Shadows of Berlin полностью

Rachel finds it rather roomy. Inside there is the salon, or should she say the living room? There is a sofa flanked by matching lamp tables, but not matching lamps. Then comes a galley kitchen with a linoleum floor and a narrow apartment stove from Welbilt, the bedroom with a double bed and foam mattress, the bath with a claw-­foot enameled tub and a showerhead. A hall tree by the front door, opposite a closet. A few other sticks of furniture here and there, and that’s it. Basic digs. Not a luxury penthouse maybe, but not a dump either.

She misses their old place at times, maybe not the drippy faucet or the noisy steam radiators, but the park? The homely old neighborhood? Those she misses, she thinks. Though what does that really mean to her, misses? Things, neighborhoods, homes? They have no real hold over her. She knows if she must, if she has to save herself, she can walk away from any address. Any home. Any possession. Perhaps even any person. She can slip away like a shadow. Though at night, she often lies awake listening to the dark rumble of the trains traveling the elevated West Side line and fights an urge to crawl beneath the bed. She fears trains. Fears their power. Once you’re on a train, you can’t always simply decide to get off at your stop. Sometimes your stop is decided by the train.

Night. Rachel lies in bed, her eyes open and gazing upward. She is examining her eema’s painting in her mind. Shining an inner light on the brushstrokes. Seeing it in the rubbish heap of the pawnbroker’s shop, even dulled by a film of dust, it shocked her how Eema’s brushstrokes were still as fiery and challenging as they were when paint first touched canvas. The moody crimson of the background eclipsed by la muse’s figure, a thick rush of color overtaking the foreground. A brightly alluring female shape. Flesh on exhibition. Eema painted la muse like an icon. The sacred red harlot, the intimacies of her feelings revealed on the canvas by the impassioned attention of Eema’s technique. Rachel can still recall how the canvas stood on Eema’s easel in the blaze of a sunset. Transcendent.

Will she ever create something so stunning? She’s heard that if a thousand monkeys are set before a thousand typewriters with a thousand reams of paper, they’ll eventually hammer out the works of Shakespeare. Could that work for her as well? If she slings enough paint across enough canvases, will she eventually create a masterpiece? She once wanted to believe this could happen. But she knows better now. She knows that she’ll never create anything of value until she has freed herself from her ghosts. Freed herself from her guilt. Freed herself from her crime. Angelika Rosen made murder easy. Easy enough for anyone to commit. Even a little morsel. Was that God’s plan as well? And if it was, what’s His plan now? Why has this painting reappeared one moment only to disappear the next? Is it bait? A lure to her entrapment or a path for her deliverance? Salvation or damnation?

The front door opens in the next room and then quietly shuts. Rachel pushes herself up on her elbows and switches on the bedside lamp. Aaron appears, still dressed in his shirtsleeves, his collar open and tie unknotted, home from another double shift managing the restaurant that isn’t even his. The business in which he owns no equity beyond the equity of sweat.

“I woke you,” he observes, unbuttoning his shirt.

“I wasn’t really asleep,” she tells him and lights a cigarette from her half-­empty pack of filter tips, feeling the smoke biting the back of her throat.

He sits on the mattress beside her with a scrunch of bedsprings. Steals a drag. “So I’m sorry about last night. It’s been bothering me, getting so bent out of shape about everything. I mean, what do I really care about the electric bill in the big scheme of things? So it’s a little higher than normal if it means you stay warm?”

She gently brushes a few stray curls from his forehead. He smiles dimly.

“I just thought this year on your birthday, we’d make it a tsimmis. Not a big tsimmis, but a small tsimmis, that’s all. Have a nice meal at the restaurant and then take in a show. Like for instance, I dunno, orchestra seats for The Pajama Game?” He says this as if he’s revealing a prize. The cat trots in and hops up on the bed, but Aaron scoops him up one-­handed and drops him back on the floor. “They got a big hit going at the Saint James. Supposed to be gangbusters. Sold-­out crowds. But I’ve got a guy who can swing tickets.”

“Who is a guy?”

“Just a regular at the bar. A guy named Chernik. He’s a booking agent. Knows all the big fish on Broadway. Very funny, always cracking everybody up.” He waits for a beat. “So whattaya think?”