Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 94 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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An excerpt from the contract signed between the representatives of the residents of Samson Lager and unofficial representatives of the Austrian government:
…All those who have left the camp, of every age, commit to maintaining absolute silence regarding their lives as experienced since the end of the war, or from their birth, until they left the camp grounds.
In addition, each individual who was at the camp for more than a year, but less than ten years, will be compensated with fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Every individual who was in the camp for more than ten years will receive five hundred thousand U.S. dollars.
Being that on the day of the departure from the camp, two civilians were killed, and there was no prosecution in a legal court for this crime, a complaint was received by the Salzburg police. According to what is agreed above, the case will be closed, and the suspects in this matter will not be prosecuted. As noted, this is on condition that the silence regarding Samson Lager is maintained.
Aside for this, those who left the camp will be given Austrian citizenship, which will go into effect without a waiting period.
Anyone who transgresses the secrecy agreement before the expiration date of this contract will be liable, based on his signature of the contract, for heavy fines, as stipulated henceforth…
“They clearly said it’s going to be a lawsuit for huge sums of money,” Rechel said as she and her friend Ruchelle swept the floor of the preschool after the day’s sessions had ended. The preschool was one of the few elements functioning in a way that was reminiscent of their previous lives, after a number of parents had reached out to Naomi and asked her to continue occupying their children in the mornings here in the guesthouse as well.
The conference hall that had been allocated for the preschool to use was spacious and beautiful. Both the children and their parents had been stunned by the elegant furnishings, and they warmly thanked Mrs. Domb, the proprietor of the place.
“So of course we’ll be quiet, somehow,” Shifra Cohen-Sighet said.
“And my grandson is one of the only residents in the camp who won’t get anything,” Ruchelle said with a sigh as she arranged the chairs into a circle. “But it doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t have wanted to stay there even one more day to wait for him to get a little older. Even if—” She fell silent, and no one asked if she wanted to say that his mother would have wanted exactly that to happen. The baby’s mother had hardly been seen since they’d arrived at the guesthouse ten days ago.
“That’s right. We didn’t have too many babies under a year old,” Rechel mused.
“And Herzlich’s baby was already born in Vienna,” Ruchelle said lightly. “I called Sarah. She has a telephone in the hospital! She told me than in twenty-five years, she’ll tell her daughter how wonderful it was to have a child born into freedom…”
“Who is with her there?” Rechel asked.
“Bluma Hanter, and another woman from the frum community in Vienna, that psychologist who’s come here a few times.”
“How is Sarah feeling?”
“Fine, baruch Hashem. A bit confused and out of sorts, but I think she’s managing well. They gave her a private room for herself and the baby, and she told me that she hardly speaks, so the doctors and nurses might think she’s a bit meshugeh, but it’s fine with her that they are not trying to speak to her.”
“And what about Dr. Katzburg?” The women exchanged glances. “Think about what a vital figure she was in the camp… What will be with her now?”
“She probably feels awful, especially that Sarah Herzlich went to the hospital. Who will need her help now, when we have advanced hospitals to serve us?”
“She is spending a lot of time sitting near the lake, reading.” Rechel hesitated. “And at the meals she looks…okay. Not broken or anything like that. Hashem will help her.”
“Like He will help us all.”
“And like He already has helped us all.” Rechel put down her broom; the room was clean and organized. Maybe she’d go to the kitchen now, to her mother, who was helping with the cooking there. They had asked the Hanters to be allowed to help as much as possible arounde the place, in order to keep expenses down. The feeling of living on someone else’s account, even for a limited time, is not pleasant. And besides, long days with nothing to do is never beneficial for anyone.
But aside for a bit of sweeping, straightening up, laundry, and helping to supervise the children, what could she do? Sew? She loved to sew and embroider, but they hadn’t taken the ancient machines from the camp with them. Mr. Hanter had said they were antiques, and it was a waste to schlep them over here. When they would receive their compensation, she’d buy a new sewing machine and open a sewing shop of her own.
Shifra Cohen-Sighet, on the other hand, claimed that bli neder, she would not touch a needle or thread for the next twenty years. She could not bring herself to do the thing she had been forced to do for thirty years. That was also reasonable.
So many conversations were taking place here about the murky future ahead of them, and her father and Binyamin related that the same was happening among the men. Each one saw his future differently, and there were those who said one thing at night and another thing the next morning.
As for Binyamin himself, he wasn’t talking about the future at all. In the first few days after they’d come there, Rechel had worried a lot about him. He slept most of the day, hardly spoke, barely ate, and rarely returned her gaze. And he refused to meet the frum psychologist that the Hanters had brought to speak to anyone who wished to talk and open up.
“It’s because of the drastic changes,”her mother had reassured her. “It’s a difficult and complex transition. As much as we know that it’s much better for us here, and even though he’d dreamed very much of this happening, the acclimation isn’t easy. And don’t forget the unimaginable tension that he’s lived through just before… Let him be.”
And her father had added, “He’ll be fine. Don’t worry, Rechele.”
