Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 48 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“A sefer Torah that costs one hundred and forty thousand? That sounds like top of the line,” Menachem said to his son Yehuda.

“Of course,” Yehuda agreed. “That’s the standard of those in charge of us… But you can for sure get a good, mehudar sefer Torah for less money than that.”

“How much less?” his mother, Yocheved, wanted to know.

“Maybe a hundred thousand, a hundred and ten,” her husband replied.

“One minute, Eliyahu. Don’t tell me you are now going to spend one hundred thousand shekels!” Yocheved’s expression was reproachful. “How many months of renting your apartment will you need in order to have such a sum of ma’aser money?”

“Could be some sifrei Torah are even less than that,” Yehuda tried to interject.

“There are, for sure.” Eliyahu raised his eyes from the nutcracker and looked at those around him.

“Could be,” his brother-in-law concurred. “Have you looked into it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, so you’ve already done the field work…” Menachem smiled. “How much do they want?”

“About eighty. I’m not a hundred percent sure yet.”

“What?” Menachem’s hand left his glass and rose to his forehead. “Eighty?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where are you going to find such a sofer?”

“I found one already. The sefer Torah is written. It’s a very mehudar sefer Torah, top of the line. A Sephardic one.”

There was a momentary silence in the room.

“I have never heard of an Ashkenazi family donating a Sephardic sefer Torah to a shul, or the opposite.” Yocheved sounded peevish.

“So you’re hearing about it now.” Her younger brother smiled. “And we are going to do it, b’ezras Hashem.”

“Did you know about his idea, Elisheva?” Her sister-in-law turned to her. “And you’re okay with it?”

Elisheva smiled. “Looks to me like Eliyahu found a very original and practical solution. We want to donate a sefer Torah, and we want it to be mehudar. So why not do it like this? Because people will say that they’ve never heard of such a thing in their lives?”

“What’s the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic sifrei Torah?” Binyamin asked.

“The Ashkenazi writing is considered much harder to do. Technically, the writing is more complicated and takes more time, and that’s why people pay more for it.”

“So the sefer Torah is written already?”

“Yes. Because of the time it takes, it’s rare that Ashkenazi sifrei Torah are written without pre-orders. But Sephardic sifrei Torah are written even without being ordered in advance, and I already went to see a few of them. I found them all to be very beautiful.”

“And do you know the sofrim who wrote them?” Yocheved asked.

“Yes, the one who wrote the one I’m thinking about is in my kollel. You remember Gueta, Elisheva? The one who wrote Binyamin’s tefillin? So he writes tefillin for Ashkenazim as well as for Sephardim, but he only writes Sephardic sifrei Torah. He has a beautiful handwriting, and he’s a real yarei Shamayim…” He smiled. Something dreamy and unfamiliar was glistening at the corner of his eye. “Maybe we’ll be able to make a hachnassas sefer Torah before Shavuos.”

“To which shul?” Yocheved asked.

“I’ll find out about a Sephardic shul that needs a sefer Torah.” Eliyahu nodded to himself. “There are lots of new minyanim of bnei yeshivah that haven’t yet fully established themselves. I’m sure they’ll be happy to receive their own sefer Torah.”

***

5708/1948

The coughs almost tore Gustav’s throat, and they annoyed the other passengers in the crowded sleeping hold of the ship.

“Take the boy out!” one woman grumbled, hugging a baby close to her. A five-year-old boy trailed behind her. “He can infect all of us!”

“He has nothing contagious,” Rabbi Walkin explained patiently yet again. “He was sick, but now he’s completely recovered. The doctors made this very clear before they released him from the hospital.”

“You can’t believe them.” The woman was angry. “I don’t want him near us!”

“Come, Gustav.” Rabbi Walkin grasped the boy’s hand. “I’ll arrange the best place for you: at the entrance near the stairs. If you feel like you need some clear air at night, you can go out quickly without having to find your way through this big room. Does that sound good to you?”

Gustav nodded and glanced back. Everyone was quiet, looking at him. Even the boys from the orphanage were staring in his direction. The boys liked their director very much, and even Gustav liked him, seeing what a good man he was. But all the children knew each other very well by now; they had been together for so long, more than a year already. Only he was new. Only he didn’t belong.

