Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 63 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.
“Asher ga’alanu v’ga’al es avoseinu mi’Mitzrayim…
Kein Hashem Elokeinu yagienu l’moadim…l’shalom, smeichim b’vinyan irecha…
V’nodeh Lecha shir chadash al ge’ulaseinu v’al pedus nafsheinu”
Chani’s little house was the largest of the whole extended family. Her family had moved into it when their youngest child was born. So it was self-understood that the family Seder was regularly held there. The closet that served as a wall between the two rooms of the house was pushed aside before Yom Tov, and three medium-sized tables were pushed against one another to create one long, festive table.
Zeide, seated at the head, raised his Haggadah to show Meir that finally, it was just about time to eat the matzah, and the boy excitedly announced, “Rachtzah!”
“Let’s see when the poritz will come for his regular visit to Moshke,” Binyamin muttered on the left side of Zeide, and stood up. He pushed aside the black curtain that covered the window. “It’s just a shame they didn’t throw a dead monkey in through the window, with a few secrets in its belly.”
“Brrr…” Chani, Naomi, and Rechel all shivered in unison.
“Golden coins!” his younger cousin Meir corrected him. “In the story the monkey had coins in its belly!”
“Coins don’t interest me,” Binyamin said, his eyes fixated on the window.
“Binyamin!” his mother said. “Please close the curtain. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Tonight they are a little more forgiving, usually,” her son replied as he hastily pulled the black fabric into its place. “I’m just uptight. I don’t want them to come just before Shefoch Chamascha, and we’ll have to change around the order of the Haggadah.”
“Hashem will help, Binyamin,” his uncle, sitting to Zeide’s right, said. “We’ve always managed with them. Hashem will help us this year, too. The main thing is that our wine is no longer on the table.”
“This time, Bernard is here,” Binyamin said. “So I hope we won’t need an open miracle to—”
“Quiet,” Naomi said suddenly, from her position closest to the door. Binyamin wanted to leap toward the window, but the look in his mother’s eyes stopped him in his tracks.
“Let’s sing,” Zeide Nachum said nervously, and the family began to sing Dayeinu once again.
A few moments later, they heard a staccato rapping at the door. Aryeh went over to open the door with a polite smile on his face. He stepped away from the opening and motioned with his hand to the inside of the house.
“Hag same’ah!” Josef Wangel wished them in Hebrew with a dreadful accent, a smile stretching from ear to ear. Bernard stood behind him, and Rechel, peeking over their heads, suppressed a sigh of relief when she saw that Katarina and the two girls had not joined the traditional visit. All she needed was to have to be nice to them now.
“Bruchim haba’im,” Zeide replied, also in Hebrew, and the younger children hurried to bring two more chairs to the table, next to Zeide. Polite handshakes were exchanged among the men.
Wangel settled into his chair and then asked, “So where are you up to now?”
“We’re just about to eat the matzah,” said Yiddel, Chani’s husband.
“Oh! The matzah! You made a big ruckus this year about those, didn’t you?” Wangel sounded disapproving. “I hope that that didn’t destroy their taste.”
“Especially as you didn’t have available blood to mix into the dough,” Bernard commented from his father’s right, reaching for Zeide’s Haggadah. He held it upside down and leafed through it for a few moments, before putting it back in its place.
“So we are getting up to wash our hands,” Zeide instructed, and the room slowly emptied as everyone went to wash. This time, the silence was not only due to the fact that they’d washed their hands; there was something icy in the air.
“Zeide,” Binyamin whispered. He’d hurried to bring the bowl and cup to his grandfather, but found his grandfather walking over to the sink like everyone else.
“Not now, not now,” Zeide whispered. “It’s not a good idea to put on any show of respect for someone else in front of them. Who knows what they will think when they see that; maybe they will expect someone to bring them water to wash also, or something like that?”
“True, I didn’t think about that.” They were the last two at the sink, and they hastily washed their hands and joined the family again. They had such a limited number of matzos this year—more limited than any other year—and yet they’d have to share them with their unwanted guests. There was no other choice.
Bernard hardly touched his piece of matzah. Maybe it was for anti-Semitic reasons, or perhaps he was already full from visits to other homes. His father, in contrast, chewed heartily and praised the crispy taste of the matzah.
“But where is your wine?” he asked after a few bites. “You have a mitzvah to drink five cups, no?”
“Four,” Zeide Nachum corrected politely. “The final cup we pour and leave on the table until the morning meal, and then one of us drinks it.” He didn’t mention Eliyahu Hanavi; the figure heralding the Geulah was one with too sensitive a connotation to explain at length, and in truth, even briefly.
