An Unexpected Afterlife_A Novel

by Dan Sofer

  Moshe perused the rabbi’s library. He read from the Bible for the first time since childhood. Abraham’s journey to the Promised Land. Isaac’s devotion to the land despite conflict and famine. Jacob’s return after a forced exile. Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. David’s united kingdom. Solomon’s golden temple in Jerusalem.

  The calamitous destruction. The exile to Babylon.

  During two thousand years of national dormancy, like disembodied souls, the Israelite nation turned inward. The exiles found comfort in their Torah and its prophecies of dry bones.

  “Son of Man,” God asked Ezekiel. “Can these bones live?” Moshe felt as though God was speaking to him as well. “They say ‘Our bones have dried, our hope is lost; we are done for.’” But God had not lost hope. “I will raise you from your graves, My nation, and I will bring you to the Land of Israel.”

  Among the many religious works on the shelves, Moshe found a biography of the early Prime Ministers of the State of Israel. Ben Gurion. Levi Eshkol. Menachem Begin. They invoked the heroes of the Bible as they burst back onto the pages of history. The returning Jews no longer resembled the shepherd prophets and glorious monarchs of the past, but the same ancient spirit animated their new collective body.

  Moshe placed a clean dish on the drying rack and scrubbed the next. Down the corridor, bathwater splashed and little feet pounded on the floors, as the rabbi and his wife prepared the boys for bed. Occasionally, the rabbanit raised her voice at the rabbi. Moshe could not hear her words but he guessed their meaning.

  “We need to find a new place to stay,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ll like the accommodations the Great Council will provide, if they do.”

  Irina squirted dish soap on a blue sponge. “Where can we go?”

  By “we,” she meant the three of them. A Russian, an Israeli, and an Arab—it sounded like the start of a bad joke, but circumstances had bound their fates together. With Irina’s forgotten life and Samira’s murderous family, the task of finding a new home would fall to Moshe.

  “I’ll call in a few favors.”

  He cleaned out the sink and dried his hands. The rabbi marched into the living room and pulled a book from the shelves.

  “Rabbi, may I use your phone?”

  The rabbi turned and smiled. “Sure.”

  The title on the spine of the book read Deeds of Our Sages. Bedtime stories about righteous rabbis. Rabbi Yosef deserved to feature there too.

  “And the laptop?”

  “Of course, I’ll get it right away.”

  Moshe opened the computer—a bulky ASUS with duct tape holding the disc drive in place—on the dinner table and jotted down telephone numbers from the Bezeq online telephone directory. He dialed the first number into the rabbi’s home telephone and pressed the receiver to his ear.

  He had interviewed many prospective employees over the years but he had never sat on the other side of the table. He was not enjoying the experience.

  The number rang, then switched to an answering service.

  “Sivan,” Moshe said, after the tone, “it’s Moshe Karlin. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” He left the rabbi’s home phone as his contact number.

  One down, two to go. Arkadi was not listed. That left Mathew and Pini. If his former employees had a spare bedroom, he was sure they’d help him. He would have done the same for them in an instant. Pini had a large family of his own to feed, so Moshe tried Mathew next.

  After two rings, he picked up.

  “Holy crapola!” Mathew said in English. Moshe breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, a figure from his old life who was willing to speak to him. “I heard rumors but I didn’t believe them. You’ve got to come by my place.”

  The walk to the end of Palmach Street took ten minutes. Moshe and Irina stared at an old soot-stained apartment block. Samira, who had spent most of the day cowering in her room, had opted for an early night. Moshe had dropped Mathew home after many a long shift at Karlin & Son, but he had never ventured inside. They climbed the three flights to apartment number six.

  The door opened before he could knock. Mathew slouched on the threshold wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Stubble on his chin. Lanky hair. Unemployment had taken its toll.

  “Moshe Karlin,” he said. “Back from the dead.” His mouth hung open, and he nodded his head. He was always nodding his head. He wrapped Moshe in a bony hug. He glanced at Irina. “Who’s your friend?”