But soon, he would be in Eretz Yisrael, and he would be together with Edo again. He had been with Edo for so many years that they definitely could be considered brothers, if not more. He would go and tell him what he had done: that he had run away from Janek and Ulush’s house in order to retrieve the paper, so that he could remember what Edo’s real name was. All the children here had names, and they told all kinds of stories about themselves from the past. Maybe they were making things up; Gustav did not know. What he did know was that he had no stories to tell about himself, because he didn’t remember anything from his past. And there was no one to remember for him.

“Rabbi Walkin.” A short, slight boy suddenly appeared at the director’s side. “I also want to sleep near the door. Can I share a mattress with him?”

“Sure, Moshe.” Rabbi Walkin smiled at the boy. “Here, sit down here together.”

Both boys sat down quietly.

“How old are you?” Gustav asked.

“About eleven.”

“About?”

“You know exactly how old you are?”

“No.”

“So neither do I.”

Gustav took a deep breath. “Is Moshe your real name?”

“Yes. My Jewish name.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I always knew that. At home they called me Mosh’ke, but my father called me Moshe.”

“How did you know?”

“Why are you called Gustav?”

“Because that’s what the man at the orphanage decided to call me.”

“I have always been called by my name, even in the ghetto.”

Gustav was quiet. He wasn’t quite sure what the boy was talking about.

“Where are you from?” Moshe asked him.

“Bratislava.”

“And I’m from Budapest. Hungary.” He sat with his legs folded for another moment, and then stretched them in front of him, rubbing his knees. “When we went to the ghetto, I was almost seven. They even made me a little birthday party in the ghetto. But I don’t remember the date. At the end of the war I was about eight, or maybe just seven and a half.”

“And do you have a family name?”

“Sure. Horenstein.”

“Do you remember that too, or did you make it up?”

“I didn’t make it up,” the older boy answered, his eyes narrowing. “Why do you think I made it up?”

“Because, why don’t I remember anything?”

Moshe Horenstein frowned. “When did you come to that orphanage?”

“When I was little. Maybe three. No one really knows.”

“Nu, so how do you expect to remember?” The eleven-year-old fell silent. “I don’t know the details of what exactly happened during the war, but I think that the Nazis, yemach shemam, occupied Bratislava quite a few years before they occupied Hungary. So I was able to grow up a little bit, and know my name, before they took my mother and father away.”

“And I didn’t get to,” Gustav concluded tonelessly.

Moshe Horenstein lay down on the mattress, trying to keep to just one half of it, so he could leave space for Gustav. But Gustav did not want to lie down. He sat at the far end of the mattress and stared at the steps, which were very close to his legs. Then he suddenly stood up and went upstairs.

“Hey, where are you going?” Someone hissed, grabbing his shoulder. It was not Rabbi Walkin.

“Leave me alone!” the boy replied. “Let me go!”

“Where are you going?” the adult growled again into his ear.

“To the deck.”

“To the deck? It’s nighttime now. And we warned everyone over and over that there must be silence outside. Remember? The closer we get to the coast of Eretz Yisrael, the more dangerous it gets, because there’s a greater chance that the British will discover us. Go back downstairs.”

“I don’t want to!” Gustav said. He shrugged off the man’s grip.

The man’s long arm reached for Gustav a second time. “Young man, you don’t want me to lock you up in a room for you to understand what I’m saying, do you? No. Going. Upstairs. Period.”

Gustav went back down to the sleeping hall, defeated. Without saying another word, he curled up on the edge of his mattress. It was too quiet. Some of the adults sat and spoke in hushed voices, discussing the chances of getting to shore without being caught. He stifled a cough and turned over to the other side.

Fine, so this boy, Mosh’ke, came from Hungary, and that’s why he knew things about himself. But there were other boys in Rabbi Walkin’s orphanage from Czechoslovakia and even from Poland, and they had been very little when the Nazis took their parents away. How come almost all of them knew something about themselves?

He rubbed his eyes. Bondy, the tall one, had been hidden with neighbors, and they’d told him everything. Meir and Pinya had been hiding out in a convent, similar to where he had been, but their parents had brought with them documents with all their personal details. Like Edo, sort of. Yanku and Srul’che and Chaim’ke were hidden by the Underground, by all kinds of gentiles, and the Underground kept records of all their details, even their exact birthdays.

