Shadows of Berlin полностью

“Oh. Nothing. A bunch of the alter kockers on the benches when I was up in Tompkins Square. But they turned out—­I don’t know—­kinda boring.” She says this while examining a bottle of gin. “I’m a little low on provisions. No more vodka, and no more decent scotch. But I’ve got some Gordon’s and some Lejon extra-­dry vermouth. I could make us martinis if you don’t mind drinking them without olives. Oh! Wait!” She spots it. “There’s that bottle of Four Roses you and your huzz-­band brought over last month.” She never misses a chance to razz Aaron, even when he’ s not there to score against.

Rachel sits carefully on the sofa. “I remember it. That was the night Aaron got his elbow caught in the subway door.”

Naomi laughs as she unstops the bottle of bourbon. “And kvetched about it the whole fucking time if I recall.” She pours out two measures neat and ferries them over. “So! Tell me all about the big night! How was the show?” Naomi wants to know. “Was it hilarious? I read it was hilarious.”

“Ah. Um. We ended up seeing something else. Something that was not the Pajama Game. And it wasn’t very funny.”

“Oh? Well, that’s too bad. Did the shtoomer fuck things up? Forget to bring the tickets or something? He must have,” she insists.

Rachel changes the topic. “I’m sorry it took me so long to return your dress,” she tells her sister-­in-­law.

“Forget it. Nobody’s taking me to a Broadway show anytime soon,” Naomi says and swallows whiskey.

“Really? I thought… Isn’t there the law student?”

“Y-­y-­yeah,” Naomi answers evasively, “but jazz clubs are more his speed. Which reminds me. Are you and Aaron…” she starts to say but then stops and starts the sentence again. For an instant, Rachel fears that she’s going to ask, Are you and Aaron having trouble? But what she says is “Are you two still planning on coming over on Saturday night?”

“Saturday?” Has she forgotten something again? Plans she agreed to inadvertently, while not really listening? It happens. It’s how she once ended up suffering through a matinee of The Girl in Pink Tights with Leo Blume’s first wife, Muriel. “I suppose we are,” Rachel replies too tentatively.

“Oh, so Aaron didn’t mention it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he did. It’s been a very exhausting week. He’s been closing at the restaurant almost every night.”

“Well, then. Just in case Mr. Big got too busy to remember. You and he are invited for dinner this Saturday night for the new specialty of the house: chicken Kiev and asparagus in remoulade sauce.”

“Okay. Well. That sounds wonderful,” Rachel tells her, because it does. But there’s something behind her sister-­in-­law’s voice. Something hidden.

Naomi kills her whiskey. “So, darling, you wanna see what I was working on when you knocked?”

“You mean in your darkroom?” Rachel asks. She is slightly surprised. Her sister-­in-­law has always been resistant to opening her darkroom to those she deems “civilians.”

“Why the hell not? I could use an artist’s eyeball for a change. Just don’t get your hopes up,” she warns. “’Cause great art it’s not.”

Printmaking in the red glow of the darkroom is a cramped business. “I’m trying to put together a new portfolio,” Naomi is explaining. “Something other than shots of Swanson’s frozen dinners, and I’m bored with most of my old Village stuff.”

Images emerge on Kodak paper soaked in a bath of developing fluid. From a white surface to a gray ghost, to a sharp contrast of light and shadow. It’s a shot of a park bench lined with Naomi’s alter kockers. Old men dotting the benches.

“It’s magic,” Rachel says. “A blank sheet, and then out of nowhere, a picture.”

“It is magic. You’re right,” Naomi agrees. “It still feels like that even to me.”

She removes the print by the corners, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, then rinses it in a tray and pins it onto the line where it hangs drying with a number of others. Paper curls on the line. The old men smoke, drowse over Yiddish newspapers, some just sitting in the sun or in the shade because that’s their life now.

“These are wonderful, Naomi.”

“You think so? I’m not so sure. Old farts on park benches? Pretty kitschy.”

Rachel disagrees. “No, no. Not these. You can—­you can feel the weight of the years they’re carrying.” She smiles. Is it nostalgia? “I can recall the Orthodox men with their long beards gathering outside the cafés in the Grenadier Strasse. This was in Berlin. The Scheunenviertel, uh—­the ‘Barn Quarter’ I should say. It was called so because long before, it was used as sheds for cows. But the men? I was only a child, but they looked so ancient.” So strange and exotic, she explains, with their dangling side curls and their great fur hats. The Ostjuden from the shtetlakh. “Most were destitute. As poor as the dirt under their feet. I remember the very sour aroma of salted fish perfuming the streets.”