Read Online The Covenant by Naomi Ragen - Free Book Online

daylong yarzheit candle at the end of its twenty-third hour. The dark ghosts of her past often swept through the room, poking her with their annoying, inconsiderate fingers, prying loose the tears she had held back all these years; tears for her murdered parents and sister and nephew and brothers and daughter and for the grandchildren that had never been born; for the Jews of Israel, people she didn’t know, black Ethiopians and blond Russians. They were all part of her blood, and they were being murdered and harassed and frightened… Most of Oprah’s solutions didn’t really work for her. She’d tried jogging, but her feet began to hurt even before she crossed the street. She had tried using Oprah’s “Favorite Things,” but all those butter cookies and rich cocoa drinks clogged her plumbing. As for keeping a journal, she wasn’t much of a writer, and her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. But she’d kept it all in her head.
    That’s why making the videotape for the Shoah Foundation, that movie director, that Spielberg, was such a good idea. That nice girl had asked the questions and a man had filmed everything, making a movie. After Leah had gotten over her disappointment that Spielberg himself wasn’t going to be directing, it had all worked out fine. Often, early in the morning, she would watch the tape. She looked old and overweight, she thought, her facebloated and angry, not like herself at all. But sometimes she was surprised and secretly pleased at the things she heard herself say, things that brought back such memories. She slipped it in now. She had an hour to kill until she could eat or watch Oprah. She pressed play, staring at the screen, listening to herself describe the house in Uzhorod surrounded by woods and fields; the visit of the tzadik of Munkatsch who had come with his whole yeshiva and raised his hands above her head in blessing; her father baking Passover matzohs for the village, his beard dusted with flour; baby Shmilu’s blue sun hat left in her hands when Mengele sent him and her sister left, and her right… And Esther, Maria, and Ariana, who had been with her in Auschwitz, saving her life countless times. Her three block shvesters , closer than sisters of flesh and blood, united forever by their experiences and their Covenant vows…
    Never liked to talk about it. What was the point? Like opening a sewer cover, allowing all the filth, the degradation to send up its stench to pollute her life and the lives of those she loved. But now the world had gone mad again, denying the past, claiming the facts were not facts but a deliberate lie or an exaggeration. And people were such ignoramuses that they actually listened. If we don’t open our mouths now, before we die, then we let the liars win, she’d told the others.
    Esther was making her tape now, already planning the big party they’d have when all four tapes were done. She shook her head fondly. Esther and her big cosmetics company and her big parties, her Hollywood parties. Like Zsa Zsa, with all that fancy makeup and the fancy clothes. But maybe it would be fun. She hadn’t seen Ariana or Maria for years. A reunion, to see what it had all come to, all their struggles for life; where they’d all ended up, close to the end of their incredible journey.
    She didn’t add: and if it had all been been worth it.
    She heard the phone ringing. For no reason, a small dart of fear pierced her calm and she thought, without hesitation: Elise.

Chapter Seven

    Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem
May 6, 2002
11:40 P.M.
    “B UBBEE ?” ELISE WHISPERED . “I need to talk to you.”
    The effect of the sedatives still coursing through her veins gave her a sense of floating on water. She looked at her watch. It was almost midnight. Why did I do this? she thought, listening to her grandmother’s urgent stream of exclamations and questions. She was filled with sudden panic. So many people had offered to make this call for her: her neighbors from