Shadows of Berlin

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.”

The Metropolitan is a sanctuary. A refuge. At the Met, Rachel settles down in front of a Vermeer. The magician of light. Seated on a leather cushioned bench, before her is Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. She gazes into the painting as if gazing through an open window into a quiet home. The purity of the light descending. The purity of the silence. This woman on display, her privacy exposed without her knowledge. Bathed in Vermeer’s tranquil balance of colors. Yellow, red, blue defining the fall of light on the woman’s stillness. Rachel longs to experience that same stillness.

She thinks of her uncle. She has been angered by Feter’s talk of advancing her work, not merely because it made her feel used but because it was so ludicrous! So impossible to believe! As if she could possibly be of curiosity to the House of Glass. An absurdity among absurdities! But even if it could be true, which it can’t be. Even if it might be true in the realm of some dreamworld where her talent is valued? Sought after? Even if this could be possible, it’s too false. Too dishonest an aspiration to accommodate. Of course, she is incensed with Feter. How selfish of him to flatter! How cruel of him to tempt her with potential. The scene she precipitated with him? If nothing else, she was simply defending herself from the obscenity of hope.

She stares into Vermeer’s painting on the wall. She would like to step into it. She would like to enter all that quiet light and take shelter in it.

***

In May 1933, the National Socialists are still new to power, still blustering like amateurs when the book burnings commence. At night, the Hitler Youth join nationalist fraternities in building a bonfire in the Franz-­Josef Platz across from the university. A fire to rid Germany of all un-­German spirit. The newly anointed minister of public enlightenment and propaganda makes an appearance, speaking to youth. “The old past lies in flames; the new times will arise from the flame that burns in our hearts. Wherever we stand together,” he shouts into the microphone, “wherever we march together, we want to dedicate ourselves to the Reich and its future!”

The newsreels record it all for the cinemas. Rashka sits beside Eema, shrinking into her seat in the newsreel house in the Ku’damm, bombarded by the singing and salutes as books are heaved into the flames. The hooked-cross banners borne by the S.A. men and the fraternity youths poke into the night. “We join together in the vow that we so often promised to the nightly sky,” the Herr Reichsminister crows. “Illuminated by many flames, let it be an oath! The Reich and the nation and our Führer Adolf Hitler! Heil!”

Artwork is included along with the books. Eema has heard that two of her paintings were consigned to the pyre as well. The portrait of Rathenau that had hung unfinished as a kind of memorial in the Jüdische Bibliothek and the portrait of Fritz Elsas filched from the Red Town Hall. The first to be reduced to ashes.

***

Campbell’s tomato soup, thirty-­three cents for three cans, still cheaper than a single tin of SPAM. Aaron likes a bowl of soup for lunch before a Wednesday matinee shift at the restaurant. A bowl of soup with two slices of buttered bread and a glass of milk. At the moment, Rachel can hear him in the bathroom, clunking about. Flushing. Playing with the squeaky taps. She has lit a cigarette but is letting it burn away, the smoke rising into the air and arcing. When Aaron arrives dressed in his slacks and shirtsleeves, he tucks into the table in a businesslike fashion, buttoning his cuffs. “So how’s it going with the thing, anyhow?” he asks, picking up his soup spoon.

She butters two slices from the sack of Silvercup bread on the bread board and cuts both in half on the diagonal. “What thing?”

“You know,” he tells her as if she’s being willfully dense. Slurps soup lightly. “The thing. The doctor. What’s-­his-­name.”

She pours his glass of milk from the bottle. “Solomon.”

“Yeah. Him.” Slurp. “How’s it going? What’s he think?”

A small shrug. He thinks what he thinks.

“He still got you on the pills?” She knows that Aaron is ambivalent about his wife on tranquilizers. He doesn’t like to be the guy at the drugstore who has to have the pharmacist fill an order of crazy pills for his missus. But. Neither does he want any repeat of the Episode. So.

“I take them, yes,” she tells him.

“Because they’re helping?”

“Yes. Because they’re helping,” she repeats, then adds, “Why else?”

And now maybe he’s getting a little steamed. “I don’t know, Rach. I guess that’s the only reason. I’m just asking ’cause you’re very closed-­mouth about it, ya’ know?” Slurp. “Very closed-­mouth.” The spoon pauses before his lips. “I don’t hear a word.” Slurp.

She ferries the glass of milk and the plate of bread to the table. “I’m seeing him this afternoon.”

