Shadows of Berlin полностью

Eema considers. At times. At times I was. And when he died, I grieved. I did. But I was also relieved. At last to have my life back in my own hands.

“And what about her?” Rachel asks.

Her? Who is her? Eema pretends not to know.

“You know very well who is her,” Rachel insists. “Did she make you happy?”

Her mother shrugs slightly, expels smoke from her cigarette in the amber holder. When a person sticks a dagger in your heart, can that person make you happy? she wonders. An unanswered question.

At that moment, Aaron replaces her mother as he slides into the booth looking abashed. “Uh, honey?” he says and swallows something jagged. “There’s been a bit of a wrinkle in the plan.”

The atmosphere in the rear of a checkered taxi is chilly as they head west on 48th. Rachel glares through the window glass blindly. The only sounds are the passing traffic and the occasional snort of static on the cabbie’s dispatch radio. Between wife and husband, there is only silence, until Aaron finally speaks.

“What?”

But all he gets is nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but it was the only show he could get seats for that weren’t up in the rear mezzanines with the cobwebs.”

More silence.

“It’s supposed to be incredible,” he offers with hope. “All the reviews…”

Nothing.

“So whattaya wanna do? Turn around?” he asks. “Go home and play Scrabble? We can do that,” he offers. A real offer.

Rachel breathes out and finally answers, looking down at her satin-­gloved hands. “No.” She sighs in a small way. “No, too late. It’s only that you promised The Pajama Game. I was looking forward to comedy.”

A moment more of nothing between them, until Aaron proffers his only defense: “I hear there are some funny parts…”

The Cort Theatre on West 48th. As the taxi slows, the marquee blazes.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

She sits beside her husband in the crowded auditorium. But she is unaware of him. Unaware of the audience surrounding her. She can only see the people onstage; she can only absorb what she hears from the performers acting their parts under the claustrophobic lighting. Her nerves are needles. Her muscles clenched. Her throat too thickened to emit the slightest whimper. She has made it thus far, as one act gave way to the next, navigating the desperation of Jews in hiding onstage, through the cloying scenes of fear and fearlessness, of joy and ennui, of petty squabbles, of soaring hopes, and of doomed dreams. Doomed, doomed, doomed by the coming betrayal. The evil blot of human betrayal. Glaring at the stage with sharp grief gleaming in her eyes, she hears the line spoken by the young girl standing center.

It remains her opinion, she informs the crowd, that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, people in their hearts are still good.

And that’s it.

Rachel is up, shoving past annoyed patrons. She can hear Aaron whispering frantically after her, calling her name, but she ignores him. She must flee. She must flee. She must flee.

“My fault,” Aaron is admitting. Breaking the silence in the rear of their cab heading down Ninth Avenue. Heading home.

“My fault,” he repeats. “This is my fault. I should have said screw it the second that yutz Chernik called.”

Silence.

Rachel’s eyes are raw. She glares at the lights of the street as they stream past the taxi’s window.

“Diary of Anne Frank,” her husband concludes. “Bad idea.”

But Rachel does not speak a word. Up in the front, beside the driver, sits a schoolgirl. Her hair woven into a single braid, a wine-­colored beret on her head. Her strong, beautiful face betrays patches of decay. The simple beauty of her eyes is hardly diminished by the rot of death; their humanity is still very clear.

“Stop!” Rachel hears herself shout aloud. “Stop!” But too late. By the time the cabbie stamps on the brakes, she has puked the dinner that Leo had treated them to into her husband’s lap.

She does not sleep that night. Hunched over the toilet on her knees, she cannot stop the upheaval, even though she must be ruining Naomi’s dress. Aaron kneels beside her, holding her hair, stroking her head in between heaves. He blames the salmon, and she does not attempt to correct him. She must have gotten a bad piece of fish is his explanation, though she has already heaved up appetizers, entrée, dessert, soup to nuts, and at this point is simply sputtering bile into the white porcelain bowl.