Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 67 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.
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Binyamin,
This animal was wounded, and they weren’t able to take off the skin properly in the back and rib area. We dealt with it this way, but the soaking only made the tear worse, as you’ll see for yourself. Please check if it’s not better to divide it into two furs, a small one and a big one, instead of the strange shape it is in now.
Pinchas
Binyamin carefully removed the note attached with a pin to the shiny black fur resting on the low table to his left. It was a good thing that he had time until he had to decide what to do. It wasn’t really nice of Pinchas to throw this onto him. If Sherer would blow a fuse that they’d cut a good fur, slashing its value at once, why should he, Binyamin, be to blame that they hadn’t handled the animal better?
He wanted to speak to Pinchas, to gently probe about the details of what had happened, but Pinchas wasn’t there now. He had no reason to make up lost hours. He’d worked normally the week before.
“Chol Hamoed work.” Binyamin sighed to the wall in front of him. “That’s what your work is worth. Wouldn’t it have been much better had you taken off then, like all of us?”
“It will be okay,” someone said, putting a hand on the sewing machine. “I started working on it, but I didn’t finish yet.”
“I’m sewing by hand now, in any case: the Wangel insignia,” Binyamin replied to David. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked beyond his quiet work corner; no one seemed to be approaching. “You can continue working now on the repair; it won’t bother me.”
David Elkovitz sat down on the floor, a wide, black band in his hand. “Talk,” he whispered.
And Binyamin spoke quietly, bent over the white fur that had been waiting for him since yesterday, nearly finished. He affixed the gold-colored metal ellipse to its place as he repeated Naomi’s words to the best of his recollection. When he finished, the band of leather in the machine was properly stretched out in its place, and the old brown, worn down strip was on the floor next to Elkovitz.
“You know, it could have sounded delusional,” Elkovitz said.
“It—could—have—sounded…?” Binyamin repeated carefully, forming a loop through which to knot the final stitch.
“I’ve been living for years with the feeling that something isn’t right here. Turn the machine on now, with nothing in it.”
“Of course it’s not right. Does it make sense that the children of the King of the world serve as slaves to a few megalomaniac Nazis?” Binyamin retorted bitterly. He moved over to the sewing machine. His foot pressed the pedal with force, and the machine began to rattle normally, without the grating shriek of earlier.
“Keep going, keep it running. My answer is that of course it doesn’t make sense, but I have this feeling that there’s a major secret here, a secret they are hiding from us.”
“And do you think your father-in-law knows about it?”
“My father-in-law? Are you nuts? It’s a secret that the Wangels and all their friends who are part of it would kill for!”
“I’m just wondering, what’s this newspaper that they sometimes give us? Because according to it, they are not lying at all, and the situation in the world is very grim for us. Do you think that he—”
“The Der Cosmos? One big fake, in my opinion. And you can stop the machine—it’s working fine.”
They both fell silent. Elkovitz bent over to collect his tools from the floor.
“I want to call Hanter myself,” Binyamin whispered decisively.
“Who will answer you at three in the morning?”
“I’ll call early in the morning, after davening, a few minutes before everyone gets here.”
Elkovitz scratched his head and then said, “If I’m able to, I’ll also come here. But very early, okay? Before the Wangels wake up and start using the phone in the house.”
“Of course.”
“Meanwhile, I’m forgetting my pliers under the table, so I’ll have a reason to show up here so early.”
And he was gone.
Binyamin sat bent over his light-colored fur, not raising his head until he was finished. At the other end of the production hall, far away from him, figures were moving around, each one doing his own work. But the young man felt that he was much further away from them than just the physical distance that separated them. He wasn’t here at all, and he had no idea where he was. It was a good thing his hands were doing the work almost automatically.
A fake.
There aren’t really Nazis.
Jews live in peace and tranquility.
Was it true that only one big fake had kept them trapped here all these years?!
By the time he had to leave for shul, he’d finished the job. The fur was resting on the designated shelf, and Binyamin went up to the ground level, washed his hands, and headed out to shul. His eyes were burning, and his arms felt heavy. As he walked, he stretched his arms over his head, then downward and to the sides.
“Nice to see such a young, energetic youth!” Leo Sherer called out to him, appearing from between the trees. “It’s great to start your day with refreshing morning exercises. Did you get a lot done, Shvirtz?”
“Yes, baruch Hashem.” The most important thing he’d done, of course, was have that conversation with David. And he hoped, with Hashem’s help, that they could get even more done this morning.
The question was how safe it was to call when the Wangels were liable to be partners to the conversation. Who could guarantee that they were still sleeping?