They had been right. For three days, Binyamin hardly did anything and didn’t even emerge from his room, aside for davening, for which he’d go to the guesthouse’s shul. Every so often, he’d get out of bed, check the work tools that he’d brought with him, and then go to lie down again. His mother had brought his food to his room.
But on the fourth morning, after he came back from Shacharis, he’d sat down to eat the food she’d brought from the dining room and suddenly said, “I think these tools will be a souvenir for me, an interesting souvenir. I’m not sure I’m going to want to continue sewing furs all my life. But we’ll see.” And that was his only remark regarding future plans. He’d eaten his food quickly, bentched, and said that he was going back to the shul because Rav Schartzbrod was waiting for him there.
And from that point on, he’d gone back to being the Binyamin that she knew.
Rechel walked out of the preschool to the lawn, gazing with a smile at the children playing on the colorful wooden playground. They were shouting, jumping and running, and their happiness was so alive, so genuine. She waved from afar to Naomi, who was standing at the side and talking to Dena Hanter, and they both waved back.
All the women liked the refined young woman who had come a short time after they’d arrived at the guesthouse, feeling confused, agitated, and like they were in a dream. Together with her mother-in-law, Dena had accompanied them to their well-appointed rooms, smiled, and softly answered the endless questions they had.
Now she was talking to Naomi, while her two sons played with the other children. Her eyes followed Duvi, who was swinging vigorously on a swing he shared with Dror Elkovitz. They communicated in an amazing babble of languages, and were managing just fine.
“Nebbach!” Duvi’s voice was filled with compassion. “You didn’t have a Chumash seudah?! And you were never the Shabbos tatty?! Oy… Do you want me to make you a Chumash seudah here?”
Hearing him, Dena smiled. “That’s actually an idea,” she said to Naomi. “We have to make things up for your children here. They’ve missed out on so much.”
“We need to make things up for ourselves, too,” Naomi said, without a smile. “We missed out on even more. But we’ll get there, b’ezras Hashem. Now, would you like to come with me to visit a friend?”
“Sure,” Dena replied. She had taken a liking to the younger woman in the dark blue tichel.
They walked across the front balcony. Out of the corner of her eye, Naomi recognized Sol Sherer standing at the far end, leaning on the railing as he gazed out at some random spot, in silence.
“I’ll tell you a bit about this friend,” Naomi said as they reached the second floor and stopped in front of the young Kush couple’s room. “She had lots of vouchers in the camp. She worked very hard to earn them, really exerting herself, and now…”
They knocked once, and then again. And once more. A tinny wail answered from inside, carrying Naomi back to that day when she’d stood with Dror in front of Elky’s house, banging on the door. “Elky!” she called now, like back then. “Elky, can you open the door? Can we come in?”
The door opened. Her friend stood there, pale-faced, holding her little baby. Naomi walked in without being invited to do so. “Dena, this is Elky. Have you met her yet?”
“Yes,” Elky said, and then retreated into the room, to her bed. She pulled the blanket up almost to her eyes and turned to the wall. “You wanted to see me?” she asked from there, and it was unclear if her words were directed at Naomi or at Dena. “You wanted to see the way a person who worked all her life for nothing looks?”
Naomi sat down on the upholstered chair that was near the bed. “First of all, don’t say, ‘all your life.’ You’re not even twenty, Elky. How do our grandmothers say it? You still have your whole life ahead of you.”
“You, Naomi, at least gained something from all your work in the camp. You are well-liked, you are needed, you are significant even now. But me?”
“I also thought that I was insignificant,” Dena whispered. “But I’ve learned that it’s not true. A person can gain from every single person and from every single thing. And we can learn to look differently at things, and to see them in a different light—one that is no less real, and perhaps even more real.”
“Gain?” Elky sat up, her voice trembling as the words tumbled out of her mouth. “Don’t talk to me about gains, because I only lost. I ran from the office to the store, and from the store to the laundry room, working my head off, and now I have nothing to show for any of it! Do you understand? And it’s not only that.”
“What else is it?” Naomi asked as she smiled at the baby, whose bright, alert eyes peeked out at her from the blanket.
“The investigators who came yesterday told us that all the newspapers that the Wangels gave us, at sporadic times over the years, were faked by Bernard. He tried to conduct a social experiment on us, to see how much he’d be able to change us.” She sat down and looked at Dena. “He was doing a study about how captors are able to influence their captives, even if in theory, there is hatred between them, or something like that—I don’t know exactly. He wrote his whole thesis down, and they found it at the manor house. And I was the only fool who was excited about their offer to get married there, on their estate… They probably had a good laugh at my naiveté!”
“Why do you care about them now?” Dena asked. “They’re all dead already.”
“I care that I was a fool.” Elky’s eyes were smoldering.
“But they didn’t continue doing it,” Naomi said. “Aside for your wedding and the Gefreiter’s birthday party, I don’t think they tried anything similar.”
“True.” Elky fell silent for a moment, and then added, “Maybe because your grandmother got involved regarding the birthday party, and because of her I didn’t participate.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I was so angry at her then for losing the grant…! But now I’m happy I didn’t go. Because of her, at least I don’t feel like a complete and total fool.”
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