The Ninth Berth – Tractate 9: Rupture

9/N

This is the ninth part of my serialized novella The Ninth Berth. Previously: Tractate 8.

Tractate 9: Rupture

07:00 – 07:23

After we talked, she left and I stayed a little longer watching the crabs. A tiny one scratched the tank’s glass, two larger ones bumped into each other like paralyzed wrestlers. When I got out, she faced a window in the corridor, a little forlorn, immobile save for her lips talking to the glass. Outside, the train drew a flickering shadow over the rocky ground. Beyond it, the frosty plains glinted with the first sunbeams. It had stopped snowing.

She wasn’t alone. Shesh was two meters behind her with two other familiar silhouettes. I walked towards them without hurry.

Shesh pointed the numbers on the door as he glanced down at Czerny’s bulbous head. His corpulence loomed comically over the small man who, hatless and visibly irked, paced like a chihuahua. Czerny’s hands fended off Shesh’s questions but after the rabbi insisted he took a step back and replied:

The nine again? Yes they’re here. No you can’t see them. What’s wrong with that?

He spoke with a rattled cadence and waved his arms like a street preacher. He lowered a hand into his jacket’s inset pocket and fished a yellow document that he unfolded before us. He spoke to Shesh again:

It’s on the train manifest, see. Five: occupied. Six: occupied. Seven: occupied. Eight: occupied. Nine? occupied too. He jabbed a finger at the paper under Shesh’s faces. Seraphina wasn’t paying attention or pretended not to.

It’s just a piece of paper, Kagami said bluntly.

Says he who writes so-called scientific papers about invisible waves and inexistent dimensions? Where’s your imagination gone, professor? Turn a six on its head and you get a nine. Careful professor, the nine hears you.

You are a bad joke, Kagami said. He turned his back to the little man and sauntered into the compartment. Wise man, he doesn’t argue with dunces.

Shesh pinched his beard with thumb and forefinger and eyed Czerny.

You’re saying it holds a spirit? A benevolent one?

You misinterpret, Reb. I’ve pelted you with proofs. The plaque, the manifest, the rest. You confuse the unseen occupant. Face your comeuppance.

I got closer and caught Czerny’s stare. I spoke first:

You also gotta tell us. What’s the deal with the fish and the crabs? Some kind of contraband?

Paul, Paul... You’re sagacious as a lemur. They’re for the nine’s entertainment. I’m a mere fishwarden.

Seraphina inclined her head with her shoulders still parallel to the glass. She wore a gilt earring, a glinting triangle pointing to her shoulder. She looked at me, without darkness.

She turned to Shesh, ignoring Czerny.

There’s a simple explanation for all of this, she said in a soft voice, her right hand adjusting her hair near her temple.

What do you mean? Shesh asked.

Cabin fever, the agony of confined space. He needs help, she added in mock whisper.

What do you think the nine is about? Shesh asked.

Bad math? she said, looking down at Czerny.

Czerny half-raised one hand.

Are you having fun, princess? he said with a rueful grin.

She just looked past him as if the sound came from the wall behind.

I think you’re anxious, Jessica. Is it about the letter?

What letter? she replied, as if to herself.

Czerny paused, tilted his head.

You amuse me, he said. I’ll miss you. What can I tell you? It ain’t too late to repent. Even Shesh’s magic box sees the nine.

Repentance isn’t my business. Her eyes darkened.

Czerny opened his mouth as if speaking without sound. Then he turned and he strolled toward his compartment while whistling the Happy Birthday tune, but the rhythm and the notes were off, which gave it a sullen undertone. He spread his hands above his deformed skull like a parody of a blessing. For the first time, he scared me.

Seraphina and Shesh had watched the scene without a word. The rabbi stood between our compartment’s door and the previous one, his serene smile unaltered. I liked how he took serious matters lightly and innocuous matters overseriously, like this business with the number nine. His gaze followed Czerny’s shape until it vanished in the darker end of the corridor.

I glanced through the window at the drab mosaic of farmland and abandoned fields. A thin layer of snow covered the brown soils, shards of melting ice drifted on the ponds. In the windless landscape nothing moved except flocks of birds and the occasional car along a distant road.