  Moshe made the introductions.

  “Come on in. Soda or beer?”

  He made for the refrigerator in the corner of the living room. No, not the living room. The entire apartment. An unmade bed lined one wall beneath the window and faced a lopsided closet, a mounted flat-screen television, and a framed print of a castle atop an immense rock that floated in thin air above the crashing waves of a seashore. A white plastic chair and a wheeled coffee table filled the little living space that remained.

  There was no spare couch for Moshe in the American immigrant’s studio apartment, never mind Irina and Samira. With no family in Israel, and no safety net, Mathew was as alone and defenseless as they. Without his job at Karlin & Son, how far was he from landing on the street?

  Mathew handed out Carlsbergs in green bottles of frosted glass. He spread the sheet over the bed, indicated for them to sit, and pulled up the white plastic chair. He asked the usual questions about Moshe’s death, return, and Heaven. The answers rolled off Moshe’s tongue.

  Moshe said, “I’m sorry about your job.”

  “Don’t be. Getting fired was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

  “It was?” Moshe sipped his beer to hide his disappointment.

  “Avi is an asshole. He didn’t come up to your ankles, man, and I’m not just saying that.” He gave a bitter laugh. “That jerk got under my skin from day one, even before he became the big boss.” He took a swig of beer. “But besides that, getting fired opened my mind. I signed up for unemployment and took a course in technical writing. I start my first job next week. I’ll earn double what I used to and work fixed office hours.”

  “That’s great,” Moshe said. “Good for you.”

  “You should try it.”

  “Try what?” Moshe’s English was workable but not on a level for technical writing.

  “Unemployment.” Mathew nodded his head with enthusiasm. “Go to the Ministry of Employment. Fill out a form. Check in once a week. You don’t even have to look a human being in the eye—just use the self-service terminal. You worked hard all those years, right? Might as well get something back. Until you find your feet.”

  Unemployment benefits. The thought had never occurred to Moshe. Mathew had a valid point. Irina nodded her support for the motion too. Moshe had kept careful books. He had paid his social security levies to Bituach Leumi every month. The Ministry might even find him a job. He had never spent so long without the buzz of an all-consuming project, and the days of inactivity gnawed on his nerves. Why not?

  “Thanks, Mathew,” he said. “I’ll try that.”

  “You’re welcome.” He nodded his head some more. The immigrant had lived in a large box for years, lost his job—but not his optimism—and still came out smiling. Life in Wisconsin must be pretty tough.

  “Mathew,” he said, curiosity bubbling up through the beer, “do you ever regret moving to Israel?”

  Mathew blinked at him and then searched for his answer on the blank wall.

  “Nope,” he said. He took another long gulp of beer. “But sometimes,” he added, “I regret that some of the other people moved here.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Avi ducked as a dinner plate hurtled overhead and shattered against the wall of the living room. Shards of china and plaster rained on his head.

  Galit reached for another plate. “You lied to me!”

  He spread his hands like a lion-tamer in the corner of a cage. “Calm down. Please.”

  She had spent the day crying in their bedroom. When she emerged Saturday night, Av
i thought that she had settled down. He was wrong.

  “You said he faked his death,” she said.

  Avi dodged another plate and stepped closer. Eventually she’d run out of ammunition. He hoped to reach her before then. They had no money for a new dinner service, but now was probably not the best time to tell her about the financial crisis at Karlin & Son.

  This was Moshe’s fault. Everything was Moshe’s fault. Not for the first time, Avi wished that he had never met Moshe Karlin. He sure as hell wished he had never saved his neck. Moshe had stolen Galit from him once before—he was not going to steal her again.

  “I was wrong,” he lied. “I made a mistake. What made more sense—that he came back from the grave?”

  Moshe’s death had been a windfall. Finally, Avi had gotten the girl and inherited a business—the head start that life had never offered him.

  But Moshe couldn’t let him enjoy it, could he? He had to return from the dead and ruin his life. Again.