He turned to the other side and heard Moshe moving, as well. It was too bad that before they’d left, his father and mother had not thought to give him a paper with the names of his uncles, or his own name, and where he had lived before the war, and the names of those who might know him. Then Theodore would have found him with the paper, and he would have known everything about him. Gustav would have also known everything about himself. Now he was just plain Gustav: poor, little Gustav, with no one in the world, without even a family name, who didn’t know anything about himself.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 47 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Yes, yes, thank you. Low alcohol, please.” He looked at the clear red liquid that slowly filled his crystal goblet to the lip.

“Right you’re going to let me steal your afikoman?” seven-year-old Benjy asked him cheekily. “Because yesterday my father didn’t let.”

“Tell me when exactly you want to take it, and I’ll decide then,” the guest replied with a smile.

“Kadesh!” Benjy’s father announced, and placed three square matzos into his tall, tiered Seder plate as they all stood up. The guest preferred not to pick up the full glass in his hand, and instead encircled the narrow stem of the goblet with his fingers. His hands were not what they used to be, and he had no desire—even after being a Pesach guest here for fifteen years—to stain the family’s pristine silk tablecloth and make it awkward for everyone. He insisted on staying young, and when those parts of him that refused to remain young emerged, he did his best to conceal them.

He drank most of the wine in the glass, and leafed through the leather-bound Haggadah on the table in front of him. It was the night of Pesach, the Festival of Freedom, so why did he feel like his brain was in prison? It was roiling with thoughts that kept turning over in his mind, preventing him from enjoying the company of his devoted relatives. His fingers played with the lace napkin that had been arranged into a fan next to his gleaming plate. He didn’t like the design on the napkin, or the plate. He also hadn’t enjoyed the Seder last night, and feared he would not enjoy tonight any more.
What was going on?

He must be tired. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and he would have to come to terms with the fact that tonight would also end earlier than he would have liked. You get old; that’s how it is. And as long as you stubbornly refuse to take sleeping pills, take into account that your days start at three a.m.

He set his empty goblet down with the weariness of an old man. He liked Pesach vacation at Daniel’s home in Perth, but although the visit was as pleasant as ever, these things seemed to drain him at this point. He wasn’t twenty anymore, and he needed his bed, his house, his quiet, and his privacy…

His back stiffened in pain, and he leaned against the back of the chair, unable to move for a moment. He closed his eyes and reflected on the fact that he hadn’t been at the orthopedist for quite some time. He’d never tolerated doctors.

“Are you afraid they are going to tell you to write a will?” Alexander Korman would tease him in those halcyon days when they were both young, busy, and successful, and the thought of wills only flashed rarely through their minds, if at all.

“And if so?” he used to answer. “Let’s say I am afraid of that. Why can’t I be? Isn’t it my right?”

“It’s your right, of course,” Alex—he should rest in peace—would always reply.

Your right. Indeed, it is your right to ponder wills very rarely, because you know that if you think about them too often, you’ll get into trouble. As it is, you spend most of your days trying not to think. Not about the past, not about the future, and not too much about the present either.

The problem is that when you age—which you are doing—your head automatically fills with thoughts. Unwanted, wanted—they don’t ask permission to barge in.

Okay, enough already! It’s Pesach tonight! Be happy! The family in Bnei Brak is also celebrating Pesach happily tonight.

Maybe he should send someone to Bratislava to try to dig into the past again. Why not? He had been most pleased by Leonid’s recent work. True, investigations in the present were simpler, but Leonid was very good at what he did. He hoped that Leonid would do a good job of meandering through the pathways of the past, which had gone up in smoke, seemingly silenced forever.

Again these thoughts?! On Seder night?

“I wish you lived closer to us,” Benjy whispered to him, and wiped his lips after emptying his smaller, child-sized becher. “I like it when you come to our house. My mother and father like it also.”

Really? He was somewhat doubtful about that, but to their credit, he had to admit, they had never tried to get out of hosting him each year. He preferred not to think too much about the reason why they were so devoted to him. Each year, Daniel called a week or two before Pesach and reminded him that they were expecting him for all of Yom Tov, of course. It was a domestic flight that wasn’t too many hours, and he would spend the whole week of Pesach in Perth. And this year, here he was again.

“Urchatz!” Daniel announced. “Uncle and I will wash our hands now.”

“I’ll bring the cup and bowl!” Benjy volunteered. He seemed to have adopted their guest this year, and was determined to wait on him hand and foot. As he stood with the towel on his shoulder, polite and patient, he asked, somewhat randomly, “How are you related to us, anyway?”

