Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 60 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.
1.5 marks – 500 grams sugar – March 23
2 marks – 250 grams fish – March 24
2 marks – 5 kg potatoes and carrots – March 24
1.5 marks – 200 grams white cheese – March 24
4 marks – 2 bottles cleaning soap – March 30
Total for payment: 10 marks
“The bill is really big already. Will you pay it now, Naomi?” The young cashier was really sweet, but Naomi knew that the payment had nothing to do with her. She had also spent a long time behind that counter.
“Is it alright if I wait two more days to pay, until we get our salaries?”
“I hope so,” Chaika Shmuelson replied as she rubbed her forehead. “I mean, if they don’t make an inspection tomorrow morning.”
“If they come, send someone to call me quickly from the preschool, and I’ll come to take the scolding.” If she’d even go to work tomorrow. Based on her headache right now, she had no idea whether she’d be up to doing anything tomorrow.
“No, no!” Chaika laughed. “I can explain such a thing, don’t worry! Especially—” she flipped through the cards—“as I don’t have a lot of cases like this.”
“A new housewife just starting out, huh?” Elky laughed from her place on line behind Naomi. “Two bottles of cleaning soap, no less! You can see this is the first year you’re cleaning the house for Pesach, Naomi…”
“Maybe I’ll use a bottle and a half? But it doesn’t matter, because one is for my mother,” Naomi replied, without turning around. She had no strength. Yesterday, she’d dropped into bed early, and had left Aryeh to send an urgent message to Binyamin not to come under any circumstances. Not the same day she’d disappeared from the classroom for such a long time. There was no way to know what kind of thoughts and suspicions were going through Wangel’s mind after the story of his broken telephone.
But in the empty bottle, she’d send a message to Binyamin. Very minimal, very vague, but he’d understand more or less what had agitated her so much. And he would also have to understand the other things she’d write to him: that she refused to meet, discuss, or talk about the subject, until the story of the phone that fell into the pool would be completely forgotten.
“So what are you taking, Naomi?” Elky left the line and took her place behind the counter. With a motion, she sent away the younger cashier to the back shelves.
“You’re back to working here?” Naomi was confused for a minute.
“Yes.”
“You left the office?”
“Of course not,” her friend said with a laugh. “My day at the office is over already. It’s just some extra hours. I know they need more manpower here in the store before Pesach.” She studied Naomi’s bill. “This is some bill you have.” Then she added, “Maybe you should write one of the bottles down on your mother’s account?”
“No, why would I do that?”
“But if you’re buying it for her…”
“We figure it out,” Naomi responded curtly. The fact that she had decided to use this bottle to send a message to Binyamin did not mean her mother had to pay for soap that she didn’t ask for.
“Okay,” Elky said, and sat down on a stool. She passed a hand over her forehead, and to Naomi, she suddenly looked very old. Maybe she had also discovered something distressing recently? No, it made no sense; she was just imagining it.
She studied Elky again, carefully, and then left the store with her two opaque, blue plastic bottles. The factory rose in front of her between the trees, a rectangular, ugly, cement bunker, most of which was underground. But the spring breeze that rustled quietly between the leaves made Naomi turn her head in the other direction and let the wind tickle her face. New flowers that had suddenly blossomed over the past month dotted the grass with a pink, purple, and orange carpet, and Naomi looked at all this beauty, took a deep breath, and continued walking. Maybe their spring would also come now, if indeed she had understood correctly, and the Nazis no longer reigned over the whole world.
She wondered what the outside world even looked like.
How would it look after they would…leave from here?
It was scary to think about it.
Aryeh did not understand her, when she told him her thoughts. “Why scary?” They were speaking in such low tones that they could barely hear one another.
“Because…” Naomi emptied the cleaning fluid that she’d bought into an old, rusty metal jug, and then scrubbed the inside of the bottle with a knife wrapped in a big rag. “You can never know what is waiting in that world… It sounds very frightening. Suddenly, I think how everything there is probably so different from everything we’re used to here…”
“It’s good that we’re already at the point of thinking these things, huh?”
She couldn’t figure out if he was joking or not.
“Look, Naomi. Until yesterday morning, we didn’t even dream that it’s possible that the Nazis don’t rule the world, right?”
“I see that you’re accepting it as a hard fact.”
“And you’re not?”
