Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 76 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.
Theresa was sitting at the piano, playing the overture for Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, when her sister walked in and sidled up behind her.
“You know I can’t stand it when people stand behind me when I play. And certainly not you—I know how happy you are to point out every time I go even slightly off-key!” Theresa muttered, her eyes fixed on her music notes.
“Stop playing now, please,” Helena said. She had a strange expression on her face.
Theresa could not see her sister’s face, but she heard it in her tone. She raised her hands from the keys and swiveled the round stool to face her sister. “What happened?”
“Something really odd. I wanted to call my friend in Vienna, because I forgot something in her house yesterday. But as soon as I picked up the phone, even before I dialed—I heard voices talking.”
“Maybe Papa is talking on his cordless now. Or Mama.”
“I don’t think so. They’re at the funeral for the Jewish preschool teacher.”
“What, she died?”
“Yes, this morning.”
“But she’s terribly young!”
“What?! Oh, no. Not Naomi. The one who preceded her, the older lady.”
“Oh. And you don’t think that in the middle of her funeral, Papa or Mama can talk on the phone, if they want to?” Theresa chuckled. “Come on!”
“First of all, it was a man, so it wasn’t Mama. And it wasn’t Papa—listen to what I’m telling you!” Helena’s eyes were smoldering. “I heard the two people who were speaking. They were talking German mixed with Hebrew—I recognize the sounds.”
“And what were they saying?”
“From what I understood from the German, it was, ‘For now, still don’t do anything.’ Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you?”
Theresa’s eyebrows knitted. “It does,” she said slowly. “It sounds like you picked up in the middle of someone’s call, and maybe the lines got crossed. It happens sometimes on phones.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere here. Where could we pick up a call from? Who would our lines be getting crossed with?” She sat down on the armchair near the piano. “Don’t tell me that it could be a conversation from Jorgan—you know, the village that is the closest to us—because it’s more than eighty kilometers from here! And besides, what about the Hebrew that I heard?”
“Maybe two of our Jews managed to craft a communications device, and they were talking between each other.” Theresa closed the piano cover. “Papa will explode if he hears it. These walkie-talkies can also be used to make contact with someone from the outside!”
“There is no such device that would work at a distance of more than eighty kilometers.”
“And if they manage to connect to an existing frequency?”
“I don’t understand enough about these things,” Helena said. “Actually I don’t understand these things at all.”
“But from what we do understand, it’s clear to me that it would be wise to go to Papa and Mama and tell them everything.”
“Papa’s blood pressure is going to skyrocket, and I have no idea how else he’ll react.”
“Neither do I, and that’s exactly why you should hurry to tell him. Go and get him and Mama from that group of Jews down there.” She stood up and walked over to the window. “Tell them what you heard, and let them decide what to do about it.”
“Do you think they have a way to detect such devices if they are cobbled together by someone—if they decide to search the whole camp for such a thing? We don’t even have enough manpower for that!”
“Well, if Papa brings all the people who are in on the secret here, then there is a group of sorts.”
“Oh, and those sleepy old guys will go from house to house, opening cabinets,” Helena muttered.
“There are a few young ones, too.”
“Them? They’ll advise us to kill everyone and be done with the story. You know how Bernard feels about this.”
“Not everyone is Bernard, don’t forget,” her sister replied. She turned away from the window. “Here are Papa and Mama now, coming back home. The Jews are heading for their cemetery.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Helena said, standing up quickly from her chair. At the door, she stopped. “And I’ll tell you what I’m not going to tell Papa: that one of those voices was a bit familiar, though I cannot remember who it belongs to. I didn’t recognize the second voice at all.”
“Why won’t you tell that to Papa?”
“As long as I can’t remember whose voice it is, I have nothing to tell him. He’ll accuse me of trying to cover up for someone or something, and I am not interested in being the scapegoat, if he doesn’t find a way to discover who the two people were.”
And without another word, she went down to the entry level and into the garden. Josef and Katarina were just walking through the gate that separated the camp from the manor house, and Josef raised an eyebrow when he saw his daughter.
“You look worried,” he said solicitously. “Did something happen?”
