Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 58 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.
Yahadus notebook belonging to eleven-year old Surele, last page:
-Roizy, what happened to Morah Naomi? She’s not feeling well?
-I guess not. A minute ago, she got confused and said chametz instead of matzah.
-And at the beginning of the lesson, after she came back and was shaking and sat for a few minutes till she started to teach, she told us we’re waiting to go out to galus instead of to the Geulah. Did you notice?
– Sure. And it’s not like her to get confused twice in one lesson!
-Should we ask her what happened to her?
– You think that’s nice? Is it okay for us to ask?
-I don’t know, but I think we have to.
-Why do we have to?
-Because otherwise what we wrote here is just lashon hara, and if we ask her what happened it will be that we spoke lashon hara l’toeles.
“It’s not so simple to speak lashon hara l’toeles,” the voice of Morah Naomi said above them. The girls recoiled and then blushed. “You have to plan it ahead of time, before you talk, and there are a few conditions that must be met. But it’s fine, I forgive you. I see that you are really worried about me.”
“Do you feel okay?” Roizy asked timorously.
“You’re right, I’m not myself. But it will pass soon, b’ezras Hashem.” Naomi smiled at the girl and passed a hand over her thin braid, making sure as she did so that her fingers were not shaking. “Thank you, Roizy and Surele. Now can you please erase what you wrote here?”
“Of course.” Surele’s blush deepened, and she grabbed her eraser. “In a minute, nothing will be left, Morah Naomi.”
Naomi smiled at them again, with effort, and then went to the bench on the other end of the large room before they could ask her again what had happened to her. She could feel more eyes fixed on her back; she didn’t allow herself to turn around to see who it was. She just hoped no one was following her!
Apparently it was only Katy, hurrying toward her with a cup of tea. “Naomi, take it!” she said. “Are you sick, maybe? You don’t feel too well, do you?”
“I don’t know what happened to me,” Naomi murmured, sitting down heavily on the bench.
Rivku was also approaching. “In the morning you looked fine,” she said in a tone that was hard to interpret.
“I felt fine then,” Naomi replied.
“So what happened?” Katy fretted. “Maybe you have a stomach bug?”
“I really don’t know. It’s like this weakness…” Naomi closed her eyes and leaned on the wall behind her.
“Should I call your grandmother?” Rivku asked.
“No, no need. I’ll recover, with Hashem’s help, and it will pass.”
“Until tomorrow?” Rikvu asked, and Naomi grasped at once: she was worried about the hours she might have to fill in tomorrow.
She smiled at Rivku. “I really think I’ll be fine. It’s not anything serious. Just…a bit of dizziness.”
Katy whispered something to Rivku; Naomi couldn’t hear her even if she would have wanted to. In any case, she didn’t want to. The children were playing nicely in the room, not really noticing what was happening. Only the older girls were a bit concerned, and Naomi well understood why. It had been a rough winter, and the infirmary had been occupied by too many people. B’chasdei Shamayim, everyone had recovered, but the fears remained ingrained in all of them.
“Alright,” she said aloud, forcing herself to stand up. For them. “What’s with lunch? Whose turn is it to help with that today?”
She saw immediately how her practical question released a burden that was weighing down her students. “Me!” Zuska announced, exchanging relieved glances with the others. She went out to the small kitchen with two other girls.
When they came back with the steaming pots, they brought a guest with them. Naomi stifled a sigh. She loved her grandmother, and there had been no way to warn the girls not to tell Babbe anything about the way she was feeling. But—it was so hard to hide things from her grandmother.
“I came to fulfill the mitzvah of bikur cholim,” Babbe said. “But I see that baruch Hashem, the situation isn’t so bad. Naomi, is that right?”
“Yes, it was something very…short.”
“You need to make sure to rest enough,” her grandmother said. “You’re not putting in overtime, are you? There’s no such thing in the preschool.”
Naomi smiled at Rivku. “There is sometimes, and actually, it’s Rivku who does it.”
“But that doesn’t mean that I’m here more than I’m supposed to be,” Rivku hurried to clarify. “I’m just here sometimes in place of both of us, but that’s fine. It’s nice to do favors for Naomi.”
“Because she’s so nice,” Katy announced, “and then she gives back to Rivku every minute that she was left alone.”
“Good, so everything is fine.” Babbe smiled and turned to leave. Naomi escorted her to the door, and only there did Babbe ask quietly, “Have you had lots of urgent errands recently, Naomi?”
