The Ninth Day

by Ruth Tenzer Feldman

  I got us another box of tissues.

  A moment later, Mom said, “Gabriel called while you were out. I invited him to have dinner with us before we sit shivah. He’ll come around five. The Academic Senate is meeting this afternoon, and he’s busy with something to do with that.”

  Ah, sweet Gabriel

  . I practically waltzed over to the tray of pastries.

  ”He’s a kind, sensible young man, don’t you think? He’ll be such a stabilizing influence for Dagmar. She’s finally found someone we like.”

  What could I say? Deflated, I stood there in mid-stride and bit my lip.

  Mom’s expectations for Gabriel nagged at me through the rest of the afternoon, but Gabriel turned up in a mood to celebrate. “They’re still deliberating,” he told me as soon as I ushered him into the living room. “But an inside source says that most of the faculty will vote in our favor. Mario thinks we’ve won.”

  ”That’s f-fabulous!” I gave him a congratulatory hug and wondered when to tell him about my mother’s plans for him and Dagmar.

  ”Hey, no bandages. Let me look at you.” He put his hand under my chin and brushed my hair away from the ugly side of my face. I closed my eyes and wished I could close my ears, too.

  ”Hang on, Mime Girl,” he whispered, his Mr. Zipper Mouth lips enticingly close to my ear. “You’re going to be fine.”

  ”I s-saw the script you m-made for the phone calls. And-And I even m-made some m-myself.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  ”No. R-really. From D-Dagmar’s list.”

  Gabriel laughed. “I didn’t think your sister would make those calls. Where is she?”

  I shrugged. With Mom on Dagmar’s side, did I really stand a chance?

  Josh walked in from the den, hand extended. “Gabe my man, good to see you again.”

  Gabriel shook Josh’s hand and thumped him on the shoulder. I had a momentary image of two male chimps.

  ”Hey, Hope, your music teacher called while you were downstairs.”

  Crap!

  ”He said he won’t be talking to the principal. Did you rack up too many absences?”

  ”M-maybe.” At least Mr. Zegarelli had the decency to save me from that bit of humiliation. No way was I going to tell Josh what happened at Barston’s.

  ”Anyway, he said something about extra help for the music festival. You should take him up on that. You were pretty shaky with the Hanukkah blessings.”

  I creased my forehead and stared at Josh. He must have garbled the message.

  ”Hey, don’t look at me. Ask him. He said something about cooling down and thinking about his Italian grandfather, and then he blathered about the Constitution. The guy sounded more like an American history professor than a music teacher.” Josh shook his head. “Glad I never took his class.”

  ”Me neither,” Gabriel said. “Hope, is everything okay?”

  ”Y-yes,” I managed, as it all started to sink in. “Definitely.”

  Josh raised his finger in the air. “One more thing. There’s some strange girl waiting in Grandpa’s old room for you. She says she’s a friend of yours, but I doubt it. She looks like a nun.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Serakh. Who else could it be? I raced down the hall and then stopped. I remembered when I first heard her speaking to Grandpa. She was persuading him to give me my grandmother’s prayer shawl. Now, in the worst way, I wanted her to meet Gabriel. It didn’t make sense. It was a silly risk to take.

  Still…

  Gabriel was disappearing into the kitchen when I grabbed his hand. “Th-this is g-going to be a b-b-it odd, okay? I’ll expuh-lain l-later.” I snatched a half-sour pickle from the deli meat platter, stuck it on a paper plate, and told Gabriel to take it with us.

  Serakh was standing next to a pile of Dagmar’s junk. She had robed herself in black, from headscarf to sandals. I wrapped my arms around her and inhaled the goat smell clinging to her body. Before she could ask, I said, “It’s fine. He doesn’t know about Paris, but he’s…um…a good friend. Gabriel Altman.”

  Gabriel nodded politely. Hanging out with Dagmar, he’d probably seen a lot of weird outfits. “Gabriel, this is Serakh. She’s a… well, she’s a friend of the family. It’s complicated.”

