An Unexpected Afterlife_A Novel Read online

  “Please,” Moshe said. His time was running out. “Things will be just the way they were before.”

  “Ha!” said Zohar. “And things weren’t exactly wonderful then.”

  “Yes, they were!” Moshe fought the urge to throttle the hairdresser right in front of his worshippers.

  “OK, Mr. Right. When was the last time you brought her flowers?”

  The question caught him unprepared. He had not been big on flowers. The stores only opened after he set out for work, and closed before he left the office. Galit had never seemed to mind.

  “Um,” he said.

  “Exactly,” said the hairdresser. “Avi buys her flowers every week.”

  Moshe disliked Zohar more with each passing second.

  “And,” the hairdresser continued, “he’s better in bed.”

  Giggles behind him. Moshe did not need to hear that. The very thought of Avi in bed with Galit made him want to puke.

  Zohar waved the scissors in the air and resumed chopping at her hair. “Living with you wasn’t easy, you know. Working late every night. Never paying attention. It’s a wonder she didn’t throw you out sooner.”

  Was it true? Was life with him so bad?

  “I’ll do better,” he said. “I’ll change.”

  “Ha! How many times have you heard that, girls?”

  The women in waiting muttered their agreement. Zohar was their God; his every word, their Holy Scripture.

  Time for Plan B.

  Moshe said, “What about Talya? She needs a father in her life—her real father.”

  Zohar stopped chopping. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve made her cry.”

  He gripped Moshe by the shoulders, scissors still in hand, and shoved him toward the door.

  “Please,” Moshe said. “Give us a chance. Don’t marry him!”

  Zohar pushed him onto the sidewalk and closed the door behind him. “You’re not welcome here,” he said. “If you care about her at all, you’ll leave her alone.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Sunbeams poured through the leaves above and warmed the patches of dirt and wild grass in the courtyard. Birds squawked in the trees. The sounds and smells of Rocheleh’s Shabbat cooking drifted through an open window.

  Yosef sat in the center of the yard on a low stool of hard plastic designed for a child. He dipped the horsehair brush in the circular tin of polish and spread thick black paste along the side of a leather Sabbath shoe.

  He loved Friday mornings. After dropping the boys at school and shopping for groceries at the store, he continued his preparations at leisure. The air tingled with an almost palpable tranquility streaked with eager anticipation. Each passing second brought the Sabbath sanctity closer.

  This particular Friday morning, his anticipation skyrocketed, as he sensed the approach not only of the weekly Sabbath, but the final and long-awaited Day of Complete Sabbath. The Messianic Age.

  He tilted his hand inside the shoe and polished the other side.

  And yet…

  After morning prayers, he had stopped by the Mount of Olives. Again, he patrolled the rows of tombstones. Again, he searched the perimeter of trees and bushes. Again, he found nothing.

  Two resurrected Jews do not the Resurrection make.

  Rabbi Emden’s words echoed in his ears and unsettled his Shabbat eve peace of mind. Two days had passed since the discovery of Irina, yet the count of resurrected Jews remained the same.

  Have faith, Yosef.

  God worked at His own pace and by His own rules. Human impatience would not dictate the course of history. The world had waited two thousand years. The world could wait a little longer. One thing was clear—the Final Redemption had begun. He found no other way to read the facts.

  He placed the blackened shoe on the square of old newspaper, then replaced the lid of the tin with a loud click.

  A sudden thought vaulted Yosef to his feet, and he rushed indoors to his bedroom. He opened the closet door and ran his fingers over the nylon plastic cover among the suspended shirts and dresses.

  The Redemption could arrive any day and without warning, the Sages of Blessed Memory taught, and one should forever be ready to greet the Messiah at a moment’s notice. And so, the day after his wedding, Yosef had dry-cleaned his suit and hung it in his closet, awaiting the call of the ram’s horn over the hills of Jerusalem. Four children and two homes later, the suit remained in the plastic cover.

