Shadows of Berlin полностью

In two nights, the Café Romanisches is blasted to pieces. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is reduced to the charred stump of its tower. The KaDeWe department store on the Ku’damm explodes when a downed bomber crashes through the roof. The vacant New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Strasse is crushed to jagged rubble. A gasworks in Neukölln ruptures in a gust of flame. The raids produce all these terrible landmarks of destruction, but what is more important to Rashka and Eema is that a Tommy incendiary strikes the building where they are held prisoner by their Jewishness and spills flaming thermite over the tar-­paper rooftop. In the chaos of good Germans escaping the fire, even a pair of U-­boaters manage to save themselves. They will find shelter on the second night of bombing by joining the thousands inside the thick concrete fortress of the Zoo Flak Tower. The 88-­millimeter flak cannons on its fortified rooftop are like the hammer of God above them.

All these things Rashka is teaching herself to accept. Teaching herself to absorb them into the silence that is enlarging her from within, armoring her heart. Turning her into a fortress. Fortress Rokhl.

***

Aaron has called her at home. He’s forgotten his wallet somewhere in the apartment. He could borrow a couple of bucks from Leo, but how wonderful would that be? God knows what might happen. Leo might start pulling out wads of cash from his twenty-four-karat money clip. “‘What? Boychik? You need taxi fare?’” Aaron mimics. “So other than mooching a subway token off Smitty at the door, I got nothing.” Not a crisis, but does she think maybe she could bring it by before she sees what’s-­his-­name the shrink? It’s probably on the bureau top. Or maybe it’s still in the pair of pants he wore yesterday, the brown ones that he hung over the chair.

She finds it in neither of those places but on the floor of the bedroom. Yet she understands. A man out in the strife of the world without his wallet? It’s emasculating. So she slips it into her purse.

Before her hour with Dr. Solomon, Rachel takes the I.R.T. Broadway Line uptown to the restaurant. “Good afternoon, Mr. Smith,” she says to the doorman. He afternoon-­ma’ams her in return, smiling blindly and tipping a salute off the peak of his cap. It’s obvious that he does not recognize her as anyone but yet another white woman for whom he is hired to hold the door. Lunch rush is over, so the tables are mostly empty or being cleared by the busmen. A few show people from the Winter Garden sit at the bar drinking Kahlúa and coffees, kvetching over this or that review or casting call.

She is surprised, however, to find Leo installed at Table 27. It’s early for him, isn’t it?

“Ketsl.” He grins when he spots Rachel and kisses her on the cheek like an uncle. “Sit,” he instructs in his graveled, intimate tone as he slips back into the booth. “You want some coffee? Or maybe a nice shot of cognac?”

“No. Thank you, Leo.”

“Don’t be silly. You need something. You’re a bone. Solly,” he tells the balding waiter who has appeared to refill Leo’s coffee cup. “Get Mrs. Perlman a cognac and slice of the French apple cake, will you?”

“Sure, Mr. Bloom,” says Solly, finally back from Miami but without a tan, capping the dirty ashtray and leaving a clean one in its place. “And how are you, Mrs. P.?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Kolinsky, thank you. How are you?”

“Good, good,” he says, quickly lighting Rachel’s cigarette the instant she draws one from her pack.

“Thank you,” Rachel tells him before he smilingly vacates.

“So out shopping?” Leo inquires. He is hunched forward, elbows on the table as he pops two fresh sugar cubes into his coffee.

“Shopping?”

He stirs his cup. “Yeah. Though I don’t see any bags. God knows, when Gloria goes shopping, she needs a truck to carry it back.” Shopping, Rachel realizes, is the only thing that Leo can conceive of a woman doing out and about in the city during the day. So she doesn’t correct him.

“Uh, I didn’t find anything I liked,” she says. It also makes it easier to explain her arrival here. She can keep the forgotten wallet a secret and avoid wads of cash appearing from a golden money clip. “How is your wife, by the way?” His second wife, Gloria, is a trim, fierce woman in her forties with beauty-­parlor blond hair and a smoky voice, mother of two out of three of his children.

Leo shrugs in mild despair. “Gloria? Upstate since October,” he announces. “She likes the season up there. You know, the leaves and whatnot. And since the kids are gone, she goes up by herself. I could get run over by a bus, she don’t care”—­he grins crookedly—­“so long as it don’t interrupt her nature hikes. Suddenly, she’s a crazy woman about nature. Completely tsedrait!” He takes a drink from his cup. Go figure. “So what’s news with the lovely Mrs. Perlman, huh? Painting any masterpieces?”