Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 19 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
The stern-faced secretary’s first question is, “Have you brought cash?” and Ruchi’s mother immediately opens her wallet.
The sectary waits with frozen politeness until the woman across from her puts three hundred dollars down on the desk. She takes the bills, quickly scans them, and then asks Mrs. Katz to please wait.
“Come, Yudi,” his father-in-law says, while his mother-in-law pushes Isamar’s carriage to the waiting area. But Yudi stays standing at the desk, his foot shaking nervously.
“I prefer to wait here,” he says finally, “to see when it’s our turn.”
The secretary glances at him fleetingly and then goes back to her work.
“They will call us when it’s our turn,” Mr. Katz says.
“I think it’s a good idea for me to wait here anyway,” Yudi replies politely. “I want to see when our turn comes.”
His father-in-law nods and then turns to the well-appointed waiting area. He sits down on a chair from where he can keep eye contact with Yudi. Not that that is so possible, because Yudi has his eyes closed most of the time, and only opens them every few seconds to glance at the orthopedist’s door.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have brought him with us,” Ruchi’s mother whispers.
“He wanted to come!” her husband replies, fixing his gaze on a tall plant standing near the wall.
“Ruchi also said that she wanted to come,” she says, “and we convinced her to stay home.”
“Are you comparing Ruchi to Yudi?”
She turns to look at him. “What?”
“What, what? It’s obvious that they are different.”
Ruchi’s mother is quiet for a long moment. “He’s not either so focused the last day and a half.”
“Well, this financial chaos is really addling him.” He glances for a moment at his son-in-law standing with his eyes closed near the wall on the other side of the room. “And I didn’t say he’s a hundred percent. But both of them are behaving in a way that’s pretty appropriate for them, considering the circumstances. A complex financial situation is bothering him very much, and brings out some less standard behaviors, and the worry for the baby is bothering her, and causing her to be much more sensitive.”
“Now you sound better,” she replies, not even realizing that she is breathing a sigh of relief. “Before I thought you were trying to say that he’s on a higher level than her.”
“That’s exactly what I said. I haven’t changed my mind about that.”
“You really think so?”
“You don’t?”
“Ruchi is so smart and talented, and she has such a good heart! She’s also pleasant to talk to, and—”
“You don’t have to tell me all that,” he says. “I know how hard you worked over the years to get her to where she is today. No one can take that away from you. But at the end of the day, Yudi is more advanced than she is, and he does things that she is not capable of. And his level of conversation is much more mature than hers.”
“Well, so it’s a matter of maturity,” Ruchi’s mother says, glancing at Isamar, who is sucking intensely on his pacifier. “She’ll grow up, b’ezras Hashem, and get more with it; then she’ll go far. I…” She tears up suddenly, looking very much like her daughter. “It’s hard for me when you say that. It’s enough that our mechutanim feel that way.”
“What do they think?”
“That their Yudi is more advanced than Ruchi.”
“How do you know?” he asks, careful not to say aloud, Well, it’s true!
“I see it in Yudi’s mother’s eyes, in the looks she gives me. Sometimes it also comes off as an anger of sorts, as if they got a bad shidduch. And you can say what you want, but Ruchi is not a bad shidduch!”
“No, of course not, chas v’shalom! Why, did his mother ever say anything to you like that?”
“No, she’s very polite and refined. But every time Ruchi behaves in an unusual way, I feel her criticism.”
“Ruchi is not a bad shidduch!” Yudi says as he suddenly appears next to them. “And she doesn’t criticize at all—she only says nice things! When she is not crying.” He sits down heavily on the chair next to his father-in-law and then blurts out, “Would you agree to buy me and Ruchi tickets to Eretz Yisrael?”
“What?!” Their response is exactly the same.
“I want to go back to Eretz Yisrael.” He toys with the strings of his tzitzis. “I…can’t handle this thing with the banks. It’s so confusing that they are hiding the money that I earned. I want to go back to Eretz Yisrael and open a new bank account there. That’s it.”
A prolonged silence hangs between the upholstered chairs, with Yudi’s words hovering over their heads.