  Yosef lifted the suit from the rack and slipped the trousers from the hanger. He kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his weekday slacks. The suit trousers rose over his shins and thighs, but the metal clasps refused to meet over his waist. Yosef shook his head at his own stupidity. He’d need to visit the tailor on Sunday morning. A small delay in the Redemption would not be a bad thing, after all.

  “Yossi,” said Rocheleh. She stood in the open doorway, a stained apron over her house gown. She had caught him, literally, with his trousers down. “What are you doing?”

  “Just trying on my old suit.”

  She shook her head at his silly antics and got to business. “It’s been four days, Yossi. We have four children to feed. Five, counting you. And now your two houseguests too. We can’t go on like this.”

  “You’re right,” he said. Their teaching salaries barely covered their own basic needs, and the added load in cooking and laundry fell to her. Good thing he had not discovered more resurrected Jews!

  His poor Rocheleh. Born and raised in the ultra-Orthodox community, she had never dreamed that she would marry the once-secular Yosef. The real catches—the Torah prodigies and sons of the Charedi aristocracy—had married her girlfriends whose families had deeper pockets. Rocheleh, however, had collected dust on the shelf until her age had convinced her to settle for a lesser man. Her fortune was about to change.

  “Rabbi Emden called this morning,” he said. “We’re going to meet the Great Council on Sunday evening.”

  “The Great Council?” Her eyebrows lifted on a gust of awe mixed with suspicion.

  “Yes! When they find out about Moshe and Irina, they’ll want to visit them in person.”

  Rocheleh brushed a rogue strand of hair beneath her kerchief. “Here, in our house?” The corners of her lips curled into a smile. Her eyes explored the wall, already preparing a menu of delicacies to serve the leading rabbis of the generation—and their wives—in her home.

  “Yes! What great merit we have had to have discovered and honored them first in our home.”

  The smile dropped. He had overdone it. “Sunday they’ll be gone?”

  “Add a few days to make arrangements. Tuesday, tops.”

  Rocheleh grunted, cast a parting contemptuous glance at his bare legs, and returned to her pre-Sabbath tasks.

  Yosef dressed and returned the suit to the closet.

  In every generation, the Sages taught, a Messiah is born. He waits in anonymity and longs for the Redemption, when the time will come for him to reveal his true nature. Coming to think of it, the Messiah must surely be one of the great Torah authorities of the Great Council.

  Oh, no!

  Yosef grabbed the suit and ran to Emek Refaim. If he hurried, he’d reach the tailor before closing time. If he begged, his suit might be ready on Sunday. If Yosef had the merit to greet the Messiah, he would not do so shabbily dressed.

  CHAPTER 24

  Noga hesitated outside room 419C in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

  You have nothing to fear. According to Eliana, the cute mystery patient had woken from his coma. He had a name, and his behavior was as sane as that of the other patients. But Noga remembered the crazy dark eyes and the pink lines his fingers had left on her wrist, and her pulse raced as though she was about to enter a lion’s cage.

  She should probably stay away, but she could not resist the call. The attraction went beyond his looks or even curiosity about his sudden recovery. He had a name but no family or friends. No visitors. He remained a lonely island in a sea of indifference
. We have a lot in common. She wasn’t exactly hitting on him, either. She was just doing her job.

  She drew a deep breath, clutched the transparent folder of papers to her breast like a shield, and stepped over the threshold.

  The leg in the cast hung from the sling, the other lay beneath the blanket. As she rounded the divider curtain, more of his body came into view. Be asleep! But the fairy godmothers ignored her wish. Mr. Eli Katz lay in bed, his eyes fixed on the blank television screen in the corner.

  She cleared her throat. “How are you feeling today, Mr. Katz?”

  His head rolled on the pillow. The mop of jet-black hair fell over the bandage on his forehead. His dark eyes considered her. Then the head returned to the blank screen. If he remembered her from yesterday, he hid it well.

  “Trapped,” he said.

  Not a man of words. She would have to do the talking. She didn’t do small talk, although her job forced her to speak with strangers of all sorts. For some causes—and some people—she was willing to make the effort.

