Shadows of Berlin

32.

For the World That Will Come

The frost is sticking to the windowpane. A thousand intricate stars of frost. It’s mesmerizing.

“So,” he begins. On his way out. Lights his Lucky from the gas burner and huffs smoke. “You’ve got an appointment today, right? With the doctor?”

“Yes. Two o’clock.”

“Should I come with?”

“Should you?” Rachel sounds slightly too surprised. “I don’t know. Why?”

“I don’t know either,” he says. “This is the first time I’m having a baby too, ya know. I got no idea what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. Go with my wife to the obstetrician? Don’t go with my wife to the obstetrician? So I ask you.”

“Because I’m the expert.”

“Well, in this case, you’re the star of the show, honey,” he says, stubbing out her cigarette for her. A habit he’s developed to curb her smoking, because his mother read an article in Reader’s Digest. “I’m just playing a bit part. The guy who walks on in Act Three and says, ‘Your Majesty! The heir to the throne is born!’”

“I don’t know what you are saying, as usual. But the doctor’s only a few blocks away. I can walk.”

“No, no,” Aaron begins to insist. “No walking, thank you very much. Take a cab.”

“A cab costs money.”

“So what’s money? Who cares? No slipping on the icy sidewalks for the pregnant lady, please,” he tells her, bending over to kiss her on the head. “I gotta go.”

“You don’t want breakfast? I’ll get up and make you breakfast.”

“Nah. No time. Don’t worry. I’ll grab a sack of cashews on the way in,” he tells her, sliding on his overcoat from the coat tree. “There’s a guy with a cart on the way to the train.”

As he adjusts the fit of the jacket’s shoulders, he bends forward. “Okay, so I’m going this time for real,” he says, coming back to dispense a final kiss, a big smack on the cheek. Then he pops on his hat and is heading out. “Chinese tonight,” he declares. “I promise, nothing too spicy. Some chicken and broccoli or something.”

“Sure,” she says, when she is pinched by a pulse of need and calls his name. “Aaron?”

“That’s me.”

He’s stopped. But now she’s not sure what to say. Suddenly, she feels embarrassed by the impulse, so what she says is, “I’ll have an egg roll.”

“Okey-dokey,” her husband says. “Egg rolls on the side. I’ll see you at the doctor’s at two. There—­I made the decision,” he announces. “Take care of the heir.”

“I will,” Rachel says back. And then, “Aaron?”

He stops once more, eyebrows raised. “Yes, honey?”

“I’m not the star of the show,” she tells him and lays her hand on the swell of her belly. “The star is inside me.”

Aaron looks back at her for a second. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll remember that. See you at two.”

She nods. Then listens as the door closes behind him.

Turning back to the window, Rachel gazes at the icy galaxy of snowflakes clinging to the glass. Each unique. Each fragile, fleeting in the brightness of daylight.

The cat curls around her ankles, and she scoops him up, transports him to the sofa, where she deposits him on the couch. At twelve weeks, she is just starting to show. Her belly is a small, round bump that stops her pedal pushers from properly fitting.

On the wall, her painting hangs without a frame. Hangs from a pair of nails, a little crooked because she’s never been good at straight lines. Aaron does not complain. She has agreed to him moving the sofa to face the opposite direction, so that the painting does not give him the evil eye, though now and again, she spots him gazing at it as if he’s staring into the darkness of a cave. A cave that has opened up in their living room.

It becomes late in the afternoon, and she has dozed off on the sofa after her return from the appointment with the obstetrician. A woman no less! Dr. Eileen Kushner, a middle-­aged practitioner with calm eyes and competent hands. She calls Rachel “Mami,” as in, Now breathe deeply for me, Mami.

Aaron remains uncomfortable around a female physician and keeps wondering whether they should go see Dr. Grauberger in Brooklyn, “Just to be on the safe side?” But Rachel likes Dr. Kushner, and who needs to schlep all the way out to Avenue P in Midwood?

The door buzzer rouses her from her nap. The copy of ARTnews she had been paging through has fallen on the floor. She shakes herself awake and wobbles toward the door only to find that it’s the German super standing there with an oversized wooden crate he has hauled up from below.

Rachel’s eyes go wide. “What? What is this?”

