Shadows of Berlin

26.

The Good Hour

The inevitable telephone call comes to pass. Feter, restrained. Not exactly apologetic but checking his tendencies toward embellishment and hyperbole. His subtle chutzpah curbed. He speaks of the future of art. At least the future of art where Rachel’s work is concerned. He has an ace or two up his sleeve. Still a few contacts that might surprise her. With her talent and his kop for art business?

“So am I the only one who sees the possibilities?” he wonders. She cannot help but relax into his tenderly optimistic trap.

At home, her husband is not very thrilled to hear about any such possibility as doing business with her uncle. “So he’ll take like a commission?”

“I suppose, yes.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ten percent?” His voice raises. “Fifteen percent?”

“I don’t know, Aaron. We didn’t discuss it.”

“No? Well, why not? I mean, let’s face it—­your uncle…” he says but doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.

“He says we’d have a contract.” Which is true. This was the agreement when they spoke over the phone. Everything aboveboard. Everything in writing. That was the price of Feter’s ticket back into Rachel’s life. “That he’d have a lawyer draw it up so there’d be no confusion.”

“Yeah, well. Whose lawyer? That’s my question. One of those shysters downtown who specialize in chasing ambulances?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Rachel tells him.

“It means, honey, that we gotta be careful is all. I know, Fritz is your family, but we just gotta be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And we will be. As it’s said, we’ll take one step before the next.”

“Yeah,” Aaron replies. “Is that what is said? Also one step at a time, that is said too, and you wanna know what else? Don’t stick your head in the lion’s mouth. This is also said.”

“Are you upset,” she asks, “because you don’t trust Feter? Or are you upset by the idea that I might actually have some kind of career?”

“Career?” Aaron repeats the word. “What are you talking about, career?”

“That Feter Fritz might actually find a gallery willing to take me on. Willing to show my work.”

Aaron frowns. “Honey,” he says. Trying not to sound smug as he explains the facts. But not trying very hard. “What artwork? What have you got? Not much as far as I can see. You got a bunch of little sketches. And you got a big, empty canvas without a spot of paint on it. That’s all.”

Rachel stares. She would like to hate him at this moment. She would like to, but how can she? He’s only speaking the truth.

Daylight. She wakes to the sound of clanking. To bumping and banging. She shakes sleep from her mind and dons her pink chenille robe, following the noise out of the bedroom, where she discovers her husband seated at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette. “Ah, the lady of the house emerges,” he says but in a loaded tone, as if he’s talking to someone else and not her. Kneeling on the linoleum by the kitchen sink with a toolbox is? The German.

Rachel stops. Wraps her robe tightly across her chest.

“Mr. Bauer here came by to replace the trap in the sink,” her husband informs her. “Apparently he’s had a hard time catching anyone at home. So lucky I was up early.”

“Good morning. Missus Perlman,” the Boche says, as if he’s as innocent as any dumb animal.

She frowns, feeling her heart thump. Her first instinct is to retreat to the bedroom and lock the door. But “Good morning,” she mumbles in return. Pushing through the panic, she circles around her husband to an empty chair.

“I made coffee,” Aaron says, nodding toward the stainless-­steel percolator.

“You made coffee?”

“Somehow, I managed.” Then he confesses. “Actually, it’s only the instant stuff. I just stuck it in the percolator and poured in the water.”

Rachel swallows. Blinks at her distorted reflection in the percolator’s shiny stainless-­steel skin.

“So Mr. Bauer here was telling me about how he came to America, honey,” her husband enlightens her. Obviously he is trying to prove a point. Trying to teach her a lesson. “He comes from… What was the name of the town again, Mr. Bauer?”

“I come from Rengschburch in Bayerich, Mr. Perlman,” the German declares. “I think in America it is called Regensburg. In Bavaria.”

“And you said you immigrated here when? In forty-­seven? Is that right?”

“Forty-­eight,” the German replies, squeaking his wrench around a pipe.

“Right, forty-­eight,” Aaron corrects himself. “That was the same year you came, Rachel, honey,” he says, as if she needs reminding.

Rachel issues him a look as she filches one of his Luckies, igniting it from his Zippo. “And what did you do, Mr. Bauer, before you came?” she inquires, expelling smoke.

