Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 18 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
…Three rolls of white English silk
Three rolls of cream chiffon fabric
Three hundred grams plastic pearls
Five spools of thin wire thread
Five spools medium-thickness nylon thread
“Has it been almost a year since the engagement? It’s obvious you have weddings coming up soon. Congratulations!” Katarina Wangel smiled as she dropped the order form for the materials on the table in the sewing workshop.
“Thank you,” Rechel replied as she looked at the paper. The sewing room was empty; everyone had already gone home, and only she was left to finalize the purchase list for the coming week. “It really is for the wedding dress for Elky and Naomi, with the Creator’s help; and the girls who will come after them in the next few years. The old bridal gown that everyone has been using until now has been altered and changed so many times, and it’s also gone yellow.”
After a moment she added, “Not all of the materials here are for that one dress, though. We need the fabrics and the threads here in any case, and Dina and Sima also asked for the plastic pearls, for the beading and their scarfs… But the original purpose is definitely to make the young women happy.”
“Your Naomi deserves it, there is no doubt. Even if only for the fact that she’s the daughter of one of our best seamstresses.” Katarina was in a complimentary mood today. “Fine, we’ll supply you with all of this, along with the rest of the order.”
“Thank you. I’ll let Naomi know, and I’m sure she will be happy.” And she’d draft a fitting thank you letter.
“That’s very important,” Katarina affirmed dryly, “and that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I just spoke to Rachel Cohen, the mother of the other bride, and I asked her to convey the message to their groom’s parents. If you want, you can speak with your sister Chani, the mother of your future-son-in-law. Or I can speak to her myself..”
Rechel’s back stiffened. “About what, Hauptmann?” she asked submissively.
“We decided to allow you to hold the wedding celebrations at our manor house.”
Rechel raised her eyes. “That…is a very generous offer.”
“Obviously, the food will be yours and your responsibility, but the space…” She smiled her sour smile. “You can ask your sister Chani. Our medium-sized hall should be very dignified for a wedding celebration.”
“That is really so kind of you, Hauptmann.” Rechel took the list from the table and folded it in two, then four, then six. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Throughout the years, until now, we’ve made our weddings in open spaces, or in the upstairs hall of the factory, and it was just fine. What…” She groped for the right words, but failed to find them. Something got stuck in her throat.
“Why did we decide to be nice all of a sudden?” Katarina chuckled. “First of all, there hasn’t been a wedding here in a long time, and we saw how thrilled you all are now, so we decided to express our participation in your joy.”
Rechel nodded, her mouth dry.
“And another reason, no less an important one, is that the situation today is becoming more complicated than it’s ever been. Planes, helicopters, photos from space… You know how much effort we make to ensure that you can continue to live here. If you celebrate outside in a large group, the camp might be easily discovered. A gathering of dozens of people in a place that is supposed to be desolate is something that can raise many questions. But if there will be loud sounds of music from our house, that won’t be suspicious to anyone, even if a helicopter flies right over us.”
***
“That’s such a strange answer.” Binyamin put his father’s notebooks back on the shelf, one after another.
“Why?” Naomi’s eyes were questioning.
“Because it’s much simpler for them to limit the number of participants at the wedding than to let us make it in their place. They could have demanded that we have just ten people, without any celebrations or anything. What’s the real reason? Do they love us so much that they want to prevent our chassanim and kallos from having a traumatic wedding?”
“So what do you think the real reason is?” Rechel asked.
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
“It really is strange, I agree with you,” she said. “But maybe they really don’t want to go head to head with us. Ten people, without celebrations, you know…it’s something that may not sit well with us.”
“And what exactly would we do if something doesn’t sit well with us? We’ll escape over the walls, to the loving world out there?” he asked with a mirthless laugh.
“Shh…enough with this talk!” his mother said sharply. “They treat us just fine. You know, they want good work from us, without force.”
“Yes…” he said with a sigh.
The dreamy kallah sitting on the side was oblivious to this exchange between her mother and brother. She drummed her finger lightly on the table and said suddenly, “My friend Elky wants a wedding at the manor. She says that Wangel’s son, Bernard, or whatever his name is, got hold of some old recordings of Yosse’le Rosenblatt, from before the Nazi days. And there’s a gramophone at the estate, and Katarina told her mother that they plan to turn it on in their honor.”
Binyamin turned around. “Did you say Bernard?”
“I said Elky. She’ll have the first wedding here with real Jewish music, and not just that old violin that Zeide’s friend has, which is also only used to play classical music because they are so afraid it might be heard on the outside.”