This reminds me of when I was a kid, Shesh said. Freezing winters, farms. Now I live in a city.

You’re from this region? I asked.

No. Not even from this country. But in winter all flat places look alike, don’t they?

I don’t know, I’ve never lived in the countryside.

Before Shesh could answer, he cried out and jerked his arm up as if he’d been bitten by a snake.

Oi yoi! I was shocked. By this door.

He pointed at the handle of compartment 1 2 3 4 and stepped back toward Seraphina. Around the same time, the linoleum beneath my feet trembled.

Then the door 1 2 3 4 slid open.

The elderly woman stepped out. She wasn’t much taller than Czerny. A black velvet headband tied her straw-blond hair. Glasses too large for her square face gave her a severity that reminded me of one of my linguistics teachers, which is not a compliment. She wore a dark beige jacket over a gray dress with a faded tapestry of flowers. The man was by her side, slightly behind, in a mustard-colored linen shirt. At least as old as her, no less than eighty, quite stocky for his age. He had thin patches of hair on the sides of an asymmetrical, otherwise bald skull. His small eyes looked younger and livelier than his pallid hairless face. They stood there in silence, at first more interested in the view through the opposite window than in us Then the woman scowled at Shesh and his handless arm.

Nice to meet you, Shesh said. They didn’t react.

Nice to meet you, he repeated, louder.

The woman and the man scanned him.

She spoke words I couldn’t decipher, in a harsh German-sounding dialect. I caught zu roysch or something like that.

When Shesh responded in the same tongue, the woman softened. He gestured toward our compartment, then toward Seraphina and me. As he spoke, they nodded and punctuated his phrases with nu and richtik. He asked them something. The woman spoke for a while and the man dipped his head in agreement. They went on talking and I didn’t catch a single word.

With a lower and slower voice, Shesh answered a question that I guessed was about his maimed arm. As his index finger traced a line from his elbow to his wrist, he blinked twice and when he stopped talking no one spoke for five seconds. Then Shesh spoke again and they all laughed. After a final exchange the couple told us something that must have meant nice-to-meet-you and stepped back in their compartment.

Very nice people, Shesh said to Seraphina and me. They’re visiting their family, a son and two grandchildren.

Was that Yiddish? I asked.

Yes. My first language. I rarely speak it now, alas.

Kagami appeared behind us. He had changed into a black t-shirt with the logo of a Japanese rock band, or so I guessed.

Mister Shesh, can you come see something please?

Shesh obliged and disappeared into our compartment with Kagami.

Seraphina stepped closer to me:

The lady complained about the noise. Shesh blamed the train’s mechanics, but she didn’t buy it. He called us his good friends.

You understand Yiddish?

I know German, and some Hebraisms too, it helps. Anyway, they also asked about his hand.

Figured as much.

He lost it in a war. He served in a platoon. He said he misses the friends he lost that day more than his hand. I sensed remorse. He made a joke I didn’t understand, something about the train and two beds.

That’s when they laughed.

Yeah. One bed he sleeps in, one he won’t.

After that, we returned to the compartment.

The kudz was on the tray table with Kagami and Shesh sitting motionless around it. The stone shined as if a fire burnt within, a dark cobalt blue fire.

So it serves as a bedside light, Seraphina said when she came in.

I’ve never seen this, Shesh said. Come closer, touch it.

I leaned in and touched the stone. It was warm as a cardboard sleeve around a takeaway coffee. Seraphina pressed her palm against the gleaming surface and held it there for five seconds, as if trying to cool it down.

The kudz began blinking at irregular intervals, its hue growing more luminous. Shesh ascribed it to our touch. He said the square was complete, whatever he meant. Kagami brushed the stone with the back of his hand and said it was heating up. At the same time, cracks like wood splitting and debris striking metal came from the train’s underframe.

Kagami asked what was happening but Shesh answered only with prayers. The strident screech we’d heard earlier returned, higher-pitched this time. The noise below us grew louder and thicker. The stone was brighter than ever.

I told everyone to sit on the floor and cover their heads with their hands. They did, without asking why. Kagami said he needed to get his envelope and the photo from his berth. He stood up.

The train lurched violently and halted. Kagami’s head slammed against the frame of the upper berth and he crumpled to the floor.