“Okay. Great. But that still doesn’t answer my question. What’s he think?”

“He thinks I should be shipped to the nearest insane asylum because I’m nuts.”

Aaron plunks down his spoon and puffs out a woeful sigh. “I just don’t get it. Why do you talk like that?”

“Why are you yelling?”

“I’m not yelling! I just don’t understand why we’re paying this gonif a ton and a half of money if he’s not helping you. That’s what’s nuts!”

This is the end of the discussion. When it’s a ton of money under discussion, Rachel knows it’s best to shut up and just let Aaron stew. In the following silence, he calms down, slurps at the soup, then stands. “Look, I gotta go.”

“But you’ve hardly touched your lunch.”

“You eat it. You’re getting too skinny,” he says and crosses the room to the hall tree. She watches him lug on his coat. “I just want you to get better,” he tells her wearily. “Ya know? That’s all. I just want you to get better and feel happy once in a while.”

“Like normal people,” Rachel answers to sting him. Not because she’s angry but because she’s ashamed of her “mental illness.” That’s what it’s called now, isn’t it? An illness. But it still feels like a shameful illness. Not like a decent disease. A well-­adjusted disease that a person can suffer under heroically. Like cancer or polio—­diseases that no one could confuse with wallowing in self-­pity.

She pours the soup into a Tupperware container and swathes the bread slices in Saran Wrap. The milk she pours back into the bottle, except for the portion she donates to the cat’s bowl for Kibbitz to lap up. The garbage pail is starting to smell, but she decides not to bother with it now, because she too is on her way out the door. As noted, she has an appointment with her shrink. She sets Aaron’s dishes in the sink and ties a wool scarf on her head before she slips into her coat. She is happy to be free of the apartment if nothing else. Free from the little chores that define the life of a wife. Also? Free from the demands of the empty canvas, that snow-­blinding cliffside sitting on the chair waiting for her to crash into it. But on her way out, she bumps into Daniela with the twins in the hallway. Daniela is moving slowly, her swollen belly leading the way, but she smiles warmly at Rachel as usual. “So how’s your work these days?” the woman wonders aloud.

“My work?”

“Yes. You know—­your artwork? Are you doing anything?” She sounds hopeful with this question. It surprises Rachel.

“Well, um. I’m thinking about it,” Rachel is willing to concede.

“Mmm.” Daniela nods. “I don’t know how a person does it. You artists,” she says. “Sitting down in front of a blank canvas and then having to fill it up with a picture out of your own head? I could never even imagine. It makes me jealous.” She smiles, making that sound like the sweetest compliment. “I could never draw a straight line.” The little girl is tugging on her mother’s hand.

“Mommy, I’m bored.”

“Leah, be patient please, darling. We’ve talked about how to be patient.”

“So.” Rachel looks up from the child, changing the subject. “Where are you off to? The playground?”

“The zoo,” Daniela answers, smiling down at her children, as if one of them had asked the question.

“The zoo!” Josh repeats victoriously.

“The little one picked up her daddy’s sniffles, so I thought it was better to call up Mrs. Bethel from downstairs and let her nap.” Instinctually Daniela seems to know never to bother Rachel with such a request. Watch my child while she naps? No. “So where are you off to?” Daniela asks her.

“Oh, nowhere. Nothing important. I’ve got an appointment with my shrink,” Rachel says. She doesn’t know why she admits to this so bluntly. So casually. So needlessly. How hard would it have been to say she was off to the store for a quart of milk? She’s certainly quite aware that it’s not the sort of thing Aaron likes her to broadcast, and yet? It comes out of her mouth. The tiniest flash of dismay brightens Daniela’s eyes, though she quickly blinks it away and digests the information with a gentle curiosity.

“Hmm,” she says. “You know I’ve always wondered. Why do they call psychiatrists shrinks?”

Rachel stands there, trapped now by this question. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe I should ask.”

And that’s it. That’s the end of words for both of them. They were in short supply to begin with. Daniela begins to cluck sweetly at the Kinder, and Rachel pretends to have forgotten her subway tokens in the apartment so that she can avoid accompanying Daniela and children down three flights of steps.

Sitting in the chair in Dr. Solomon’s office, Rachel announces, “My husband says you’re a quack.”

A small blink behind the doctor’s horn-­rimmed glasses. “I beg your pardon?”

“He called you a gonif.”

For an instant, the blank, fixed stare, and then with mild interest: “Did he?”