  Serakh spread her arms out. “As you see, I have dressed in darkness as is your custom for mourning. Now that the intertwining is over, I give you my deep condolences on the release of your grandfather’s soul from his earthly body. That is the first reason I have come. There are three.”

  ”I’m so glad you’re here,” I told her. “I missed you already.” I showed Serakh the pickle. “Have you ever had a sour cucumber? Try it. It’s brined in vinegar and I don’t know what else.”

  After the initial puckered surprise, she was delighted.

  Gabriel bit his lip. Then he said, “Hope, I don’t mean to sound rude, but what happened to your stutter?”

  I grinned at him. “Sad to say this is only a temporary fix while Serakh is here. It has something to do with magical communication. I’ll get back to my regular stuttering me as soon as she’s gone.”

  Gabriel cocked his head. “I’m completely lost.”

  A case of the nervous giggles threatened to erupt. I cleared my throat and reminded myself that Serakh had come at a solemn time to pay her respects.

  ”The room has changed since Ephraim lived here,” she said, wiping pickle juice-covered hands on her robe.

  ”It’s my sister’s now. She hadn’t organized the piles yet. We decided this morning, after… um…after my return.” I heard the church bells again in my head, announcing matin services in Paris. Dawn. Avram.

  My stomach lurched. “What happened to Mon Tr;éacute;sor?” I searched Serakh’s face for an answer. “Avram didn’t...I mean…”

  She kissed my forehead the way she did when we first met.

  ”All is well,” she said, and suddenly I had to sit in Grandpa’s chair and take a deep breath. Too many ups and downs jumbled together in too short a time. Gabriel touched my shoulder.

  ”I’m fine now,” I said, although he didn’t look convinced. “Serakh, tell me the two other reasons you’re here.”

  She reached into the pouch hanging from her belt and handed me the dreidels I had given to Dolcette and Avram. “The second reason is that I must return these to you. They are objects of the future and do not belong in that spot on the olam.”

  ”Oh, of course. That makes sense, I guess. Do you want my William the Conqueror coin back?”

  She shook her head. “The coin is acceptable to leave with you. It is a relic from the past, and you may do with it as you will.”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows danced in surprise. “You’ve got a Saxon coin? It must be worth a fortune.”

  ”It’s only a replica,” I lied, knowing I’d tell him the truth one day, now that he and I were…or were we?

  ”Serakh, I have a favor to ask, if you don’t mind. I’d like to know what happens at the Northwest Choral Music Festival in Portland on January twenty-eighth, just a few weeks from now. And, um, Gabriel, when does the Board of Regents meet?” I didn’t have the nerve to ask about the future of Gabriel and me.

  ”December seventeenth and eighteenth in LA.”

  ”Right. Can we find out if the Regents support the free speech resolution? Gabriel can stay here. Please, Serakh, you know it won’t take any time at all.”

  She shook her head. “This is not to be. You and I can travel only into the past, and even then at great risk. You must wait here and now for the future to become the present.”

  Gabriel coughed, his face a study in confusion.

  ”Serakh has a sort of loose relationship with time,” I told him. “My dad the physics professor would get it.”

  ”Well, I clearly don’t.”

&n
bsp; Serakh grinned at him. “This does not matter. I trust that you are content to stay in the present with…what do you call her? Hope? She is a special person.”

  ”Very special.” Gabriel’s voice was low and gentle, and round and deep.

  For a moment I forgot Serakh was with us. I put my hand on Gabriel’s soft woolen sweater. “What about Dagmar?”

  ”I’ve already told her she’s just a friend. Your sister sees that as a challenge.”

  ”My mother has the wrong idea about you and Dagmar, too. It’s not going to be easy.”

  He caressed the top of my head. “It’s going to be worth it.”

  Serakh cleared her throat. “Here is my third reason. This token you may also keep as proof that you were Avram’s angel.”

  She gave me another coin, more refined than the silver one. It had Roman numerals on it and Hebrew letters, and the profile of a woman’s face and upper body. The woman’s dress had a high collar and she wore what looked like a ring of pearls covering a headscarf that draped across her shoulders.

