Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 61 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.
The note in the bottle of cleaning soap:
I spoke to someone; she is Jewish. And not only her… The conversation was very strange. I’m very confused. Everything we knew…may not be true.
It’s not clear who rules. Those who we thought did—have long been defeated. Including the leaders and the army.
Maybe they control only these areas nearby? I didn’t quite understand.
Another person listened with me for some of the time, and she’s also confused.
We need to be very careful. Even though I wrote this note in gematria, destroy it right away, and don’t speak about this subject for a few days.
Also, until we see that they are not looking for us, I don’t want to meet.
“Where was this hidden?” Binyamin asked his mother, who had taken a break to run home at exactly the same time as his personal break. He folded the note, keeping a neutral expression on his face. “Is this what was in the bottle Naomi brought here this morning?”
He glanced outside through a slit in the window shade. The area in front of their house was empty. His break would be over in a few minutes, and he’d go back to the factory.
“Yes,” Rechel whispered. “I didn’t understand why she brought it, and why she was practically screaming at the top of her lungs that she’d bought me what I’d asked for…but alright.”
“And now everyone thinks that you surely have enough cleaning soap till Pesach!” he said. “You’ll need to make sure not to buy any more. Do you have some stocked up?”
“Worst-case, we’ll say that by accident, it all spilled. That’s not what is bothering me,” his mother said. “I’m more worried about what she wrote to you here. I knew you’d come to check it, so I came also.”
“How did you manage that?”
“With Katarina? I’m on cleaning duty today; I don’t have to be there when they are sewing and embroidering.” She pointed to the note. “Nu?”
“The truth is, it’s not very clear to me,” Binyamin said slowly.
“What, you weren’t able to decipher Naomi’s gematria?”
“That I was able to do, but I don’t really understand what she is saying.”
“Something worrisome?” Her forehead creased.
“Worrisome? No, not at all. I’d call it strange.”
The creases grew deeper. “What’s strange?”
“Mamme, I prefer not to talk about things that I don’t understand,” Binyamin replied gently. “Is it okay if we wait until I ask her clearly what she meant to say?”
“Does she even want to talk about it?”
He smiled, knowing when he was defeated. “I guess not. At least not yet.”
“Of course. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken the risk of sending this note. Just imagine if one of the Wangels would have demanded that she open the bottle that she was carrying early this morning.”
“Oy, Mamme, those things don’t happen anymore. It’s been years since they stopped people randomly to check what they’re carrying.”
“But if they see something suspicious?”
“What can be suspicious about someone bringing some soap to her mother?!”
“She was carrying the empty bottle too easily. I think she did try to make it look like it was full, but I saw that she was walking too fast, and it swung a bit in her hand.”
“Did anyone see her?”
“I don’t think so, baruch Hashem. Anyway, for now she’s sufficed with sending this note, eh?”
“Apparently. She wrote not to talk to her about anything for the next few days,” Binyamin admitted.
“It’s very good that she’s being cautious. So what are you going to do with that note now?”
“I’m going to destroy it.”
“How?”
“I’ll tear it into tiny pieces, and slowly we’ll get rid of them.”
Rechel nodded. “So… what did she write?”
Binyamin took a deep breath. “That she had a very strange conversation with someone.”
“With whom?”
“She didn’t write that here.”
Rechel toyed with the crocheted doily in the middle of the table, and then said, “What was strange about their conversation?”
“It seemed that she didn’t understand her too well, and the other person didn’t understand her…something strange like that. Naomi didn’t really provide details, and I need to wait until she’s ready to talk about it.”
Rechel sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I have to go back to the sewing room now. Are you also leaving the house?”
“Yes. I finish early this evening; we have to take care of everything for the matzos tonight.”
“Oh, I almost forgot about that!” A smile lit up her tired face. “Lots of hatzlachah with it, and may we have kosher and mehudar matzos for Yom Tov!”
“Amen!”
“When will you be finished?”
“Tonight we’ll take the oven out of the storage room, we’ll draw the water, and before dawn, we’ll start to bake, b’ezras Hashem. We hope to finish it all by ten, before it gets too warm out.”
“Will Naomi come with the children to the baking?”
He frowned. “Honestly, I have no idea. I totally forgot about the kids coming to watch… Also, I don’t know what they will do this year, when the class is split so clearly between us and the Reformers.”
“They also eat matzos; why should they care if their children see the baking?”
He smiled. “I don’t mind if they all come. It’s a nice experience, regardless.”
Indeed, that evening, the children came to watch the water, the mayim shelanu, being drawn, together with the adults. But the next day, the day of the baking, wasn’t quite as successful, and the “nice experience” was not exactly very nice.
Naomi realized it from far, as they approached the field where the oven was standing. It had been built by the skilled hands of Reb Dovid Kush, zichrono l’vrachah, forty-three years ago. But today, the familiar calls of matzah bakers sounded very different from that of other years.