The German shoots her a quick glance, frowning. “Before?”

“Before you came to America. During the war? Was hast du während des Krieges gemacht?”

Another glance, another frown. He answers her in English. “I was a ‘Sanitäter.’ In the army, Missus Perlman. As I told to your husband. A medical soldier,” he says.

“Right. A corpsman.” Aaron offers clarification. “Or. Or a medic.”

“Yes. Medic,” the German confirms. “But only because I was—­how is the word said? Forced into the army? Eingezogen.”

“After he was conscripted,” Rachel translates dully, expelling smoke.

“Oh yeah. Drafted,” Aaron says. “Me too. I was drafted too. I ended up assigned to the Quartermaster Corps in California. Course it was the Japs who were our problem,” he assures the German.

But the German only nods and grunts again, clunking about with a wrench before he announces, “That should finish the job, Mr. Perlman.” Standing with a huff, he opens the tap on full. Water gushes. “The drain flow is now correct.”

“Terrific,” says Aaron and makes a point of shaking the German’s hand. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Bauer.”

“Oh yes,” Rachel chimes sardonically. “Wir sind so glücklich, dass ein ehemaliger Reichssoldat unsere Pfeifen bewacht,” she says.

The German looks at her warily. Then nods once with a half frown. “Missus Perlman.”

After the German leaves, lugging his toolbox, Aaron shuts the apartment door behind him. “So ya see, Rach. Not so bad,” he declares. “Not some mad-­dog Nazi after all. Just another poor shlub who got drafted like everybody else.” Grabbing his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair, he bounces a quick kiss off her temple. “Anyhow. I gotta get going. We’re down two busboys, so I’ll probably end up schlepping dirty dishes all afternoon.” And then he says, “Aren’t you supposed to go see what’s-­his-­name today?”

Rachel raises an eyebrow. He’s Mr. Absentminded when it comes to things like picking up milk or dry cleaning, but he seems to have her schedule with the psychiatrist engraved on his brain. “Yes. At three o’clock,” she says.

Flapping his arm into his overcoat sleeve, he says, “Okay. Don’t forget.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t forget a thing,” Rachel replies.

At the door, though, Aaron pauses. “By the way, what was it you said to the super right before he left?”

“Nothing,” she answers with an innocent frown. “Just how lucky we are to have a former soldier of the Reich guarding our pipes.”

Aaron looks pained. Releases a breath.

“So I understand, Aaron, what you’re trying to prove,” she tells him directly. “Shaking hands with that man. I understand that you’re trying to help. Trying to show me that there’s nothing to fear. The world is not so dangerous. Not all Germans are murderers. I understand,” she repeats, “and I appreciate your effort. But here’s the truth: The world is dangerous. And if to me every German is a messenger of death, it’s only because that is what history has taught me.”

Aaron sags slightly. Starts to speak but instead just shakes his head. “H’okay” is all he can utter, eyes dropping to the floor. “H’okay, I get it,” though it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Flopping on his old snood, he says, “See ya later.”

She watches the door close and hears her eema on the couch. If you truly hope for him to understand you, Ruchel, she says, then you must show him your true self. Not housewife or refugee but the true person. Mais l’être humain authentique.

She notes the shift of his eyes to the clock on the opposite side of the room. A small clock placed discreetly on a bookshelf ticking off the minutes of the therapeutic hour.

“Am I running out of time, Doctor?” Rachel asks.

The doctor does not answer this question. Instead he sniffs lightly and says, “I want you to think about something, Rachel. I want you to think about how you can express your emotions in your art. And I don’t mean emotions on the surface. I mean the emotions you have trapped inside you. Down deep. The emotions that erupted the day at the department store counter.”

Rachel is silent.

“I firmly believe you should return to painting. And I don’t want to give up on the idea, even though you’re resistant. It’s important. Honestly, not only important to you. But important that it be known.”

“Known?”

“The truth. The truth of what happened. It’s been over a decade since the end of the war. I think it’s time the truth be told.”

“A decade?” says Rachel the stone. “Doctor, it might as well be a thousand decades. It’s all ancient history. All anybody cares about now is the bomb. Who has the bomb? Who will get the bomb? The bomb and what’s on television? I Love Lucy? No one cares about history or truth.”

