Shadows of Berlin полностью

Tyrell fastens a look on her. “No. I met a woman who makes me feel good. And I wanted to be with her. That she was white?” He says this as if he’s asking a question to the air. To the world. “It didn’t matter. But I don’t imagine…” he says next. “I don’t imagine that we have much of a future. Greenwich Village is a quirky place. But it ain’t the world. And the world is like a hammer always pounding away. Honestly? I’m not sure that I’m strong enough. Or that she’s strong enough. That what we have between us is strong enough to survive the inevitable punishment. I mean, can you picture it?” he asks. “Naomi and me showing up on your mother-­in-­law’s doorstep with a couple babies in the pram?”

“Only if you’re raising them Jewish,” Rachel tells him just to amuse. “And of course, you’d have to convert as well.”

“Oh yeah?” That half smile.

“There are Black Jews. In Abyssinia, I think. Some came once to Berlin when I was a girl. They consider their royal line to be descended directly from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.”

“Well,” Tyrell says, carving a bit of ash from his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. “I am not Abyssinian, nor to my knowledge am I descended from any kings or queens.” He picks up his glass and downs the rest of his beer, leaving only a web of foam at the bottom. By this point, any ebullience at his victory over Yaakov has dissipated. “I should probably hit the trail,” he decides.

But Rachel feels that she doesn’t want him to go. Sitting here in this bar with him has taken her out of herself in a way that she finds liberating. She feels shielded from the judgment of the world in Tyrell’s presence, regardless of how the world judges them sitting together in this booth. Perhaps that’s why she makes her sudden confession. To keep him here. To keep the small bubble they are sharing intact, at least for a little longer. Or perhaps it is simply her need to confess that Tyrell has triggered. Her desire to purge herself of the shame she carries, one autseyder to another.

“I betrayed a young girl who was in hiding from the Nazis,” she says, spilling out the words. “She was a Jewish girl just like me. And I sent her to her death.”

The sentence separates them and entangles them both, as if she has just dumped a bale of barbed wire on the table. Tyrell’s face is caught in a look of confusion and dread, as if maybe he hasn’t quite heard what he’s just heard. So she repeats herself. “A Jewish girl whom I picked out of a crowd in a café. A schoolgirl. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know anything about her. Only that I felt, at that instant, as if she was my opponent in a terrible game, and that between us, the loser of the game was going to die.”

Tyrell looks at her as if he is staring into the scene of a disaster. A car wreck. A train wreck. A plane wreck, where there are obviously no survivors.

Rachel comes home to find Aaron not manning the cash register at work like his father but sitting at the kitchen table drinking Ballantines and playing cards with, of all people? Cousin Ezra the Fucknik. “Hey there, buttercream,” her husband greets her.

“What happened?” Rachel asks, hanging up her coat.

Aaron glances away from his cards. “What happened?”

“Why aren’t you at work? Did another water main break?”

“Nope. Milton Berle walked into the joint, and suddenly Leo had to be the man in charge. So I said fuck it, let Uncle Milty deal with him, I’m going home. So I bumped into Ignoramus here, and he begged me to beat him in a couple hands of Michigan rummy.”

“Begged?” says Ezra. “Challenged is more like it.”

Rachel doles out a small kiss on the lips for Aaron and scrapes a chair up beside him. “Either way, it’s more than I can ever do,” she tells Ezra and sorts the cards in her husband’s hand for him. “He never plays cards with me.”

“So why do you taste like a brewery?” Aaron asks.

“I told you.”

“No, don’t think you did.”

“Well, I had a beer today, if that’s a crime. And I don’t taste like a brewery any more than you do. Play your two sixes,” she suggests.

Aaron flops down the cards and slips one from the draw. “I mean, who… Why were you drinking a beer?” And then he says it. “Never mind. Let me guess. Naomi.”

Rachel doesn’t lie; she simply doesn’t correct him.

“Great.” Aaron pulls a frown. “Now my sister is getting my wife schnozzled in the middle of the day.”

“I am not schnozzled,” Rachel replies. “You’ve got a pair of deuces.”

“I can see that I’ve got a pair of deuces, thank you very much.” And she can see that even the mention of Naomi has gotten under her husband’s skin. “I don’t know why she thinks it’s okay to be knocking back a few just whenever the urge strikes her. Shouldn’t she be working?”

“Why are you getting so upset?”

“I’m not getting upset. I just don’t get it. Why can’t Naomi just have a normal life, huh? Just a normal fucking life like everybody else?”

“Hey there, Sergeant Perlman,” Ezra interjects. “Let’s not get stupid over this, okay?” he suggests.