***
Binyamin stopped behind a narrow space between two trees, breathing heavily. He scanned the area below, focusing on the faraway shul. Someone was still standing on the rock and talking. It was hard for him to identify who it was, but it made no difference. As long as they hadn’t started heading for the cemetery, he could still pass the factory and cross the main path toward the residences before the people would get there and meet him.
His heart was still pounding, and his breaths came in short, fast spurts every few seconds. He didn’t know if someone had really come onto the line when he was talking or not. In the middle of the conversation with Bentzy Hanter, he’d suddenly heard strange noises on the phone, and had hastily hung up. He had no idea what the noises were. Maybe they were from the spices factory, but he couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t have time to clarify it.
Was it possible that one of the Wangels had wanted to suddenly use the phone? He’d never called Bentzy in the middle of the day before, but this time, it was for a very short and very urgent conversation. That was aside for the fact that he had assumed—with near certainty—that the Wangels were attending Morah Bilhah’s levayah, as part of their relationship with the residents of the camp.
He would go back to the clinic now, with the hope that Irwin hadn’t preceded him. And if he would be waiting there for him—certainly irate—he would have to understand that Binyamin simply could not miss his preschool teacher’s funeral. What about the fact that they hadn’t seen him in the crowd? Well, obviously, he’d been warned not to talk to anyone, so he had stood at a distance.
Binyamin crossed the path and continued to the no-man’s land behind the residential huts. He hugged the walls of the houses, dashing from one to the other, until he got to the clinic, and then he walked between the pine trees that shaded the left side of the building. He was just at the door now.
Irwin was there already, standing with fire in his eyes, his muscular arm resting on the doorpost. “Where were you?!” He grabbed Binyamin’s shoulder none too gently.
“Only others are allowed to go to the teacher’s levayah?” Binyamin muttered, careful about how he worded it. “No one forbade me from going. But you can relax—I didn’t speak to anyone there, and I didn’t even get close to anyone.”
“Where were you?!” the man growled again.
“I told you.”
“He went out to the levayah,” the doctor, just walking in, interjected. Babbe was right beside her.
“You went to the levayah, Binyamin?” Sarah Liba’s eyes flashed with irritation. “Even though you’ve been instructed to be on absolute bed-rest? That wasn’t right of you! Now go straight to bed!”
Irwin’s hand lifted from Binyamin’s shoulder, and the youth felt the eyes boring into him as he walked into the long room.
Babbe followed him. “You shouldn’t have exerted yourself that way!” she said angrily—genuinely so—and Binyamin didn’t know to what extent she believed that he was in such a weak state that he needed full time rest, or if she was afraid of Sherer’s reaction.
“I’ll be fine, Babbe, b’ezras Hashem,” he said, climbing into bed, with his clothes on. “And…don’t worry.”
“But I am worried!” she answered. Then she added in a lower tone, “First of all, it’s so everyone here will calm down. And daven that Leo Sherer will be less suspicious than me.”
Binyamin glanced behind him. Irwin had left the clinic. Had he gone to summon Leo?
Babbe turned to the desk at the front of the room and exchanged a few brief words with the doctor and one of the workers. Then she left the room.
“Where did my grandmother go?” Binyamin asked the doctor, who was approaching the bed with the same green pill that Babbe had given him yesterday.
“She also works in the small kitchen, if you recall.” The doctor put the pill on the small tray. “Swallow this.” She walked off, and Binyamin picked up the pill, wondering if he should swallow it. Maybe it would be wise for him to be asleep when Leo came. But it wouldn’t be such a deep sleep, and if they would try to wake him, they would succeed. He would just be less alert.
That was dangerous.
Without another thought, he slipped the pill into his pillowcase and arranged it under his head. He hadn’t even managed to close his eyes when Leo Sherer strode into the room, followed by Irwin. They both made a beeline for his bed.
“You are coming with me right now,” Leo said, without any preamble. “Outside. And you will show me exactly where you were standing. I don’t believe—” He stopped mid-sentence as his daughter suddenly burst into the room.
“Papa!” she said in a panicked tone. “Wangel is looking all over for you! He said that it’s urgent, and you should come to the manor house right away!”
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