Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 21 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.
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Shimmy squinted and cautiously moved his aching head. What was this place? It certainly wasn’t a dream, even if he really wanted to hope that it was. Darkness enveloped everything, but the moon was still there, dimly lighting up the area, and he realized he was lying at the foot of a rocky mountain. His palms were both scraped and bleeding, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a big bump on the back of his neck, on the right side. His entire body was aching, and where was his phone? Gone. Wallet? Gone. Wonderful!
Slowly, he sat up, feeling his muscles protesting at the effort. Little pebbles slid down under his feet, and he tried to see where this place started and where it ended. About five feet behind him was a dark copse of trees, and it didn’t seem to be a residential area. But from above, he could hear a faint, monotonous noise that sounded like cars. There must be a road at the top of this mountain, but how was he supposed to climb up?
Same way you came down, the joke would go. But even with the pounding headache and fuzziness that filled his brain when he tried to remember what had happened before he woke up and found himself in this place, it was very clear to him that he had not gone down; he’d been taken down. Or, to put it more accurately, thrown down, maybe from a moving car. You didn’t want the amusement park and uncontrolled dizziness? You got it all anyway—big time.
Shimmy tried to stand up, but the result was a fall that caused the few muscles that weren’t hurting to get bruised now. He sat down again, even though it was growing darker and the sounds of the trees swaying in the wind behind him were getting louder. He didn’t like any of it.
So what had happened? The driver had stopped in a little alley, someone had gotten into the car, and apparently that someone had delivered a blow to him. But what did they want?
Your cash, your dollar bills, a little voice inside told him. The driver apparently didn’t know English, but he knew enough to discern those words.
Wait, and maybe Shio Ching was also involved in this? He hadn’t been all that pleasant today.
No, that made no sense. Shio was a civilized person, with a good source of income. There was no reason for him to get mixed up in criminal activity and thus lose his client base for a measly $800.
“If he is civilized, he should be looking for me now,” Shimmy said to the nearest tree, while grasping onto a low branch. “The guy came out of the amusement park, saw that the taxi had disappeared, with me inside it, and I’m not answering my phone—okay, let’s see what he does!”
And with this boost of motivation, he forced himself to stand up, swaying a bit in his place as he did. The tree was strong, and he was able to lean on it. Still, Shimmy felt his head spinning, as if he’d just gotten off the biggest roller coaster ride in the world. One minute passed, then another, and he began to feel a bit steadier. The bones in his legs seemed whole, baruch Hashem, though his hands were badly bruised.
At least the mountain wasn’t too steep, because he had to try to climb it. The sounds from the woods behind him as night set in all around did not sound pleasant, and although he wasn’t at all sure that the Chinese leopard he had once seen at the zoo in New York had chosen to build its home in this area of the woods, he didn’t want to check it out from close.
He would daven. And then he’d start to climb, and hope that someone was looking for him and would find him as soon as possible. Because in his injured state, it looked like it would take a herculean effort to traverse the dozens of yards that separated him from the top of the mountain.
***
“Where is Ruchi?” Her parents raise their gazes as their son-in-law walks into the dinette.
He looks at them with red eyes filled with distress. “She called me now. She’s sitting on a bench at the entrance to the park and doesn’t want to come back.”
“Why?” Her mother stands up quickly, pushing back her plate.
“She took Isamar for a walk in the park so that he could get some fresh air.”
“Right, I drove her over there,” his father-in-law reminds him gently.
“And she saw a cute Yiddishe baby there. A few months older than Isamar, but he looked a little bit like him. And…” His knee is shaking now. “And she said that maybe he was supposed to be our baby, a healthy baby, without a crooked leg.”
Her parents exchange glances. “And that’s why she doesn’t want to come home?” Ruchi’s father clarifies.
“Yes. She said that…” He lowers his gaze for a moment. “She said that I should come, and we should go and see where they live, and then we can switch the babies.”
“Did she say that seriously?” Ruchi’s mother asks tensely. If Ruchi’s thoughts are reaching such a level, maybe they need to be taking much more drastic steps…
“I don’t think so. Because after that she said, actually not, she really loves Isamar. But she was crying and crying.”
“So why isn’t she coming home?” Ruchi’s father picks up the car’s key fob.
“I don’t know. She’s crying a lot and saying she has no energy, and that…” His voice falters, and he glances at them through lowered eyelids. “That maybe I should take Isamar and go to Eretz Yisrael myself, and she will stay here for now and wait for us until everything gets better.”
