Shadows of Berlin полностью

Tyrell takes a breath. “One night at the end of November… Well, it was a bit of a surprise, if I can put it that way, when a few hundred thousand Chinese regulars came screaming across the river with their bugles blowing. We were…” he starts to say and stops. Searching for the correct word perhaps as he shakes his head. “We were overwhelmed,” he says. “Half the division was simply—­annihilated.” It’s the only word he can find to describe it. “Out of the forty-­two men in our platoon, I was one of only six who made it out alive. The rest of them? I don’t know. Maybe they’re still there lying in those mountain fields. Nothing but bones by now, I suppose.”

A dead silence reigns over the room. It settles as if those bones have been scattered across the table.

“Helluva story,” Aaron admits quietly, staring into his wine before taking a frowning swallow. His face is flushed.

“Not a very happy story for the dinner table,” Tyrell tells Naomi, as if to say, I told you not to push me on it.

Naomi absorbs this and sucks in a breath. “I’m gonna open that second bottle of wine,” she announces.

The meal continues with the passing of side dishes and the refilling of glasses. But Rachel can see that her husband’s face has darkened. His color has settled into a flush of male embarrassment. He’s quit his interest in the food on his plate and pours more wine. “Mr. Williams,” he begins, even though his sister hasn’t finished talking about how she got her recipe for the chicken from The Joy of Cooking. “This old guy. ‘Yaakov’ you called him,” Aaron begins. He speaks the name into the air as if to consider it more clearly. “The great grand master or whatever. He’s a Jew?” Aaron wonders. “I mean, ‘Yaakov.’ It sounds like a Jew’s name, am I right?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. Perlman,” Tyrell answers, tending to his plate. “I’ve never asked him.”

“Oh, so you can’t tell,” Aaron concludes. “I mean, he doesn’t have a huge schnozz or anything? He doesn’t talk obsessively about how much money he’s losing—­but oh, that’s right. He can’t possibly be a Jew, can he, because with him, no money changes hands.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Naomi demands sharply over Tyrell’s silence.

“What?” Aaron is just an innocent guy. “I’m just making conversation with your friend here, the lawyer. Oh, I’m sorry—­the almost-­a-­lawyer. You know,” he says, returning to his plate with alacrity, cutting up a spear of asparagus, “I mean, what do I know from chess? I’m just a Jew from Flatbush. But Rachel’s Uncle Fritz plays, doesn’t he, sweetheart?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “He tried to teach her how to play too, if memory serves, but she could never remember how the pieces moved.”

Rachel tries to maintain a smile. “I don’t have a mathematical mind,” she admits.

“You’re an artist, Naomi tells me,” Tyrell suggests helpfully.

“Yeah, if she ever stops glaring at an empty canvas,” Aaron answers for her, chewing as he cuts up more asparagus. Rachel feels it like a knife stab.

“Well, I could never paint any kind of picture,” Tyrell declares. “That takes a special kind of talent that I do not possess.”

“Naomi, I’m going to get a glass of water,” Rachel says.

“Oh, let me.” Her sister-­in-­law starts to rise, but Rachel waves her off.

“No, no, no. I’ll get it.” At the sink with her back to the table, she listens closely to the water gurgling into the glass from the tap. Her hand trembles as she drinks it. She is having a problem. An old problem. After going hungry in hiding, it’s still painful for her to eat in public. She has managed to train herself away from it, but it can still turn up during moments of tension, and right now, she has a killing desire to start hiding food instead of eating it. She drinks the water down as Naomi appears with an empty platter and a few utensils greasy with sauce that she sets in the sink.

“You okay?” Naomi asks.

“Yes. You?”

Naomi shakes her head ruefully, turning on the tap to rinse the plate. “My brother. What a piece of fucking work.”

“Should I make him take me home?”

“Nah, Tyrell can handle it. He’s been handling bigoted assholes his whole life,” she says with smothered anger. Rachel wonders: A bigoted asshole? Is that who she’s married? Naomi shows her a forced smile. “Go. Sit back down. I’ll be there in a minute. I just wanna get a jump on some of the cleanup.”