“So, if you have four, won’t you honor us with even one?” Wangel chuckled, and then nodded at the sight of the wine bottle that was brought to the table. This wine bottle had been prepared beforehand, in anticipation of this visit.
A wild thought flew into Binyamin’s head: If only they had poisoned this bottle before Yom Tov!
And then what?
It wasn’t a real solution.
First of all, Hauptmann Katarina was not here, and he didn’t want to imagine what she would do if she’d discover her husband and son lying dead here in their house. And even if they did find a way somehow to poison her and the other two Nazis, what would happen then? There were a few other people of rank outside the camp who knew about its existence. If something happened to the Wangels, their people on the outside would figure out right away that something strange was going on in the camp. They’d send forces in, and that would be the end of them.
But if…if what Naomi had heard on that phone call was correct…
Binyamin shook his head. The confusion between what was real and what was perhaps not true gave him no peace.
“I don’t drink much, as you recall,” Wangel said in a cautious tone to Zeide, who was filling a cup for him. “Just half a cup, not more. And not more for Bernard either.”
His son snickered. “Half a cup? What is that for me, Father?”
“For you, it is one conversation too much with some guy Hanter,” his father grumbled, unaware that three pairs of ears in the room perked up at that second.
“I already told you that I didn’t speak to anyone!”
“Just one or two of your roommates,” his father muttered.
“They don’t really know anything!” the younger man hissed.
“Just our phone number.”
Binyamin silently chewed on his matzah, hoping that his reddening face was being attributed to his concerted effort to finish his portion in time. Naomi, from her place further down the table, wondered if she’d heard right, and Aryeh was pondering if this was a bait of some type, or if the father and son were arguing in riddles, without knowing anything.
So were these Hanters connected to Wangel and the camp, after all?
If so, the Nazis should know about Naomi’s phone calls. Why, though, had they not done anything about it, even though nearly a week had passed?
Zeide didn’t volunteer to settle the argument between Josef and Bernard, and certainly wasn’t going to offer his chinuch advice on errant young adults. He simply proffered the bottle of mevushal wine to Wangel, who poured for his son a third of a cup, not more.
Bernard didn’t argue; he didn’t look pleased but said nothing. He downed the liquid in his cup in one gulp, and remarked something about how they knew how to make pretty good wine here. Then he stood up, pushing his chair back with a squeak, and walked to the door. A moment later he came back and picked up the wine bottle. “It’s okay if I take this with me, right?” he asked.
“Certainly, Herr Lieutenant Bernard,” Zeide Nachum replied, and the long-haired young man walked out.
“Are you going home, Bernard?” his father called after him.
“Yes, yes, calm down, Father!” His son laughed and opened the door wide. “Ah, ah! Finally, some clean air!” His father laughed but stayed seated, waiting for the next round of matzah, and the others in attendance pretended they hadn’t heard a word.
***
“And to think that all of this is one big deception!” Binyamin whisper-shouted. He had kept everything stuffed inside him until Motza’ei Yom Tov, and then it all erupted.
Binyamin, Naomi, and Aryeh had just emerged from their grandparents’ room after Havdalah, and Binyamin was speaking as if Bernard had left their house that very minute, after taking with him nearly a liter of wine—wine that was the product of a lot of toil and effort. The three of them were standing in the empty kindergarten room, whispering. The rooms of the older people were in the building right near the preschool, and they had no interest in someone coming to check what Nachum and Sarah Liba Einhorn’s grandchildren were doing in the big room.
“Who said that it’s a deception?” Aryeh asked.
“Huh?” Binyamin looked at him. “You heard what the Hanter person said.”
“But the fact that the Wangels know Hanter only means that we can’t believe a single word of that phone call,” Naomi said.
“Who said that they know them?” Binyamin argued. “They mentioned them, fine, but that doesn’t mean they know the specifics about that conversation.”
“They mentioned the ‘conversation with Hanter’!” Naomi almost shouted.
“Maybe that just means they know that such a conversation took place, but that’s it.”
“But I didn’t offer that Hanter woman a word about us. They are not supposed to know that the call took place from our camp.”
“Unless there’s an option to check on the phone line which calls were made from it.” Binyamin shrugged, not noticing that Naomi had paled. “But we have to find that out from Elkovitz. I think I’ll corner him for a little talk tomorrow. Enough with his evasions—we need to decide what we are going to do, moving forward.”
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