He smiled at Benjy, took the towel off the boy’s little shoulder, and wiped his hands.
Benjy’s mother answered patiently, instead of him. “Stop badgering him with questions, Benjy. It’s a bit complicated to explain. He’s a cousin of Saba and Savta in Israel; you didn’t know them. And when Arik was in eighth grade, he went on a summer trip to Israel and met them.”

“Uh-huh,” twenty-year-old Arik said, from the other side of the table. He yawned. “Can we continue? I’m hungry already.”

“A cousin of Saba or Savta?” the boy pressed.

“Saba. Now go back to your seat. And don’t get the drapes wet as you pass by! How many times do I have to tell you that!”

The guest sat, paging through the Haggadah in front of him. Drapes. He couldn’t imagine that the family in Bnei Brak had drapes, even for the Seder night. They probably did not have crystal glasses or pure silver napkin holders, either. But he hoped that they had managed to use a bit of the generous Yom Tov grant that they had received to buy some new things for themselves.

***

“I don’t believe it, Eliyahu!” Yocheved stood gaping at the built-in bookshelves that were packed with sefarim. Then she spun around to her brother. “Where is that very dignified, traditional bookcase of yours?”

“In the storage room downstairs,” her brother answered patiently. Elisheva was bustling from the kitchen to the dining room, serving dates and nuts, Pesach cookies, cake, and homemade lemonade.

“Stop bringing so much food already,” Yocheved scolded her. “Come sit down for a minute. What is this? You’ve already let Eliyahu put his sefarim into the wall?”

“It’s not a wall.” Eliyahu looked over at the plaster shelves. “It’s a built-in bookcase. What difference does it make what a sefarim shrank is made out of? It’s easier to use than the wooden bookcase.”

“What’s easier about it?” Yocheved turned to look at her younger brother.

“The shelves don’t sag.”

“Oh, you think plaster is stronger than pressed wood?” she asked, hardly concealing her scornful tone. It wasn’t directed at Eliyahu, of course, but at the offending, modern, new bookcase that she decidedly did not approve of.

“Plaster is not stronger than wood, but metal is. And there are enough metal bars in those shelves.”

“And the silver display,” she said. “Why is it on the side? Why didn’t you put your silver items in the middle, to make the whole thing more symmetrical?”

Elisheva retreated to the kitchen.

“I don’t think the silver has to be in the center,” Eliyahu answered, in the same patient, respectful tone that he used when speaking to his oldest sister. “I think the sefarim are the center, and it’s more appropriate for the silver to be placed on the side.”

“So why wasn’t it like that in your old bookcase?”

“Because I didn’t have the choice. The silver display was built into the middle of our old bookcase, and that was it. We bought a floor sample from the store twenty years ago. Here, the person who installed this asked me exactly how I wanted to plan the layout of the shelves.”

“Nu, very nice. And what other furniture did they give you?” She looked up as Elisheva set a mug of hot tea in front of her. “Oy, Elisheva, I told you that you don’t need to!”

“It’s fine; let us host you with the honor you deserve. When do we ever have a chance to have you?”

“That’s right. In your old apartment, it was nearly impossible to get into the dining room. So what’s with the furniture? I see your antique table is still here. And the chairs.”

“We were supposed to get a table with eight chairs, and another coffee table with a couch and two armchairs,” Eliyahu said.

“A coffee table,” she repeated. “Menachem, why aren’t you sitting down? Yehudah, you too. Take a drink or something to eat while I take another look around the apartment.”

“The children are showing me this large porch,” her husband, Menachem, said. “I never would have believed there could be such open air in Bnei Brak at this time of year.”

“Well, the sixth floor on the outskirts of the city—what did you expect?” she said. “Wait until some more buildings go up here, and you’ll want to run back to your little porch in our house in Yerushalayim.”

She turned back to Eliyahu. “So, a coffee table, you said, Eliyahu? Really now. A set of matching chairs sounds good—better than this whole hodgepodge you have here. But armchairs? Why do you need them? And a couch?”

“We always had a couch, but it’s old already. And I like this table and don’t really want to replace it. So we asked for only the chairs and the couch, and they let us exchange the rest of the stuff for bedroom furniture—dressers and beds. But they’ll only be coming in after Pesach.”

Yocheved conducted another walk-through of the house, which passed without any comments, and then they all sat down in the spacious dining room. “I understand that your father isn’t here anymore,” she said to Elisheva.

