Shadows of Berlin полностью

A shrug. “Okay. The Nazis certainly were, yes,” Aaron offers. “No argument there. And I’m no great fan of the Krauts in general either. But seriously, do we have to make them all into Hitlers and Himmlers?”

“Why not? Of course, I know there were French Nazis too. And Dutch Nazis, and Hungarian Nazis, and English, and Italian, and Ukrainian, and even American Nazis. I know this. And they could all be complicit, or they could all be murderers themselves. Killing Jews has been a sport for centuries. Who doesn’t know that? But only the Germans stoked the crematoria. Only they made it an industry.”

“Look, what you went through? Losing what you did? It was”—­he shakes his head over the inadequacy of words—­“horrific. But does it mean that all Germans are murderers? The SS were criminals, true. No argument. But weren’t they a little different from the regular dope on the street? That’s all I’m sayin’. Must we make the building super out to be Julius Streicher?”

Rachel shakes her head and drops her eyes to the floor. Really, she is just waiting for Aaron to stop talking. If that ever happens. This is the big argument that Americans like to put forth. That there were good Germans. Even good Nazis, or at least Nazis who were not murderers. The scientists, for instance. The physicists. The anti-­Communists. The useful Nazis, who were “denazified.” Only America could come up with such a concept as “denazification.” Those denazified Nazis have been exonerated to defend against the Communist onslaught. Exonerated, though not by her. Not for the first time she says, “You don’t understand.”

They change into their pajamas in the bedroom. Quietly. Not much conversation. In the bathroom, she asks her husband, “So what made you so threatened by Negroes?”

Aaron stops dead in the middle of brushing his teeth. Rachel is rubbing cold cream onto her face, waiting for an answer. Aaron returns to his scrubbing, but only for a second before he spits desolately into the bowl of the sink. “I’m not ‘threatened,’ as you put it, by Negroes, Rachel. I’ve got nothing against one race or another. I just want that said out loud for the record. And this guy Tyrell? He’s probably a decent guy. It’s only I’d rather not have him as a brother-­in-­law.” He rinses his mouth with water from the tap and spits again, then pats his mouth dry with a towel.

“You think Naomi wants to marry him?”

“Who knows what in hell my crazy sister wants?” is Aaron’s answer. “I just believe that everybody needs to stick with their own is all. Jews marry Jews,” he declares, cutting the air with his hand as if he is giving it a chop, cutting through any wishy-­washy confusion on the subject. “That’s all I’m saying. Jews marry Jews and have little Jews. Let Blacks marry Blacks and have little Blacks. It’s the way nature intended.”

“And you know this how?” his wife wonders.

Aaron frowns at the question. “Look, can we drop this, please? I just wanted to say what I had to say, and that’s it. I don’t need to be interrogated in my own goddamned bathroom, thank you very much.” Claiming ownership of the spot where he stands. My own goddamned bathroom. My own goddamned living room. It’s his way of trying to assert a kind of masculine authority over the moment. She’s learned this.

He drops down onto the bed, holding his cigarette as he picks up an old LIFE magazine with Sophia Loren on the cover and starts paging through, glowering. Rachel is on the bed beside him, her legs tucked under her. “You think your mother knows?”

Aaron huffs at the thought of this. “Well, no mushroom clouds over Flatbush, so my guess is not,” he says, then shakes his head. “But who knows? Who can guess? I can’t figure Ma out anymore. Since the old man passed, she seems to have gone off the rails.”

Silence for a moment as Aaron gazes ahead.

Then Rachel inserts, “I’m sorry.”

A blink. “Sorry? For what? That your husband’s an ass?” he asks, parking his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that too,” she says, leaning over him to steal his cigarette. “But that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry you feel so lost. I know how that is.”

Aaron frowns. “I’ve got nothing against the guy, Rach. How many times I gotta say that? Mr. Almost-­a-­Lawyer is prob’ly better than buttered toast. I just don’t want trouble. I don’t want another big crisis to have to deal with. And I’d like to know why?” he asks the air, his voice rising. “Why the hell Naomi has to try to bust my balls all the time.”

Rachel tamps out his cigarette in her ashtray, then hooks his arm around her and rests her head against his shoulder. She likes the feel of his muscles. The shape and firmness of his body. “She’s competitive. She thinks your parents always discounted her opinion because she was the girl.”

“She said that to you?”

“No. But isn’t it true?”