“Just delivered for you, Mrs. Perlman. A man on a truck.” The stencil on the crate’s exterior reads: G. ALBERT GLASS GALLERY, FIFTH AVE, NEW YORK.

“Shall I open it up for you?” the German wants to know. “The crate?”

It takes some work with a hammer from his tool belt, prying out nails with the claw. Rachel keeps her distance, standing with her arms folded. But after a few minutes, the large rectangle emerges packed in straw and wrapped with kraft paper. Rachel glares heavily at the shape as the German collects the scraps of crate wood. “There you are, Missus Perlman,” he tells her, hovering, and she realizes he must be waiting for a tip.

“Oh. Um. Let me get my purse,” she says, avoiding eye contact, but the German is shaking his head no. Nothing is required, he tells her in German. The sound of his soft, slushy Bayerischer Sprechstil stops her in place. She is surprised by the painful expression on the man’s face.

“For all of it, I am sorry, Mrs. Perlman,” he tells her. “For all of what was done. It is so painful to carry the knowledge of such terrible happenings. But I was always only a medical soldier.” He wants her to know. “This I swear to. I had three wounds on the battlefield. A bullet is still with me. But I only ever treated wounded men. Never hurting other soldiers. Never hurting Jews. Never hurting anyone,” he says. His eyes are wet. Beseeching. And she can see it. The wounds he carries. She can see them reflected in his eyes.

Rachel breathes. Swallows. But then releases a tight nod.

A beat passes between them. The man frowns. The pain in his face closes over. “Let me know if there is more to be fixed for your apartment,” he says, avoiding eye contact, and makes for the door. But as he opens it to exit, Rachel speaks.

“Thank you,” she chokes out. “Mr. Bauer.”

He blinks back at her. Uncertain.

“For your help with the crate,” she explains.

The German purses his lips flatly. Nods, then steps out, closing the door behind him. She wipes her eyes and turns her attention to the straw-­packed rectangle, and then her mother is there, in her painting smock, excited. Eyes dazzling. Tsigele. Quickly, she is commanding, her hands clasped tightly together. Oh, please! Quickly.

A painting rests against the wall, the nesting material torn away. The figure before her throbs off the canvas. A sensual inferno of red pigments. The long, willowy body. The sweeping red tresses, like a fire blowing through a forest, and the beatific face with the hungry leopard’s eyes. Rachel glares at it as if staring straight into a firepit.

A square envelope contains a card with a small explanation written by hand in German: For you, Bissel. Who else but you?

There’s a scrape of a key in a lock. The door pops open, and in comes Aaron carrying a paper sack. “Okay, I got you the sesame chicken with broccoli,” he announces happily. His voice is always a happy one these days. The overcrowded subway, the city, the dirty sidewalks, the price of fucking everything? Happy. The restaurant, the customers, the cook, and the bottle washers, all of it happy. Even complaining about Leo is a happy subject.

“Also, two egg rolls,” he says. “If you don’t want both, I’ll have the other. Oh, and I don’t know if I said? I promised Ezra we’d come up tonight after supper.” See! Even dessert with the Fucknik watching T.V. is a joy. Aaron is smiling. The father-­to-­be. He smiles with puzzlement at the mess of packing materials and the canvas leaned against the wall. “So what’s this?” he wonders.

“This,” she says, “is my mother’s painting.” She has tears standing in her eyes.

Aaron’s smile grows a bit more serious. “Really?” He stops, turns to stare at it. She can see the wheels turning in his head as he surveys the brutal desire in every brushstroke. The blood boiling through the paint. Maybe he’s finally starting to get it. Why his wife is the woman she is. “Wow,” he breathes. And then, “Where’d it come from? I mean, is this it?” he asks. “The thing itself, I mean. From the pawnshop?”

“Yes.”

Aaron, poor man. It’s obvious he understands just enough about what’s going on here to know that he doesn’t understand what’s going on here. “Sooo…I don’t get it.” He concedes. “How did it end up here? Your uncle finally pull a rabbit out of his hat or something”

“Yes,” Rachel decides to tells him. “Feter Fritz.” She will burn the card. When she is alone, she will light it off the stove and let it burn away in the sink. Eingeäschert. Reduced to ash. “That’s what happened. The rabbit from the hat.” Which isn’t entirely a lie.