“Go to Israel?” Ruchi’s mother is the first to find something to say.
“Yes,” her son-in-law replies simply.
“Will Ruchi want to go?”
“I don’t know, but I really hope she’ll agree. Just like I agreed to name the baby Isamar even though I knew you’d all be surprised.”
“It’s a good idea to do things that will make Ruchi happy,” his shver says somberly.
“Right. And it’s also a good idea to do things that will make me happy.”
His shvigger looks at the baby sleeping in the carriage, calm and content. She can’t find anything to say.
“My mother agrees that we can live by her—I already asked her. Do you…do you think you have enough money in the safe for tickets for both of us?” His right knee jumps as he studies them, somewhat in distress, and just then, the doctor’s door opens.
They stand up, but a nurse in a white coat comes out just then, and the door closes. Ruchi’s mother hears the nurse asking the secretary, “Are you going down to buy something for the doctor to eat?”
“How?” the secretary replies. “There’s no money for it! Dr. Coon needs to transfer the rental payment to Torrence, and he said that he doesn’t yet have the entire sum in cash, so we shouldn’t buy anything until then.”
The nurse grumbles in response and then walks through a different door. Ruchi’s parents exchange glances, and a moment later, the secretary motions to them that their turn has come.
*
“Invest in robots?” Batya was sitting at the edge of the couch as she rocked Shmulik’s carriage. He wasn’t crying, but at least this way she felt that there was someone else in the house with her.
“Yes, I thought it’s a very worthwhile investment.” Shimmy was pacing up and down the hotel lobby with his phone. “I spoke with the guy by phone, and I met him a second time already, but the investment money he wanted was higher than our abilities, and now it’s certainly impossible. Even the tiny loan Gedalya promised me is out of the question.”
“Poor Gedalya.”
“He’s not a nebbach.”
“Why not? He lost almost all his money!”
“So now he has only one account in a small bank with twenty thousand dollars,” Shimmy said impatiently. “If we’d have an account with twenty thousand dollars, wouldn’t you be thrilled? Not to mention his apartment in Manhattan.”
“Fine, but it’s all relative.”
“What can I do—I can’t bring myself to pity him now. Just like I don’t pity the billionaires who kept millions and billions of dollars in their accounts, and now they’re wailing to the whole world about their losses. Let them sell a property, and they’ll have a thousand times more than us, if not more.”
“But who will buy from them now?”
“Don’t worry about them. There are all kinds of people who have all kinds of other accounts in all kinds of banks.”
“Should I tell you something?” Batya asked slowly. “If I was a billionaire, I’d be very afraid right now. This happened a few weeks ago, so what would it help to have all kinds of other accounts? We can’t know what the next incident will be, and which bank is next.”
“It won’t happen again,” Shimmy said.
“How do you know?”
“Because as skilled as these hackers are, in the end, the situation always reverts back to what it was. True, last time it took two days, and now it’s already the third day and they say the end is still far off, but I believe in the end they will succeed.”
He didn’t sound so good, and Batya tried to guide the conversation in a different direction. “Do they know yet who the hackers are and what their goal is?”
“No, nothing. I assume the authorities are doing everything they can to find them, but in the meantime, all that’s out there on the street are guesses: Iran, China, Putin…”
“China?”
“Don’t you know that China and the United States are rivals? And there’s tons of security spying and industrial espionage going on?”
“Yes, like that bat that Yang Yang sent to you.”
“So now we’ve come full circle back to the beginning of the conversation,” Shimmy said. He sounded dejected. “And because I prefer not to think about that subject now, maybe we should finish up. I want to daven Ma’ariv now.”
*
On a personal note, I also lost a significant sum of money due to the whole bank mess-up, with two of my accounts suddenly showing a balance of zero. I daven to Hashem to replace our loss, and that of all the people who have lost assets of unbelievable value. But you know, I thought of a certain point, and if anyone is listening to this, I’d like for him to think about it too: What does a person takes with him to the grave? Even if he has millions in his account, we all know what he takes with him on his final journey: one big zero.
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