“Why is he paying you if I’m still insane?” she says. Then she asks the question: “So am I insane?”

“No,” the doctor answers matter-­of-­factly. “‘Insane’ is not a diagnosis.”

This briefly heartens her. She looks up from the cigarette she is igniting, then snaps open the brass table lighter and inhales smoke. “Then what am I?”

“Clinically? You’re depressed,” he informs her, pad balanced on his knee. “So have you been doing any artwork?”

Why is everybody so suddenly fucking interested in the answer to this question? “Why do they call psychiatrists shrinks?” she asks instead of answering.

“Why do?” Dr. Solomon cocks his head to one side.

“Why,” Rachel repeats, “are psychiatrists called shrinks?” She pronounces it, see-­ky-­a-­trists. “My neighbor wanted to know.”

“Why?” The doctor is cooperative. He tries to answer these questions of culture when they arise for Rachel. Such as the difference between Pepsi-­Cola and Coca-­Cola. Why “Go jump in a lake” is not an inducement to suicide. (Ah! As in “Gai kaken oifen yam!” Go shit in the ocean!)

“Well,” he offers, “I suppose the term ‘shrink’ comes from the headhunters.”

Without comprehension. “Headhunters?”

“Yes. You know, in the jungle? Borneo, I think? Headhunters shrink heads.”

Her gaze clouds. “They shrink them.”

“It’s a type of custom, as I understand it. A type of ritual.”

“So are you trying to shrink my head? Is that it?”

The doctor surrenders. “Never mind. I really don’t know the answer to that question, Rachel. It’s a colloquialism of the language. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?” the doctor suggests. “Is that why you’re here today? To ask me this question? Would your neighbor like to know why an egg cream has no egg in it?”

Rachel takes in smoke from her cigarette. She feels it circulate in the emptiness inside. “I feel such shame, Dr. Solomon.”

The doctor settles quietly across the room. Patient. Waiting.

“Such shame,” Rachel repeats. “You say I’m depressed. That’s my diagnosis? But it’s the shame I feel. I feel it like a disease. I know,” she says and then must stop. Her voice thickens and her eyes welter. “I know that I am a bad person,” she says. “That’s the truth of me. Oh, I can fool people. I’ve learned how to do that and blind them with a facade. But under everything, I have a diseased soul.”

Solomon shrugs delicately at the weight of the air in the room. “Children,” he says. “Children who are…who are made to feel rejected at a very early age. Even in infancy. They are often vulnerable to deep feelings of shame as an adult. Feelings that attach themselves to the moments of their daily lives. It is quite easy, psychologically speaking, for such a child,” he says, “such a person, to have assumed responsibility for consequences that were actually far beyond any personal control.”

Rachel does not speak.

In the subway, she sobs, the train clacking through the tunnels. No one pays her any heed, beyond a few troubled or curious glances. Another nutcase on the train? What else is new? She doesn’t care. She is beyond caring. The tears are her reward for defending her own shame against the shrink! That’s how it feels.

When she gets home, the building stairwell creaks. Entering the apartment, she is met by the sight of her husband on the telephone, scrunched into the gossip bench with the phone’s receiver tucked under his chin. “Yeah, well, of course you think that’s funny,” he is saying into the phone as he looks up and gives her a perfunctory wave. She looks back at him as she shuts the door. He’s talking to a woman, Rachel can tell. The cozy charm in his voice. For an instant, she feels a bright bite of jealousy.

“Well, of course you think that’s funny,” he repeats. “You’re twice as much of a klutz as I ever was. Ask your mother.”

And then she knows that it’s only Naomi on the other end of the line, which modifies her twinge of jealousy but doesn’t eliminate it. They are so easy together, sister and brother. Siblings, so connected by an intimate language of family that Rachel does not speak.

“Yeah, and what if I get hit by a bus, huh?” he is asking the receiver with a grin in his voice. “What then? What if I get hit by a fuckin’ crosstown bus? She’ll be all yours, baby. All yours! Naomi, for Gawd’s sake,” he scolds, mimicking their mother’s smoky, mezzo soprano, “if you’re gonna use your brother’s urn as an ashtray, then at least set it on the coffee table like a person. I just took the cover off the sofa!”

Rachel breathes in and breathes out.

