Read Online While We're Far Apart by Lynn Austin - Free Book Online Page A

doorbell rang, interrupting Jacob’s reading. He shuffled to the door, then out to the foyer, and finally managed to fumble open the outside lock. A gray-haired man in an odd-looking uniform stood on his doorstep. Experience in the old country had given Jacob an instinctive distrust of men in uniform. He opened the door a mere crack. “Yes?”
    “Jacob Mendel?” the man asked. He looked too old to be in military service, and besides, the uniform was not the right color for any of the usual branches.
    “Who is asking, please?”
    “I’m Inspector Dalton from the fire marshal’s office.” He produced an identification badge and held it up to the crack. “I’m conducting the investigation into the fire at the synagogue across the street. I’m told that you went inside the building to rescue some scrolls, and I wondered if you would be willing to answer a few questions for me.”
    “Yes, I suppose.” Jacob widened the crack a few more inches, letting in a swirl of cool night air. He would not invite the man to come inside. He wanted to be left alone.
    “Could you tell me what you remember from last night – in your own words?”
    Jacob frowned. Whose words would he use, if not his own? “I went for a walk – ”
    “Do you recall what time you left home?”
    “No, but it was after sunset. On my way back – ”
    “How long were you gone?”
    “I don’t know. I paid no attention to the time.”
    “Okay, go on.”
    “On my way back I saw smoke and flames in the rear of the shul, in the beit midrash and – ”
    “Excuse me, I’m not familiar with those words.”
    “The shul. You would call it the synagogue. And the beit midrash is the room in the back where we study. Where all the books are kept.”
    “Thank you. Go on, please.”
    “I was walking down the street, approaching the shul from the rear when I noticed the fire. I had just passed a cigar store a little ways back, and so I ran in there and told the clerk to call the fire department.”
    Jacob paused. The man was writing everything down in a little notebook, and Jacob worried that he was talking too fast. But the inspector nodded without looking up and said, “Yes, continue please.”
    “I looked around to see if there was a way I could throw water on the fire while I waited for the trucks to arrive, but there was nothing I could do. It was spreading too quickly. Then I realized the sacred Torah scrolls were going to burn and I could not allow that to happen. So I ran around to the front door – ”
    “Why did you go to the front?”
    “Why? Because the fire looked worse in the back, and besides, it is easier to get to the Aron Ha Kodesh – the place where the scrolls are kept – from the front door.”
    “Weren’t you concerned for your own safety, entering a burning building?”
    “I did not think; I simply reacted. It had to be done.”
    “I understand that you were able to save the scrolls, Mr. Mendel. But you were injured in the process?”
    “Yes.” He opened the door a scant inch wider and lifted his broken arm. “Some burns on my hands, I inhaled smoke, and I broke my arm when I fell.”
    “How did you burn your hands?”
    “How? . . . I don’t know how, exactly,” he said with a shrug. “I must have touched something hot. Everything happened very quickly.”
    “I see. Is there anything else you can tell me about the fire? Anything else that you recall?”
    Jacob shook his head. “No. That is all I know.” He wanted the man to leave. He didn’t want to remember the fire or think about the devastation to the shul he had once loved.
    “Well, if you think of anything else, Mr. Mendel, please contact the fire marshal’s office.”
    “Do they know how the fire began?”
    “I couldn’t say. It’s still under investigation.”
    Jacob pondered the inspector’s answer as he closed the door. Did it mean that they still weren’t sure or that he wasn’t allowed to tell? What if the fire had been deliberate, as his