  ”Gracia Nasi. She is not much older than you,” Serakh said. “They call her La Chica. She is partly of the line of Avram and Dolcette. No harm ever comes to Mon Tr&éacute;sor. He marries well. La Chica comes into being generations later. Here is your proof.”

  La Chica was more than proof. I knew she would always remind me of my time in Paris with that beautiful baby, and his desperate mother, and his anguished father. Mon Tr&éacute;sor. My treasure. My eyes filled with tears. I brought the coin to my lips.

  ”What have you done with the rest of the potion?”

  ”I destroyed it, Serakh.”

  She smiled. “A wise choice.”

  One beat of silence.

  My shoulders slumped. “You’re leaving now.”

  She studied my face. “I see you are already healing. Perhaps I will meet you again with this man as I met your grandmother Miriam and her beloved Ephraim of blessed memory.”

  My face flushed. “Serakh, really?”

  The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled with humor. “And perhaps not. It is time.”

  ”Good-bye,” I whispered.

  ”Nice to have met you,” Gabriel told Serakh, as if this were a normal conversation. Poor guy. We’d have a lot to talk about..

  I put the coin in my pocket and told him to turn away. I told Gabriel—my Gabriel—to shut his eyes, and keep them shut, until I said it was safe to open them. Then I took a breath and kissed him. The scar from his cleft palate repair pressed with an oddly satisfying firmness against my lips. I enveloped him in my arms and waited for the flash.

  * * *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Complicated—the word Hope and her physicist father use to describe their worlds—comes from a Latin word meaning “to fold together” or “to intertwine.” Intertwining is one of my favorite words. Serakh intertwines people and events over the centuries—Hope and Avram, Paris and Berkeley, LSD and ergotism. That’s what this book is all about.

  I would like elaborate on everything that’s true in The Ninth Day and everything that’s not, but that would take at least another fifty pages. Historical fiction is tricky that way—and fun. Gabriel’s mnemonic “sober people don’t find good in killing” is true. The lion-cruet menorah sits by my writer’s desk. Yes, there was a Hanukkah celebration at Sproul Hall during the occupation and a pogrom in Bialystock, Russia in 1906. Caff&éacute; Med is real. Tidbits on Telegraph is not. Neither is Barston’s. I made up LSD-laced licorice and the choral music festival (although both could have existed).

  Instead, here’s the big picture:

  People

  The Bible says little about Serakh. It merely lists her (in Genesis 46:17 and Numbers 26:46) at events said to have taken place about four hundred years apart. People have spun tales about her for centuries. InThe Ninth Day and its companion novel, Blue Thread, I take a turn. My Serakh flashes through the olam, which is my intertwining of space and time inspired by the ancient Hebrew word that can mean both “universe” and “forever.”

  Miriam Hope Friis and her family and friends are fictional. Hope is the granddaughter of Ephraim and Miriam, fictional characters last seen in 1912 in Blue Thread.

  Stuttering is a part of Hope’s life and the lives of an estimated three million Americans. It’s a speech disorder with a physiological basis and can worsen through embarrassment, frustration, and fear. About one in twenty children aged two to five stutter. Some of these children continue to stutter as adults. I was one of them, although I rarely stutter now.

  Gabriel’s cleft palate is a relatively common birth defect involving fetal development of the roof of the mouth, and it can be repaired at a young age. Children born with a cleft palate or cleft lip (a similar defect) were once thought to be evil or cursed by a witch, or to possess supernatural powers.

  While Hope’s grandmother is fictional, Dolcette’s mother, also named Miriam, is not. She’s the middle daughter of the French rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak (or Solomon ben Isaac), known as Rashi (1040–1105). Miriam had a son, Yom Tov, and other children, including one named in a family tree as Dolce (my Dolcette). She might have worn a prayer shawl, although an embroidered one is my idea. The other Paris people are pure fiction.