“I am…” she said slowly, “but I’m starting to have doubts. Maybe I didn’t hear her well? Maybe I misunderstood? Or they were just joking with me? Maybe it’s just an evil plot concocted by Wangel and a few others?”
“Which others? Elkovitz?”
“No.” Naomi shook her head decisively. “I don’t suspect Suzy Elkovitz at all. And you had to see how shocked she herself was from the few words she managed to hear.”
“Oh, so she also heard something?”
Naomi raised her eyes from the bottle.” Yes,” she said slowly.
“So if there was another witness, that’s proof that you were not imagining or misunderstanding it. Maybe you have to meet with her again and try to recreate that conversation.”
“No, no!” Naomi was horrified by the very idea. “It’s enough that they know in the preschool that I met with her for a conversation, and that it was a long one. I don’t want any contact with this woman in the near future!” She took a deep breath. “And besides, she heard only the first part of the conversation, before I called the second time, and the one who answered—” She fell silent.
“Who answered the second time?”
“Hanter herself. The Jewish daughter-in-law of the Jewish camp commander!” She almost choked on her words.
“Camp commander?”
“Maybe it’s not a camp; I don’t know what they call it.”
“Very interesting.”
“I…I feel like I need to just calm down from all this,” she said, sticking her finger into the empty bottle. The results were satisfactory, so she put down the bottle and went to sit at the table, but not before checking again that the door was locked.
“What are you going to write to Binyamin? He’s very tense; I saw him at work today. Think about him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“He tried to come over to me, and I just repeated what you asked me to tell him: that you came away from the phone call yesterday very confused, agitated, and frightened; that you don’t want to meet him just yet; and that you’ll find a way to convey to him the main points of what happened.”
“Did you speak to Elkovitz?”
“He kept a safe distance from me.”
“His wife must have warned him,” Noami murmured ominously. She bent over the piece of paper with a pen in her hand, but didn’t write a word. “How did Binyamin accept that?”
“Did he have a choice? I just hope he won’t do anything foolish.”
“Binyamin won’t do anything foolish,” Naomi said. “And I know that it’s very hard for him; that’s why I’m going to write something to him.” She sat up, looked for a while at the scratch in the table, and after a few seconds, bent over the page again and began to write.
***
“I don’t understand, Dena. Why are you so uptight about this conversation? Why were you in such a hurry for me to hang up?”
“The journalist didn’t sound malicious at all,” Dena said, as she carried the tray of coffee cups to the table in her husband’s parents’ kitchen. “But the man was too irate. It’s a good thing you didn’t give him any details besides our names.”
“Why do you think so?” Bentzy asked.
“That newspaper gives the impression of being anti-Semitic,” she said. “The name…it doesn’t sound good. And the editor or secretary—whoever it was who answered your call—sounded very curt and angry, from what I could hear. But the reporter who spoke to me didn’t sound anti-Semitic at all. I thought a lot about it after our conversation. She was more…shocked, I would say.”
“Shocked at what?”
Dena laughed. “Shocked at the fact that the Nazis don’t rule the world anymore.”
“Nu, and how do you explain that craziness?”
“Maybe she’s sick, or had some type of episode or crisis. Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like the one you spoke to was even aware of her interview with us, right? It’s a good thing you didn’t tell him specifically that she had called and what she asked.”
“But why?”
“Maybe it’s a project she’s trying to do herself.” Dena took a deep breath. “Under his nose. I don’t know what the connection is between them, but maybe he is a neo-Nazi, and she is trying to incriminate him. Maybe she’s having a mental health crisis and is trying to hide it from him…”
Bentzy chuckled. “You have lots of ideas.”
“I have no idea how to explain it. But when I heard your conversation with the man, I suddenly felt like it would not be a good idea for him to understand why exactly she called.”
“And that’s why you wanted me to hang up? You’ve managed to completely confuse me.”
“Don’t ever underestimate a woman’s intuition,” his mother interjected for the first time. The senior Hanters were sitting at the table with Bentzy and Dena, quietly following the conversation. “By the way, thanks for the coffee, Dena. It’s excellent.” “If that reporter calls again,” Dena said, her eyes becoming dreamy, “I’ll try to gently get her to talk, so I can understand why she’s talking about the Wehrmacht and the SS in the nineties. I think she needs to go to a psychiatrist or something, for a serious consultation. But her boss, or whatever he is to her, is not the guy she should be talking to, because he really doesn’t sound like a nice person.”
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