Shadows of Berlin полностью

“And so you see me, Feter,” she says. “Here I am. Now what is the other reason?” she asks, though doesn’t she already know? Moolah, bubala! Kies und Shotter! The old Berliner bywords: Ohne Moos, nix los! Without moss, nothing happens!

“Should I be stung by your tone, Rokhl?” her feter wonders with a careful smile. “Since when is my niece so cynical?”

A small shrug in reply. “You called me? I came.”

“Fine,” he says flatly, down to business. “I don’t want to say a big word,” the man confides with intimate restraint. “But I believe, Rashka,” he tells her. “I believe that I have discovered one of your mother’s lost masterpieces.”

Rachel feels herself grow cold. Her fingers go numb as she gazes back at her uncle’s face. She knows he is searching for some reaction. Perhaps he is hoping for even a small surge of surprise—­or, dare it be imagined, a spark of joy. But this blunt dumbness that has struck her is all she can offer, forcing her uncle to ask the question directly. “Do you know what that will mean, Rokhl?”

“Mean?” Rachel repeats. Does it mean that there is some proof remaining of her eema’s brilliance? Does it mean that her eema’s reputation will be resurrected from the footnotes of art history texts? Does it mean that a part of Eema has survived beyond the quarrelsome specter that Rachel raises from the ashes? But all Feter’s shrunken perspective and empty pockets can permit him to whisper is “It could be worth a tidy fortune.”

“Which one is it?” This is really the only question that’s important to her. Which painting has survived? Her mind races through an inventory of possibilities. The unfinished portrait of Rathenau interrupted by his assassins? The portrait of Harry von Kessler, le célèbre comte libéral, holding his dachshund on his lap? The bespectacled impressionist Ernst Oppler, painted the year before his death? Or could it be the actress Brigette Helm, armored from the neck down in her costume as the Maschinenmensch in Metropolis?

“You must tell me, Feter.” She removes a cigarette from the packet of Camels from her coat. She often carries things like men do, in her pockets, but she must open her bag to find matches. “You need to tell me which,” she insists, searching anxiously, her Miltown calm shredded and the cigarette dangling from her lips.

Feter Fritz, however, is circumspect. He seizes the opportunity to prevaricate by igniting her cigarette with the snap of a lighter that features a Pepsi-­Cola bottle cap, part of the collection of accoutrements that underpin his frayed elegance. “Let’s say for now,” he suggests, “that all I can tell you is…it’s one of her major works.”

“So I will recognize it?”

“Oh, yes.” He nods with smug certainty. “Oh, yes, you will quite definitely recognize it, tohkter,” he tells her, adopting that oh-­so-­charming and yet quite irritating custom of old-­world men, addressing young women as daughter. It’s a term of “affection” but also intended to detract from Rachel’s competence in this conversation by juvenilizing her. All in good time, child, it says. It’s a sticky matter for experts, not for les demoiselles. For now, he’s said all that he dares.

“So that is all I’m permitted to know?” she asks with a frown.

Well. Her uncle expels smoke with manly dignity. Perhaps there is one more thing he admits he should mention. And that’s when it comes. The meat of the matter. “All I need is fifty,” Feter informs her.

“Fifty?”

“Dollars, Rashka,” her uncle clarifies gently, as if Rachel may be sweetly dense. And then to add a splatter of grease to the skillet, he declares that “the fool in possession has not a whiff.” A shmegegi is how he describes this man. “He thinks the value is in the frame, a gilded monstrosity,” Feter sneers cozily. “The poor shlub has no idea what he has.”

“And who—­” Rachel starts to press but silences herself when the ancient schlepper appears.

“One cup Visotskis Tey for the big eater,” he announces dubiously as he delivers Rachel’s tea on saucer. “Plus one bowl lentil bean for the regular. And don’t worry,” he adds, setting it down in front of Feter. “It’s Wednesday. The cook never spits in the soup on Wednesday. It’s bad luck.”

Feter ejects an affected laugh at this, perfected over decades of charming waiters, hotel porters, and doormen. “Thank you, Alf. And my compliments to the chef, of course.”

“Still nothing for the little missus?” the man inquires.

“Still nothing,” Rachel tells him.

A shrug. If she says so. And he slumps away. Only then does Rachel bear down on her question. “And who possesses this masterpiece, Feter?” she pushes. “Who exactly?”

But once more, her uncle bats her question away. “A nobody,” he declares. “A bedbug from a pawnshop. I could shout his name from a rooftop, and he’d still be anonymous.”

“Is it the place on West Forty-­Seventh Street? Where you lost your diamond stickpin?”