“Holy mackerel, honey,” says her husband sweetly, caringly, and squishes her shoulder against him. Maybe he’s just noticed her teary eyes, and as for the rest? What difference does it make? She laughs lightly at her own tears as she wipes them with her palms.

At night. Aaron is in the other room still gabbing on the phone with Naomi.

Her sister-­in-­law rejoiced over the news. “Oh my God, I’ll be Mume Naomi!” she cried, laughing through tears. She was on her way out when they appeared at her door. Her hair was out of its ponytail, a chestnut mane down past her shoulders. Kohl eyeliner, red lips, and fishnet stockings. Tyrell had called her. He’d passed his bar exam. They’d made a date to meet at a place on MacDougal called the Gaslight. A beatnik dive! Aaron was still smiling. “Well. Give ’im our regards,” he told her. Happy!

And on Webster Avenue in Flatbush? Her mother-­in-­law had REJOICED in capital letters, as if Rachel had just delivered the Messiah into her lap! You sweet thing! You sweet, sweet thing! Hugging the stuffing out of her. The entire mishpocha of the Perlman tribe rejoices at such news and will not quit rejoicing. The phone stays hot. Rachel gets calls from aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends of the family. The whole of Flatbush and then some, like they’re planning a ticker-­tape parade.

She hears Aaron telling Naomi over the phone, “Oh, who knows?” His voice is lazy with affection. “Boy? Girl? We’re just gonna pick a name off the labels of the spice rack over the stove. Yeah, Allspice Perlman, Nutmeg Perlman. Pepper Perlman. Actually, that one’s not so bad. I should write that down.”

She bestows a kiss on his head. She is tired early, she finds, so she had made ready for bed, changing into her flannel pajamas.

“Hold on, the pregnant lady’s saying good night,” he says. Then, palm clamped over the phone, “who couldn’t guess,” he says. “She wants to have us over for dinner again with Mr. Now-­I’m-­a-­Lawyer. I said my wife handles our social calendar. You wanna talk to her?”

“Tell her I’ll call her tomorrow. We’ll find a date.” And now she bends forward and gives him a kiss on the lips.

In the bedroom, the curtains are closed to the street, and Rachel has not snapped on her night-­light but instead lies on the bed cocooned by the darkness.

She once felt so alone in the darkness and afraid of it overwhelming her. But tonight, she feels no fear. She is not alone, not even in her own body. She starts to light a cigarette but then stops herself. Lets herself sink into the darkness instead. And then the springs groan, she smells smoke, and she sees Eema sitting on the corner of the bed, a Gitanes Brune inserted into an amber resin cigarette holder. Her eyes shine.

So here we are, you and I, her mother says.

“Yes,” Rachel whispers into the darkness. “Here we are.”

So. You’re the artist now, tsigele, she declares. And soon enough? A mother. A soft shake of her head. Children. You know they’re a curse, she says. Though even in death, there is a smile touching her lips.

That night as Aaron sleeps beside her, Rachel feels the shape of his body beside her. A man. Her husband. A Jew from Flatbush whose child she is bearing. A second heartbeat inside her mimicking her own. Sometimes she believes she can feel it. Could her eema feel it too? she wonders. When the founder of the Berolina Circle was carrying her child, could she feel her child’s heartbeat even before birth? Such a small and fragile thing, an infant’s heartbeat. Hardly more than the swish of a butterfly’s wings. And yet how it reverberates. A child full of possibilities. Full of difficulties. Carrying the future.

Outside, the West Side freight line passes, shuddering down its tracks, pursuing the night to its final boundary.

Dawn at the kitchen table. First light is streaking the lower quarters of the sky, a raw pinkish glow. Rachel lights a cigarette. Smoke rises. Kibbitz meows for attention, and she scoops him up into her arms. She can smell the spirits in the jar where her brushes are soaking. As she hugs the cat to her breast, the tears come. Grief and liberation. She sobs without constraint but not without purpose. It’s the cleansing purpose of the mikveh, washing through her. She sobs for her mother. She sobs for the millions. She sobs in grief for the world that has vanished, just as she sobs in hope for the child she carries and for the world that will come.