Shadows of Berlin полностью

Therapy for the Shell-­Shocked

Whenever Rashka needed a new frock or new shoes or a new coat, her nanny took her to Karstadt’s department store in the Hermannplatz. It was a gargantuan temple of merchandise the size of a zeppelin. It had lifts and escalators. Escalators! Slightly terrifying—­would she trip and be accidentally shredded by the moving steps? But also marvelously fun, like a carnival ride, going up, up, up! It was an adventure. An expedition to the top floors! But it was always a nanny who took her. Fräulein This or Fräulein That. Her mother employed and then dismissed them with regularity. But never did Eema bother to lead the expedition herself. Shopping for Rashka was too trivial a matter to gain her attention; she had her work to consider.

So when Eema returned that afternoon from the Hermannplatz, trailing a porter loaded down with haberdashery boxes and ribboned dress boxes, it was a shock. Especially when Rashka saw that Eema was arm in arm with the red-­haired fräulein. Obviously, Eema had taken the girl shopping! Rashka was wounded. They were laughing, the two women. Touching each other on the arm, the shoulder, even the face! And the new outfit that the girl was wearing! The beaded frock, the fur-­collared cloak. The snug little hat with the long feather tucked into the band. The leather gloves the color of wine. Was Eema going to paint her with clothes on now?

That night at supper, Rashka refused to eat. She kicked the empty chair beside her under the table. But it was only the nanny who bore the brunt of her anger. Eema was out for supper. Not even there for Rashka to lash out against.

Rashka was a still a young child. But not so young that she couldn’t feel pain. Not so young that she couldn’t feel envy. No so young that she couldn’t feel abandoned.

***

“Have you considered my suggestion further, Rachel?” Dr. Solomon wonders. “That you return to painting?”

A pause before she lies. “I’ve considered it.”

The doctor shifts in his chair, always a sign that he is about to mount an effort to overcome her obstacles. “Have I ever mentioned the name Mary Huntoon to you?” he asks and doesn’t wait for an answer. “At the end of the war, there was a woman I worked with briefly. An artist,” the doctor tells her, “named Mary Huntoon. She had an art studio for patients at the Winter General Army Hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Her idea was to use art as a therapeutic treatment for veterans damaged by combat neuroses.”

Aha. “So. Therapy for the shell-­shocked meydl, Dr. Solomon?”

“Is that how you’d like me to put it?” he asks.

“You know, my mother told me that every artist is cursed at birth.” And now Eema appears in order to chime in. Your imagination again. I never said any such thing. “My mother thought that it would be smarter for me to become one of the ‘sheep’ as she called them. A simple sheep who finds an ordinary man and makes an ordinary marriage.”

And you see? That was true.

“Though men, she said, were also a curse.”

Also, true, her mother agrees. Men and children both.

Leaving his office, Rachel is pursued by his suggestion. Narishkeyt! Folly! Returning to painting? Dangerous even to consider! Her heart is thumping.

But on the way home, she tries to calm herself with a Miltown. It planes down the rough edge of her panic, allowing her to at least consider such a thing as picking up a paintbrush again without sobbing or puking or losing her mind. A night in Bellevue cured her of the painting disease. All thought of such oily, messy endeavors had screamed to a halt after the Episode. It was as if the memory of holding a brush was fully erased from the muscles of her hand. She was sure that if she tried to employ a brush after Bellevue, her fingers would lose their strength, and she would simply drop it to the floor. And even if she did manage to find the temerity to slap paint onto a canvas, who knows what misshapen demon she might release into the world?

Still. She feels her eyes tear up.

She tries to imagine, as the downtown train bores through the tunnel, what might have happened if she had not been ruined. If she had not had her future torn from her and shredded. Might she be standing right now at an easel? She thinks of the paintings she has not produced in the same way as she thinks of the children she has not borne. The empty spaces of a life she is not living.

And then there is this young girl. This specter seated across the aisle between a woman with a shopping bag on her lap and a man dozing off over his newspaper. The schoolgirl with her brunette braid and burgundy beret, interloping across time. Do the dead also wonder about the lives they did not live?

Rachel closes her eyes.

Look for yourself in the crowd. Those were her instructions. You are who we’re hunting, Bissel. This is what the woman always called her. Bissel. Little morsel, A bite to swallow.