“And who’ll be laughing then, huh?” Aaron wants to know, now openly grinning into the mouthpiece. “I mean, who gets the last laugh then?” Rachel hangs up her coat, listens as the jokey familiarity in her husband’s voice gives way to the business end of their conversation, now that Rachel has intruded. “Okay, okay, yeah. We’ll be there,” he assures her. “What? Yes. Because I said we would, Red. Look, I gotta go,” he declares next.

His voice turns clipped and efficient. Tech Sergeant Perlman managing the logistics. “We’ll bring a bottle of something,” he says. “I don’t know. We’ll bring a bottle of both, so that way we’re covered.” And then, “Yeah, I gotta go,” he repeats. “Your sister-­in-­law just walked in and is wondering what the hell I’m doing home on a matinee shift.” Then, with a quick “G’bye,” he clamps the phone’s receiver firmly into the cradle. “That was Naomi,” he announces.

“Yes,” says Rachel.

“She wants us at her place Saturday at seven thirty. I told her we’d bring the wine.”

“And did you suss out her agenda?” Rachel inquires.

It is Aaron’s belief that Naomi always has an agenda. Especially when dealing with him. He sniffs and rakes a bit of phlegm from his throat. “As I anticipated,” he declares in a voice that is both grudgingly resigned and self-­congratulatory. “A new goy in the boyfriend department.”

Rachel nods. “Ah” is all she says in response. This is an ongoing family controversy for the Perlman clan. Naomi’s obsession with gentile beaus. But Rachel has no wish to engage with it. “So what in hell are you doing home on a matinee shift?” she asks instead.

“Water main busted on West Fiftieth,” he reports happily. “Con Ed’s got the whole block shut down. So I get the rest of the night off,” he says and claps his hands together. “Zo!” he begins, adopting the alter kocker’s accent that he finds so amusing. “What’s fur supper, bubba doll? You want maybe I should put on some pants and go down to the Chinese for takeout?”

Rachel strikes another match to life and inhales the puff of sulfur before lighting a burner on the stove. “I thought I might cook something,” she answers.

“Really?” says Aaron skeptically but at least dropping the irritating accent. “Well, that ought to be interesting.”

Spaghetti. She’s learned how long to boil it so it doesn’t stick together by adding a few drops of Wesson oil. And she can heat up the sauce from a can she bought at the market. The label on the can assures her that Every meal’s a masterpiece, when Chef Boy-­ar-­dee makes the sauce! The choice was sauce with meat with a red label or simple marinara with a yellow label, but she always picks the meat sauce and then douses the steaming spaghetti with it as soon as she drains it from the boiling water, serving it with a slice of buttered white bread. Aaron eats without much complaint and seems to take some satisfaction in demonstrating the best way to twist the spaghetti onto the fork by pressing it against a spoon. The things a Jew from Flatbush learns, he observes.

“So I ran into Daniela Weinstock in the hallway today,” she mentions. “With her twins.”

Without interest. “Yeah, ya did?”

“They were going to the zoo.”

He sniffs. Clears his throat. Stabs a small orange meatball with his fork. “Okay.”

“I told her I was on my way to my shrink.”

Silence. Then Aaron sucks in air and sets the fork down.

“You told Ezra Weinstock’s wife that you’re seeing a shrink,” he says. Then he drops his head back and shakes it with disbelief. “Oy fucking gevalt,” he declares with utter desolation, as if he’s echoing the last words God spoke to Abraham. “My wife.”

“It just came out.”

“It just came out? Honey! Do you know… Can you conceive, for just a moment, with what lightning speed that bit of news is now going to flash across Brooklyn to my mother? Like the speed of a rocket. Like breaking the sound barrier, with the big boom at the end included.”

“I think,” she says, “you’re overreacting.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Plenty of people have see-­chiatrists these days. It’s not a stigma.”

“Trust me, in Flatbush, it’s plenty stigma enough. And by the way—­it’s not see-­ky-­a-­trist, it’s sigh-­ky-­a-­trist.” He says this with such force that the impact is too much for Rachel. She does what she hates doing in front of him during an argument. She bursts into tears.

Aaron drops his utensils and releases a plummeting sigh. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he says. Pushing back his chair, he’s on his feet, wrapping his arms around her shoulders for comfort. “You’re right. Everybody needs a shrink these days,” he tells her and kisses her on the neck. “I’m making too big a thing. Ma likes you anyway. If she hears?” he decides. “She hears.”

The next day, as Rachel comes into the house, the telephone is ringing. She yanks off a clip-­on earring to answer. “Perlman residence, hello?”