“They are screaming there!” Dror Elkovitz said, as he left his partner in the line and came over to Naomi.
Rivku stopped and squinted. “What’s going on over there, Naomi?”
Naomi, too, squinted in the blinding light of the rising sun. “It sounds like an argument,” she said. “I hope it’s not anything worse.”
“Who is there?” Katy shouted. “I can’t see! Oh, it’s your brother, Naomi, and the rav, and a few other frum men… But there is one Reformer there; it’s Ernie, Leo Sherer’s nephew!”
“My sister-in-law’s father,” Rivku murmured. “I think he always comes to the baking. He’s in charge on our behalf.”
“And there is Leo Sherer himself!” Katy crowed. “What’s he doing, running over there…?”
“It’s my grandfather!” Dror boasted proudly, going back into the line and taking his partner, Chaim Landau’s, hand.
“You’re not going to do whatever you want here!” the vaunted grandfather proclaimed loudly.
The proud grandson’s forehead creased with discomfort.
“Why is your grandfather screaming at my father?” Chaim asked his partner, which did nothing to boost Dror’s already flagging mood.
Naomi intervened quickly. “Quiet, Chaim! Even if the adults are arguing about something, it doesn’t mean the children should get involved.”
“But we want to see the matzah baking!” Zuska cried, folding her arms. “What is going on?”
Naomi exchanged glances with Rivku for a moment. Then she left the group and marched forward to her brother Binyamin. “What’s happening, Binyamin?”
“We had some delays with the baking,” Binyamin said. “We had to clean the oven, because mice had taken up residence in it over the year. So we ended up coming too late to the baking.”
“What do you mean, ‘too late’?”
“We don’t bake at this hour outside, under the sun,” he said.
“We are baking!” someone shouted from behind him; it was Ernie. “And don’t you burden us with your chumros! We’ll finish the baking now, and then you can do whatever you want!”
Naomi realized that it wasn’t a good time for the children to observe the baking. “Kids, we’re going back to the classroom now,” she said to her group, raising a calming hand to ward off the grumblings of dissent that rippled through the pairs of children. Until now, they’d stood in obedient silence, while waiting for the signal that they could go into the field. “There were mice in the oven, and the cleaning took much longer, so now everything is delayed.”
The babble of voices behind her made her hurry even faster back to the classroom. Rivku didn’t say a word either, and Naomi was pleased about that. She had no idea if she’d grasped all the details of the issue, but in any case, she had no interest in making this personal between her and Rivku. The men would work it out, b’ezras Hashem, and she and Rivku would just be busy with what they were supposed to be busy with.
***
“In the end, our people took their sacks of flour and left. The Reformers stayed to bake, and tomorrow, we will bake our matzos,” Aryeh said, as he wiped down the chairs with a wet rag. He stopped to scrape at a sticky stain. There was a pleasant scent of cleaning in the air of the small house.
“And that’s it?”
“It wasn’t so simple. Wangel also came and got involved. Today the bakers got a special permit to be late to work, but tomorrow they won’t. They’ll have to deduct the time from their personal accounts.”
“I hope this doesn’t mar the atmosphere in the whole camp,” Naomi said as she scrubbed a metal pot. “The status quo was pretty good lately…”
“Yes, it really was,” he agreed.
“Is this pot clean enough?” she asked.
Aryeh put down his rag and came to run a finger over the pot. “It’s perfect—ready for kashering,” he said. “I wanted to ask you if it’s okay for me to participate in the baking tomorrow as well. The more hands there are, the faster we can do it.”
“Oh, okay,” she replied quietly. “Will it take a lot off your salary?”
“The regular fine. Something we can handle, b’ezras Hashem. But putting that aside, do you know what I was thinking during this whole argument, Naomi? That maybe for the status quo between us and the Reformers, what happened today wasn’t great, and I sure hope that the matzos they baked today are kosher enough, even if they are not mehudar. But for us, the ruckus was actually very good.”
“What do you mean? In what way was the ruckus very good for us?”
“Well, there’s a lot of agitation in the camp right now; there’s tension; everyone’s talking everywhere… I think that if we sit down with Binyamin this evening, and you tell him what you heard on the phone call, it won’t be obvious or unusual to anyone.”
“What’s so urgent that it has to be this evening?”
“Have mercy on the poor boy, Naomi,” Aryeh said with a smile. “He is so uptight, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
“And you think that the jumble of information that I can give him will calm him down? I’m afraid just the opposite will happen.”
“And then what?”
“I’m afraid he’ll do something hasty that will put us all in danger.”
“He won’t.” Aryeh was firm. “Binyamin is young and fiery, but he won’t do anything foolish.”
“Okay, so find a time and a good excuse. For my part, he can come and help us get ready for Yom Tov. I think anyone who hears about such help will accept it for what it is.”
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