Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 72 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.
On brown packing paper, the words etched with a sharp instrument of some kind:
Reb Yosef, at 3. In the preschool.
Yosef Posen washed his hands with soap as his eyes studied the empty paper bag. His six children were sleeping—or in various stages of falling asleep—beyond the wood partition, so he lowered his voice. “Since when is this here?”
“It came with a bit of sugar inside, about half a cup,” his wife replied, a crease in her forehead. “It was tied with a string and hanging on the doorknob.”
“Who owes us sugar?”
“No one. It seems to be someone who didn’t want anyone to notice that there are letters etched into the bag, in the event anyone comes to take a closer look at it.”
“It’s not the first time that someone is returning to you something that they borrowed, right?”
“It’s not. But we don’t usually like to lend expensive things like sugar, which is why it’s suspicious to me. I checked the package when the children were not looking, and when I saw the writing, I hid it right away.”
“I see.”
“The person who sent this message is being very, very careful.”
“Make sense,” Reb Yosef said, studying the words again. He sighed. “So he chose me. I wonder if it’s because he thinks I’ll be the authority most accepted by the others, or if it’s because I showed the most skepticism.”
“Where are you supposed to go at three? Will you be able to leave the bakery in the middle of the work hours?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “It means three in the morning,” he whispered.
His wife gasped. “No! What does he have to do in the preschool at three in the morning?!”
“It’s just a dark, quiet corner.”
“With older residents in the same building who might wake up from the slightest noise.”
“I assume that he thought about this and decided that this place is still preferable to some others.”
“Hmm,” she said. “But what is he looking for there?”
“He wants to show me something important.”
“Something dangerous?”
Yosef was silent for a prolonged moment. “The thing he wants to show me? I don’t know.”
“I’m worried,” she whispered.
“If we are caught going out, it won’t be very pleasant, but how dangerous can it be? What would the Wangels do already? They’ll cut our salary?”
“It’s our children’s food!” his wife countered. “And it’s not only that. You know very well how much hatred hides behind their smiles. Things are only peaceful and smooth because we try to be one hundred percent obedient to their orders.”
“I think they also need us a lot,” he said. He didn’t mention anything about the delusional stories told to him by Binyamin Schvirtz and David Elkovitz, stories that had totally altered his view of this place. “And I’m not being careless. I just don’t think anything dangerous is going to happen by my going to the preschool at 3:00 in the morning. In any case, relax—if I go, I’ll be extremely careful.”
***
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Dena asked anxiously when she saw that it was still middle-of-the-night dark outside. “I hope it’s not some neo-Nazi, and all he wants to do is get you to the factory in the middle of the night.”
“And what will he do there?” Bentzy smiled and slipped the ring of keys into his pocket. “The gates are locked, everything is barred and guarded as always; what are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know. Their story is so strange.”
“And yet, it rings true.” Bentzy moved toward the front door. “He asked for one thing: to speak with us at this hour, when he can include other people in the conversation, so that they will believe him.”
“So that others will believe him? First we have to believe him!”
“Apparently he’s succeeded on that front, more or less. It sounds like his complicated task right now is to persuade people in his camp that everything they have been told over decades is an absolute lie.”
“Hostages…” Dena murmured.
“Exactly. I’m leaving now, because my father is picking me up downstairs in another minute. Good night, and don’t worry. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye out, and we’ll be careful.”
***
“Let’s say in the end, you’ll figure out where exactly we are.” For Yosef Posen, sitting on the floor in the corner of the darkened preschool classroom, this was the first phone call of his life. He held the receiver cautiously, a bit far from his ear, as if snakes were about to slither out of it at any second. “Let’s say you’ll figure it out. Do you have an idea how to help us?”
“What will happen if we get there, backed up with weapons, and ask to see you?” Bentzy countered with a question of his own.
“What kind of backup? From the authorities?” Yosef was appalled. “We cannot have that, under any circumstances! We don’t rely on the goyim.”
“And besides,” Binyamin interjected, as he heard every word, “they will order us to hide, and will tell you that it’s all nonsense; they may even take you on a short tour so you can see for yourselves that there’s nothing but a factory here. And what will happen to us after you leave? I don’t even want to think about it.”
“You think they would actually kill you?”
“Absolutely,” Yosef said with confidence.
“If they have weapons…” Binyamin murmured. “Who said that they even have ammunition? It’s been years since a single bullet has been fired here.”