“But it’s not going to get better, so it seems, without a small surgery,” his father-in-law says as he walks toward the door. “And that’s certainly better to do here than in Israel. Come, Yudi, let’s go and call her.”
“Maybe you should go yourself,” he says feebly. “I…she already cried and screamed a lot, and I don’t really have energy for this. Now she’s not answering the phone.”
His father-in-law isn’t allowing him an escape route. “Still, please come.”
“I’ll prepare you some black coffee in a thermos,” his mother-in-law says quickly. “You hardly slept last night, so of course you’re very tired, Yudi.”
“There’s no time,” her husband says. “He’ll drink it when we come back, all of us.” And without another word, he heads out. A moment later, Yudi hurries after him, looking defeated.
Ruchi’s mother remains standing near the electric kettle, staring blankly at the door. With her father, Ruchi will act less irrational, so maybe it’s good that he has gone and not her.
Six minutes later, the phone rings. “She’s not here,” her husband says, in a tone that shows he’s trying to sound calm. “The carriage isn’t here either. Do you have any idea where she could have gone?”
“Are you sure he brought you to the right place?”
“Yes, Yudi says that this is where she said she went.”
“So look around a bit. She can’t have gone too far in these few minutes. Maybe go toward the lake. She likes to sit near the lake and throw crumbs to the ducks.”
“Yudi says he thinks she didn’t take food for the ducks this time.”
“It doesn’t matter, maybe she just went to look at them. Go and check.” She takes a deep breath. Now is not the time to fall apart! How will that help anything? It won’t. If anything, she should go sit down now and say some Tehillim instead, for her daughter, grandson, and son-in-law.
“Okay, let’s go back to the car and drive further in,” her husband is saying, leaving the phone on. He and Yudi go back into the car, fasten their seatbelts, and drive off. Yudi’s eyes are fixed on the window, trying to take in as much of the area as he could. But the area around the lake is also empty, save for a few dark-skinned children running around.
“I think we should go to the path that circles the lake,” Ruchi’s father reports to her mother, and he backs up from the shoreline. And then, at once, they both see her.
Ruchi looks tiny near the huge, illuminated advertising billboard standing at the edge of the park. The board—about the height of a five-story building—shows a black shadow of a person’s head, and on it, in flashing neon lights, it says “Moni.” And lower down, in small: it says, “The man who tells you what you are thinking.”
“Here she is!” Mr. Katz reports to his wife with a sigh. “Baruch Hashem! I’ll let you know what happens.”
At the bottom of the sign, far below the letters, Ruchi is standing, her head tilted as she looks all the way up. Next to her is Isamar’s carriage, and she is holding his empty bottle while sobbing her heart out. She doesn’t move even when the car slowly pulls up near her and the headlights shine on her. She only turns around after the engine shuts down and all is quiet.
“I want Yudi to speak to him,” she says, pointing to the black shadow above her. “It’s him, Moni. Yudi should talk to him.”
“It’s just an illustration!” her father replies, stressing the words, as if fearing that his daughter has lost her mind. “You can’t talk to him!”
“Not to the illustration!” she snaps. “I mean the real man. I want us to send him letters. Maybe he’ll talk to us in his next shiur and will tell us what to do when our baby has a problem with his leg, like he does. And maybe…” She is breathing heavily. “We need to find out who he is, and Yudi should speak to him.”
“We can’t find out who he is,” Yudi says. He studies the black head towering over them. “No one knows. Tons of people have tried to find out and weren’t able to. It’s a major, deep secret!”
“My mother and father will be able to find out,” she says as she gets into the car with Isamar. “They’ll pay a private detective to figure out who it is, if that’s what we need. Right, Tatty? You’ll do what it takes to find Moni for us?”
“Your father won’t waste money on this now.” Yudi clicks his seatbelt closed. “Now everyone has a problem with money, and no one is spending on these types of things. When things get back to normal, then we’ll see.”
His father-in-law is quiet, letting the words fly over his head.
***
I received two letters with requests for specific songs. I didn’t know most of them, but I composed a tune to the holy words, “Al tira ki ya’ashir ish…ki lo b’moso yikach hakol.” These words bring tears to my eyes, and perhaps they will touch you as well. So if you don’t mind, I’ll play the tune now, accompanied by my guitar.
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