The Ninth Day

by Ruth Tenzer Feldman

  Tante Rose rushed out of my room and shut the door in my face. I heard something scrape against the wood. The door wouldn’t budge. She’d locked me in.

  I knocked on the door. “Tante R-Rose!”

  Nothing.

  I pounded my fist against the wood. A moment later I heard Tante Rose’s voice just outside my door—a hodgepodge of words in a sing-song chant, high-pitched and urgent.

  My heart set a faster pace. I pounded again. “L-let me out!”

  Tante Rose shouted something. Then there was an odd burning smell. Something oozed under the bottom of the door. Hot wax? Was she trying to seal me in? Or set the straw on fire?

  My breath came short and fast.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Think!

  I eased the wriggling snake through the hole in the wall. Then I got on my hands and knees and made a dirt barrier between the wax and any stray bits of straw. Fire lines work for California brush fires; they’d work here, too.

  The room seemed to close in on me. I grabbed my prayer shawl, wrapped the blue thread around my finger and called for Serakh.

  No glow. No blue flash. No Serakh. My temples pounded with the pulse of my racing heart. I leaned against the far wall and stared at the crack under the door. What would that crazy woman try next? Boiling oil?

  Stay calm. The doctors said flashbacks often happened when someone was under stress. Inhale. Slow release.

  That tune from The King and I popped into my head, the one that Deborah Kerr sings to her son when they get to Siam. “Whistle a Happy Tune.” I sang the part about “whenever I feel afraid I hold myself erect and whistle a happy tune, so no one will suspect I’m afraid.” A silly song, but still…I hummed, and sang. Then I switched to “Put on a Happy Face” from Bye, Bye Birdie, and “I’ve Gotta Crow” from Peter Pan,. No sad songs allowed.

  ”You did what?” Serakh’s voice filtered through the door. Oh, thank God!

  ”She is possessed!” I heard Tante Rose shout. Serakh must be close enough for the communication to work. “I saw with my own eyes. She spoke in tongues. Her mouth quivered with the sounds Lilith made her utter. Even now she sings strange incantations to the devil. She came at me with a snake!”

  I heard scraping. A thin shaft of light leeched under the door. “Serakh, I’m fine,” I shouted.

  The door creaked open. Serakh whisked into the room. “I have found Avram. I’m sorry I left you alone.”

  Tante Rose stood in the doorway, sniffed, and glared at us. She hefted a large ladle and a long iron roasting spit. “This vile creature cannot stay here,” Tante Rose told Serakh. “I protect this house for Dolcette and I will guard her son with my life.”

  ”Dolcette would be displeased,” Serakh countered.

  Tante Rose raised the ladle over her head in warning.

  I’m not a monster! Half of me wanted Serakh to disappear in a blue flash. If Tante Rose was arming herself against terror, I wasn’t the one she should have been afraid of. The other half of me would have been nearly as terrified as Tante Rose if Serakh disappeared then, leaving me stuck in medieval Paris.

  Tante Rose backed away as we walked across the kitchen to the door. She tracked our every step, her eyes wide with fear, her fingers clutching the ladle and roasting spit.

  Safe with Serakh now, I felt a surge of power. “Find a better bedroom for Celeste,” I told Tante Rose. I remembered that red mark I’d seen on Celeste’s cheek. “And if you ever hit her with that ladle or anything else, I will come back to haunt you!”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath as I stormed out of the house. Yes!

  An icy wind attacked us as we walked toward the familiar grove of trees. Pulling the fur-trimmed hood over my head, despite the putrid smell, I leaned close to Serakh. “Where’s Avram?”

  ”On the other side of the river,” she said. “When we are through with what must be done, I will guide him back to Dolcette. Celeste will care for her until then.” She looked at the starry sky. “We still have about an hour before dawn.”

  ”That’s it? Only an hour? We have to give him the LSD now. It takes about an hour or so to really work. At least I think so.” My stomach knotted.

  ”Then I must travel alone again. You will be safe in the short time I am gone.” Serakh took the paisley squares from her pouch. I showed her how to tear off a single dose. “Let this melt in his mouth if you can. At least I think that’s right. No. I changed my mind. Use two. Two squares.”