A pause. “Maybe not,” Dr. Solomon is willing to concede. Then the leather of his chair creaks as he leans forward. “But if that’s true, then all the more reason that you should wake them up, Rachel,” he says. “As an artist. And dare I say it? As a Jew—­or perhaps simply as a human being—you have a responsibility to share your story.”

Rachel feels herself balancing on the point of a needle. “And with whom would you have me share it?”

Dr. Solomon shrugs. “With the world,” he says.

“Is this really necessary?” Aaron is grousing into the bathroom mirror, tying his tie behind Rachel, who is rouging her lips in her slip. “An evening with the Fucknik on my only night off for a week?”

Rachel lifts the tube of Red Velvet, primps her lips to smooth the color. “You don’t wish to go? Don’t go. I’ll say you’re too busy.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” her husband snorts. “Like that wouldn’t get back to my mother.”

Rachel crinkles her brow. “What? What wouldn’t get back?” she asks. “What are you talking about?”

“My mother, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Your mother would really care if you miss coffee and dessert?” She mouths a tissue to remove the excess red.

“Care? If I skip an evening with my dear cousin Ezra, by lunch tomorrow, his mother’s on the phone with my mother, drilling into her ear,” and here Aaron drops into his sour-­faced impression of his aunt Ruth’s Brooklynese. “‘Too busy? Too busy for family, I guess, but what can you do? For some, business comes first.’ And then kablooey,” he declares. “I just don’t need the grief.” He gives his hair a touch with the comb, then brushes past her into the bedroom to yank on his shoes.

Entering the Weinstein apartment upstairs, there’s the matter of the mezuzah. Having a mezuzah fastened to your doorpost is a mitzvah in the eyes of God. But what to do if you’re up from the Perlman apartment, where no such mitzvah is in evidence sanctifying even a single doorway? The Weinsteins’ front-door mezuzah came from a trip to Jerusalem. The Hebrew words Shomer Dlatot, Keeper of the Doors, fashioned into its brass cylinder. Aaron always brushes past it with a tap, flicking away a kiss on two fingers with the same cursory routine as if he’s kissing the cheek of ancient Bubbe Perlman.

Rachel usually follows in a hurry too, whisking past with a half gesture in her husband’s wake. But this time, she’s first through the door and skips it completely, covering herself by handing Daniela a half gallon of Newbrook vanilla ice cream in a carton. She catches the corner of Daniela’s glance at the omission but keeps moving into the apartment. She could have pretended and offered up a counterfeit mitzvah, but she wants to be on the level with God. She has not yet forgiven Him, He should know.

The Weinstock children are asleep in the next room. Daniela invites Rachel to look in on them with her, as if it’s an honor or a treat, but when she does, all Rachel sees are small heads poking out from blankets. Another mezuzah guards the bedroom door, and she does not challenge it by crossing the boundary.

In the living room, the coffee is going cold in the cups and the ice cream is melting into sugary pools on the plates of half-­consumed slices of Daniela’s homemade lemon pound cake. The room is lit by the foggy blue-­white glow of the television screen, a Magnavox in a mahogany console. I’ve Got a Secret. That’s the name of the show. Rachel finds it somewhat incomprehensible. A panel of celebrities, whom she is supposed to recognize but doesn’t, are asking questions that are managed by some fellow in a bow tie. What are they supposed to be guessing? Secrets? She can’t really follow.

“So what’d this gadget set you back anyway?” Aaron is asking, nodding toward the Magnavox like he’s laying a trap.

“Normally? A hundred,” Ezra informs him. “But Daniela’s got a cousin on Utica Av’—­so we got it for eighty.”

“Eighty,” Aaron repeats with a squinting frown. “Still,” he concludes. “That ain’t beans. But then who needs to eat, huh?” he wonders aloud.

“Aaron, you’re being rude,” his wife points out mildly.

“Just sayin’, honey,” Aaron responds. And then his expression balls up like a wad of paper as a commercial break interrupts the show’s proceedings. “Ah, now, ya see? This is exactly what I hate about television,” he announces. “Every how many minutes? A word from our sponsor.”