“Bernard has something to do with this?”
“Yes.” Naomi sounded irritated. “Why does it matter so much to you?”
“Listen, Naomi, and listen well.” He took a deep breath. “If Bernard is involved, it must be much worse than I thought at first. The man doesn’t have a drop of goodness in him. If he made the effort and got hold of things and made promises so that this plan should succeed, it has to be a terrible thing. Don’t agree, do you hear? It’s better to get married with just ten people, without a band or anything—so long as you don’t get involved in this whole thing.” He looked very agitated, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Mamme, tell Aunt Chani that it’s not worth it, and that she should tell her Aryeh. Or I’ll tell him tomorrow myself, after Shacharis.”
“Don’t tell him anything!” Naomi stood up. “Binyamin, did anyone ask you to get involved here? Excuse me, but just because you decided yourself that something here is not right, you can’t expect everyone to start dancing to your horn!”
“So long as they don’t dance to Bernard’s gramophone,” her brother said with a smirk, but his tone remained as agitated as before. “Listen, Naomi. I once heard him talking about an experiment he is doing, something relating to us. Since then, I’ve become suspicious of him. I have no idea what this person’s plans or intentions are, but it doesn’t sound good. Didn’t you read the newspaper article Wangel brought us years ago, something about a gene called 1000 or something to that effect?”
His mother turned around to him. “I remember such a thing. Why?”
“Who knows if it isn’t connected to the weddings that they want us to hold in the manor house.” His voice dropped further. “I’m afraid of him.”
“I also remember the article, but what you’re saying is delusional,” Naomi said, checking that the window was closed. “If you tell that to someone, they will think you are paranoid. What are you afraid of? What do you think they could be scheming? To scatter poison at the weddings? You know that we are in their hands all the time; they could kill us easily if they would want to.”
“We are in Hashem’s hands all the time,” her mother corrected her. But then she added, “Binyamin, I’m asking you not to speak about your concerns with anyone, do you hear?”
Both of her children turned to look at her. She was sitting at the table, her chin resting in her palm.
“Mamme?” Naomi asked quietly, after a pause.
“What?” Her voice was flat.
“You…is everything okay?”
“I’m fine, baruch Hashem.”
“Do you think Binyamin is right?”
Rechel shook her head. “No. It’s hard for me to believe that they want to harm someone here, although I agree that the story is strange. But it will be more dangerous for us if they think that you don’t believe them.”
“So because they are not allowed to know that we are skeptical about Katarina’s excuses about their sudden magnanimity, we have to take the risk and do whatever they say?”
“We don’t have to, because it’s not an order, but rather a generous offer,” Rechel said. “And we should leave the main people involved to decide if they want to accept it or to get married like those who preceded them.”
“Or at a small wedding of ten people, depending on what options Katarina offers,” Naomi murmured quietly. “Mamme, what do you suggest I do?”
Rechel sighed. “I think we first have to hear what Chani and her husband say about it, and what the chassan thinks. Then, maybe after that, we should go to Rabbi Schwartzbrod and ask him quietly—” She looked at Binyamin—“but very quietly, about whether your concerns are valid. But you need to realize that the fact that Bernard doesn’t like Jews doesn’t necessarily mean that he is lying when he says he got old recordings of Jewish music for us, or whatever his offer was.”
***
Dena was peeling potatoes in her mother-in-law’s kitchen to the sounds of the music coming from the dining room (how long could she just sit on her mother-in-law’s couch, doing nothing?), when her phone rang.
It was her sister Margalit.
“What is that music?” Margalit asked. It was a few seconds after seven, when the price of phone calls went down, and she had called to wish Dena a happy birthday.
“Some fancy classical music that my in-laws enjoy listening to, the type that you and I don’t really know much about…”
“Tell them that they should put on ‘Siman Tov U’mazel Tov’ for you now—it’s your birthday! One minute, Shaindy, Abba is resting now. Then he has to go to yeshivah… What? Oh, to Aunt Dena, sure. Dena, Shaindy tells you mazel tov! She’s asking if you remember that her birthday was the day before yesterday and that she turned four.”
“Tell her I say mazel tov to; she’s so cute!” A potato accidentally got nicked by the peeler, perhaps due to the tears that were blurring Dena’s vision.
“Bye, Dena, and lots of mazel tov wishes from afar! I feel bad I can’t buy you a present or anything…”
“Your phone call is a huge present,” Dena said, choking on her tears. She missed it all so much. And the sounds of Margalit’s house reminded her of the home she’d always wanted to have.
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