Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 57 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.
Don’t do things hastily.
But sometimes that is better than not doing them at all!
Leo Sherer’s newsletter had a column featuring sayings that he himself wrote. No one knew from which bottomless pit Leo got all of his endless—and sometimes foolish—sayings, but some of them certainly had a source. And Babbe had said regarding this particular one, which had been published a few months earlier, that she was familiar with it in Polish; she’d heard it back when she was a girl in Lodz. She liked the saying and claimed it was wise.
Naomi gripped the phone, after her big declaration, knowing that this was an opportunity that was unlikely to repeat itself. But what was she going to say to the secretary at Hanter’s?
She claimed that she was Jewish. It sounded like a bad joke, as if someone had been sitting and waiting for her call, and had decided to make fun of her and drag her into a trap.
She wanted to ask Suzy if it was possible that Wangel had arranged for all of the communications from their phone to be directly to an SS command center or something. But Suzy had already disappeared, and Naomi decided to concede that that was a wild, illogical idea. The Wangels needed to call other places aside from Nazi command centers.
Yes, she would call.
Hasty? So what.
But what would she ask?
The truth: How did they manage with the law? Were they official, under the Wehrmacht or something?
That must be the answer; otherwise, this reality was impossible.
She pressed the top button again, and called the spices factory.
***
“I don’t want to answer the phone,” said Suri nervously, as she looked at the phone with a hostile eye. “I’m afraid that it’s that journalist again.”
Dena shrugged. “I can talk instead.”
“You don’t speak German.”
“So what? At worst, she’ll see there’s no one to talk to. If it is her, of course. And besides, my Yiddish is pretty good, so maybe I’ll be able to understand what she wants.”
***
“Good morning.” Dena was polite. Her mother-in-law had told her a few days ago that in Vienna, there is a highly developed service ethic. She had to be patient, even with this crazy reporter.
“Good morning,” Naomi said with effort. If she was not mistaken, this was a different voice than the one who’d spoken to her a few minutes earlier. “I wanted to ask about the Jews who work for you.”
“The Jews—who work—for us?”
“Yes. I didn’t speak to you before, right?”
“Can you speak a bit slower?”
This one’s German was very strange. Wait, was that not Yiddish? Naomi took a deep breath. “I can speak Yiddish if you want.”
“Oh, wonderful!” Dena said. “So I understand that you are Jewish?”
“I didn’t speak to you before, right?” Naomi whispered.
“Right.”
“Are you also a secretary at the Hanter Camp?”
“Where?” Dena gaped at Suri.
“At Hanter.” Naomi realized she’d hit a mine of sorts, but wasn’t sure that she knew what it was.
“Yes, sort of.”
“And you are also Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“Do you live on the factory grounds?”
“What does that mean, on the grounds? There’s no place to sleep here.”
“Well, not in the actual building. I meant in the area around it.”
“Yes, we live pretty close by.” Maybe this was a piece of information that she should not be providing to this clearly strange woman? The Yiddish indicated that she was Jewish, although she hadn’t answered the question directly. And she had a strange Yiddish accent, reminiscent a bit of Hungarian, but not exactly. “Although there are also workers who come from far away,” she added quickly, just to be sure.
“And…that’s approved by the authorities?”
“What, that they come from far away?” Maybe this was some official Austrian office, that had to do with income tax or something?
“No, that you work there.”
“Who is ‘you’?”
“The Jews.”
“I see that the subject of Jews in the factory is really bothering you, Ms. …” Dena didn’t know how to say ‘reporter’ in Yiddish.
The other woman took a deep breath. “Because I saw that you wrote on the paprika to be careful about insects.”
“That’s right.”
“You decide yourselves what to write? Your manager lets you do that?”
“He also wanted it,” Dena said with a half-smile. “He is also Jewish.”
“I didn’t mean the work manager; I meant the general commander. The owner of the factory, I mean. Hanter himself.”
“I also meant him, and he’s a Jew,” Dena replied. “I’m also Hanter, by the way. His daughter-in-law.”
