Shadows of Berlin полностью

Rachel dries another dish with the hand towel and places it atop the stack on the counter. A pause. A clink of a dish as it’s soaped.

“It was my mother,” Rachel suddenly announces.

Another pause as this sinks in.

“The ghost. It was my mother as I imagined her after she went to the gas.”

When Rachel looks up, she sees that both Aaron and his mother appear deflated. Quite literally as if the air has been let out of them. Miriam gazes at her with those blank cat eyes for a moment. And then when she speaks, all the scold, all the challenge, all the archness has been displaced from her voice. Instead, she sounds uncomfortably perplexed. “And that’s something you want people to see, hon?” she has to wonder.

At which point Naomi enters the kitchen.

“So what’s going on?” she asks, eyes flicking from face to face.

Aaron blinks, sounds vaguely defensive. “Whattaya mean, what’s going on?”

“Well, what I mean is you went to get Uncle Meyer a beer like a year and a half ago and never came back.”

“I got carried away by little green men,” Aaron answers bleakly. “Here,” he says, going into the fridge for another Ballantine. “Give him this one.”

“Too late for that,” says Naomi, grabbing the opener and snapping off the cap for herself. “He’s already conked out on the couch, snoring like a pardon-­my-­French freight train.”

On the way home, sitting on the subway, Aaron finally says it: “You never said before. About the painting. I mean, about who the ghost thing was supposed to be or the other stuff.” By this, he means the gas chamber. His voice is neutral, but she can tell that underneath, there is a tint of irritation that he was ambushed by her pronouncement in his mother’s kitchen. That he was embarrassed for her and for him both.

“I never said because you never asked,” she replies.

“Never asked? Well, of course I never asked. I’m a Jew from Flatbush. What the hell do I know about art? You painted a picture, so I figured, okay—­maybe it looks a little creepy but it’s supposed to, right? You said it was a ghost.”

“Did I offend her? Your mother?” Rachel wants to know.

“Offend her? No. Terrify her? Kinda sort of.”

“I should keep my mouth shut,” says Rachel.

“No,” her husband disagrees. But only kinda sort of. “You don’t need to do that. Just…I dunno. Prepare a person for what’s coming maybe.”

Rachel nods. “I should keep my mouth shut,” she says.

18.

Safe ’n’ Sound in Brooklyn

After the Episode at Bonwit Teller, Rachel went to the museums every day for weeks. At the Frick, she was consoled by the simple humanity and the quietly troubled beauty of Whistler’s portraits. She would gaze at the reverence of Sassetta’s The Virgin of Humility Crowned by Two Angels, gleaming with gold leaf. Maybe she was Jewish, but the worship of the Mother was something she could understand. At the Whitney, she loved the warmth of color played against the ascetic solitary geometry of Hopper’s work, but once, while lost in Pollock’s Number 27, 1950, her body absorbed so much of the stunning chaos that she had to run to the toilet to vomit. And the Metropolitan? She felt she could travel its galleries forever, happily vanished into its universe of beauty.

But did she ever imagine during a single moment of fantasy that her own work could be hanging on a wall at some future point? No. Her eema was the famous artist, not her. That much had been drilled into her kop. Finally, Aaron started gently complaining about her poor housekeeping again, and so her museum visits diminished. He had only so much patience with sickness and recovery. Especially in the world of mental instability. Isn’t that what it’s called these days? Not insanity. Anyway, it’s no secret that his measure of a well-­ordered marriage is a well-­kept house. If the apartment is clean, then all is in order.

Dr. Solomon believes that her arguments with Aaron about housework are never about housework. That they are indicative of feelings of neglect or stress or unfulfilled desire. Of unrealized dreams or something else entirely unrelated to unwashed dishes or dirty floors. Feelings of jealousy or a struggle for control in an uncontrollable world. If this is the case, then perhaps the resurgence of the housecleaning complaint was Aaron’s signal. Enough with the craziness. Shouldn’t she be recovered by this point? Shouldn’t she, after how long, be getting back to normal? But what is normal?

Rachel lights a cigarette. “I’m not his mother,” she tells Dr. Solomon.

“You think that’s what he wants in a wife? Another mother?”

“Isn’t that what all men want, Doctor?” she answers. “But it makes no difference.” She feels a terrible weight in her belly, because the truth is always heavy. “God made me to be me,” she answers. “Not to be a mother. Not be anyone’s mother.”