“Do you think the Hauptmann will come to the factory today?” he asked politely. “The fur I finished overnight came out beautiful, and I’d love for him to see it with his own eyes.”
“You’re not usually the boastful type.” Leo’s face clouded. “And don’t forget for a moment who taught you this skill, Shvirtz.”
“Of course I remember.” Binyamin smiled pleasantly, not mentioning that from the first minute, the stitches that he made were many times nicer than those of Leo Sherer. Although Max, of blessed memory, and Leo belonged to a famous family of furriers from Budapest, Leo had apparently been very young when the Nazis invaded Hungary, and he hadn’t had much experience actually holding the needle. He was good at managing and controlling, and he knew the principles of handling furs. But sewing, finishes, and precision were not his strong points. Binyamin’s instructor had been the old man, Max, and his stitches, too, did not compare with the precision of those formed by his remarkable protégé.
Binyamin kept walking, realizing that he would not get an answer out of Leo about the Wangel family’s plans in the coming hours.
Wait—what about Aunt Chani?
“Aryeh!” He grabbed his brother-in-law’s shoulder immediately after davening. “Is your mother already at the manor house now?”
“She should be leaving her house any minute, I think.”
“And the Wangels aren’t awake yet, right?”
“Now? For sure not.”
“When do they get up?”
“I don’t really know. I think she puts a tray with something light to eat near the doors of their rooms, and they only get up after that. Later on, they come down to a big breakfast.”
Binyamin lowered his voice. “I want to call Hanter soon. How late do you think they sleep—and don’t use their phones?”
“I can’t promise, but I believe that right now they are still sleeping.”
“I know, it’s rare for them to be around when we go out to work…” Binyamin murmured to himself. “Right? They don’t usually show their faces the first hour. Usually.”
“Right,” Aryeh replied, somewhat hesitantly.
“So I’m going to make a run for it and try to take advantage of these few minutes,” Binyamin whispered. “Daven for me.”
He walked briskly toward the factory, hoping that Leo had already finished inspecting the output from the night shift, and that he was also eating breakfast by now.
The factory was completely empty. Binyamin hastened to his corner, stuck his hand under the pile of furs waiting for him—and pulled out the phone. It was a terrible hiding place. But as a temporary spot to put something for the nighttime hours, it was fine.
He sat down near the machine, holding the black fur, but he didn’t cut it or do anything else. He’d start the outside seam, and under the cover of the buzz of the motor, he’d try to carry on a conversation.
But he couldn’t make the call.
There was no line.
The device wasn’t working, even after he pressed all the buttons as Naomi had directed him. There was no long tone, or even a broken tone, or any other sound from the rectangle. Even when he tried to press the digits, which he knew by heart, the device did not react. As if it had never worked, and would never work.
A figure approached from the distance, and Binyamin hastily shoved the device under the large fur. Now? Who was coming now?
After a moment, he recognized David’s gait and relaxed.
“Did you call?” the man asked, without preamble.
“I can’t.” Binyamin sounded frustrated. “There’s no dial tone.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
“My sister explained it to me, when she told me about her call with Hanter.”
“Give it to me, I’ll try,” Elkovitz said, bending down under the sewing machine. He also tried, but got the same results.
“Maybe the Wangels realized that your wife had crafted another device, so they somehow made it impossible to use?” Binyamin mumbled.
“I don’t think they could do such a thing without having the actual phone in their hands. And I also think—” he smiled, but his eyes were dark—“that if they would suspect such a thing, they wouldn’t suffice with simply destroying the device that she’d built.”
“So what’s wrong here?”
“I think there’s a simple reason for why the phone isn’t working.” He studied the metal rectangle. “The device is too far from its main part, which is in the manor house. That’s how it works with these phones. They need a base that is connected to a phone line in the wall of the Wangels’ house. And when the extension—this part—is too far, it doesn’t work. But I have to ask my wife.”
“Herr Wangel uses his cordless phone here.”
“His is more sophisticated,” David replied. “Remember, this thing is just a pathetic imitation.”
Binyamin took a deep breath. “I’m going to talk in the woods,” he whispered. “That’s closer to the manor house. I’ll go to the hilly area, where no one has any reason to be.”
“And what will you answer if someone asks you what you’re doing there?”
“That I needed some peace and quiet—you know, to be with nature and the birds,” the boy replied. He stuck the phone into his sock again, and without another word, he ran outside, himself.
He didn’t go toward the residences or the fields, and instead turned northward, to the trees. He went further uphill, breathless, making sure that he was not visible from the manor house at any time. Even once he reached the top of the hill, he saw that the high wall continued on: the barrier between them and the world.
He slumped down at the foot of the wall, and pulled out the phone.
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