  She got to the point. “I’m conducting a study,” she said. “Genetic research. We’re—”

  “I’m not good with blood,” he said, interrupting her without even making eye contact.

  A full sentence. Progress. She rushed ahead with the good news. “No need for that,” she said. “The lab already has samples.”

  That got his attention. “The lab has what?”

  She felt her cheeks redden under the gaze of those deep, dark eyes. “Samples. Of your blood. When you arrived, they had to run tests before surgery. It’s standard.”

  He ran his uninjured hand through his hair as though she had just informed him that his mother had died. What was his problem?

  She took advantage of the silence to plow on with her sales pitch. “We’re tracing a particular gene—”

  He raised his hand for her to stop. “I’m not interested. Just… just leave me alone, OK?”

  Her cheeks burned again but with an entirely different emotion. “As you wish,” she snapped. She had liked him better comatose.

  She turned to leave, but stopped at the curtain to deliver a parting shot. “You’re going to be here a long time, Mr. Katz,” she said. “You might want to make some friends.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Moshe and Irina followed Rabbi Yosef down Shimshon Street. The setting sun bathed the low stone buildings and leafy trees of Baka in gold. The rabbi’s sons ran ahead in black trousers and white collared shirts, their curled side locks swinging at their ears. Their footfalls reverberated off the homes and apartment buildings of the quiet suburban street. In a window, twin Shabbat candles burned on silver candlesticks. The smells of freshly baked bread and chicken soup wafted in the gentle breeze. Cars straddled the sidewalk as their owners relaxed at home after a tiring week.

  Moshe and Irina fell a little behind.

  “How did it go?” she asked. She looked particularly fairylike in the green dress from Tal Chaim and the rabbanit’s makeup—a fairy on her way to a palatial ball. In the rush of Shabbat preparations, he had not had time to update her.

  “Good, at first,” he said. The hot shower and fresh clothes had raised his spirits. Then details of the encounter rose in his memory. “Terrible, actually,” he added.

  Irina chuckled. “Good and terrible?”

  “I finally got to see her and speak to her,” he explained. “But she didn’t say a word. She’s furious. She thinks that I faked my death and that I’ve been leading a double life. Oh, and that I was a terrible husband.”

  He had reeled from the revelation for a full hour after Zohar Raphael had thrown him out of the hair salon.

  “I find that hard to believe,” she said.

  “Which part—the double life or the bad husband?” At least he still had his sense of humor.

  “Either.”

  They passed his old home. The blinds remained down, the door shut. Slivers of light at the edges hinted at the warmth of his old life, the warmth he would probably never know again.

  “I thought we were doing well,” he said. “We were a team. We were going to conquer the world together. But toward the end, I suppose I ran too far ahead. I didn’t even notice that she had fallen behind.”

  Irina said, “But you’ve stopped running now. Maybe she just needs time to catch up. Don’t give up, Moshe.”

  He smiled. “‘A Karlin never quits,’” he said. “That’s what my father used to say.”

  “Those are good words to live by.”

  They strolled along in silence. It felt good to have her support—a pair of objective eyes to keep him sane. And thank God for Shabbat. He sorely needed a break from the strain of his new life.

  They turned a corner. Rabbi Yosef held open the metal gate of a low-walled courtyard and ushered them inside.

  The Emek Refaim Synagogue on Yael Street—a humble oblong of rough stone blocks—reminded Moshe of the Western Wall in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City.

  In the late 1800s, German Templers journeyed to the Holy Land to promote the rebuilding of the Temple and to await the Second Coming. The former Protestants bought large swaths of land in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem’s Refaim Valley, where they tilled the holy soil and invented the Jaffa orange.

  New suburbs mushroomed around their German Colony in Jerusalem—Katamon, Talbieh, and Baka—and housed wealthy Arabs.

  During World War II, however, the British deported the German settlers. Only their cemeteries and the stone homesteads with arched doorways and metal shutters remained as reminders of their presence.

