Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 74 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.
Naomi,
I never want to talk to you again.
Is this how the metzora felt when banished from the camp?
Binyamin sat in the corner bed on the far wall of the clinic, his eyes fixed on the small huddle taking place near the door. Babbe was there, as was the doctor, Leo Sherer, and his older son-in-law. Too bad Leo hadn’t chosen David Elkovitz to send him to the clinic; instead, it was the broad, husky man standing there with an expressionless face and his eyes flitting from one metal bed to the next. Every time they reached the bed in the far corner, they paused for a few seconds, and then moved on, to the window and then to the first part of the room.
Leo was pontificating animatedly, and Babbe listened to him with a somber expression on her face, without so much as a glance toward her isolated grandson.
“Overwork,” Dr. Katzburg concluded aloud. “So we will start with some rest and something to calm him.”
“Something serious to calm him,” Leo said loudly, turning to face Binyamin. The latter turned his eyes to the ceiling. Did Leo really believe that everything was hallucinations, or was this his wily way of silencing him?
Babbe said something—Binyamin couldn’t hear what it was—but after a moment, everyone dispersed, aside for Leo’s son-in-law, Irwin, who approached Binyamin’s bed. He pulled over one of the metal chairs with a grating scrape, and sat down near the facing wall.
“Shhh….” the doctor chided. “He needs to rest. Please, keep it quiet.”
In contrast to the last time Binyamin had been hospitalized here, there was no quiet. Three other patients lay in beds closer to the door, speaking amongst themselves, and Mottel Kush, who came in with his father and the Rav, was not making a particular effort to keep quiet. He sat down near his baby’s cradle, together with the other two men, and began to discuss something with them. Babbe also got involved, and Binyamin wondered to himself with a wry smile what would have happened had he really been suffering from hallucinations, chas v’shalom. Would this bustling clinic have worsened his condition?
“Maybe you should lie down,” Irwin said hoarsely. “You need to rest.”
“I don’t need to rest,” Binyamin replied in frustration and stood up.
The other man immediately sat up in his chair. “Lie down,” he ordered, and Binyamin suddenly realized that he had hardly ever heard his voice. It was so different from his brother-in-law’s!
“Lying down won’t help me.” Binyamin remained standing but didn’t walk away from the bed. The other man stood up as well, and Babbe hurried over from the other side of the room.
“Binyamin! Please, lie down,” she instructed. “Dr. Katzburg will decide soon which medication is good for you and at which dosage, and you’ll feel better very soon, b’ezras Hashem. Meanwhile, you need to rest.” Her eyes were flashing ominously, and Binyamin knew she was wondering if he had impulsively decided to get into a physical altercation with his assigned captor.
No, he was no fool. He had just wanted to examine his options here.
So he obeyed.
But more than two hours passed, and the only thing he got during that time was a cup of tea. Irwin’s eyes were focused on the entire serving process, until the moment when Binyamin finished drinking the tea.
“Supper will be here soon,” Babbe said in a hard tone, and walked off.
As soon as she did, Mamme arrived at the clinic. “Binyamin!” she said as she approached the bed.
“Please don’t come close!” Irwin leaped from his seat. “He needs quiet and rest; those are the orders I received.”
“Orders? From who?” Mamme asked.
The man did not answer. He stood with his arms folded near Binyamin’s bed, as if blocking him off from the rest of the world. “One minute for a short conversation,” he said after a moment’s deliberation. “Please stand there, near the medicine chest.”
Was he afraid Mamme would give him something? That Binyamin would try to give her something?
Binyamin fingered the scrap of paper under his pillow, on which he had written all he had left to say to Naomi, his traitorous sister. And to think they had been so close all these years!
Mamme wasn’t the one who should have come here now; Naomi should have. Let her see what her excessive anxiety had caused. She’d gone to Leo to tattle on him! He didn’t think she’d actually carry out her threat. It was sad to learn how it was impossible to trust anyone.
Mamme stood silently, gazing at him. She was too far; there was no way he could get her the short note. No, Naomi should not come here. She shouldn’t be able to celebrate her victory. Perhaps she would also think it was all hallucinations, and that he was rightly being hospitalized!
A bitter smile crossed Binyamin’s lips. If it was hallucinations, then Naomi also needed to be sent here. He wondered what she’d say if Leo Sherer would also summon her suddenly, and would accuse her of spreading lies, and then send her to be supervised strictly by Dr. Katzburg, Babbe, and Irwin all together!
“Are you alright, Binyamin?” Mamme finally asked.
“So-so,” he said.
“Does something hurt you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you feel?”
“Anger.”