“No, he left on the first day of Chol Hamoed back to the nursing home. But he enjoyed being here very much, baruch Hashem.”

“I’m sure.” Yocheved’s eyes, which were usually narrowed with suspicion or criticism, also knew how to smile. “Plenty of space, well-raised grandchildren, a devoted daughter and son-in-law… So, children, what do you say about the new house?”

“It’s nice,” Chani and Esti said in unison.

“And big,” Devoiry added.

“But Ima doesn’t let us ride our cars here,” Shloimy complained.

Bentzy quickly soothed him. “But there’s lots of room in the lobby downstairs, so it’s okay.”

“I miss my friends who live near the old house,” Meir said, “but it’s not so far. On Isru Chag I’ll go help my friend collect wood for the Lag B’Omer fire. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk.”

“Oh, that’s not too bad. All the kids stayed in the same schools, right?”

“Yes,” Elisheva and Eliyahu said together.

“So what’s with your apartment? When are your tenants moving in?”

“They’ll get the key a week after Pesach. I don’t know when they are actually planning to move in.” Elisheva passed Yocheved a platter with slices of cake.

“But you’ll get paid from the minute they get the key, right?” Menachem inquired.

“Yes. They pay a few months’ rent up front.”

Menachem nodded approvingly. “That’s good.”

“Yes, it sounds very good,” his wife added. “So, you’ll have some more ma’aser to give for Aunt Minna’s operation, right? Yankel told me that you gave him a nice amount, but you know how it is; there’s never enough money.”

“We’ll see,” Eliyahu said.

“What does that mean, ‘we’ll see’?”

“It means that I have a few ideas about what to do with my ma’aser money, and I have to look into it.”

“What’s there to look into? What other things were you thinking of doing with it?”

“Buying a sefer Torah for a shul,” he replied.

“A sefer Torah!” Yocheved stared at him as though he’d swallowed five whole dates with the pits. “How much are you renting that apartment out for, Eliyahu, that you can deduct ma’aser of one hundred and thirty thousand shekels?!”

At the doorway of the porch, Binyamin was chatting with his cousin Yehuda, Aunt Yocheved’s youngest child. They both turned around when they heard her voice rise. “What costs one hundred and thirty thousand shekels, Ima?” Yehuda asked.

“A sefer Torah.”

“A sefer Torah? Our yeshivah got a new sefer Torah before Purim that cost more than a hundred and forty thousand.”

“Nu.” Yocheved looked triumphantly at Eliyahu. “After all, Eliyahu, you didn’t become a millionaire. Although…” She looked around. “Maybe this apartment might delude you into thinking otherwise.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 46 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The next morning, just as Elisheva was about to leave for the new house, there was a knock at the door.

“Someone’s here to see the clock!” Chani announced loudly.

Eliyahu, who was home from Shacharis already, escorted the man into the empty dining room.

It was silent for a few moments; the potential buyer was probably appraising the value of the clock.
“Nice piece,” Elisheva heard him say after a few minutes. “I understand it’s not working properly, is that right?”

“Yes,” Eliyahu replied. “A clockmaker once told us that there’s a problem in the delicate balance of the mechanism.”

Meir was probably making desperate hinting gestures, because Eliyahu suddenly added, with a smile in his tone, “My son sometimes gets the bird to pop out. If his ball strikes a specific spot that apparently jogs the balance of the cogs or the springs back into place, the cuckoo bird works once. Meir, you threw your ball a few minutes ago, right?”

“Yes,” the boy replied.
“So maybe we’ll see the bird in action,” the man’s voice said. “What time does it announce?”

“Something else each time,” Meir answered bashfully. “Once it cuckooed three times; sometimes it’s five times. I don’t know how it decides.”

“May I take a closer look at the clock?”

“Sure,” Eliyahu said.

There was a long silence, which was suddenly broken by the cuckoo bird; it cuckooed eight times.

“If it’s able to work,” the man said, his voice muffled; his face was probably buried in the clock’s innards, “that means there is definitely hope.”

Eliyahu smiled. “We always knew there was hope. The thing is that the repair costs money, and it wasn’t worth it for us.”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 45 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

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“I’m calling about the cuckoo clock you advertised that you’re selling?”

“Okay…?” Elisheva was getting tired of these phone calls. The day after tomorrow, the day before bedikas chametz, was moving day, with Hashem’s help, and she didn’t know where she would get the energy from for this final battle. Perhaps it had been foolish to try to sell the clock; it was a shame they hadn’t just dumped it.

