Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 42 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.
“Again the same message? Couldn’t he say a bit more than this?”
Rudy ignored his friend’s frustration. “Tell me, Steve, what are your plans?”
“Now? To send a message to Moni’s email address, ordering him to tell me what’s going on with him.”
“You said you don’t want to send anything to him, because you’re afraid it will be detected.”
“Right, but I’ll encode it to a level where they won’t be able to put a hand on it.” The capillaries in his eyes bulged with fury and exhaustion. “And I’ll also make sure it will be deleted a few seconds after he opens it.”
“Has he ever answered you when you emailed him?”
“No. But now I’m going to write him the truth, and he won’t be able to ignore me when he sees I’m taking all the accusations against him upon myself!”
“What exactly are you going to write to him?” Rudy asked as he checked if anything was left in the snack bag on the table. “I think if you want to continue the game, you should be very careful about writing explicitly who you are and what your connection is to this story.”
“Oh, of course. But I am going to write to him that if, on his next recording, he doesn’t report clearly what is going on with him, I’m dropping the whole thing and telling the police the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m not Moni!”
“But you are the hacker!” He took a deep breath. “Besides, if he does listen to you, and reports what is happening to him, everyone will hear it, not only you. They will realize that he’s not the one barricaded in here now, the guy who has all of America up in arms.”
He swept the crumbs from the table onto the already filthy floor. “And in any case, even if you are the one to tell them the truth, I don’t think they’re going to just accept your information quietly and then let you get up and go on your way. They will interrogate you, and it won’t be hard for them to find out that even if you are not Moni, you are creating your own chaos. In fact, they can probably back off of Moni altogether if that happens.” Rudy was trying to make some logical order in the confused mind of the brilliant, delusional man sitting across from him.
Steve slumped down on the pile of ratty blankets on the mattress near the wall. It looked like indeed, everyone was keeping the distance he was insisting on. The question was whether they were planning some cunning raid.
They were not. Because if he’d be killed, they’d be forever stuck with the zero-balance accounts in their infected computers.
Although…maybe it was worth it for them to take the risk?
He gnawed at his fist. “Enough already!” he suddenly howled at Rudy. “Stop telling me what I should and shouldn’t do!”
Rudy recoiled slightly. “I’m not telling you anything! I’m just helping you think.”
“Don’t help me think! My thoughts are a million times sharper than yours, and you’re just confusing me with all your foolish talk!”
Rudy was quiet, wondering if he should offer Steve one of the tranquilizer pills that he’d brought with him. But he was afraid that would ignite Steve’s anger again. He walked toward the fridge, making sure to maintain eye contact with Steve. His impression until today had been that Steve was not dangerous, but who knew? Might his outbursts become more frightening if his mental state was stretched any further?
“I’ll send Moni a message.” Steve’s voice emerged from the blankets. “And I’ll demand that he answer me personally.”
“How? You said that the email is going to get deleted right away, so how will he send you an answer?” Rudy asked cautiously. “Besides, are you going to write to him clearly who you are? Then what happens if they do pick up on your correspondence?”
“I…” Steve buried his face in the blankets again. “You’re right. I’ll write to him that for his own good, and if he wants my cooperation, he should report in a general message about his condition, without anyone realizing that he’s not the one who is barricaded here in this shack.” Without looking, he reached out and groped for the cup of water that was on the floor, spilling some of the water on his head. “They won’t detect my message, don’t worry. I’m a lot smarter than they are.”
“Amazing,” Rudy agreed.
“It really is amazing.” Steve scrubbed his head vigorously. “Now bring me more water. It helps me clarify my thoughts and my plans.”
Rudy brought him another cup of water, and watched how Steve poured the contents of the cup on his head, and then vigorously scrubbed his hair with his fingers. “Now I need to decide how to do it.”
Steve stood up from the blankets, rolled up his sleeves, and sat down at the table, with the energetic expression of a youth ready to tackle his homework diligently. Only his wet hair, dripping down onto his shirt, marred the seemingly wholesome scene.
***
Chumi studied the long flight of stairs. “I hope Tatty will be able to get up these steps,” she said somewhat doubtfully.
“So do I,” her mother replied. “He’ll go up very slowly, while holding onto the railing and the walker. We’ll also help him. People from the ambulance organization will help him up. And if he isn’t able to do the stairs, they’ll carry him up in a chair.”