  The instant I turned away, I felt I was wrong. Two squares would be too much. “Wait! Use one!”

  But she was already gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I slumped to the ground. Stupid. Stupid. Why hadn’t I stuck with my original plan? Frost gnawed at my ankles.

  And then she was back.

  ”I have inserted two squares with the potion into his mouth,” she said. “I have torn them into bits, and he has swallowed them without waking. Are you ready?”

  ”I made a mistake. I’m sure of it. We should have given him only one.”

  Serakh nodded. “Can we undo this?”

  ”No. Unless we make him throw up, but maybe not even then. It’s probably already in his system.”

  ”Then there is nothing to be done. So, now, we go forward.” She helped me up, and guided me toward the wooden bridge. “Tell me what happened with Tante Rose.”

  On our way, I explained about the snake. “Plus I stuttered,” I said. “That’s how I usually speak when I’m not with you.”

  ”This should not have frightened Tante Rose. It is common knowledge that the great Moshe himself suffered from this malady. I think she feared the foreign words and the snake.”

  ”Who is Lilith?”

  ”They believe in this place and time that Lilith is a she-monster, a demon who makes women do evil and who kills or deforms babies in childbirth. This is nonsense, but their belief is strong. Remember, I gave you one of their amulets against Lilith as a token when we first met? Lilith would have been pleased.”

  ”You know her?”

  ”We have met. She is an independent woman with a sharp tongue. But Lilith is no more a she-monster than I am.”

  Peeking from my hood at the dark waters of the Seine twirling under the bridge, I wondered whether my assessment of Serakh or Sylvester’s assessment of Serakh was the more accurate. Not that it mattered now. I couldn’t go back to my Berkeley world without her.

  I could barely feel my toes by the time we reached a forest. “He sleeps beneath the shelter of a large fir not far from here.”

  My voice shook. “I think I’d better be in a tree, someplace high where he has to look up at me and imagine I might have flown there.”

  Soon I was straddling the thick limb of an elm tree, my back against its trunk, my hands finding support in nearby branches. Serakh found a place in the thick branches of a fir tree a few feet away, hidden from Avram. We didn’t have long to wait.

  Pink is a feeble word. To call what I saw a rosy dawn hardly describes the power of the shift in the night sky that forces you to believe that yesterday’s muck is gone, and that today everything can be made new and whole.

  Down below us, Avram rolled on his side and crawled out from under the cloak that served as his blanket. He stripped off his thick woolen vest and tunic and sat there, shivering, staring up at the sky. Then he stood, wearing only his leggings and some sort of breeches, and wandered into the trees out of my sight.

  Serakh motioned to me to close my eyes and look away. A moment later I heard her whisper, “He is bathing in a small stream that empties into the river. I believe that he is getting ready for his morning prayers. I will watch over him to see that he returns here safely.”

  For a moment, I was still nobody’s angel—just virginal me who had admired Avram’s body and now thought about Gabriel. I forgot to be terrified.r />
  Then I saw Serakh back in the branches of the fir tree, and Avram, his shoulders still wet, stumbling back toward his clothes and a leather pouch. My shoulders twitched with tension again. It was too late to stop this craziness; he’d already been dosed. The rest was up to me.

  Avram managed to put on his vest, but not the tunic that went underneath the vest. He seemed to be mumbling to himself as he reached into a pouch and took out his knife and a small wooden box. When he stood and faced toward the dawn, I guessed what was inside the box—tefillin. The black leather straps were similar to the ones Grandpa had brought to America. I remembered a snippet of prayer from temple: “Bind them for a sign upon your hand, and let them be for frontlets between your eyes.”

  Even from what little I knew about putting on tefillin I could see something was wrong. After Avram had laid a long leather strap across his bare bicep and started to chant, he just stood there, letting the rest of the leather strap dangle. Then he stopped, the chanting unresolved. He took the strap off and squatted on the ground, sniffing the leather. He sat back on his heels and lifted the strap toward the sky. Then he made a loop and knot in the strap. A noose? Oh, my God.

