Shadows of Berlin полностью

“The truth? And what is that?” He snorts. Frowns. He closes his eyes for a moment and massages the side of his head with his fingers. Then he looks away from her. Bites his lips for an instant, eyes gone raw. What inner trauma is he staring at? Is it a breakdown, or is it an act? “Very well,” he decides. “Truth is what you desire, then it is truth you shall receive. I met,” he says, “with David Glass. Yes. The exalted one. The great man himself.” He breathes out. “I explained to him what I knew.”

“What you knew?”

“And, as it happened? What I knew was valuable. I was promised a commission,” he says. “A commission for your eema’s painting, ziskeit,” he declares and swallows. Swallows hard. The blush of performance is leaking away from him. The color draining from his cheeks, exposing la couche morte beneath. The Dead Layer. “I convinced the man that if he buys for pennies, he could sell for a fortune. I would take no more than a modest percentage. Honestly, I was a bit amazed how quickly he agreed. But then it struck me that he must already have a buyer in mind. I simply never conceived that the buyer could be…” He stops. Unable to speak the name. His gaze goes hollow. “She married a rich man, of course. She’s Mrs. Irving Mendelbaum now.”

Rachel repeats the name vacantly. “Mendelbaum.”

“Yes.” He nods with leaden eyes. And then he says, “You recall the proverb, ziskeit? ‘Speak of wings and the angel appears.’”

Silence.

And then her uncle says, “She’s alive” in a toneless voice.

Rachel feels her face heat, her nerves vibrate. “No. No, she’s not.”

“Rashka… She is.”

“No. No, you said yourself that she was dead. That she had hanged herself in a Russian cell.”

“That was the lie,” Feter informs her.

“No, this is the lie. What you are saying. She’s not alive. You’re lying, Feter. Eema always said you couldn’t help yourself. That lies were too easy for you.”

Feter is shaking his head. “Not this time.”

“She died, Feter. Elle est morte!”

“Rashka.” He makes her name sound like such a pitiable thing. “The truth is different. If someone was found hanged in a Soviet cell, it wasn’t her. She is here. In New York. Very much alive. And she wants to see you.”

30.

All Because of Her Little Goat

The day is cold, but the Orchard Café is warm. Rashka breathes in the scent of perfume that clouds the air around the gnä’ Fräulein, who has ordered them two coffees. No more warm milk; she is not a child. Just look at yourself in the mirror, Bissel. That’s what the gnä’ Fräulein tells her. Womanhood is upon her. The blessing and the curse of it. “Give me your face,” the woman tells her, crooking her finger, gesturing for Rashka to turn toward her. Rashka shifts in her chair. “Closer,” says the gnä’ Fräulein. Rashka pokes her face slightly forward. There is something in the gnä’ Fräulein’s hand. A tube of lipstick that pops softly when it’s uncapped. “Now, give me your lips, like so,” she says and puckers lightly to demonstrate.

Rashka feels nervous. The color of the lipstick in the tube is red, bright as blood. Very few women in Berlin have such luxuries available, and besides, don’t the Nazis detest cosmetics on good German women? But the color is so rich. She feels a pang of hunger for it as she obeys the command of the gnä’ Fräulein. The feel is waxy but thick as it’s applied. A smooth roll on the flesh of her lips. Upper lip. Then lower lip. The same slightly sticky velvety roll.

“Now do as I do,” the gnä’ Fräulein tells her and primps her lips together. Rashka obeys. The gnä’ Fräulein observes her and then nods. “Yes,” she says and holds up the small mirror in the shell-­shaped powder puff case. Rashka stares at the color ripening her mouth in the reflection.

***

Rachel is walking aimlessly. Shoulders crouched. Head down and bumping into people. Hey, lady! Watch it! Open your eyes, why don’t you! Jeez, are you blind? The words bounce off. She doesn’t care. She is fleeing herself, but no matter how fast she bores ahead, no matter how many steps she puts behind her, she is still a prisoner of her own body, of her own mind, of her own history.

Stepping off a curb, she stumbles, and a car horn blares irately over a scream of brakes. She glares at the car’s chrome bumper. The driver is shouting curses at her, but she shrugs them off. The car suddenly swings around her with an angry gun of its engine and is replaced by another car blaring its horn. At this point, like a sleepwalker coming awake, she blinks. Shakes herself. Standing at the curb is the schoolgirl with the sable braids and the wine-­colored beret, watching her as always from the silence of death.

“Hey, sweetheart. Move out of the fuckin’ street, for Chrissake!”

This time, she obeys the demand of the driver and steps back up onto the sidewalk. The girl has vanished.