Shadows of Berlin полностью

“Yep. That’s the guy,” Aaron confirms. Then he gives her a businesslike smack on the cheek. “It’s his job to unclog that which is clogged,” he tells her. “Uh, no coffee for me this morning. No time. I gotta get moving. The lunch crowd’s gonna be murder today. Special matinee of The Vamp at the Winter Garden with Carol Channing.”

This means nothing to her. “No coffee, no breakfast?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have somebody scramble me a coupla eggs at the restaurant and stick ’em on a roll.” It’s obvious to Rachel that he has securely stowed yesterday’s dispute in the drawer in his head marked WIFE TROUBLES: ONE OF MANY. Though it’s also obvious that he’s skipping breakfast because maybe it’s wiser not to hang around. He does, however, insert a tentative question. “So you okay?”

She glances into his eyes. “Hunky-­dory,” she replies. That seems to be good enough.

“Look, I gotta close tonight,” he tells her, breaking away, heading toward the door. “’Cause Solly’s still in Miami.”

“I thought you said he was back.”

“No, I said he was supposed to be back, but then his mother broke a hip or a leg, or I dunno, she broke some damn thing. So it’s double shifts for me,” he tells her, grabbing his coat and hat off the branches of the hall tree. “Do something today,” he commands thoughtfully on his way out. “Call Naomi. Go see a movie or something. Just don’t hang around in your bathrobe like a mope.”

“Are you saying I mope?”

“I’m saying some fresh air wouldn’t kill you. Don’t wait up.”

When she hears him descending the stairs, Rachel goes straight to the bottom shelf of the magazine table by the sofa, loaded with her copies of ARTnews and American Artist. But it’s also the spot where Aaron keeps the Merriam-­Webster’s Dictionary stowed for his occasional battles with the paper’s Sunday crossword puzzle. It’s a dog-­eared copy from his school days, this dictionary, in which can still be found his covert schoolboy doodles of naked breasts and such. Opening the pages, she flips through till she finds what she’s looking for. The rainy-­day twenty. Once it’s in her billfold, she considers hunting around the apartment for some small treasure. If she had anything of real value, she could put it into hock, but what does she have? Nothing. A bundle of everyday items. Household appliances. Costume jewelry. Nothing that would command a price of more than a dollar or two. Here! A can opener! Please take it on account! Think of the many cans of soup you can open at home with such a prize!

No, all she can hope for is that he’ll take pity on her. The bedbug. That he’ll take her measly twenty-­five as a down payment maybe. She can skimp for a while, promise to pay him a few dollars per month. He’ll understand paying over time. Even a businessman can take pity, can’t he? Can’t he take pity? That word that she both dreads and covets.

Outside, the air is indeed fresh, briskly scrubbed by yesterday’s rain, as she heads for the uptown subway.

She can still so easily return to her mother’s studio. The pleasing sharpness of the spirits in her nostrils. And the oily aromas of the paint on the palette. Her eema used only a certain brand of hand-­mixed Belgian oil paints famous for their vivid colors. Rachel can remember the smell of sulfur in the cadmiums was so strong it was like the smell of a match head as it ignites. Even in the pawnbroker’s shop, had she somehow expected to detect the sulfur emanating from the canvas after so many decades? In her mind’s eye, she can see it. The canvas seated firmly on Eema’s massive easel. The figure of a girl rendered in fiery colors. The pungent perfume of the cadmium red. Folklore warns that the smell of sulfur is a sign of the presence of demons. In this case, perhaps true. She can summon the image of the girl seated on the dais at rest, lazily smoking a cigarette, wearing a gauzy robe that exposed the color of her flesh. Hair red as a blaze.

Rachel was just a child. Still Rashka. She had come to her eema’s studio with her nanny. Eema, of course, was too busy with the nanny, dispensing directions, to pay much notice to her daughter, but that was bearable. Certainly not unusual. Really she had been hoping to pet the cat who lived there. A big tawny beast who often snoozed in the light that poured through the loft’s windows.