  ”His sickness is upon him.” Serakh said calmly.

  ”No! You have to stop him. He’s going to kill himself.”

  ”Avram is safe enough,” she said, pointing toward him.

  I followed her finger. Avram was lying on the ground, humming a strange tune in a minor key and whirling the tefillin over his head as if it were a lasso. I rubbed the back of my neck.

  ”Now, I put my trust in you,” Serakh said.

  Inhale. Slow release. And so I began.

  ”Avram! Avram!” I said, my voice full and clear, hoping I echoed the “Abraham Abraham” call of the angel in the Genesis story.

  Silence.

  He stood up and stared into the trees. Panicked, I waited for him to recognize me in the branches, to call out my name. But then he bowed his head.

  ”Avram! Avram!”

  He gasped and fell to his knees.

  ”Avram! Avram!”

  This time I heard the answer I wanted: “Hineini. Here I am.”

  Please, let me get this exactly right. I said the next words as I’d memorized them from my English translation in the confirmation Bible. Whether Serakh let Avram hear them in French or German, or in the Hebrew from the biblical passage he would have studied as a boy, I do not know. “Do not lay your hands on your boy as a sacrifice. For now I know that you fear God, and would not withhold your son.”

  He gasped again. His shoulders shook.

  I wanted more. I needed desperately to make sure he understood. “Avram! Avram!”

  He looked up again, startled, his voice shaky. “Hineini.”

  ”Your son will be part of the generations that will return to Jerusalem. Avram, make a new vow!”

  He frowned. Then he stared up at the tree. He grabbed his head.

  ”No,” he shouted. “I am a pious man. I will not fall for your trickery.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Avram scrambled to his feet and hurled a rock at my tree, barely missing the branch under my feet. He seemed all too lucid, frighteningly so. Was he seeing me or imagining something else? Could the LSD be wearing off already? Or was he seeing a monster instead of an angel?

  I looked at Serakh. Her anguished face must have matched my own.

  I shook my head and closed my eyes, half-expecting a flashback of a bloodstained screwdriver. How could I have done this to another human being?

  Avram grabbed his knife and stabbed my tree, over and over. I wanted to scream at him, “You ate the wrong thing, just like me. It’s your own stupid rye bread, not God!” I wanted to explain. I wanted to apologize. I wanted this whole horrible scene to end.

  I wanted Serakh to step in and save me.

  She didn’t.

  Instead she held out her hands and nodded. She trusted me, even now.

  Then the bells rang. Peal after peal. Church bells. I remembered Celeste telling me about the monks of St. &Éacute;tienne, the ones who collected the horehound leaves. I imagined the monks assembling for their morning prayer, standing to face each other in an echoing stone chapel and offering Gregorian chants in praise of the divine.

  I looked at Avram’s tefillin, his way to praise God, and I knew I had to give him pitch-perfect words, prayerful words, words he could have faith in. They needed to express their meaning in a way that was clearly and utterly beautiful.

  Today I am Avram’s angel. Today I will sing praise, not to commemorate a life, but to save one.

  I turned my face to a sky now suffused with visual variations on harmony and melody. Clinging to my elm tree, I shifted my weight and moved upright, until my feet felt more solid in the notch where the branch met the trunk.

  I hummed a D, inhaled the dawn, and began to sing.

  Ha-la-lu-yah, ha-la-lu-yah

  Ha-la-lu Eil b’-ka-d’-sho

  Hal-la-lu-hu bir-ki-a u-zo…

  I sang the version of Lewandowski’s Psalm 150 that I’d sung at Grandpa’s funeral. The words came from a psalm that Avram must have recited a thousand times. The melody was one Lewandowski had composed in Germany about a hundred years before my time and eight hundred years after Avram’s. Maybe, just maybe, Avram would believe that he was hearing an angel.

  Again, and again, I inhaled the early morning air and I exhaled praise. Hallelujahs burst out of me, one after the other, each line without a ragged breath or a false note. I was praising and blessing God with all the instruments mentioned in the psalm: timbrels, lutes, harps, shofars, cymbals, and drums.