“I don’t want to be home when it happens,” Chumi said, and she hurried into the room she shared with Tzippy, not waiting for her mother’s response. Couldn’t there be a test to study for today? Then she could just pop over to a friend to borrow her notes. The truth was that her algebra book had been left in Dassy Mermelstein’s house. On a regular day, she wouldn’t go all the way over to her for the book; it could easily wait till tomorrow. But if Tatty had to be schlepped up the stairs, and neighbors might very well be going up or down at the same time, then it was absolutely not a regular day.
She went out into the hallway, hoping that Mommy wouldn’t tell her anything. But her mother had already gone to her room to get ready to leave for the hospital.
Chumi went to call Dassy to ask if she could come over soon, but the phone rang before she could touch it. “Hello?” she said, a bit impatient when she saw the unfamiliar number on the Caller ID.
“Hi, who is this, Chumi?”
“Yes. How are you, Tatty?”
The phone made strange noises and his words were a bit cut off, but then he continued, “—Shabbos…to be home?”
“Sure, b’ezras Hashem!” she said. “You’re coming home today, right? So for sure you’ll already be here by Shabbos.”
“Who said that I’m coming today and that I’ll be by you for Shabbos?” the speaker asked, and Chumi suddenly realized her mistake.
“Oh, Shimmy!” she said. “Which horrible phone are you calling from? I was sure it was Tatty!”
“Some dumb Chinese phone,” he said with a laugh. “My phone was stolen, so they gave me a new one.”
“Oh, wow. You should know that your voices are so similar! At least on this phone.”
“I guess. I have no idea what I sound like.” He was talking as he walked briskly. He had been trying to walk around the entire complex, near the gate, at least twice a day. If he had to be bored here for a few days, at least he wouldn’t totally wither.
“And you also talk in such a similar way to him. When you said the words ‘what I sound like,’ it sounded exactly like Tatty would have said it. Anyway, Tatty is supposed to come home today, b’ezras Hashem.”
“That’s great! How’s he feeling?”
“Baruch Hashem. He’s still in pain, but it’s much, much better. And his fever also finally went down.”
“How does he look? Very weak and frail?”
Chumi was quiet for a moment. “I was only there once, and at that point, he looked and sounded fine. He was talking, he laughed, he was…Tatty, like regular.”
“And the walking?”
“It’s very slow, very difficult, but he’s managing, baruch Hashem. Mommy brought him a walker from Yad Sarah. He’ll use it for the beginning, but we’re hoping that he won’t need it for too long. By the way, he asked about you a few times.”
“If you were only there once, then how do you know?” His voice sounded defiant, and he knew it.
“Mommy and Tzippy were saying that. When are you coming back?”
“When I can.”
“Nu, nu.”
“What, nu, nu?” When he was irritated, his steps were faster, and he was almost running by now. “Is something not to your liking, Miss Supervisor Chumi, aged…how old are you now? Fourteen or fifteen? Is something not clear to you?”
“No, something is not clear to me. For how long are you going to be stuck there in China, leaving Batya and Shmuli alone?”
“Haven’t you heard about the financial mess in the world?”
“I heard. What does it have to do with you? I didn’t know you had American accounts that zeroed out,” she said snarkily. “I thought you only had an overdraft, and that it was here, in Israel.”
“First of all, I did have a small account in America. And besides, this chaos is affecting all business.” Out of breath, he reached his unit. “And I prefer to wait here until the factory releases my dolls.”
“And when will that happen? When the dollar stabilizes and things get back in order? And when Gedaliah has money to pay for the order?”
“Maybe.”
“How nice. So you can dream that that’s happening any time soon. Are you going to stay there for two years? And besides,” she added, suddenly remembering an interesting point, “I heard Mommy talking. You’re not only there because of that, but because you’re participating in some kind of project.”
“One of your questions answered the other,” Shimmy said as he entered the unit. “I hope to get a big enough sum of money from the project managers, and to use that to pay for the merchandise that is waiting in the warehouses here. Now we’re going to end this conversation, Chumi, because you’ve really worn me out.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“You sound too cynical, but it doesn’t matter. Bye.”
***
I once again want to thank all those who are taking an interest and praying for my welfare. I really hope that tomorrow I’ll have enough energy to speak a bit about what I am going through. But right now, I am not able to.
