Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 22 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 darkness on the mountainside grew thicker, and Shimmy discovered just how dark the world could be. Really dark. No lights from windows of buildings, no light from passing cars’ headlights. Thick darkness that enveloped everything. Somewhere above him, there were somewhat clearer skies; the road at the top of the mountain may have been lit up, but that light did not reach him. After exerted efforts to crawl, which included a scary fall and two smaller slides, he was about four meters higher than where he’d been when he first woke up, but it was still a far cry from where he had to get to.
He thought about Batya and about Shmuli. Did anyone know yet that he had disappeared? He didn’t call home every hour and a half, only once a day—and they’d already spoken that day. But his translator knew that he’d disappeared, and in that case, he should have updated Gedalya. If he had done so, then someone was surely searching for him already. The question was if they knew where to look—not that he had any suggestions to make on that front. He had no clue as to where he’d been thrown.
If his father was with him here, he would say that they were not alone, that Hashem hadn’t left them for even a moment. But if Tatty would be here, everything would look different. Not that he thought, chalilah, that it wasn’t true; he knew that Hashem was with him everywhere. But Hashem was also with those people who had disappeared, thrown to desolate places—the people who ultimately succumbed to dehydration and never returned.
It was good for them, that much was clear. But that didn’t mean he wanted to die! He wanted Hashem to send someone to get him out of here—fast!
Shimmy’s hands were bleeding as he grabbed a bush a few inches above him, and tried to climb just a bit more. He couldn’t wait here until the Chinese police would get to him—who even knew how effective they were at search-and-rescues altogether! He had no idea if and when they would ever get to him.
Suddenly, something approached him, flying down from the top of the mountain. It came directly to him, and Shimmy couldn’t believe how happy he was to see that creature that he’d despised so much. He stared into the bulb eyes of the bat that was flapping its dark wings just above him. “It’s you!” he burst out. “I don’t believe it! Did they send you to find me, or did you come by yourself?”
A moment of quiet, and then he heard that metallic voice from the bat, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he detected Yang Yang’s tone. “Who is that?”
“It’s me, Shimmy Lev.”
“Ah, yes,” the bat—or rather the man—replied. He paused for a moment and then said, “Interesting location that you’re in. How did you get there?”
“I was mugged,” Shimmy said, keeping it brief. “Can you try to send some help? Or reach out to my interpreter, Shio Ching, from the fish market.”
“I know who Shio Ching is,” the voice said, and then faded out. Shimmy was afraid that the bat was about to turn around and fly off, but then it continued to speak. “It’s very interesting that once again, you were able to draw Christopher to come to you. You have no idea how that happened?”
“No, I have no idea.”
“I hear,” the man said, and then was quiet.
“But listen, we can discuss it afterward. It seems that Christopher sent you the exact information about my location. Please realize that I was thrown down here and it’s hard for me to climb up. And I’m pretty bruised and injured. Could you get me some help?”
“It’s also interesting that Christopher switches himself on when he detects you, and then he contacts us. As if he’s continuing to insist that there’s something of value about you. Are you sure there isn’t anything special in you?”
“Of course there’s something special in me!” Shimmy cried. “I’m…a person!” He wouldn’t tell the Chinese gentile that he was a Jew. “I’m a person with a soul, an eternal soul. Do you know how much value I have?!”
Silence. The bat flew around a bit more, then settled on the bush, and suddenly a strong light went on. Shimmy squinted and realized it was coming from under the bat’s wings. The bat folded its wings obediently, looking like an attentive pupil sitting in a classroom, and the light now shone over the whole area, illuminating the ground, which suddenly didn’t look so dark or threatening anymore.
“Mr. Yang?” Shimmy tried. “Did you give Christopher an order to turn on the lights?”
No response. This was so strange, but Shimmy felt much better now.
*
“I want to send Yudi’s mother an arrangement with fruits and chocolates for Shabbos,” Ruchi’s mother says to her younger daughter, Esther, on Thursday night at eleven.
“What, in Israel?” The girl glances at the stairs. Ruchi is sleeping already.
“Yes. We did it when he was a chassan; it’s very simple. There are some people in Israel who know how to do these really nice things—I just have to call someone good. They’ll be getting up in two hours already over there.”
“Okay, we won’t be sleeping in two hours yet,” Esther says as she looks at the counters full of ingredients that have to be transformed into Shabbos food. There is no indication of how that is going to happen. Ever since Ruchi had disappeared in the park, no one has too much energy, especially not to start cooking.
“Yes, but there’s another problem. How am I going to pay her? I can’t make a bank transfer if our account has nothing in it.”
“The banks aren’t lending money to their customers?”
“Tatty doesn’t want to borrow from them. Also, they are being very strict about these things now.”