  Toward the end I sang: Kol ha-n’sha-mah t’-ha-leil ya. Let everything with breath praise the Lord. And I had breath. I was praising. And now I was praying—praying to all that was pure and right and holy, praying to the divine essence that guided my Jewish mother and my Lutheran father. That guided me. Let Avram believe me now. Let Mon Tr&éacute;sor live.

  The hallelujahs kept coming until the very end, the last note, that high F-sharp, and I was still there—we were still there—my prayer, the dawn, and I, in complete harmony for eight full beats.

  ”Avram, Avram,” I said again, praying that I’d get it right this time.

  ”Hineini.” His voice quavered.

  ”Know that I speak the truth,” I said, as gently and confidently as I could. “Know that you must renounce your vow. Know that you must never harm your son.”

  When I dared to look at him, Avram was staring up at me.

  Please, please see me as your angel!

  Then he looked down at his knife, still in his hand. He fell to his knees. He raised the knife.

  No! I waited for the blue flash that meant Serakh had swooped down and saved Avram from himself. Distraught, I closed my eyes, praying she’d be in time.

  In the seconds that followed, all I heard was a man weeping. When I looked down again, Avram had arched his back and was looking past the trees into the sky. His knife was on the ground, the long leather straps of his tefillin dangling from his upraised right hand.

  ”I renounce my vow,” he cried. “My son will live to see his sons and his sons’ sons. Let it be so.”

  Inhale. Slow release. “Then let us say amen.”

  ”Amen.”

  Another amen echoed from the fir tree.

  Avram curled in on himself and wept. So did I.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Grandpa’s room felt warm and stuffy at 4:07. I was back in a flash, hours before dawn in my Berkeley world.

  We sat on the floor, and as my body stopped aching, I tried to ease the anxiety plaguing my mind. “Will Mon Tr&éacute;sor be safe?” I whispered.

  ”I have no doubt,” Serakh said.

  ”This potion can turn on you,” I said, pointing to the paisley blotte
r Serakh had taken out of her pouch and put in my lap. There was still one dose left. “You can have flashbacks. Avram might get sick again—sick in his mind—next week or next year. Someone has to watch over him.”

  ”I will do what I can. You cannot be his angel forever. This intertwining is over. You have done what you were meant to do.”

  ”But I’ll never know what happens. You can’t leave me hanging.” I took off my chiffon scarf. “So now I am supposed to be back on my own little spot on the olam, and we’ll never see each other again?”

  ”Perhaps there will be another intertwining, as I have had with your grandmother Miriam. If it is the will of The One.” Serakh cupped my chin in her hand, the gold flecks in her eyes bright, searching. “Until then be your own angel, my dear friend. And let us say…”

  ”Amen.” Suddenly exhausted to the point of numbness, I turned away from the flash and let her go.

  The house was still quiet when I slipped downstairs in my bathrobe with Dagmar’s things bundled under my arm. No Dagmar. I shrouded the last dose in toilet paper and flushed it away to a burial at sea. I collapsed under the covers. My arms and legs felt encased in cement and my body filled with lead. How many times had I traveled to Paris and flashed back again to Berkeley? How many days had I lived through twice? My eyelids closed. Darkness. A shallow breath.

  ”Ow! Shit!”

  I jerked my eyes open. Full sunlight. Dagmar was balancing on my desk, her Morticia outfit snagged on the window latch.

  ”Hopey-Dope, you’re just in time to free me from my bondage.”

  Struggling into wakefulness, I unhooked the material for her.

  ”I’ve gotta catch some sleep,” she said, taking off her army boots. She was in a great mood. “Wake me in a couple hours.”

  As I sat back in bed, Dagmar waved two pieces of paper at me. “I was with Jerry and Marsha last night, and they are like Mr. and Mrs. FSM. I mean you’d think they’d been married by Mario Savio himself. They want us to call all the members of the Academic Senate today before their big confab at Wheeler. Here’s the script. And here’s my list. Twenty-five names was the least amount, so I took that. So, I mean, if they don’t get called, it’s no big deal. I’ll see how I feel in a couple hours. There’s, like, a thousand names.”