Shadows of Berlin полностью

Meanwhile the black marketeer is unmoved by her mother’s plea. The offer is the offer, take it or leave it.

On the day they are arrested, the sky is bleak with ashen clouds and a low, white winter sun. They have entered the Bollenmüller. An accordion player is busy with a crowd-­pleaser called “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen.” Seated at a table in the rear, they spend precious pennies on ersatz coffee and a cup of warm skim milk. Rashka tries to drink the milk slowly, but she can’t. It feels like everyone is watching her, so she downs it in a few gulps before it can be snatched away.

Meanwhile, the coupon seller they are waiting on is not appearing. Eema has tacked her eyes to the door, watching intently as the woman doesn’t arrive. Rashka knows that the few marks Eema earned from the sale of the bracelet, that small amount, composes their entire fortune, and that after it is spent, there will be nothing left. Eema has recently instructed her to start praying. “For a miracle,” Rashka is told. A miracle that will feed them, fit them with new shoes, mend the holes in their clothes. A miracle that will suddenly conjure them out of danger with a wave of a hand by the Master of the Universe. He parted the Red Sea for Moses, didn’t he? Why not a small-­in-­comparison miracle for them?

When the door creaks open from the street, Eema is drawn forward in her chair as if caught in the pull of a magnet. A dowdy Berliner Frau has finally appeared and taken the small round table nearest the door. She is not as watchful, this Frau, as black marketeers normally are. There is also something insular about her expression. Her posture is tense, hunched, but she is focused on her hands instead of the room. When she does finally raise her eyes long enough to speak a word to the waiter, Rashka spots a scab on the Frau’s lip and a purplish bruise shadowing the under-­crescent of her eye.

“What’s happened to her face, Eema?” she whispers to her mother, but her mother has already locked Rashka out of her course of action. Her daughter is no more now that the sad mannequin Eema can point to, hoping to shave a few marks off the cost out of sympathy.

“Stay here, and don’t move. Understand?” her eema commands, then stands, marching toward the Frau. The two women huddle together, crowding the small table. Watching from this distance, Rashka can see how Eema has lost her looks. What a tattered rag her mother has become! It makes her feel ashamed and prompts her to look away. It is by this accident of embarrassment that she catches the red-­haired woman’s gaze. A gaze that is at once dangerous and intimate.

Rashka has no defense against the resolve of those eyes. She can only stare back, even as this beautiful creature crosses the café, seating herself at Rashka’s table with a scrape of a chair.

“Hallöchen, Liebling,” the woman says with a smile contouring her bright-­red lips. “Did your mummy leave you all alone?”

Rashka is both terrified by the woman’s arrival and oddly thrilled by the attention. So beautiful! Beautiful even as the seven worlds!

And then the memory strikes her.

How could she ever discard the memory of those eyes? The eyes of the girl posing on a dais in Eema’s studio? Rashka’s heart bumps heavily. It’s obvious that the woman does not recognize her any longer, but for Rashka, it’s like reclaiming an icy dream. The eyes of la muse du rouge. She thinks she should call over to her eema, but to say what? She is here! The girl you painted! But she doesn’t do this, because she is trapped. She cannot speak.

The woman puts her hand on Rashka’s arm and asks, “Where is your star, Liebchen?”

Her mother abruptly returns, and Rashka is confused by what happens next. The expression on the beautiful woman’s face chills deeply. “Lavinia” is all she says.

Eema looks as if she has opened a door on a tiger. She lurches forward and seizes Rashka by the arm. “Please,” she whispers in a raw voice, her eyes gone round. “For the child.” A drop of hesitation colors the woman’s eyes. But there is already an operation in motion. A trap snapping shut.

Men in trench coats appear out of nowhere, pointing pistols. “Geheime Staatspolizei!” they announce. A slim, blond man in a leather trench is pleasantly impatient. “Time to go, little mice,” he declares. “Off to your new hole.”