical than him. They’ll go wild if they discover such a betrayal on his part. There’ll be an uproar in the whole world, and even if they won’t do anything to him because of his rank—what will be with us? We’d better not talk about it.”
“I also heard that theory,” Binyamin said. “But if indeed there have been changes in the party, then maybe there are more changes? Maybe all the anti-Semitism has calmed down somewhat, and maybe there are Jewish labor camps that are supervised by the regime.”
“If so, I pity them,” his mother said sharply. “Go ask Zeide and Babbe and a few other people who can tell you their memories of the camps from the beginning of the Reich rule. ‘Supervised,’ as you called it.”
He was quiet again. “The food is very good, Mamme,” he said finally.
“I’m happy.” She was very agitated. “I really hope that no one plans on trying to take the risk of getting out of the walls to check what’s doing on the other side. I’m afraid that he won’t be able to come back to tell us his dismal conclusions.”
“No one is talking about leaving here.”
“So what are they talking about?”
“I don’t know,” he said evasively, the piece of paper in his pocket almost stinging him.
“This is a subject that’s discussed openly?” She stood up. “What happened to everyone, all of a sudden? How come I don’t hear anything about this from the women?”
“No, it’s not that something happened suddenly,” Binyamin said hastily. “Don’t worry. It’s just some small questions that a few people have on the subject, not anything that’s widely known.”
“Well, let anyone who has these ‘small questions’ know that in this world, we have to overcome our curiosity,” Rechel said with a sad smile. “And you, Binyamin, should please try to keep away from those who enjoy action and talk of the kind that Wangel must not hear, alright? It’s playing with fire!”
She collected the plates, and Binyamin knew that he must not ask her about his father’s final day. She might faint if he brought up the subject.
In any case, as he’d told David Elkovitz, nothing would help Tatte now.
***
Binyamin passedby Aryeh the next day. “Naomi sent me a note with the number. Where’d she get it from?”
“My mother,” Aryeh said simply.
“You decided to ask her for the number?”
“Yes. We tried for a few days to come up with an excuse that could bring Naomi to the estate and the kitchen again, but we couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t make her seem suspicious. Especially because…—” he glanced left and right— “if they ever catch on to something, they must not have even a clue. Especially a clue that leads to you, what with the story of your father in the background here.”
“You’re absolutely right.” It was calm around them; even Leo Sherer wasn’t around. Binyamin allowed himself to linger for a few moments. Two brothers-in-law were allowed to chat, weren’t they? “I need to also catch Elkovitz. I hope he doesn’t get cold feet at the last minute… I don’t really know how exactly he plans to make contact.”
Aryeh nodded.
“Your mother agreed to get you the number?” Binyamin recalled his conversation with his mother last night. Well, Aunt Chani’s anxiety level wasn’t even half of his mother’s, and it was easy to understand why.
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?”
“She knew something already. When Naomi saw the sentence about the insects, she showed it to her. But my mother didn’t really take it very seriously.”
“But does she understand what we are trying to do?”
Aryeh nodded. “Yes. I told her that we want to have the factory’s number, in case we ever get a chance to call the people there. But I didn’t tell her about Elkovitz’s cooperation, so she doesn’t believe we’ll ever get a phone line. That’s why she’s not nervous.”
“I’ll go look for Elkovitz soon,” Binyamin said in response.
“Great. Just…I promised my mother that we’ll only try to call if there’s absolutely no risk involved. And that we won’t go into the estate for it, and that under no circumstances will we do it on a day that Bernard is here.”
Leo Sherer appeared just then at the end of the hall, and Binyamin hurried to his corner near the sewing machine. At the meal break, he’d try to sit down near Elkovitz and find the right moment to report to him that they had the phone number.
***
“It was all wonderful, amazing, and beautiful,” Dena told her mother-in-law on Motza’ei Shabbos before they left.
The other woman smiled with pleasure. “I love the way you put it!” she told Dena.
And they went home.
Dina didn’t realize that the words “wonderful, amazing, beautiful” were beating a rhythm in her mind now, and she hummed them quietly in the car to Shloimy, who was resting his head on her, half asleep.
“What are you singing, Ima?” Duvi asked, with an alertness that was in sharp contrast to his brother’s sleepiness.
She smiled. “Just a few words.”
“Is it a Pesach song?”
“I don’t know.” She stroked his cheek with her finger. “It’s just some words that got stuck in my head, together with a little tune.”
“It’s a nice song,” he declared. “When I go to sleep, sing it to me, okay?”
“If there’s time,” Bentzy said from behind the wheel. “It’s very late, Duvi, and I’m not sure Ima will have time to sing to you. Maybe if you get ready for bed very, very quickly.”
They went up to their sparkling clean home they’d left before Shabbos. Dena quickly prepared Shloimy for bed, and Duvi rushed to get into pajamas on his own.
“Now could you sing to me?” he asked. “Before we say Shema.”
Feeling a bit foolish, she hummed to him over and over, “It was all wonderful, amazing, beautiful…”
When Duvi fell asleep, she quietly left the room, but kept humming, even as she made some French toast for melaveh malkah.
Everything was so idyllic. Or rather, everything was so “wonderful, amazing, and beautiful.” A clean house, children sleeping calmly in bed, a wife standing in the kitchen preparing food as her husband sat in the dining room, listening to a recorded Daf Yomi shiur.
But could anyone compare this to what the wives of young men in Yerushalayim, Bnei Brak, Haifa, and even here in Vienna, were doing?
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