Shadows of Berlin полностью

“I never knew his father, so it’s hard for me to say. But I do know that underneath their bickering, he really does worry about Naomi. He feels responsible for her. You know, not only is he the older brother, but with his father gone? He’s the man of the family. Isn’t that the expression? That’s why Naomi tries so often to thwart him.” Touching the cigarette to her lips. “And I think it frightened him. His sister with a Negro man? What would that mean for her future? Greenwich Village is one thing, but how will the rest of the world see it?”

“Is that how you see it?”

“No. The world is an ugly and dangerous place for everyone. People will do as they will do, for good or ill, no matter what color they are. But Aaron? He is still naive in this way. He still believes that a person can be safe in life. So perhaps his fears got the better of him? Though I believe he is terribly ashamed of himself for how he acted.”

“He told you that?”

“Not in so many words.” Exhales smoke. “But he is.”

“So,” the good doctor points out, “you didn’t actually discuss it between you?”

“We did try,” she tells him. “I told him that I didn’t understand why he had tried to make Mr. Williams out to be anti-­Semitic. Without any cause at all. As if he was simply digging out an excuse to dislike him.”

“And”

“He said he didn’t need an excuse. But. As I said, I think in the end, it was all much more about Aaron’s relationship with Naomi than it was about Naomi’s relationship with Mr. Williams.”

“And what,” the doctor wants to know, “is the effect of all this friction on Mrs. Perlman?”

A glance up. “His mother?”

“No. You, Rachel.” The doctor lifts his eyebrows above the frame of his glasses. “You. The subject of our discussions here.”

Rachel feels her stomach tighten. “I spilled his wine.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Because he was being insulting?”

“No,” she says. “Because I wanted to steal a dinner roll.”

Dr. Solomon looks back at her, obviously patient.

She inhales smoke more deeply. “I was afraid,” she says painfully, “that there wouldn’t be enough food.” She shifts. The chair she is filling feels suddenly painful to sit in. “It strikes me at times. I wanted to hide a piece of bread.”

And now the doctor observes her with a great projection of sorrow. “I understand,” he whispers.

But does he? Can he? She doubts it. Not really. He can’t understand the agonizing urgency of it. U-­boat Jews wandering Berlin without shelter, without food for days. Searching refuse bins for scraps. The gnawing anguish, the belly cramps, the terrible pains inflicted by one’s own body in the absence of any nourishment. The imprint that starving makes on a person’s body, on their soul. The shame it perpetrates on the young girl who still lives inside her.

Her mother believed in drawing. She had received a classical training at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where proper draftsmanship was considered an essential skill. Before she applied the first brushstroke from her palette, the entire composition was worked out in charcoal across the face of the Dead Layer. Perfect propositions meant perfect harmony. Eema believed in re-­creating the music of the spheres in her art. But Rachel never had the patience for Pythagoras. Her mother would force her to lay down a sketch on the canvas, but it was never harmonious. It was rushed and rough, because it was the color she was hungry for. The paint wet on her brush swiping color across the surface.

Now, however, the colors of her desire have all grayed. After the Episode, they became mud and gravel and ashes. A night in a straitjacket contaminated her desire. Color led her to insanity, and those smears of saffrons and scarlets and cobalt blues that have long since dried to her palette? They only serve to taunt her now.

She has put the canvas away. It wouldn’t fit in any closets, so she had no choice but to slide it under the bed, where it lies in the dark, gathering clots of dust. She sits on the windowsill by the fire escape. Her coffee cup is in her hand. She is still dressed in her pajamas as she stares out the window. Parked cars jam the street as delivery trucks try to artfully navigate the narrow passage. The buildings look dusty in the undiluted morning glare as she sips at her cup. Aaron drinks his coffee with milk, but she cannot stand it that way and must have it black. People pass on the sidewalk below in an oddly aimless fashion, as if the light or the early morning chill has shrunk their ambitions for the day.

Aaron is at the table. For breakfast, she had poached him two eggs for his toast, though perhaps they’re not so perfectly shaped. Aaron hasn’t complained about their odd shapes, however. As long as they’re messy when he puts his fork into them, that’s all he cares about. He likes his toast soaked in yolk.

On his way out the door for work, he asks her, “Is my tie straight?”

Rachel adjusts it. “Yes, it’s you that’s crooked.”

“Funny.” He offers her a peck on the lips, and she takes it.

“Have you talked to Naomi?”