Shadows of Berlin полностью

“You see? That’s an admission.”

“No, it’s… I don’t know what it is. Where do these things come from? We’re sitting here at dinner and suddenly bang. I’m the guy who stopped you from painting.”

“But isn’t it true, Aaron?” she says, adopting a tone as if she wishes he could just confess it. Could just get it off his chest.

“No,” he answers firmly, fixing the word in place. “It is not true. I thought it was great that you were painting. I was sorry when you stopped, ’cause I knew how important it was to you.”

“I stopped because I went insane,” Rachel declares.

Aaron surrenders. “H’boy. I dunno how to answer when you say things like that.”

But Rachel has shut down.

Aaron huffs and shakes his head as he returns to the mail. Paper rustles over the silence. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” he whispers to the air. “Three dollars and twenty cents for that fucking toll call when Ma was down in St. Pete for Uncle Al’s funeral.” He pops another shrimp into his mouth with his fingers, sulking. “Crazy,” he pronounces glumly.

“I found one of my mother’s canvases,” Rachel quietly admits.

Aaron looks confused, as if she’s started speaking gibberish.

“You found who’s what?”

“One of my mother’s canvases. One of her paintings. Well, it wasn’t me who found it,” she corrects. “It was Feter Fritz. At a pawnbroker’s shop.”

Still, Aaron looks baffled, his expression squished. “Honey, whatever you’re saying, I’m just not following. Your uncle was at a pawnshop?”

“Yes. On West Forty-­Seventh Street.”

“Uh-­huh.” His expression is still compressed. Ready to judge such a ludicrous story. “And so there? There on West Forty-­Seventh Street, in the middle of New York City, he discovers a painting that your mother did how many years ago back in Germany? Decades ago? Is that the gist of it?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that. There it is. Boom.”

“Boom, yes.”

“A painting. Your mother’s painting—­that everybody thinks was destroyed—­reappears outta nowhere. And your uncle Fritz,” he says, as if the very name is greasy with larceny. “Your uncle Fritz happens to find it in a hock shop in Midtown.”

“Correct.”

“So how can that happen?” is what Aaron is trying to say. “How can that be true?”

“Because it is true,” she tells him. “I know it is because I saw it too.”

There’s a touch of the clucking chicken head tuck in the motion of Aaron’s chin jerk. It comes whenever he disapproves of what he’s just heard. “So,” he says, just to get this straight, “you were in this hock shop together?”

“No. Not together. I went afterward,” Rachel tells him and tries to enlarge her side of the feud. “It could be worth a minor fortune, Aaron.”

“Oh, really,” he replies, unconvinced. “ A minor fortune. Not a major fortune, but a minor one.”

“Feter Fritz knows of these things,” she defends. “He knows from what he speaks,” she tells him, thinking: especially when it comes to this painting. Especially when it comes to the portrait of Angelika Rosen. How Eema and he had sparred over the girl, the desired but unpossessable treasure. Even after decades, her uncle’s voice was still ripe with covetous greed. Not even five months in an Auschwitz barracks block quelled it. Astonishing, Rachel thinks. To still feel so deeply. To desire so feverishly.

“Ohhh,” her husband begins roundly. “I get it now. Feter Fritz says it’s worth a minor fortune. Oh, well then, it must be true, because God knows Feter Fritz is the trustworthy authority.”

“When it comes to art? Yes,” Rachel insists, but she knows she is losing this battle. “He is. He was one of the most sought-­after art dealers in Berlin. You know this!”

Aaron shakes his head. His voice softens, becomes conciliatory in a paternal fashion. “Honey, look. I know you’re fond of the old guy. More than fond. And I know he was a big shot once, a long time ago. I know,” he assures her. “But times,” he points out, “have changed. Can you argue with that fact?”

Rachel keeps her mouth closed.

“No. I didn’t think so. Anyhow, considering all that, I don’t know what you want me to do here,” he says.

And then the phone rings. It rings and rings again. Rachel does not move.

“So I guess we’re letting it ring?” Aaron observes. “Never mind. I’ll get it. It’s probably Abe telling me Leo took a whiz in the deep fryer.” He is up and crossing the room. She listens to him snap up the phone.

“Hello! Abe, for cryin’ out loud, I just got home!”

Rachel wipes a tear from her face covertly.

“Okay, okay,” Aaron is telling the receiver. “Okay, I get it. Tell Mr. Big Shot to keep his goddamn shirt on, will ya? I’m coming.” And hangs up heavily before he speaks the same sentence that he always speaks when called back to work, back to the grind, back to the salt mines: “So guess where I gotta go?” It’s a rhetorical question that he no doubt learned from his father, the late and long-­suffering Arthur Perlman, may his name be a blessing. The original Jew from Flatbush.

5.