“Hello, honey, it’s Miriam Perlman. How you doin’?”

“Hello, Miriam,” Rachel replies, eternally uncomfortable calling her mother-­in-­law by her given name. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Good!” Does she sound surprised at this? “Glad to hear it.”

“I’m sorry, but Aaron isn’t home. He went in early today.”

“Of course.” The woman sighs. “Just like his father. But that’s okay, sweetheart. It’s really you I want to talk to.”

“Me?”

“How’re you feeling? Good, you say?”

“I’m fine, yes. Fine.”

“’Cause I heard that maybe you were having some difficulties.”

Rachel breathes in.

“Hello? You still with me, sweetheart?”

“I’m seeing a psychiatrist, Miriam,” Rachel declares. She even pronounces the word correctly.

“Yeah, that’s the thing I heard,” her mother-­in-­law confirms. “And so I’m wondering what’s going on? Is my son driving you crazy?”

Is this a joke? “Aaron. Uh, no,” Rachel manages to reply. “No.”

“Just kiddin’, honey,” Miriam explains. “But I’m wondering what this guy has to say…this psychiatrist, I mean. What’s his verdict?”

“Well, he doesn’t give a ‘verdict,’ really.”

“No? So he can’t figure it out?”

“It?”

“The problem, sweetheart,” Miriam explains. “If you’re seeing a doctor, there must be a problem, right? I mean, far be it from me to stick my nose into things, but you’re my daughter-­in-­law. I’m concerned.”

“Yes,” Rachel says.

“Is it—­you know—­like an intimate thing, if you’ll excuse me for asking?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Miriam.”

“What I mean,” she says, “is there maybe something wrong in the bedroom department between you and the boy? I only ask ’cause I’m trying to be helpful.”

“Oh. No. No, nothing like that.” She realizes that she is gripping her earring so tightly that the clip is digging into her palm.

“Okay, so not that, good. Then what?” Her mother-­in-­law tempers her tone as she asks the next question. Her voice recedes self-­consciously, almost sheepishly. “Is it,” she wonders, “is it what those dirty shtunks did to Jews back in the war?”

This is the most direct question she thinks her mother-­in-­law has ever asked her on the subject. Yet Rachel says nothing.

A painful sigh from the other end of the line. “I saw the newsreels, honey. After the war was over, they played them at the Waldorf over in Rugby Village.” A pause. She must be replaying them in her head. “I just can’t imagine. I mean, how evil does a person have to be to treat human beings like that?” she asks. “It made me feel horrible,” Miriam admits. “And so guilty? I mean, here I was safe ’n sound in Brooklyn, while millions—­millions—­who can even conceive of such numbers? While all those millions of other Jews were being… You know…”

Miriam can’t find the word to finish her sentence, but Rachel can.

“Exterminated,” she says.

There’s a deep pause. And then Miriam tells her, “I’m gonna talk to Aaron.” She declares this stridently as if she’s hit upon a solution. “I am. I’m gonna talk to that boy and make sure he doesn’t give you a hard time about your feelings, okay?”

“Oh. No, Miriam.”

“I mean of course you need to see a doctor. Who wouldn’t? I’m gonna make sure he understands, that’s all. That he treats you thoughtfully. That’s all I’m saying, honey. I’m just gonna make sure that he gets it. I mean we both know that boychik can be a teensy bit self-­centered at times, to say the least.”

Rachel releases a breath.

“All right, sweetheart. You take care now,” her mother-­in-­law commands. “Okay?”

“Okay,” says Rachel.

“Okay. G’bye then. Be well,” Miriam adds, and that’s it. Until evening, when the phone rings just as Aaron is walking in the door, so he actually picks it up, though it’s obvious he immediately regrets the impulse. Much later, he is dead bushed from the earful he’s still getting, planted on the gossip bench, still in his overcoat and hat, with his elbows on his knees. “Yes, Ma. I saw them too. We all saw them,” he’s saying.

And then, “Okay. Okay, Ma, I get it. Yes, I get it,” he keeps repeating before he’s finally allowed to say goodbye. Hanging up with an exhausted clamp of the receiver, he heaves out his last breath. “H’oy!” he declares, sending it up to the ceiling. Rachel has been observing him from the safety of the kitchen table with a purring cat hostage on her lap.

“So guess what?” he begins. “Apparently? Whatever happens? It’s all my fault.”