“Do I have to tell you, Babbe?” her granddaughter asked defensively. “You’re aware of most times when I leave. And it’s not so many. It’s just…accumulating.”
“I just hope that the ones I’m not aware of are not the kind that are better off not happening.”
Naomi didn’t answer. She sufficed with a smile, though she had no idea how Babbe would interpret it. If Binyamin had any complaints with that, she’d send him to their wise Babbe himself, so he could remember how impossible it was to hide anything from her.
The truth was, maybe—
A new thought popped into Naomi’s head, like a flower popping up between melting chunks of snow. Maybe it wasn’t worth hiding the information? Maybe they should consult with someone about it, and if so…was it worth it for that someone to be Babbe?
Naomi went back into the classroom, reminding herself that Aryeh and Binyamin had not yet heard about the phone call. Suzy had heard a small part, but not the rest…
She took a deep breath. The heavy stone that had been sitting on her heart, which had lifted a bit because of the responsibility she felt for her students, suddenly sank down again more forcefully, and Naomi felt physically ill. She slowly walked over to pour herself a cup of water, not knowing how she would make it to the end of the day.
It was a good thing Babbe had left already.
She sipped from her cup of water, trying to think how to let Binyamin know what she had heard this morning. She wouldn’t write a word, not even in their secret code; it was too dangerous.
It was safe to assume that Binyamin would find himself a way to get to her. But maybe this evening was too dangerous for him to come to their house. She’d already attracted too much attention with her absence and her not feeling well.
And the boy! The boy who’d come to her house to give Suzy the broken telephone!
How many people at the factory already knew that she’d spent some of the morning hours with Suzy Elkovitz?
A dark cloud of danger swam before Naomi’s eyes, but she didn’t let herself collapse to the floor. Not here. Not near everyone. If she’d faint, in addition to everything else, everyone in the camp would know something was up. And the danger would increase manifold.
Naomi blinked rapidly, fighting the fog. It was actually obedient, and slowly dissipated. She leaned on the wall, forcing herself to take deep breaths. The girls were giving out the food on plates, and she knew they needed her help; otherwise, in another minute, the bickering would begin.
The sun peeked in at her through the barred window high up on the wall. She wouldn’t be afraid now, because fear was useless. She’d think about the sun that Hashem sent them morning after morning, and about the sweet children who were here and waiting for her, and not about anything else. Especially not about the earthshattering information that she’d heard today on the phone, and about what Wangel would do if he’d find out about this call.
***
Bentzy exchanged a worried look with his father. “I’ve never heard of such a newspaper,” he said. They were both sitting on upholstered executive chairs, discussing the information they’d just received from the secretary.
“That doesn’t mean anything, of course,” his father replied. “But it’s true that the name of the paper sounds bad. Something trying to be too cosmic and worldly doesn’t bring good things with it, for the most part.”
“And her questions were crazy!” Bentzy tapped his pen on the glass pane that covered the wooden desk. “Wehrmacht! SS!” He fell silent suddenly. “On the other hand, she did not speak respectfully of them.”
“Maybe it really is someone confused, who is living in the past…”
“So what’s her connection to the newspaper whose name she mentioned? Is she a crazy lady living in delusion, or a journalist?”
“Maybe in the past she was forced to write for this newspaper,” his father said slowly, “and it also no longer exists.”
“You mean that being a journalist is part of her delusions?”
“Something like that.”
They both were quiet for a long moment.
“So we can check if during the period of Nazi rule there was a newspaper called Der Cosmos,” Bentzy suggested. “I’ll call Hershy Kop. He’s half a historian, and is very knowledgeable about anything relating to the Holocaust.”
Ten minutes later, they had an answer. There was no such paper, certainly not to an extent that was known.
“And today?” Bentzy pressed his friend.
“Today? Maybe. You know how many crazy, delusional newspapers there are?”
“Anti-Semitic ones?”
“That, too,” Hershy said.
When the call ended, Bentzy and his father sat there, feeling that it hadn’t given them too much to go on. On the contrary, it had just left bigger questions unanswered.
“You know what?” his father said, standing up suddenly. “I know someone in the national telephone exchange. I can ask him to get me the number where she called from, and then I can call them back myself. Then we’ll know more about this newspaper: what its agenda is, and who the journalist who called here today might be.”
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