Her father, remarkably, had not displayed any particular sentiment for it. “You can throw it out,” he’d replied when she’d asked him, on the day he was released from the hospital. Of course he had returned to the nursing home. He was weaker than he’d been when he’d left from there, but healthy, baruch Hashem.

“I understand that it needs some repairs, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Something with the balance of the gears.”

“It doesn’t work at all?”

“No. Sometimes the cuckoo bird pops out and chimes, but it’s rare, and we have no idea what causes it to happen.”

Meir entered the empty kitchen, mouthed something to her in a whisper, and then suddenly blushed and fled outside.

“How much do you want for it?”

“Two hundred and fifty shekels.”

If someone would come and show interest in the old clock, they could always knock down the price a bit—that’s what Eliyahu had told her. But so far, no one had expressed serious interest in it at all.

“And how much should a repair cost?”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 44 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

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The little house slowly underwent a change. Every piece of furniture was cleaned, packed well, and prepared to be sent to the new apartment. The children ate “Erev Pesach suppers” long before they were used to doing so every other year, but Elisheva knew that something had to give; she couldn’t be perfect on all fronts. So they ate pitas and pastrami and franks, and baruch Hashem no one seemed to be the worse for wear because of it.

“We’ve finished the dining room,” Eliyahu said with a sigh of relief late one night. The bookcase was dismantled, the sefarim were packed in boxes, and the table and chairs were wrapped in plastic. The little ones were sleeping, crowded tightly into the bedroom. Later, they would be transferred back to their mattresses, in the dining room.

Elisheva sat down on a plastic chair that still remained unwrapped. ““There are two things left that are questions: the cuckoo clock and this silver yad.”

“Right.” Eliyahu squinted his eyes. “What is this? A mystery without a solution, or what?”

“There has to be a solution,” Devoiry said, looking from one parent to the other. “Things don’t just land in homes out of nowhere…”

“Maybe one of the little ones brought it from someplace?”

“Who? Everyone says they don’t know what it is,” Elisheva replied.

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“It’s hard,” Elisheva’s father said suddenly.

“What is hard, Abba?” She bent over him. “Does something hurt you?”

He shook his head from side to side.

“So what is hard?”

“It’s hard,” was his answer. He sighed.

“The weakness?”

Again, a negative shake of the head.

“Being in the hospital?”

“No.”

“So what is it?”

“Being alone.”

“But Eliyahu was here all night, Abba,” she said, almost pleadingly. “He just went down to shul for Shacharis. I know it’s not easy to be alone, but I really tried hard to come early…”

He waved his hand weakly.

“Not that?” she asked.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “and I was alone…”

All at once, the few photos she knew from that time flashed through her mind. Photos from her father’s childhood. Two were from Europe; the rest were already taken here in Eretz Yisrael. He gave the impression of being a calm, worry-free child, and in some of the pictures, he was also surrounded by friends.

“Did your friends have families?” She slid her finger along the metal railing of the wide bed. “Most of them probably didn’t.”

“They had names…” he whispered, and closed his eyes. “They knew who they were.”

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“Excuse me, did the van from Atah Imadi pass by already?” The woman who turned to Elisheva was elderly and seemed to be somewhat blinded by the bright sunlight.

“I think it should be here any—” Elisheva, shading her eyes with her hand, didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence before the white van drove around the bend in the road. She climbed aboard and was on her way to spending another day at Tel Hashomer Hospital, with the hope that everything would go smoothly, and that her father would feel well and hopefully be released in a day or two.

That was life—strong, turbulent, often drowning out all your plans. She had planned and thought and ran around and hoped that by this week, they’d finish all the packing and would finally be able to move. But the infection that Abba had come down with had upended all her organized plans, and turned them into one big joke. For the past three days, since Rosh Chodesh Nissan, she and Eliyahu had been taking shifts at the hospital, in Internal Medicine C, while the children were doing the best they could on the home front.

Just then her cell phone rang. What was this long number?

“Ms. Elisheva?”

“Yes?” Her voice was laced with puzzlement.

“This is Mahmoud from Internal Medicine C.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “The hospital?”

“Yes. Your father wants to know when you are coming. He’s alone right now.”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 41 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Purim was behind them, and Elisheva and her entire household of three small rooms flew into a frenzy of organizing and packing. The little ones kept competing as to who would get hold of the biggest boxes from the grocery or nearby supermarket. But Elisheva threw out at least a third of the cartons they brought home, because of all types of unidentifiable crumbs in them.