Rachel glances at him, then back at the set. A few paid performers have come on the screen to sing that Winston tastes good like a—­bop, bop—­cigarette should. She and Aaron are sharing the green damask sofa. Her penny loafers are off and her feet curled under her. Ezra is planted in his chair, one sandal missing, massaging his toes through his socks, but Daniela has encamped on the floor, braced against the sofa. She is further along than Rachel realized and will need help getting up, because her belly is now swollen to the size of the moon. Her cheeks are flushed, and her face is round. She has lost all her angles. All her edges have vanished.

“I mean, do I really need this guy telling me that Winston brought flavor back to filter cigarettes?” Aaron rants. “Do I really need that information fed into my brain?” he asks aloud. “I don’t smoke ’em and never will. I don’t care what this schmo Moore has to say on the matter.”

“My mother loves Garry Moore,” Daniela injects. “She says he’s cute as a button.”

“Okay, well…” Aaron shrugs dismissively.

“So. You don’t like the commercial shtick?” Ezra has the solution. “Close your eyes,” he suggests, still working his toes. “Stick your fingers in your ears.”

Aaron swallows, but Rachel can tell that the tension in his body is ratcheted upward. The unbearable boyish restlessness betrays itself in the flexing muscle along his jawline and the fidgeting cigarette. He bangs off ash into the ashtray they share.

The room is filled with the TV’s chatter. Rachel looks around her. Everything is comfortable in the Weinstock apartment. Comfortable in the messy way that apartments with children can be. Toys picked up and dumped into a play basket. Children’s books atop a stack of magazines. Tawny Scrawny Lion. Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf. A basket of laundry, folded but not yet put away, tucked under the lamp table. The baby pictures in frames cluttering the wall.

Why is it so frightening for her, Aaron’s desire for a child? Perhaps it’s the same thing that frightens her so about painting. She is terrified by what might come out of her.

“Ah. See, here we go again,” Rachel hears her husband complain. “Milk of magnesia. I’m trying to watch a show, and they’re selling me milk of magnesia.”

“Shhh,” Rachel hushes. “I’m trying to hear.” Although she really isn’t listening. Someone has a secret? They’re supposed to guess? And who is Boris Karloff? Everyone seems to know but her. She expels smoke. For a while, everyone stares dutifully at the screen. Aaron sighs as if he’s constipated. His mind is so restless, he can’t simply sit and watch. It’s why he talks through movies even after people shush him. It’s why he fits so well into the restaurant business, because in the kitchen or in the dining room during the dinner rush, his brain is kicked into high gear. Sitting and watching makes him crazy. That’s the real reason they don’t have a television. Finally, the program comes to an end, and he is ready with a frown.

“I mean, we’ve been sitting here for how long, staring at this little blue screen? At least with a movie you’ve got something to look at, ya know?”

But Rachel has stopped listening to her husband’s bellyaching. She has noticed a certain expression on Daniela’s face, as if all the woman’s attention has suddenly inverted. Focused sharply inward. A knitting of the brow, slight at first but then forceful. A flatness of the line of her mouth, and then a crimp of pain. Daniela’s hand, she sees, jumps quietly to her swollen belly. Instinctively, Rachel reaches across the sofa.

“Daniela.” She pronounces the name with polite concern, touching Daniela’s arm.

“Oh boy,” Daniela whispers aloud.

Ezra glances over to her. His shoulders slump. “Sweetheart?”

“That’s a contraction,” his wife declares with a certain solid forbearance.

It’s taking too long! Telephoning the doctor, calling for a taxi, packing the suitcase that should have been packed already but wasn’t, because weren’t they supposed to have more time than this? More time before this impatient baby coming in such a crazy rush!

“The doctor’s line is busy,” Ezra reports, not panicking, just making the announcement, keeping the team informed. Tries again. “Still busy!”

Then there’s the issue of the babysitter. Mrs. Bethel from the second floor has already gone to bed! Mrs. Seventy-­Five-­Year-­Old Bethel who’d made a career of looking after the Weinstock children, to hear Ezra tell it. Anyway, when Ezra calls her to come up because the next baby is on its way, she seems to be taking her sweet time. So Rachel volunteers to stay, at least until the old lady can make it up the stairs. Just as well. She is starting to get very jumpy in the midst of this maternity emergency. Aaron has already bailed out, running downstairs to wait for the cab. At least that’s his excuse, abandoning Rachel to this scene. Daniela is starting to grunt like one of the seals at the Central Park Zoo as she tries to swallow the pain of the contractions crashing through her in waves.