  Times and Places

  Since the story tracks the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, I used the Hebrew calendar as a starting point. Hanukkah begins on the twenty-fifth of Kislev (according to I Maccabees 4:59), and lasts from sunset to sunset for eight days. I used equivalent days in the Gregorian calendar for Berkeley and the Julian calendar for Paris. I added saints days for Paris 1099, as a more common way for most people to mark time then.

  A Jewish community lived on circle de la Citéacute; in 1099, near Saint-Éacute; tienne cathedral then, and the current site of Notre Dame cathedral (built 1163 to 1345). I made up the Paris events, including Avram’s behavior, but the events in Mainz in 1096 are true. Pope Urban II proclaimed a “holy war” in 1095, to take back Jerusalem from Muslim rulers. An estimated 100,000 people, from noble knights to peasants, took up arms. One group of crusaders traveled toward Jerusalem through France and Germany. The ferocity of their attack on the Jews of Mainz, and several other cities along the Rhine River, gave rise among some Jews there to martyr themselves as an act of faith. In general, however, relations between Christians and Jews in France and Germany were generally civil during the early Middle Ages, prior to the twelve hundreds.

  Although the Berkeley High School scenes are fictional, I stuck pretty close to the facts about the Free Speech Movement during those nine days on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. I wrote part ofThe Ninth Day there, at the university’s Free Speech Café acute;. For the most part, events describing the actions of Mario Savio (1942–1996), as well as the Sproul Hall occupation, Greek Theatre assembly, student strike, and faculty vote, really happened.

  In the early 1960s, student organizations used a twenty-six by forty foot area at the Bancroft-Telegraph entrance to campus to raise money and recruit members for various causes, including civil rights demonstrations. On September 14, 1964, the Dean of Students issued a statement that the area was officially part of university facilities. The statement noted that, “University facilities may not…be used to support or advocate off-campus political or social action.”

  Students from all parts of the political spectrum objected. The occupation of Sproul Hall marked the first major protest movement on an American campus and remains one of the most significant in our nation’s history. The Free Speech Movement lasted many months—I’ve provided only a tiny slice of what happened. The Ninth Day ends just as the Academic Senate is meeting on December 8, 1964. Yes, the faculty did support the students in an 824-to-115 vote.

  Chemistry

  The true parts of this story include Claviceps purpurea, a fungus known as ergot. In medieval times, nearly a thir
d of harvested grain, particularly rye, might really have been hardened bits of the ergot fungus. Ergotism (the disease resulting from eating this fungus) is what caused Saint Anthony’s fire and hallucinations similar to those experienced after taking LSD. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 as part of his research for the pharmaceutical firm Sandoz. He wasn’t looking for a mind-altering drug, but he found one.

  When I started The Ninth Day, I had no idea that LSD was connected to convulsive ergotism or Saint Anthony’s fire. Whether it’s about history or chemistry, research is full of surprises. Add imagination to that, and an astonishing world unfolds, as intertwined as the olam.

  Questions for The Ninth Day

  1. How does the death of Ephraim Jacobowitz influence the lives and perspectives of Hope and her family?

  2. How do Henry Friis’s religion (Lutheran) and his passion (particle physics) influence the story?

  3. If you were a student at Berkeley in 1964, would you have supported the Free Speech Movement even when the students went on strike and disrupted classes? Why? Why not?

  4. What role does Josh play in the story?

  5. If you could change one aspect of Hope’s personality, what would it be? How would that have changed the outcome?

  6. Mario Savio had spent the summer of 1964 helping to secure voting rights for African Americans in Mississippi. How do you think that might have influenced his actions in the Free Speech Movement?

  7. Based on what is revealed in the story, what are the chances that Hope and Gabriel might develop as strong and loving a relationship as Avram and Dolcette, or Rachel and Henry Friis, have?

  8. What are the similarities and differences between the occupation of Sproul Hall in 1964 and the Occupy movement that began in 2011?

  9. Ergotism has played a role in several historical events, including, according to experts, the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. How much of individual and societal behavior comes down to chemistry?

  10. How might the relationship between Dagmar and Hope been different if Hope didn’t stutter?