Shadows of Berlin полностью

She is on the move, heading out into the street. She is convinced that her eema is right. That Feter Fritz knows more than he is willing to divulge. He’s always had his secrets. Even as a Jew under the Gestapo’s roof, he considered secrets a form of currency.

It’s Friday, so it’s easy enough to find him stationed at a table in the Garden Cafeteria. A plate of latkes with applesauce sits on the table in front of him, accompanied by a cup of coffee and a glass of seltzer as he is writing in his little dog-­eared notebook. The notebook is a habit of his from decades before. The secret reminders and intimate scraps of information recorded. Who knows when a person will need to remember something? A date, a name, a transaction? The exchange rate on the pound sterling? Where to purchase the best Italian leathers? That was then. These days, he usually scribbles with a nubby pencil snatched from the library, and God knows what he’s jotting down. Tips on playing cribbage for cash? Where to buy the cheapest shoelaces? How to trick a vending machine with a slug? Rachel can only imagine.

Feter pretends to be happy at her arrival, but she can tell that he is actually not so happy. After so many years, she has learned to see through the masks he wears. She sits beside him so she can whisper, so that no gossips of Feter’s acquaintance can overhear. He wonders to what does he owe the pleasure of her visit.

“Isn’t it possible, Feter,” she begins, “that you know something that you’re not telling me?”

In response, her feter appears more confused than wounded by the question. And maybe even a bit amused. “Ah, so the mother comes out in the child. The result of the rich diet of mistrust your eema weaned you on, I fear,” he says and laces together his fingers on the table. “What precisely—­if I may ask—­what precisely am I supposed to know that I am pretending not to know?”

“Eema’s painting,” Rachel answers.

“Ah!” He should have known!

“I feel as if it was stolen from me.”

“Stolen?” And her feter is the thief? Again, not hurt but merely amused. “Her poor feter? This is what she thinks?” he asks the air. “My own flesh and blood, and yet to her, I am the swindler?”

“I didn’t say that,” Rachel insists.

“Didn’t you?” he wonders aloud. Then his voice dips. He adopts a forgiving tone, an understanding tone. “Ruchel. Ziskeit,” he says. “I swear to you. God in heaven, I did not steal your mother’s painting from you.”

“I said I feel as if it has been stolen. I didn’t say by whom. I only wonder what you know. That’s all.”

“What I know, Daughter, is that you suffered too much. Too much, Rokhl, at such a tender age. It’s made you…suspicious,” he decides to call it. Perfectly understandable, he tells her. A child with such a history? How could she not be fearful of her own shadow? He opens up his old leather-­bound cigar case, lighting up with the matchbook advertising a fancy kosher steakhouse in Murray Hill. Rachel also notes the band on the cigar. H. Upmann, Habana. “Am I hurt?” he asks. “Who wouldn’t be hurt? After all, didn’t I come to you first? Ask for your help? A few dollars, Rashka, and we would have had your mother’s painting in our hands. But. That was not to be. Things went amiss, and I know my niece. I know that for all that goes amiss, she must find someone to blame.”

Someone laughs sharply from across the room. A truck grinds its gears in the street.

“So here’s a question for you, Feter. When did you start eating steak at Yosef Levi’s?”

Feter smiles in an interior way. As if perhaps this is a joke he is missing. “I beg your pardon?”

“The matchbook, Feter,” she explains. “And when did you start smoking cigars from Havana?”

So now he must laugh lightly at her presumption. “Rokhl, the matchbook came from somewhere, who knows? I picked it up.” A shrug. “And the cigars? An old man treats himself in his waning years. That’s a crime?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

Feter’s smile turns leaden. “Rashka. Ziskeit. What are you driving at?” This he asks her in English.

Driving at? Rachel catches a breath. “Nothing, Feter,” she tells him, dropping eye contact. “I don’t mean to accuse you of anything or to imply.” She glances submissively at her hands to put him off the scent that she is onto him. Not her mother’s hands, not the accomplished hands with the slender fingers, so expressive. Not those hands, but hands of the competent peasant. Her father’s hands, she’s been told. The hands of the missing man left behind for her at her birth. “I’ve been easily upset it seems. Perhaps I’m not thinking clearly.”

Feter appears to accept this as an apology, a confession, and even as a statement of fact. He clasps her hands in his and gives them a consoling pat. “I understand, Daughter,” he promises. The edge of his cuff has inched upward, revealing the tail of the number tattooed above his wrist. “I understand,” he tells her.