Shadows of Berlin полностью

“Regardless, I think my point applies. Think of your scrapbook of air disasters, Rachel. Think of your elevated levels of anxiety and depression. Your chronic nightmares. Your mood swings and loss of motivation. Even your breakdown at the department store. All these indicators suggest that you are suffering from what might be termed ‘the guilt of the survivors.’ Think of all those who died at the hands of the Nazis. Millions that we know of. Yet you did not. Why?”

For an instant, Rachel thinks he might be about to answer that question. Why? For an instant, Rachel believes he might be about to grant her some kind of absolution. Some psychological escape mechanism that will wipe the slate clean for her. But it turns out that all he has is the question itself. Why? A question to which she already knows the answer. Why? She survived because of her crime. The crime that saved her life.

No seats. Rachel is hanging again from a strap in the subway, her mind a jumble. Returning home, she is pursued by memories. Memories of Berlin. Memories of war. The noise of the lunchtime service at the Café Bollenmüller off the Friedrich. The accordion player, squeezing out “Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.” Sitting with her mother, hoping for a roll and a cup of hot milk. The café is an enticement for Jews in hiding. U-­boats they are called. Submarine Jews on the run, who have submerged beneath the surface of the city in a bid to escape the transports east.

The Bollenmüller is a place they come to bargain for needed hiding places, black-­market rationing coupons, falsified identity papers. All such items are on the menu here, in addition to ersatz coffee and pastries baked from potato dough. But the U-­boats come also to escape the arduous life on the streets. To discreetly trade in gossip or simply settle quietly for a few precious moments and pretend. Pretend that they are still who they once were. Pretend that they can reinhabit their vanished lives just long enough to enjoy a fleeting respite from reality over a taste of Baumkuchen. But Eema is too anxious for that. And there is no money to waste on hot milk or a roll for her daughter.

Pulling into the 59th Street station, a seat opens up, and Rachel takes it. Beside her, a pair of well-­dressed middle-­aged women chat lightly. Their white-­gloved hands grip the handles of their shopping bags, each decorated by a spray of Bonwit Teller violets. Rachel inhales a wisp of Essence of Lilac, one of the favorite house scents at the perfume counter. On the morning of the Episode, she had spritzed herself with the same scent at home, the bottle an anniversary gift from Aaron that she’d picked out for herself. But she had been a tad too exuberant with it, and she smelled it on herself all day. All day and then all night, locked up in the bin like a dangerous animal, stinking of sweat and Essence of Lilac.

Even after a year, Rachel can relive the trauma of the event at will. She can call every moment into a fever of the present tense.

On the morning of the Episode, she is looking into the mirror above her vanity and asks Aaron about a scarf. It is a zebra print, this scarf, like the one she has seen Audrey Hepburn wearing in Vogue, and she has it loosely wrapped around her neck. But maybe it is too much for the sales floor at Bonwit Teller? They are supposed to be stylishly dressed, but not so stylish that they detract from the merchandise. So she asks her husband: Is it too much? He looks at her, his eyebrows raised in appraisal as he buttons his shirt cuffs, but all he has to offer is, “I dunno, honey. It’s a scarf. Looks fine to me.”

“You are such a fat help,” she declares crossly, whipping the scarf from her neck.

“A big help,” he corrects.

“What?”

“I’m such a big help.”

“No,” she says. “You are not.”

Riding the train into work, Rachel is still incensed that Aaron is so poorly equipped to live life with a woman. Displaying herself like a mannequin modeling the scarf, she had been willing to submit herself to his judgment, and yet he had carelessly shrugged her off. Simply tossed the opportunity into the trash like he was tossing the wadded remains of the mail into the wastebasket.

The front entrance of Bonwit Teller is a spacious, modern portico under a limestone deco facade that rises austerely twelve stories above the sidewalk. Flashing glass doors revolve like cylinders of light in the bright sunshine. But that’s for customers. Employees enter through a featureless door on 56th Street. The corridor is vivid with the sterile glow from the overhead fluorescents.

Rachel waits with the women queuing for their turn to punch in, listening to the mechanical ka-­thunk of the time-­clock stamp repeating itself in an assembly-­line rhythm. Ka-­thunk, stop, ka-­thunk, stop, ka-­thunk.