The doctor is surprised. “But there’s still time left in the hour,” he points out.
“Nevertheless. You cannot help me any further today, Dr. Solomon. Who can? I have a sickness that cannot be cured.”
But on the subway, the brunette schoolgirl with the burgundy beret returns, sitting across the aisle, the manifestation of Rachel’s guilt. Sitting in the café up the Friedrichstrasse, hearing a voice: You’re not here on a holiday, Bissel. You must earn your keep.
The schoolgirl gazes back at her. She never appears accusatory. Never. Merely confused. Merely saddened by the lies Rachel lives by.
Pulling a half pound of frozen hamburger out of the icebox freezer, a frosty brick of meat wrapped in cellophane, she sticks it in the sink and turns on the hot water to defrost it when she hears someone knocking politely on the door.
“Missus Perlman?” the German is calling. “Hallo? Missus Perlman. It’s Bauer the super. I have come from the store with the new sink trap.” He rings the bell once, twice, then knocks again.
The cat, alerted by the buzz of the bell, meows. Thumps down onto the floor from his spot on the sill and pads over to the apartment door to investigate. He meows at the noise, but Rachel has shut off the water and become motionless. She is still an expert at silences.
The next morning, she makes coffee and drops two slices of bread into the toaster. Aaron walks over to the kitchen sink in his wrinkled flannel pajamas over his undershirt. Carpet slippers flopping.
“Shall I cut a grapefruit?” she asks him.
“Sure,” he says, stepping up to the sink beside her. He turns on the tap water and lets it gush into a glass. He drinks, draining the glass as the faucet still runs. Thirst quenched, he releases a satisfied Ahhhh. Then frowns down at the sink. “Hey. I thought the super fixed this.”
Rachel slices a fat yellow grapefruit into halves. “You what?”
He shuts off the tap. “I said, I thought the super had fixed this drain. Didn’t he come by?”
Rachel hesitates, but only for an instant. “He came by.”
“And?”
The toast pops. “And he cleaned it out, but then said there was something else wrong. He must get a part from a store.”
“And so when is that supposed to happen?”
Rachel only shrugs. Starts spreading margarine on toast.
“Well, that stinks,” her husband announces. “Just what we need. A drain that doesn’t drain. And for this we pay how much a month for this place?”
“Ninety-eight dollars,” Rachel answers.
“No, honey, I know how much we pay. I’m just saying.” He sets the emptied glass in the sink. “I guess I’ll have to talk him.”
Rachel sets the toast on her husband’s plate. “I guess you will.”
“So there’s coffee?” he wonders.
“In the pot on the table.”
Aaron nods. Pads to the table and manages to pour himself a cup on his own, then snaps on the radio. Drags out a chair where he sits and ignites a cigarette with a click of his Zippo. Opens his newspaper as Rachel nestles the two grapefruit halves in their bowls. She is not speaking another word on the subject. The super came, the super went. That’s all. The song on the radio makes a defiant statement: I hear you knockin’, but you can’t come in!
12.
La Muse du Rouge
“I want a cigarette.”
“Too bad.”
The studio is a high-ceilinged space bathed in daylight on the top floor of the villa. The year is 1932. No one knows it yet, but the German Republic is staggering through its final months of existence. Meanwhile, Angelika Rosen, aged nineteen years, poses in the nude for nine marks an hour. Straight-backed, a hand combed into the thick red mane of hair that cascades over her shoulders, this is the first time she has been naked in front of a woman whom she does not know. This is the first time she has been naked and on display. An artist’s model.
It felt daring in the beginning, answering an advertisement in the newspaper. Life model sought. It felt good to hurt Tatte and Mamme, especially Tatte, in this way by putting his daughter’s body on display, even if they were completely unaware of what she was doing. She knew that she was hurting them, and that was enough. But after the initial exhilaration, the hours passed, and the excitement drained. She began to feel stiff from keeping to a single position, and her mind began to wander into a void. “I’m bored,” she announces.
“You are paid to pose, not talk,” the artist tells her.
A moment passes.
“How much longer?”
“Until I say.”
Another moment. But it’s too much. “I’m dying for a cigarette,” she groans.
“Contemplate the suffering of women,” says the artist. The artist, whose name is Morgenstern. Frau Lavinia Morgenstern-Landau. Aged thirty or more. Hair bobbed. Her painter’s gaze dark-eyed and concentrated. She stands at her easel working on a very tall canvas. Her fingers are paint-stained; her smock is paint-stained. She paints from a warm palette. Cadmium red, alizarin crimson, cadmium orange, yellow ochre, burnt umber. A tall bank of windows keeps the room awash with light. A table is cluttered with the paraphernalia of the painterly craft, and a fat yellow cat lies dozing at the artist’s feet as she studies her model, then puts her brush to work.
There’s something mysterious that Lavinia is searching for in her painting of this girl. This little Jewish meydl from the Prenzlauer Berg. Cette belle créature rouge. Perhaps it’s the essence of human beauty? Could she be searching for such a thing as that? Or perhaps it’s simply the mystery of her own art. Her quest to capture that which cannot be captured. The flatheaded brush roughs up the edge of a shadow that outlines the warmth of the painted flesh.
There’s a noise of a door from behind, and a confident baritone voice bursts in the air like a cannon shell. “Shalom! My brilliant sister!”
She frowns but does not turn even as she listens to her brother’s footsteps approach. “And so, he arrives,” she replies. “Shalom, little brother.”
Fritz steps up behind the artist at work, a stylish bamboo cane in hand, and kisses her cheerfully on the temple. As usual, he is impeccably clothed and coiffed. Dressed in a coal-black Rudolf Hertzog suit and a diamond stickpin in his cravat. He scrutinizes his sister’s canvas with interest and, as is his custom, offers his opinion unsolicited. “Stunning but disturbing. Just what I want to see,” he announces.
Lavinia still dabs at the canvas. “Tell Herr Möller you have a painting for him. All he must do is spend a king’s ransom to obtain it.”
“That’s what I always tell him, Lavinia. He’ll pay, don’t worry. He’s entranced by your work.”
A laugh or a grunt. It’s hard to tell which. “Yes. ‘Stunning but disturbing,’” she confirms.
“And speaking of both. Won’t you introduce me?”
Lavinia looks up and frowns as she sees her brother drowsily eyeing her model. “Fräulein Rosen. My brother, Fritz Landau. Who is married,” she reminds.
Now Angelika has regained an interest in posing. Aware of the power of her beauty, she unblushingly casts a smoky-eyed look at this man. Fritz is obviously captivated.
“Enchantée,” he offers.