“And explosives?” Yosef was not ready to back down. “Maybe they’ve hidden explosives here in a few places, and with one press of a button they can blow up and destroy the whole place? That’s what my father-in-law told me that they said about the ghetto in Budapest—I don’t know if it was true. He was deported from there when everything was still intact.”
“The Budapest ghetto remained intact until the end of the war,” Moshe Hanter interjected on the other end of the line. “My mother, may she live and be well, was from there. Whoever held on till the end survived.”
“What was her maiden name?” Yosef gaped at the phone. “Hashem! It’s possible that we have relatives in the world who survived!”
“Fuchs,” Hanter said.
“That’s not my father-in-law’s name…” Yosef said, his eyes still opened wide. “But until right now, I never thought about the relatives we could meet, if we ever get out of here! Who knows how many people might still be alive?”
“That’s a good question,” Hanter replied quietly. “Because while the Nazis haven’t ruled the world for fifty years, during the six years of the war, they managed to kill lots and lots of Yidden. Multitudes.” He didn’t state a number, and they didn’t ask.
There was silence on both ends of the line.
Bentzy recovered first. “The question we are asking again is what we can do initially to help you. We weren’t considering reaching out to the Austrian police, as you are afraid that they are collaborating with your camp directors. But what about the Israeli Consulate?”
“What is that?” Binyamin asked, leaning toward the phone.
“It’s the Israeli representative here in Austria. The embassy.”
“Israel?” Binyamin’s mind was working feverishly. “So Britain finally let the Jews establish a state in Palestine?”
“Yes.”
“And who controls it?”
“Not our type of people, unfortunately.”
“The Zionists?”
Yosef and Binyamin suddenly exchanged glances, because just then they heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. and it was obvious that whoever was walking was not trying to conceal his arrival.
“Shhh…” Binyamin whispered into the phone before he could hear the answer. He switched off the phone and grabbed it from Posen’s hand. They hurriedly huddled under the nearest desk, which was hidden by other desks and stacks of small chairs. The two crouched in silence, their eyes fixed on the closed door of the preschool.
A few moments later, it opened, and a dim light shone inside from the hallway. Binyamin breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the high shoes that belonged to the elderly Reb Shlomo Roth. Yosef Posen, who was a bit nearsighted, could not see from such a distance, but he saw Binyamin’s reassuring hand motion.
“Your shver,” Binyamin mouthed to him.
The older man did not enter; he just flicked the switch at the door, and the room was suddenly bathed in light.
“What are you doing?” This was the voice of Sima Roth, Reb Shlomo’s wife, who was standing somewhere behind him. She sounded tense. “Turn off the light, Shlomo! Woe to us if the Wangels see windows lit up right now!”
“So how do you want me to check if they didn’t leave a kid here?” he grumbled in the darkness that once again enveloped the room. “And there are curtains here, did you forget?”
“They are not thick enough.”
“So what do you want me to do? We heard talking, and you got nervous, but I can’t check anything in the dark!” He leaned forward a bit. “And you surely don’t want me to bump into a table and break a hand or leg, do you?”
“Chalilah!” she said loudly. “Is anyone here? Hello? Anyone here?”
Binyamin and Yosef tried to breathe as quietly as they could. They waited a few moments until the elderly couple shuffled out of the preschool room and back to their room. They waited a bit longer, until they heard a door closing in the distance.
Binyamin dialed again. “Hello?” he whispered into the phone.
“Yes, we’re here. Are you alright?”
“Yes, baruch Hashem. It wasn’t a real danger. But now that the door to the room we are in was opened, we prefer not to talk.” He took a deep breath and carefully emerged from his hiding place. “So we’ll leave things as they are for now, alright? Don’t do anything until we make contact again. Over the next day or two, I want to try to find out something important. And daven for us, please.”
“What do you want to check?” Yosef asked a minute later, after he also stood up and brushed off his clothes. “If my wife would know how I hid from her parents tonight…”
“I want to check if Wangel really has weapons,” Binyamin said, looking at the now inactive phone.
“You’re not serious!”
“I’m very serious.”
“And how will you do that? You plan to get Josef so angry that he’ll want to shoot you, and then you’ll check if he’s really doing it?!”
Binyamin’s lips curled into a distorted a smile as he leaned on the board of the classroom, which bore math problems in chalk in Naomi’s handwriting. “No. But I want to try to get into the estate; I’ve thought of a way. I once heard Bernard and his father talking about some type of closet, or a little room, where they store clothes and weapons. I want to get in there.”
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