  Another plate spun through the air. This time, he ducked too late. The plate glanced off his temple and crashed on the marble tiles. He touched his wound and his fingers returned red and wet.

  Humor, Moshe had said. Make her laugh. Avi saw nothing to laugh about, so he said, “Just listen to me for a second, will you?”

  Galit allowed the ceasefire, her chest heaving. He didn’t blame her for freaking out. The sight of Moshe in their bedroom had made him almost pee his pajamas. But the apparition had neither torn him limb from limb, nor cursed him for his sins. The ghost had not remembered dying. He didn’t even know that he was supposed to be dead.

  When Moshe moved to throw him out, Avi chose fight over flight. This time he would not step aside.

  “You’re right,” he said. “He died. But that doesn’t change who he is. It doesn’t change what he did to you.”

  Galit loosened her grip on the plate. Avi stepped closer. He understood how she felt. He felt it too. The terror. The anger. The fear. Aim those emotions at Moshe.

  “Can’t you see what he’s doing?” he said. “He’s trying to confuse you. To make you forget.”

  One more step forward and he wrapped his arms around her. She shuddered in his embrace as she sobbed. “It’s him. It’s really him.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I won’t let him hurt you again.”

  Avi’s knuckles were still raw from decking Moshe the previous night. In two weeks, Avi would marry Galit and—dead or alive—Moshe wouldn’t matter anymore. Two weeks was a long time to keep Moshe at bay.

  “But God brought him back…” she said.

  “Shh.” He rocked her in his arms. She was asking questions again. He feared those questions the most. He had to act fast—fast and smart—to remove Moshe from the scene for good.

  And now he knew how.

  “He won’t bother you again,” he said. He kissed her head and smiled. Moshe would never see it coming.

  CHAPTER 31

  Noga curled up on an oversized beanbag and tried to get the dark eyes of Eli Katz out of her head.

  The television stood blank and silent in the living room of her rental off Ussishkin Street in Nachlaot. She took a sip from her mug of coffee.

  Why can’t I meet a normal guy?

  When she was eighteen years old, her body had shed the extra pounds of adolescence. Her podgy face and bloated limbs became slim and slender, and all of a sudden, the cocky boys who had ignored her for years vied for her attention. She saw right through them and she despised their advances. Then loathing had turned to fear: that one day an exceptionally sly brute would penetrate her defenses, conquer her heart, and make her his trophy wife. Would he care about the girl behind the pretty face?

  She built walls of suspicion around her, relying on well-meaning friends and coworkers at the hospital for a supply of random single men.

  The term “blind dates” did not do them justice. She preferred to think of them as “blind, deaf, and dumb dates” as the slew of doctors, computer geeks, and academics fell into three classes: men who saw only themselves; men who didn’t listen to a word she said; and men blessed with the conversation skills of a dead fish.

  Noga preferred the company of her library. Books provided hours of entertainment. You could shut them if they bored you. And you never had to wait for them to call.

  As she approached thirty, fewer invitations came her way. Which did she prefer—the torrent of disappointments or the deathly silence?

  The click-clack of high heels on hard floor tiles announced that Sharona had entered the living room. The young student’s denim skirt barely covered her behind and the neckline of her Guess tank top dipped toward her navel. New Yorkers had different ideas about fashion.

  “Going out with girlfriends,” she announced in English. “See you later!” Noga had asked her flatmate always to let her know where she was going in case she went missing. Yes, she had turned into a crazy old aunt.

  Noticing Noga sprawled on the beanbag, Sharona gave her a sad, puppy-dog face. “Aw. Do you wanna come along?”

  Poor old maid mopes at home alone on a Saturday night. Let me save her.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got work to do,” Noga lied.

  Sharona’s eyes brightened. “I can help with your makeup.”

  She was always offering Noga a makeover. “With the right clothes and hair,” she had once told her, “you’ll be stunning.”

  Thanks a lot.

  Sharona wasn’t the brightest crystal in the chandelier. She studied International Relations at Hebrew U and her fieldwork seemed to involve visiting every mall and coffee shop in the capital. She took pride in the fact that her parents had named her after a pop song in the late seventies.

