Shadows of Berlin полностью

“Twice removed from the list of people I can stand to socialize with. At least twice I removed him, probably ten times, and yet he keeps coming back. Honey, the man is a judgmental dope, even when he’s ‘apologizing.’ My mother’s always said that Ezra’s a first-­class tumler, just like his old man, and she’s always been right.”

“Tumler or not,” Rachel says, picking up the cat who comes meowing toward her. “He’s still your family. And this is how you treat him? You should be glad you have family.”

“H’boy, here we go.”

Rachel turns, hugging Kibbitz in her arms. “Here we go what?”

Aaron loosens his tie, lights a cigarette from a leftover pack on the coffee table. “Nothing. I know. I’m lucky to have family left.”

“That’s right. You are,” she says and shifts the cat’s weight onto her shoulder. “So don’t you be the judgmental dope.”

In the bedroom, discussion continues as they prepare for bed. Aaron sits slouched on the bedspread, jacket gone, collar opened, tie pulled apart and hanging from his neck, cigarette smoldering in the bedside ashtray. He sighs as he tugs off each shoe and tosses it. “H’okay, h’okay,” he surrenders. “I get it. Family is family. He just gets under my skin is all. Always acting like the almighty goodnik. ‘My responsibility as an American Jew,’ with his big bronze star gleaming.” Kibbitz is mewing on the bed. Aaron picks him up and plops him on the floor. “Like he single-­handedly routed the whole friggin’ Nazi war machine.”

Rachel turns her back to Aaron, lifting her hair so he can unzip the back of her dress for her. “Maybe he takes being a Jew seriously.”

Reaching up and zip he’s done. “And you’re saying I don’t?”

“I’m saying that maybe you think you don’t. And that’s why he gets under your skin.” She slips her shoulders free. “And by the way, it certainly was not Ezra Weinstock routing the Nazi war machine.” Rachel steps out of the dress. “It was the Red Army doing that.”

Aaron yanks off a sock, tosses it. “Yeah? Well, tell him that, why don’t you?” Yanks off the other sock. “No, on second thought, don’t. In fact, don’t tell anybody that, okay? The last thing I need is a Commie lover in my bed.” Suddenly he seizes her and pulls her onto the bed on top of him. She yelps, but then her eyes go wide when he kisses her.

“I know,” Aaron admits, an intimacy entering his voice. “Even though it’s not easy to believe, considering the tribe from Webster Avenue. I know that I am lucky to have family. But luckier to have you.”

A second kiss goes deeper.

She could ruin her life quite easily, or at least her madness could. It wouldn’t take much to drive her entire existence on West 22nd Street over a cliff. She could light a match and drop it on the sofa upholstery and sit back. The simplicity of it both terrifies her and entices her. She knows that it’s her guilt that pushes her to mad thoughts. But her desire for a just atonement is strong. Biblical, even.

Do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people, Israel.

Both wife and husband lie together naked under the covers. Comfortable in their marriage bed, Rachel allows herself to drop her guard enough to feel the heat of their intimacy. That is, the intimacy that she is so desperate to maintain and so tempted to ruin. Without Aaron, without her marriage, what is she? A refugee. A mental case, as they put it in Flatbush. A resident nut of the booby hatch. She needs to be Mrs. Aaron Perlman, even when she resents the need. It’s the shelter she has built for herself against the storms of her own mad guilt. So she loves him. She does. She loves him, she puts up with him, she serves his humble husbandly requirements—­answering the telephone, shopping the grocery, making the coffee, washing dishes—­when she must. Wifely chores. Yet she is compelled to thwart him in his greatest desire.

She has, once again, taken measures to block his ability to deliver a belly, as is said. She has performed a certain operation with a rubberized insert that will permit him to be satisfied but prevent her from absorbing his deposit. And this time, even with all this argument about who has given whom grandkids, Aaron doesn’t complain. He seems to have grown stoic about her measures. Perhaps because, like her, he’s simply happy to have the connection. The escape. The release. Now he begins snoring dully. But Rachel stares into the darkness of the room above, searching out the ceiling crack, listening to the train cars of the West Side elevated line as they pass.

***