Shadows of Berlin полностью

Days have passed since their aborted attempt at marital intercourse. The air is growing chilly. The radiator hisses with heat. She is dressed in one of Aaron’s old knit sweaters pulled over her pink chenille bathrobe and with wool socks on her feet, because she is always cold. One of her husband’s Lucky Strikes smolders in the green glass ashtray on the kitchen table as she sketches her reflection on a pad with a charcoal stick. Her mother shares the table, smoking a rice-­paper Gitanes Brune inserted into an elegant amber resin holder. A strong and pungent aroma in the past, but all that Rachel smells is the stink of ash that always lingers over her mother’s arrival. Eema’s face is a perfect heart shape and her complexion alabaster. She is dressed in her finery of velvet and sable. Her black bob is silvered by the arrow point of a widow’s peak. Her face is coldly beautiful. Not exactly the nurturing parent, perhaps. Always happy to judge.

So we are here, you and I, she hears her mother observe. Azoy, mir zenen do. Always, between them, it’s Yiddish.

“Yes, Eema. We are here.”

Peering at her daughter with her usual mix of curiosity and disapproval, she wonders, What is this you are doing?

“I’m drawing,” Rachel tells her.

Really? Eema is skeptical. Is that what you think? This qualifies as drawing?

“Es iz a shmittshik,” Rachel says and then picks out a few words from English. “A doodad, you know? A doodle.”

So you may call it. But is it a waste of your God-­given talent?

“And now it’s about what God gives us, Eema? I thought my talent came from you. Besides, you said you had abandoned God.”

Eema replies in a leaden tone, Of course! This is how a daughter speaks to her mother. Let’s be correct, Rashka. I did not abandon God. God abandoned me. She expels smoke with a certain dramatic aplomb, but Rachel does not react, prompting Eema to frown at the silence. So this shmittshik? You think it serves art?

“Degas said that art is not what you see but what you make others see.”

Degas, Eema scoffs. Degas was an anti-­Semite and a misogynist, tsigele.

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your little goat anymore.”

But still stubborn as one. When will you stop sleepwalking? You’ve been scarred, yes. We live, we die. But in between, for those chosen, we have a duty to create.

“Very simple for you to say, Eema.” Rachel’s charcoal stick scratches against the paper. “You’re dead.”

But her eema is deaf to this fact. She clutches at the sable collar of her coat. When I was your age, Rashka, I was already a recognized artist. My work was highly valued. Hanging in the most important galleries in Berlin.

“And yet not a single painting survives. They all went up in smoke. Just like you.”

As usual, you’re missing my point. You have your share of talent, Rokhl. A blessing or a curse? I can’t say. But why do you waste yourself?

“I’m not wasting myself, Eema. I’m protecting myself.”

Forget these silly drawings. Go! Pick up your brushes. Lay color onto your palette.

“No,” Rachel answers.

Open your easel and face an empty canvas!

“No,” Rachel answers more forcefully. “No, I cannot. I’m sorry, I cannot do it. It will hurt me.”

It will heal you!

“No! I’m afraid, Eema,” she confesses, her eyes heating with tears. “I’m afraid of what will come out of me.” She’s startled by her tiger cat leaping up onto the table, and with that, her mother’s chair empties. The smell of smoke returns to the cigarette in the ashtray. Wiping her eyes, Rachel seizes the cat. Kibbitz she calls him, because he’s always sticking his nose in, always getting into the middle of things.