“The doctor’s line is still busy!” Ezra reports again, except now he is shouting aloud, a note of panic threatening to strangle his voice.

“Leave me the number,” Rachel declares. “I’ll keep calling.”

“Oh, fuck!” Daniela cries. It’s shocking because it’s the first time Rachel has ever heard her use profanity.

One of the children—­the boy—­comes wandering out of the bedroom, rubbing his sleepy eyes at the commotion. “Momma?” he asks. “Are you sick?”

“No, no, zeisele,” Rachel answers for her, shepherding the child back into his room. “Momma is not sick. It’s just that she’s bringing your new baby sister or brother into the world.”

“Does it hurt?” the boy asks innocently, taking Rachel gently by the hand. A gesture that nearly breaks her heart in two. That warm little trusting hand in hers.

“A little. But sometimes good things come out of a little hurt,” she hears herself say. The boy hops back into his bed, and Rachel tucks him in. “So don’t you worry, okay? You just go back to sleep and don’t worry. Then tomorrow when you wake up, there’ll be a new baby in the world.”

“Okay,” the boy replies and rolls into the worn fluff of his stuffed bunny.

She doesn’t think about kissing him, but when she does, the sweetness of that little dark-­haired head poking out from the covers is painfully perfect.

She reenters the living room as Aaron comes stomping up the stairs from below. “Taxi’s here,” he proclaims as if he’s just saved the day. Mr. Lone Ranger coming to the rescue. Daniella has her coat on, her belly sticking out. Aaron snatches up the suitcase from Ezra’s hand. “You—­help your wife. I’ll schlep,” he commands.

“At the good hour!” Rachel calls out after them as all three vacate the apartment, because what else can she say that isn’t a jinx? But when she shuts the door, she is both relieved and bereft. She has shut the door against pain and contractions and motherhood threatening to spill out onto the rug. She feels utterly trapped in the loneliness of her own body. She crosses to the telephone and dials the doctor’s number that Ezra had dashed across the message pad, and finally somebody picks up. She explains the emergency to the answering service and hangs up, suddenly exhausted by it all. Then dropping back onto the damask sofa, she lights a cigarette, inhaling the smoke deeply.

It’s not too late, her eema tells her, seated at the sofa’s opposite end. I was older than you are now when you were born. She exhales smoke, the amber cigarette holder in her hand. Not that the process was any great pleasure, but I survived. Women survive, she says.

“Except when they don’t,” Rachel says. She expels smoke but then snubs out her cigarette in the ceramic ashtray. Her eema has vanished with the last whistle of smoke, and Rachel is up. She returns to the children’s bedroom and quietly creaks open the door. In the glow of the night-­light, she observes the children snuggled into slumber, dressed in their footy pajamas, sleeping like rag dolls in a puzzle of blankets, the light describing the little moon circumferences of their heads. A quiet drift of traffic whispers through the window.

But then she hears something.

Something like a cow lowing. Not here but from deep down in the building. She pops the bedroom door closed behind her and recrosses the apartment with a sting of urgency. When she cracks open the door to the stairway, she hears it again, only much more prolonged and much more resolute, a thick moo of pain. Mrs. Bethel is hobbling up the steps, gripping the railing, her eyes bright as light bulbs behind her glasses. “It’s happening! It’s happening!” she calls out with a slightly crazed tone. And it’s true. The maternity party never made it to Aaron’s waiting cab. They never made it to the foyer. The good hour has come right on the bottom of the steps.

“Press now, press!” she hears a male voice instructing as she is descending the steps. But it is not Ezra’s voice, and it is certainly not Aaron’s voice. It is a voice with an accent attached. It is, Rachel realizes with a clench of horror, the voice of the super. The voice of the German. She alights from the stairs slowly, as if alighting from a descending cloud. “Good! Good! It comes!” Herr Boche is announcing, hunched over Daniela’s splayed legs. “The head appears!”