“Well, then forget it. But why do you want to send her chocolates anyway? Maybe she should be sending chocolates to you.”
“I had an unpleasant conversation with her this morning. I thought she…was guilty of something, it doesn’t matter what, and I…didn’t speak so nicely to her. Later, I realized that it had nothing to do with her, and I feel like I should apologize.”
“Does it have to do with Ruchi’s outing to the park?”
“What? No, it has nothing to do with that. Ruchi doesn’t even know about the conversation.” She glances quickly at the door. “It has to do with what Yudi told me and Tatty, that maybe they should go to Eretz Yisrael for some time.”
Esther juts out her chin. “I think they should go there,” she tells her mother decisively. “After two days with them, his mother will be sending you not just one chocolate-and-fruit arrangement, but ten of them!”
*
“Zahava, how is your husband?”
Zahava raised her head out of the big sack of new merchandise. “Baruch Hashem, so-so. Why do you ask?”
Devora, who owned the store where Zahava worked, looked uncomfortable. “I hope it’s okay that I asked. I saw him last week, and he was walking very slowly. I remember you once told me that he has problems with his legs…”
“One leg, mainly,” Zahava said. She sat down on a chair and began to fold the shirts she’d taken out.
“Right, so I thought maybe you’d want to hear about a good orthopedist.”
Yaakov Shlomo’s wife sighed. “He’s already seen so many doctors, even back when we lived in America. I don’t think there’s anything more any doctor can do. They recently told us that he’ll probably need knee-replacement surgery, because his cartilage is totally worn away there.”
“But he’s so young! That’s a surgery that mostly older people have, isn’t it?”
“He walks so unevenly that it wore away at the cartilage.” Zahava put a few shirts on the shelf and stood up to close the window. Even the simple act of getting up from a chair had become difficult for Yaakov Shlomo.
“What can we do? Life can be so complex sometimes… Much more than I thought, when I was young like you.”
Devora nodded, feeling a bit awkward. “Of course life is complex,” she said diplomatically. The twenty-five years that separated her and her dedicated saleswoman suddenly felt very heavy.
“You know, I wasn’t so young when I got married, and my husband was a great catch—despite the whole story of his accident. It was only after we got married that he began to have more and more health issues…but that’s how life is sometimes, right?” She sighed again. “Maybe we’ll go to America for the surgery. Right now, though, everyone is stuck, with the financial situation being what it is.”
“I know, it’s really hard now,” her boss said, trying desperately to find a subject where she could redirect the conversation. “It’s amazing how dependent we are on America… My credit card company suddenly slashed my credit framework to two thousand shekel, and the bank won’t let me withdraw more than five hundred shekel a day. You know how much trouble that made for my recent order from Turkey? In the end, I took only a third of my regular quantities.” She looked around. “In any case, people are buying much less. And who knows when this mess is going to end.”
“Right, it’s a huge mess,” Zahava said, going back to her shirts. “You know, very often, life is also a mess. But it’s fine, that’s what we came into This World for.”
“For the mess?”
“To learn to live with it.”
Devora smiled. “To learn to live with it the right way.”
Zahava’s eyes twinkled. “You’re my boss, so I shouldn’t be arguing with you,” she said. “But what does it mean to live with the mess ‘the right way’? I think that if we have clean clothes, even if they aren’t folded neatly and put away in the drawers and closets, but are piled in the laundry basket, then that’s fine. Is that called managing ‘the right way’ or not? Who cares? The main thing is that we’re managing!”
“You don’t fold your laundry at home? You?! Look at those shirts on the shelf—that stack is like a ruler!”
“It’s much more complicated at home. Especially when my kids were little, it was terrible. They would pull stuff out in the morning, tugging from here and from there, and everything came tumbling down anyway…so why bother? Now the kids are big already, but it’s all a matter of habit. Folding laundry is just not something that ever made it onto my daily schedule.”
“But you have big daughters.”
“Yes, but they’re used to what I got them used to. Although they do fold their own laundry, you should know, because their friends come over, and they want their closets to look neat and organized.” She smiled at the organized shelf. “And I’m happy about that. Hopefully, it will be easier for them to run their own homes than it was for me when I got married.”
“You for sure had tons of other ma’alos.”
Zahava ignored the statement. “But the mess of the clothes and the house is only a mashal. I really meant all the challenges in life, which are sometimes a big mess.” She sighed. “A very big mess. But we have to learn to live with it, as we said.”
Devora didn’t repeat her clarification. The pain of her employee was far greater than her own twenty-six years.
*
Allow me to add my opinion to that of the experts, and as much as it hurts, it’s important for us to know it: For now, we will have to learn to live with the instability of the global financial situation. And I add—to live with it the right way.
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