Naomi groped for words. “And you have permits? Because you’re surely not breaking the law if you’re like this…”
“Like what?”
“That you work there. And are there. And live there.”
“Permits from whom?” Dena grew serious. At least she’d know to warn Bentzy if this was someone nosing around from the labor ministry or income tax department or who-knew-what.
“From the Wehrmacht.”
Dena looked at the sunny window across from her, sure that the noise of the cars from the road below had prevented her from hearing right. “From whom?” she asked again.
“The Wehrmacht,” Naomi whispered hesitantly. “Or the SS.”
“Which Wehrmacht?” Dena took a paper and scribbled something for Suri in big letters: She’s totally confused! She’s asking me about the Wehrmacht and the SS ym”s!
Another mine? This time Naomi didn’t know which of her words she had to neutralize, so she just repeated them as they were: “The Wehrmacht or the SS.”
“What, from the Nazis?” Dena tried to suppress a giggle when she saw Suri twirling her finger around her temple.
“Yes.”
“They’re long not around!”
“What do you mean, not around?”
“From the minute Germany surrendered at the end of the war, the Wehrmacht and the SS, yemach shemam, both ceased to exist,” Dena said confidently. After a second, she had a bit of doubt and whispered to Suri, “They didn’t continue calling the German army ‘the Wehrmacht’ after the war, right?”
“Of course not!” Suri replied.
There was silence on the line. Naomi stood in her place, the locked door ahead of her. This was her house. Yes. She reached her hand out to the wall, feeling its rough surface. But something here was not right. She was sure that in another minute she’d discover that she was an eight-year-old girl again, and Binyamin was telling her one of his mesmerizing, imaginary stories.
The lady on the other end had said “yemach shemam” about the Wehrmacht and the SS! And she’d said that Germany had surrendered!
“When did that happen?” Her voice trembled, and she could hardly understand her own words.
“When did what happen?”
“That Germany surrendered. Is it something new?”
“New?” Dena didn’t know if she should laugh or get angry. Was someone pulling her leg here? “It’s not new at all! The war ended about…nearly fifty years ago!”
“Do you mean the World War?”
“Yes, of course!”
“And then—” Naomi sat down on the floor. “And then Germany surrendered?”
“Yes.”
“You’re talking about Germany. But where do the Nazis continue to rule?” She swallowed big gulps of air, feeling like she needed huge doses of oxygen to understand what was happening in this conversation.
“The Nazis?”
“Yes.” She leaned her head against the wall behind her. “Like Austria, for example. After all, the Cosmos-Fuhrer was Austrian. As much as he loved Germany, he always spoke with admiration about Austria. Your factory is in Austria, right? In Vienna?”
“That’s right. But I don’t know who it is that you are talking about.”
“The Cosmos-Fuhrer!” Naomi’s fingers were trembling. “So he didn’t live in Germany until last year? He lived in Austria?”
“Who?”
She swallowed. “Hitler.” Then she added carefully, “Yemach shemo.”
“Lived in Germany until last year? He’s long dead, since the end of the war!” Dena wasn’t laughing anymore. She seemed to be dealing here with a poor survivor who was living the past. She wanted to cry when she thought about it. But wait…the voice sounded too young for the woman to be a survivor!
Naomi was also far from laughing. She stared blankly ahead of her, barely processing the rapid knocking coming from her front door. Without saying another word, she pressed the button to hang up and stuck the device under the wooden bowl. Then she leaped from her place and opened the door for Suzy Elkovitz.
“I fixed the phone for him,” Suzy said, sounding panicked. “Don’t talk anymore now, because I’m running to the factory to give it back.”
“Okay,” Naomi whispered, staring at Suzy’s back as she ran from her house. She closed the door, locked it again, and hurried to hide the metal rectangle under her mattress. Without waiting another minute, she left the house and dashed toward the preschool. How many minutes had her “consultation with Dror’s mother” taken? A lot. Too many. Far beyond any reasonable amount of time.
But right now, there were other things that were disturbing her a lot more than that.
What did Hanter’s secretary mean? What kind of trap was someone trying to set for them here?
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