  At the end of the year, Sharona would pack her bags and return home to Manhattan, and Noga would find a replacement, as she did every year.

  “You have a good time,” Noga said. Sharona didn’t need her aging Israeli flatmate to spoil her night on the town.

  Sharona gave her one last pained look and marched out the door in a cloud of powdery perfume.

  Her young flatmate meant no harm. She might even be right. Crawl out of your shell. Maybe then you’ll meet a normal guy.

  Like Eli Katz.

  She almost sprayed Nescafe over her legs as she laughed. What a waste of time that had been. Her curiosity about the mystery patient had grown into sympathy for a lonely and tormented invalid. When he grabbed her arm, however, a dormant emotion stirred inside her. The sensation went beyond his magnetic gaze, boyish locks, or manly jaw, although she could not deny those. She had felt a sense of belonging—that he had claimed her, that she had come home.

  She had been willing to write off the delusional outburst to brain trauma and drugs. Yesterday, however, the illusion had shattered into tiny jagged shards: Eli Katz was a first-rate jerk. Then why am I still thinking about him?

  Noga’s phone jingled.

  “Hi, Sarit.”

  “We’re going out tonight.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’m not accepting ‘no’ for an answer.”

  Sarit, her old classmate from Hebrew U, never ran out of bubbly optimism. It drove Noga insane.

  “What are we doing this time?”

  “Folk dancing at Binyanei Ha’uma.”

  “Folk dancing? What are we—seventy years old?”

  “Hey, be grateful. The other option was a sing-along. I’m sure there’ll be lots of single guys there tonight.”

  “Yeah. Seventy-year-old singles. Who like folk dancing. Besides, I just met someone at work.”

  “Really? A doctor?”

  Noga had planted the half-truth to avoid death by folk dancing, but she regretted her words already.

  “No, a patient.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No, he’s not married.”

  “I thought you worked with couples from IVF.”

  “Mostly. This guy is in a different ward.”

  “Which ward?”

/>   “Neurology. Motorbike accident.”

  “So he’s brain dead? Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

  “Very funny. He’s mentally sound, I’ll have you know, except…” She trailed off.

  “Except what?”

  Noga had already said more than she had planned to, but the rest was too good to omit. “Well, sometimes he thinks he’s Elijah the Prophet.”

  Laughter on the line. “Shut! Up!”

  “No kidding.”

  “Well, at least you actually spoke to him. That’s a step forward for you. Now, about tonight—”

  “I told you, I’m not interested.”

  “Forget about yourself for a minute. I need you, remember? You’re the bait.”

  “What am I—a worm?”

  “A diamond. You attract the big fish. I reel them in. We’re a team.”

  “You’re crazier than the guy at the hospital.”

  “Fine, stay home and be miserable.”

  “I will. Warm regards to the granddads.”

  “Yeah, same to Elijah. Who knows, maybe he’s legit.”

  Noga ended the call. At least Sarit made her smile, even if it was at her own expense.

  She drained her coffee and got up. She stepped under a hot shower and combed the knots from her hair. Then she poured herself a tall glass of Shiraz, turned on her Logitech UE Boom wireless speaker, and returned to the living room. She hit play on her phone and leaned back on the beanbag.

  The lazy jazz musings of a piano and bass guitar mellowed the atmosphere, and the soothing, husky voice of Norah Jones sang “The Nearness of You.” Noga swirled the red wine in the glass, breathed in the fruity scent, and took a sip. The dark eyes of Eli Katz bored into her. His fingers tightened on her skin.

  She opened her laptop on the coffee table and searched the Internet. According to Wikipedia, the biblical Elijah—zealous prophet and miracle-worker—had championed the cause of God in the northern kingdom of Israel and fought against the worship of Baal. He poured oil from empty vessels, called down fire from the heavens, and even raised the dead, until a whirlwind had whisked him away to heaven on a chariot of fire.