“Ima wants everything to be clean for Pesach, not just plain clean!” Rikki and Devorah tried to explain to the kids. But their explanations fell on deaf ears. It was a fun activity for the boys: to search for the boxes, ask permission from the proprietors to take them, and then drag them home—just to donate most of them to the storage room in Meir’s friend’s building. Meir’s friend Elchanan was organizing a huge bonfire for Lag B’Omer, and he’d already started collecting boxes and wooden boards for it.

Even Saba had already heard about the famous bonfire, and when Meir went to visit him, he rose slowly from his chair and, with the help of a broomstick, slowly nudged a large, folded cardboard box from under the bed.

“This was downstairs in the lobby,” he said to his grandson, who stared wide-eyed in delight. “I asked if I could keep it for you.”

“Thank you, Saba!” Meir hugged the carton as best he could; his arms hardly went around it. “Ima, can I go bring this over to Elchanan?”

“Wait, not this minute,” Elisheva said. She had just leaned back in her chair and was holding a steaming cup of tea, a bit of a break from the mess at home. It was just two days to Rosh Chodesh Nissan, and they hoped to move next week. Maybe it would have been better to wait until they could close off the unit for her father, instead of renovating while they lived there, but the temptation of moving before Pesach to a new, clean, very large home was overwhelming. And in any case, her father was not being very clear about his plans. It seemed like he would be happy to come live with them, but every time the subject came up, he kept saying, “We’ll see.”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 40 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

When Binyamin walked into the house with his bag of laundry on Motza’ei Shabbos, he was greeted with upbeat music.

“Sorry,” he said with a tired smile. “I thought this was my house.”

“It’s always happy here!” his sister Chani said, waiting ready with her camera.

“But there isn’t usually so much noise here. Can you lower the music a little?”

“Mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simchah!” five-and-a-half-year-old Shloimy said knowingly. “And besides, don’t you know we’re moving? Right after Purim!”

“He knows,” Esty said.

“I know,” Binyamin said at the exact same time. He sat down on a chair. “Of course I know!”

“Oh, so Abba and Ima told you?” Four-year-old Bentzy nodded understandingly.

Binyamin laughed. “And if they wouldn’t have told me, my friends would have updated me. Almost all of Bnei Brak knows about it!”

“Yes, and it’s a little…uncomfortable to be the subject of people’s stories…” Devorah spoke up. “Do you feel that way, too?”

“There certainly is something to what you’re saying.” Binyamin rested a hand on his forehead and raised his eyes to his sister. “Can’t you lower that music? My head is really aching.”

Chani and Esty studied him.

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 39 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“What are you doing here, Miri?” The two sisters bumped into each other at the corner of Nechemia and Chazon Ish streets.
“I went with Abba and Ima to see their apartment, and then I used the chance to do a few errands in this area.”

“How nice!” Tzippy chirped. “Now you can come over to me!”

Miri didn’t object. She hadn’t visited her sister since the wedding.

“But I have nothing special to serve you, just a little bit of cake left over from Shabbos.”

“Please, I’m not coming to eat!” They walked into the building, and Miri took Shmully out of the carriage. “You don’t need to feel pressured because of me.”

“That’s what you say,” Tzippy said in a low voice, and started to climb the stairs. Miri stared at her for a long moment, and then followed her sister, with her baby in her arms.

“So, how’s their apartment?” Tzippy asked as she turned the key in the lock.

“It’s really nice. Huge.” Miri took a deep breath. “You can see that it was designed as a very fancy place: the paint job, the moldings, gorgeous light fixtures in the whole house—including a chandelier in the dining room and a really nice piece in the dinette—and marble or ceramic floors; I don’t know the difference. The whole house has a very modern, shiny look, if you know what I mean. I wonder how it will look like with Abba and Ima’s furniture. Actually, the dining room has a bookcase built in, made of plasterwork, I think, so they don’t need to bring their old one along.”

“There are already light fixtures and a bookcase installed?”

“I don’t know if it’s actually a bookcase, but what else do you call a piece of furniture in the dining room that has lots of shelves?” Miri tittered. “I think we automatically assume it’s for sefarim; I don’t know what the original plan for it was. Maybe it’s just meant for knickknacks.”

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