“It’s, um, nice of you to invite me,” Binyamin said. “Rabbi Handalman said it was your idea.”
“You’re very welcome.” Hannah glanced guiltily at Aharon. “I hope you both brought good appetites.”
She had coached the children to be especially nice, yet Devorah wrinkled her nose as she sat at the table. “It smells!” she said, which Hannah hastily covered by talking about the brisket.
When the food was on the table, Aharon said the blessing: “Baruch atah Adonai…”
From under her lashes Hannah watched him, her heart weighted with concern. The change in him had been happening for some time, but a few weeks ago there was a sharp demarcation. Sometimes there was an expression on his face that made him a stranger.
It used to be if you were charitable you called Aharon assured, and if not so charitable pompous. When he’d prayed he’d had a solidness about him, as if to say, This is who I am and who my father was and my father’s father, as if he had a shortcut to God’s ear. That man was gone. Aharon went through the motions, mouthed the syllables. He might have been reading a grocery list. The worst thing was, she didn’t even think he was aware of the change, didn’t think he had any clue about the distracted blankness in his eyes or the fact that at times he had a look there that was pure panicky fear. He slept badly, had nightmares, rose so late she knew he would have little time for his morning prayers, and he didn’t even seem to care.
The mealtime crawled under the weight of forced conversation. Binyamin, who would never be any girl’s idea of a prince, was also no chatterbox. Fortunately, he was a quick eater. He finished two platefuls in record time, and no one else was hungry. Hannah cleared and served dessert: halvah and herbal tea.
The older two children were excused. Hannah put the baby to bed. When she came out, Aharon and Binyamin were not in the house. In the shadows outside she spotted them sitting in the children’s playground. She checked on Devorah and Yehuda, both reading (Devorah pretending to) in the living room. Hannah put on her coat and slipped outside.
The playground was small, only swings and a slide that even Devorah had nearly outgrown. Hannah did not approach it on the path but went around the building instead, hoping the dark would shield her from prying eyes—not Aharon’s so much as the neighbors’. What would they say about a woman spying on her own husband?
She came around the side of the building, paused against the wall. She could barely hear the men’s voices. Aharon’s usually carried well, god knew, but he was speaking without much energy.
“Last night I dreamed I was trying to hide Yehuda at the yeshiva because the Nazis were plundering in the streets. They were knocking down the Wall, and if I didn’t hide Yehuda they would find him. I had him by the hand, and I was racing through the school when suddenly there was a brilliant flash in the windows. It was the weapon. I knew it, in the dream; I thought: The Nazis got the weapon, somehow, and they’ve destroyed Jerusalem!”
“It was just a dream, Rabbi.” Binyamin’s boyish voice was uneasy but also unexpectedly kind.
“Yes, yes, of course. Pray to God it stays that way. We must find Anatoli Nikiel. We must get our hands on the rest of the manuscript before they do.” Then the men got up and began to stroll.
Hannah’s heart was in her throat, but she didn’t dare follow. She went back to the apartment, wrote her note, and waited. Devorah went to bed. The men returned. One more cup of tea, then Binyamin rose to leave. His coat was threadbare and old—like, perhaps, something that had belonged to his grandfather or someone else’s grandfather, salvaged from a bargain bin in the marketplace. His parents, who were not poor, must tear their hair out, god help them.
Hannah followed the men to the door and when Binyamin mumbled good-bye he stuck his hand in his coat pocket. Hannah held her breath for a moment, fearing in his simplicity he would give her away, would pull out the note and say, What is this?
But he didn’t. He frowned at her, clenching something tightly in his pocket, and said good night.
Ever since the moment Aharon had decided he didn’t want to communicate with Shimon Norowitz anymore, Shimon Norowitz had become his best friend. “What else have you found in the arrays? What have you learned in your research? Have you spoken to anyone? Who?” And always, like clockwork, “Of course, you’ll keep in touch?”
Whenever Norowitz called, Aharon’s lips felt pressed shut, too heavy to move, as though an angel were putting a finger there—shhhhh. He did not tell Norowitz about his interview with Biederer. He did not tell him about Anatoli Nikiel. And he certainly did not mention the disappearance of two men outside of Auschwitz in a flash of light.
On a Monday after Binyamin had taken Shabbes with them, the boy was already in Aharon’s office when he arrived. Binyamin rose with an odd expression, his Kobinski binder in his hands. He looked like a dog that had dug something up and wasn’t sure whether to look pleased or guilty about it.
“What? What did you find?”
“I found something,” Binyamin mumbled. His cheeks were spotted with red.
“Yes, I know that. I know because I can read minds, Binyamin, and because you’re standing there holding the binder with such a look. What is it?”
Binyamin held it out. “Here.”
Aharon was disappointed when he saw what Binyamin had circled. “That? That’s not a word!”
Binyamin’s tapered hands with their chipped fingernails reached for the binder hesitatingly. “Okay, but…”
“Don’t say ‘okay.’ ‘Okay’—what does that mean?”
Binyamin put the binder down on the desk, poked his glasses higher on his nose, and turned pages. Now Aharon could see that there were new Post-it notes adhered to the pages, fresh pink-colored ones showing brightly against all the dull, fading yellows. Binyamin turned to one of the flagged pages, holding the binder open for Aharon expectantly.
“These?” Aharon asked, pointing to the pink flags.
Binyamin nodded. Aharon bent over the binder and looked. The same five-letter sequence, חלקחח, was on this page again, and on the next pink-flagged page, and the next.
“How many?” Aharon asked, his voice small.
“Forty-five occurrences.”
Forty-five! “But… ‘TLCTT’—it doesn’t mean anything.” But this time Aharon wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe… um… could it be a name? With the vowels, I mean?”
“How did you find this?”
Binyamin shrugged. “Just saw it,” he muttered, looking down at the page.
“Hmmm.” Aharon stroked his beard. “It might be a name. What else? Acronym? Something scientific? A chemical ingredient? A formula?” He rocked back and forth on his toes.
“Could be,” Binyamin said doubtfully. “Or it could be a name.”
Aharon had a Jewish encyclopedia CD-ROM—something Hannah had gotten him for a birthday. He tried several combinations of vowels added to the Hebrew consonants but found no matches. He did a search for the letters in the Torah and Talmud also, but that sequence of letters did not appear in plaintext of either one.
He sat back, stroking his beard. “At the university, I can find someone in physics. Maybe they’ll recognize it. Some kind of scientific term? Roman numerals? Dates?”
“Maybe,” said Binyamin. “But it could be a name.”
9
I became obsessed with good and evil. When we act or speak or even think, we create energy. In the brain, synapses fire; in speech, we create sound waves; with physical action the impact on matter is even more obvious.