Daniela is huffing, sobbing, but her wailing has reworked its pitch. It is no longer the stilted keen of a woman in agony; it’s the clean, arcing cry of a tiny infant in the super’s large hands. Ezra is whipping off his sweater to swaddle it, repeating, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” with teary, manic astonishment. Rachel can see the tiny head, still gooey and pink with the blood of its birth, tiny fingers grasping at the air. Tiny squinting eyes, but its mouth is open and bawling brightly with life.

“Geboren ist ein Mädchen!” A girl is born! The German announces it.

Ezra is presenting the baby girl to her mother, whose arms are outstretched, sobbing with shock and joy, her hair a sweaty nest, her face gleaming, as her husband delivers her new daughter into her arms. “Such a beautiful gem,” she cries, “such a perfect, beautiful gem.” Ezra is laughing now. The German is laughing, a sharp, shared cackle of glee, face-­to-­face, as they shake each other’s blood-­pinked hands.

Rachel stares. Aaron has finally managed to look up and spots his wife above them. “Rach,” he shouts out. The wild smile on his face makes him look like he’s having a seizure. “Can you believe it?” he wants to know. “Huh? The damnedest thing! Just like that—­a baby!”

Daniela turns her head, smiling beatifically up at Rachel. Her eyes shimmer as the baby squalls, and Rachel hears her mother’s voice from behind. Life, tsigele, she’s saying. It’s life.

And then Rachel looks at the super. Standing up. Standing back. His hands stained. He digs a handkerchief from his pocket and begins to wipe them. That is when he catches Rachel’s eye, but he quickly looks away, donning a grin as the happy father slaps him on the back in a chummy manner. Ezra is grinning too as if he’s deranged, his expression exploding with joy. “Thank you, Mr. Bauer! Thank you!” he’s barking. The German continues to grin. But it makes no difference. Rachel can only believe that this is not the first time this Hun has wiped Jewish blood from his hands.

Beth Israel Hospital, First Avenue and 16th Street. Hallways of linoleum and fluorescent lights. Rachel stands in the viewing section of the maternity ward, separated by a large plate-­glass window from the cluster of infants in hospital bassinets. People come and go around her, grinning as they wave through the glass. Cooing, delighted, it seems, at their own reflections. Tapping on the glass pane for attention. But Rachel stands there, staring. She is alone when Aaron returns with two paper cups of coffee. He is wearing his coat, no hat, his collar open and his tie undone. It must have started to rain outside, because his shoulders are dotted with raindrops, and he smells of it. “Where did you go?” she asks as she accepts the paper cup. “Timbuktu?”

“The coffee machine was out of order, so I had to go to a deli down the street. Probably tastes like drek, but at least it’s hot.”

Rachel sips. It does taste like drek, but it’s not hot. Aaron drinks too but makes no comment. His interest is elsewhere, peering through the glass. He almost laughs. “Who knew the super is actually Dr. Kildare?”

Rachel says nothing.

“So. Look at this,” Aaron says in amazement, gazing through the glass at the sea of babies tucked into their numbered basinets. Their blankets a wavy ocean of pink and blue. “Do we know which one is which?”

“Number seven, I think,” Rachel replies.

Aaron nods. “Lucky number seven.” The manic glee of the birth on the stairs has given way to a certain heaviness in him. “She’s cute,” he admits. “Has her father’s receding hairline.”

“They’re all cute,” Rachel says. “They’re all beautiful.” She falls silent for a moment but then remembers something she once heard. “Did you know?” she asks. “It is said that the Messiah is born into every generation.”

His eyebrows lift wearily. “Is it? Said by who?”

“I don’t know. The Sanhedrin? Whomever it is who says things. But it is said.”

“Okay. But I gotta tell you, I don’t think I see the Messiah in this particular batch. I mean, wouldn’t there be a glow or something? The Star of Beth Israel twinkling over the kid’s head?”

Rachel doesn’t respond. She sips the bitter coffee.

You were a precious treasure, she hears her Eema say. Standing beside her as she recalls her in the flush of her success. The day you were born, I thought you were a gift from God Himself. “Behold, I give before you this day the life and the good.”

“So what’s gonna happen to us?” she hears Aaron ask her. It’s a simple question. At least he makes it sound like it’s a simple question. And maybe it is. Maybe it’s just a simple matter of logistics. But Rachel has no answer for him.