Shadows of Berlin полностью

“You should go see a fuckin’ shrink, crazy bitch!” she hears the driver suggest, followed by another gun of another engine.

There’s a telephone booth on the corner. Rachel is making a call as people pass by indifferently. The phone receiver in her hand, she inserts a nickel. She listens to the clatter of the dial as it rotates backward with each number. A truck rumbles past the booth as the drone of each ring precedes a dull clack of connection. But Dr. Solomon? He is not available. This is what the woman from his answering service tells her. Can she take a message?

Yes. The Red Angel is not dead. She is alive.

The answering service woman is confused. “I beg your pardon? Could you repeat that, please? The angel who?”

Rachel hangs up. Stares through the glass of the booth. Waiting for her across the street under the lamp of the United States Realty Building is the schoolgirl again. Watching.

Feter Fritz had given her the particulars. The time, the location, all arranged. She takes the Eighth Avenue Independent uptown. Entering Central Park, she feels cold. A deep, shivering chill. She digs out her bottle of Miltown to warm her, but her hands are shaking, and when she attempts to open the bottle, it slips from her grip, spilling the pills in all directions. “Scheisse!” she cries out. She could try to pick them up, kneel down on her hands and knees to retrieve them pill by pill, but that feels too humiliating, so she simply abandons the mess.

Off the Central Drive, there’s a statue called Eagles and Prey. A small goat trapped in a crevice is devoured alive by a pair of ravenous eagles. This is where she finds the bench. The spot where Feter has instructed her to wait. This is the third cigarette she has smoked, lit from the ember of the last. The butts of the first two lie flat on the sidewalk, crushed by the toe of her saddle shoe. Her eyes close. Who is she expecting? A ghost scissored from her memory? A fury from her nightmares? A bloody archangel, fiery in her naked hunger, spreading her ragged wings?

Speak of the wings and the angel appears.

“Good morning, Bissel,” she hears.

The shock is flooding. It matches the jolt from a frayed electrical plug, a cold pulse of electricity fed into the body, vibrating her bones. It sweeps through the whole of her. But then she simply stares into the still-­beautiful face.

***

A transport. It’s raining that day. The day Rashka loses her mother. Two lorries leave for the Grunewald rail station. Rashka is aware of this transport; who is not? But it is not until the gnä’ Fräulein appears that she feels a horror fill her to overflowing.

“I put your feter on the train.”

Confusion.

“The train?”

“To Poland. Your feter. Your feter and your eema both.”

The pain of a thousand needles surges through Rashka’s body. Her eyes burn. Her mouth opens, but no words come. No words at all.

“It’s for your own good, Bissel. Your uncle? Really, he was doomed from the start. Even he knew that. And your mother? Your mother, Bissel, she was holding you back,” the gnä’ Fräulein insists. “She was a drag on you,” the woman says. “An impediment. You can see this, can’t you, Bissel? I’m sure you can. For us to…to do our work, we must be free of impediments. So you must be strong, Bissel. No tears,” she commands, wiping away the tears that are streaming down Rashka’s cheeks. “You must be hard like stone.”

“I don’t understand,” Rashka whispers, her voice raw. “You promised. You promised to keep her safe!” Suddenly, she is shouting like a mad demon. The whole of her being feels aflame. “You promised! You promised!” And then she sees stars as the gnä’ Fräulein slaps her across the face with the back of her fist.

“You! How can you dare speak to me so? I’ve kept you alive. Do you think that Dirkweiler cared one shit about another insignificant Jewish sow? It was me who kept you off the trains. Not your beloved feter. Me! No one else! Me alone! And this is how I’m repaid? With your childish anger?”

Rashka feels the blood dripping from her nose. Tastes it on her lips.

“Do you think I have taken on the burden of your life for my own well-­being? A stupid little fish to keep swimming? No. This is for your good, not mine. Can you comprehend what I’ve done? I have saved your life. I chose you over your mother. Though now I think maybe I should have put you both on the train and saved myself the heartache.”

These are the woman’s last words on that day.

The next morning comes, and Rashka is aroused with a kick. “Come, Bissel,” says the gnä’ Fräulein flatly. “Time to earn your keep.”