“Anger?” She looked back toward Babbe. Poor thing, she had no idea what was really going on here. She’d suddenly received a message that her son was at the clinic because— Wait, what had they told her he was sick with? Delusions? Hallucinations? Weakness of the mind and soul? If so, his answer was very apt. “Anger at Naomi,” he clarified.
“Why?”
“I can’t speak now,” he said explicitly, pointing with his chin toward Irwin, “but tell her that—”
Leo’s son-in-law took a giant step toward him. “You won’t pass any messages to anyone,” he growled. “You heard my father-in-law’s warning, right? If you don’t choose to help yourself now, we’ll have to let Hauptmann Wangel handle your treatment.”
Mamme paled, and she grabbed the edge of the night table she was leaning on.
“I’m not passing over any secret information,” Binyamin said from the bed. “I just wanted you to tell her, Mamme—” the man moved closer toward the bed, clearly angry—“that bli neder I will never talk to her again. She went too far!”
“But why?” Mamme was blinking rapidly. Binyamin felt so bad for her, but there was nothing he could do. Naomi, what have you done to us all?
“It’s more than a minute,” Irwin announced. “Please leave. And don’t come again without prior arrangement.”
“Ask Naomi herself!” Binyamin called out to his mother’s back as she walked away, her posture hunched, like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. Irwin’s eyebrows had knitted angrily, as if he suspected a plot being woven here. Quickly, Binyamin shouted, “That’s not how a good sister behaves!”
Let the man think it was a foolish case of sibling rivalry.
Irwin went back to his chair, and Binyamin stood up to daven Ma’ariv. Just as he finished, Babbe arrived with his supper, and a small green pill on the tray. She put the food on a low table and pulled it over to the bed. “Wash your hands, Binyamin,” she said, without looking at him, “and try to finish everything that’s here. Strength and good health come to us from HaKadosh Baruch Hu through the plate.”
Binyamin stood up to go to the sink, as Irwin leaped up to follow him. He ate his meal in silence, ignoring the small pill in the corner of the tray. After bentching, he looked at the tray and then picked up the pill, studying it from all angles.
“Swallow it!” his guard barked.
Should he? Is that what Babbe had meant?
Binyamin looked at the desk near the door. Babbe was speaking to the doctor, and he couldn’t catch her eye for even a minute. But she had told him to finish everything she had served, so apparently she’d meant to hint that he could swallow this pill.
So he did, and then leaned back, absolutely bored. The room bustled around him, but in his distant corner, there was silence. Babbe got ready to go home, people came in and out, and he was left with himself and his depressing thoughts. Was Leo planning to leave Irwin here with him for as long as he was in the clinic? And for how long would he be imprisoned here? Two days? A week? A month?
And who would maintain contact with Hanter in the meantime?
Binyamin learned a bit by heart and then recited Shema and fell asleep, without glancing once at his bodyguard. It didn’t look like he’d be able to take a nighttime walk from his bed, as he’d done on the previous nights that he was here.
He slept deeply that entire night, perhaps because of the pill. When he woke up, Irwin was there, on the chair, alert as he’d been the night before. Had he been here the whole time? Sleeping? Had the shifts changed? Binyamin had no idea. He decided to ignore the man for now.
He stood up to daven Shacharis, aware of the fact that he’d missed the minyan in shul anyway. He would ask for his tefillin to be sent later.
The minute he finished, Josef Wangel walked in, accompanied by Sherer. They both walked straight to his bed, enveloped in the silence that had suddenly fallen over the entire clinic.
Was that it? Had Leo decided to report him?
Had Naomi taken this into consideration as well?
“Good morning,” Wangel said with a scowl.
Binymain nodded in greeting. “Good morning, Herr Wangel.”
“You’ve decided to slack off a bit, eh?” the man asked. “Because you don’t look particularly ill.”
“I—” Binyamin glanced at Leo, not knowing what to say.
“I was disappointed to discover when I got the factory this morning that you were not there. We received a very important order, and I expected that you’d be the one to do the finishing, as usual.” The Nazi cleared his throat. “What exactly is going on with you?”
“It’s an emotional weakness of sorts,” Leo hurried to interject. “The doctor also diagnosed it as such.”
“If it doesn’t pass in the next day or two, you’ll have to train someone else instead of him.” Wangel tapped his foot impatiently and studied Binyamin angrily. “In any case, the time has come to do that. We can’t have the whole factory dependent on the whims of a spoiled youngster.”
When the Nazis had risen to power, they’d murdered all the mentally ill people in Germany, not only Jews. That’s what the adults had recounted, and this move led to the establishment of the concentration camps. Was Wangel thinking about that option now?
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