Shadows of Berlin полностью

Then there’s the issue of the babysitter. Mrs. Bethel from the second floor has already gone to bed! Mrs. Seventy-­Five-­Year-­Old Bethel who’d made a career of looking after the Weinstock children, to hear Ezra tell it. Anyway, when Ezra calls her to come up because the next baby is on its way, she seems to be taking her sweet time. So Rachel volunteers to stay, at least until the old lady can make it up the stairs. Just as well. She is starting to get very jumpy in the midst of this maternity emergency. Aaron has already bailed out, running downstairs to wait for the cab. At least that’s his excuse, abandoning Rachel to this scene. Daniela is starting to grunt like one of the seals at the Central Park Zoo as she tries to swallow the pain of the contractions crashing through her in waves.

“The doctor’s line is still busy!” Ezra reports again, except now he is shouting aloud, a note of panic threatening to strangle his voice.

“Leave me the number,” Rachel declares. “I’ll keep calling.”

“Oh, fuck!” Daniela cries. It’s shocking because it’s the first time Rachel has ever heard her use profanity.

One of the children—­the boy—­comes wandering out of the bedroom, rubbing his sleepy eyes at the commotion. “Momma?” he asks. “Are you sick?”

“No, no, zeisele,” Rachel answers for her, shepherding the child back into his room. “Momma is not sick. It’s just that she’s bringing your new baby sister or brother into the world.”

“Does it hurt?” the boy asks innocently, taking Rachel gently by the hand. A gesture that nearly breaks her heart in two. That warm little trusting hand in hers.

“A little. But sometimes good things come out of a little hurt,” she hears herself say. The boy hops back into his bed, and Rachel tucks him in. “So don’t you worry, okay? You just go back to sleep and don’t worry. Then tomorrow when you wake up, there’ll be a new baby in the world.”

“Okay,” the boy replies and rolls into the worn fluff of his stuffed bunny.

She doesn’t think about kissing him, but when she does, the sweetness of that little dark-­haired head poking out from the covers is painfully perfect.

She reenters the living room as Aaron comes stomping up the stairs from below. “Taxi’s here,” he proclaims as if he’s just saved the day. Mr. Lone Ranger coming to the rescue. Daniella has her coat on, her belly sticking out. Aaron snatches up the suitcase from Ezra’s hand. “You—­help your wife. I’ll schlep,” he commands.

“At the good hour!” Rachel calls out after them as all three vacate the apartment, because what else can she say that isn’t a jinx? But when she shuts the door, she is both relieved and bereft. She has shut the door against pain and contractions and motherhood threatening to spill out onto the rug. She feels utterly trapped in the loneliness of her own body. She crosses to the telephone and dials the doctor’s number that Ezra had dashed across the message pad, and finally somebody picks up. She explains the emergency to the answering service and hangs up, suddenly exhausted by it all. Then dropping back onto the damask sofa, she lights a cigarette, inhaling the smoke deeply.

It’s not too late, her eema tells her, seated at the sofa’s opposite end. I was older than you are now when you were born. She exhales smoke, the amber cigarette holder in her hand. Not that the process was any great pleasure, but I survived. Women survive, she says.

“Except when they don’t,” Rachel says. She expels smoke but then snubs out her cigarette in the ceramic ashtray. Her eema has vanished with the last whistle of smoke, and Rachel is up. She returns to the children’s bedroom and quietly creaks open the door. In the glow of the night-­light, she observes the children snuggled into slumber, dressed in their footy pajamas, sleeping like rag dolls in a puzzle of blankets, the light describing the little moon circumferences of their heads. A quiet drift of traffic whispers through the window.

But then she hears something.

Something like a cow lowing. Not here but from deep down in the building. She pops the bedroom door closed behind her and recrosses the apartment with a sting of urgency. When she cracks open the door to the stairway, she hears it again, only much more prolonged and much more resolute, a thick moo of pain. Mrs. Bethel is hobbling up the steps, gripping the railing, her eyes bright as light bulbs behind her glasses. “It’s happening! It’s happening!” she calls out with a slightly crazed tone. And it’s true. The maternity party never made it to Aaron’s waiting cab. They never made it to the foyer. The good hour has come right on the bottom of the steps.