Shadows of Berlin полностью

She was twenty-­one the year they arrived in the Port of New York aboard the Marine Sailfish in 1949. Over six years ago. The few photographs of her taken at the time show a haunted, dark-­mopped waif. She was an open wound at that point. Bundled in ill-­fitting castoffs, thin as a matchstick, and still faintly stinking of a continent burnt to ashes. Stumbling over her English, she was boiled by the summer’s heat and overpowered by New York’s towering intensity, the skyscraper architecture, crush of people, and blare of traffic. Berlin’s Unter den Linden was famously perfumed by the sweetly honeyed scent of the linden trees, till the Nazis ordered them cut down, but New York City stank of exhaust and ripening garbage. It was deafening, smothering, and teeming with pedestrians trying to trample one another. Simply keeping up with sidewalk traffic was exhausting. Also exhausting was contending with the city’s abundance. The lavish variety of produce, the sumptuous profusion of color filling the shelves of a corner market were so taxing to her senses that buying cabbage and cucumbers was enough to cause her to panic.

But surely it was after those first dizzying months had passed that she first started her collection of clippings. It had to be after the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society had helped them find the tiny apartment on Orchard Street. A tenement house populated by mobs of homeless refugees. Jews like themselves, just off the boats from the displaced persons camps. She remembers stowing the clippings in an Endicott Johnson shoebox. But she didn’t start pasting them into scrapbooks until she married Aaron. That’s when she began treating the clippings like a secret, a shameful secret, hiding them in the rear of the closet behind the vacuum cleaner, where she knew her new husband would never look. After all, why would he ever touch a vacuum cleaner?

“So am I here to make a confession, Doctor?”

“You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” the doctor tells her.

She nods. So that’s how it’s going to be, is it? All up to her? Should a sinner willingly confess to sin? Jews don’t make confessions inside little booths. They must expiate their sins on earth through good deeds, but she is not much for mitzvot these days. Last Christmas, there was a brass band from the Salvation Army playing outside Macy’s. On an impulse, she dropped a five-­dollar bill in their pot, but she still couldn’t find a cab. Her bet is that God just pocketed it.

“I’d like you to consider painting again,” says Dr. Solomon.

Rachel stares. “Painting.”

“Yes.”

She feels a sickly terror and has to look away, glancing at the leather sofa to see if Eema has arrived, but it is empty of mothers. “And why should I want to do such a thing, Doctor?” she asks. To push a brush into the crazy woman’s hand. To shove her at a canvas and order her to paint? It’s dangerous. What raving madness might explode from her body and bloody the canvas?

And yet! “It could be very helpful,” the good doctor submits. “Creativity can often provide emotional relief.” But he does not press the matter. “Give it some thought,” he suggests. “That’s all I’m saying. Your art,” he tells her. “It seems to me that it plays a large role in forming your self-­identity.”

Her self-­identity. That ragged patchwork of truths and untruths. In the war, her identity was dependent on forged documents. It was her ersatz self that she clung to, because her true identity could murder her.

***

One of the first things that shocked her about New York City, apart from the looming towers of Midtown and the crowds swarming the sidewalks, were the filthy streets. Berlin was a clean city before it was pummeled into ruin. No one dared drop trash in the street; it would have been unthinkable! Undenkbar! But New York is a pigsty in comparison. The gutters are clogged with trash. Ash bins and garbage barrels overflow. Dogs are permitted to soil the sidewalks with impunity.

Last year, the city government erected a gigantic wire bin in the middle of Times Square, loaded with trash collected from the streets. The accusation was clearly printed in huge letters: THIS LITTER BELONGS TO YOU! YOU MISS THE LITTER BASKET WITH 1,200 POUNDS A DAY IN TIMES SQUARE ALONE! Going down into the subway is not better. Squashed cigarette butts everywhere. Sandwich wrappers, crumpled bags, discarded pop bottles, fruit peels, and half-­eaten hot dogs crawling with ants. Of course in Berlin, there was a time when she was one of those ants, trolling the gutters and bins for food.