  Then, in 1949, Jewish immigrants established the Emek Refaim synagogue in one of the old stone structures of Baka, abandoned during the War of Independence. And so, by yet another ironic twist of history, the pious Germans had helped build not a Temple for a resurrected Jesus Christ but a synagogue for holocaust survivors—and now, two newly resurrected Jews.

  The rabbi directed Irina to the door of the women’s section. Inside the synagogue, he handed Moshe a velvet kippah and a prayer book, and seated him at a pew of dark, carved wood and navy blue velvet upholstery.

  The rabbi took his seat at the front, facing the congregation, and recited the Song of Songs, in a traditional singsong.

  Never in his life had Moshe been the first to arrive at synagogue. Old men wearing their Sabbath finery trickled inside and filled the pews. Moshe caught snatches of conversations in German, Hungarian, French, Persian, and English.

  According to a bronze plaque on the wall, the furnishings had once belonged to a synagogue in the small town of Busseto in northern Italy. Moshe studied the elaborate carvings of the Holy Ark, the banisters of the raised dais, and the pews.

  In this renovated Jerusalem ruin, beneath a canopy of Arabian arches, European Jewish refugees rested on furniture rescued from an extinct Italian Jewish community.

  Emek Refaim—the Valley of Giants. Or Valley of Ghosts—for what was this nation if not a heap of disenfranchised souls, a valley of dry bones drawn together from the four corners of the Earth, after enduring every catastrophe, and surviving every prophecy of doom? In the middle sat Moshe, the biggest ghost of all.

  The singsong ended. Rabbi Yosef nodded at a bony old man in a blue suit, who hobbled to the central podium, wrapped a fringed talit over his shoulders, and led the afternoon prayers.

  The congregation rose for the silent Standing Prayer. Moshe placed his prayer book on the stand and turned the pages. The first of nineteen blessings invoked the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The second made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  You are eternally powerful, Lord; You are the Resurrector of the Dead, and redeem abundantly.

  You sustain life with loving kindness, revive the dead with great mercy; you support the fallen, heal the sick, release the fettered, and are steadfast to those that sleep in the dust.

  Who is like You, Master of Powers, and who even resembles You? The King Who kills and revives, and nurtures redemption.<
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  And dependable You are to give life to the dead.

  Blessed are You, Resurrector of the Dead.

  Moshe had read the blessing countless times, but he did not recall the focus on resurrection. The living pay little attention to the dead.

  Jews uttered this prayer three times a day as their ancestors had over the centuries. As a vulnerable minority, and the target of entrenched prejudice and blind hatred in many countries, the specter of sudden death haunted their every step. The return to Jerusalem and a national homeland on their holy ground must have seemed as impossible and incredible as Ezekiel’s dry old bones standing up and breathing again. And yet it was that unreasonable hope that had kept them going.

  His thoughts drifted to the words of the Israeli anthem.

  Od lo avda tikvatenu / Our hope is not yet lost

  Hatikva bat shnot alpayim / The hope of two thousand years

  Lihyot am chofshi be’artzenu / To be a free nation in our land.

  The synagogue windows darkened. The congregation welcomed the Sabbath Bride with song. Their voices rose and fell, then rose again. On the Sabbath day, Jews in synagogues around the world sang these same words and notes. Moshe hummed along and found a measure of comfort.

  He too hoped to revive the past. That past, however, had lost its rosy hue. He had spent little time with his daughter. He had steered Karlin & Son toward the sharp rocks of disaster. He had neglected his wife. Did that old life deserve revival?

  His wrist itched beneath the heavy watch.

  Now that he knew his shortcomings, he knew what to fix. To win back Galit, he would need to change. Spend more time with her. Work less. That part shouldn’t be a problem. With Karlin & Son diving toward bankruptcy, he’d soon have plenty of free time.

  You have two weeks.

  Two weeks until the wedding. Two weeks to reinvent himself. To prove to her that he deserved a second chance.

  The prayers concluded. Rabbi Yosef approached the podium and announced the prayer times for the next day. The congregants poured out the doors and into the courtyard.