Out of the subway, the sky is white above the city. The café radiators hiss with steam. She has finally tracked down her Feter Fritz. He is still dressed in his secondhand suit, but there is a certain zippiness about him. She notes that he acquired a bamboo cane as if he’d plucked it out from the past, when such a thing was required by every metropolitan gentleman. “How is your blintz?” he inquires, and Rachel realizes she is actually tasting the blintz delivered by Alf, their ancient waiter. Its sweetness.
“It’s good,” she is pleased to report, nodding. Her uncle has a gossipy tongue this morning. Artists he’s known and their fated decline from their zenith back in Berlin. Wolfgang Schnyder, Paul Genz, George Grosz. “Grosz left Germany to teach here in New York City at the Art Students League but now lives upstate. It seems he’s given up the old chaos of his canvases for the tranquility of Hudson River landscapes. But can one blame him? Who could maintain Dada for three decades and remain sane?”
But then Feter, as he inevitably does, gets down to business. “So, ziskeit,” he begins, smiling to himself. “I have something for you.”
She feels a perk of interest, foolishly, childishly. “Something?”
“Yes,” says her feter, removing a kraft-paper envelope from his jacket and placing it on the table beside her plate.
Rachel frowns at it, confused. Chews slowly and swallows. “What is this?”
“This is the money you paid to Mrs. Appelbaum for my rent,” he tell her brightly.
But Rachel still frowns.
“It’s what I owed you,” her uncle says. “For your kindness,” he must explain, his brightness dimming.
“But where did it come from?”
“Where does money usually come from?” A slightly insulted smile. “It came from hard work. Your feter is not a man without ingenuity, Rokhl. I don’t make a habit of living on other people’s charity. Go on,” he bids her gladly. “Take it.”
She lifts her eyebrows at the yellowed envelope. Taking money from Feter Fritz feels irregular. On the other hand? She can stop worrying about Aaron’s reaction if she can replace the rainy-day twenty in the Merriam-Webster before he notices it’s missing. She fingers the envelope. Thank God her husband has not been moved to solve a crossword puzzle lately.
“Have I said? I’m moving out of our old rat hole.”
Rachel looks up. “You call it a rat hole?”
“I call it what it is, zeisele. I’ve found, uh, a much more suitable place,” he decides to describe it, spooning the kasha into his mouth. He’s been to the barber, she notices. His fingernails have been groomed. “Nothing palatial, of course. A bachelor efficiency in a building on 42nd Street. And should I mention? It has a doorman.”
“So. You’re leaving the Lower East Side?”
Her feter raises his eyes from his bowl to give her a closer look. “That distresses you, Daughter?”
“No. It’s just that you’ve been there so long.”
Feter only shrugs, then frowns at the envelope, still in her hands. “Your blintz. Eat. You don’t want to offend Alf, do you?” Which means don’t insult me. Put the money in your pocket. Yet she leaves the envelope in its place on the table and takes a bite of the blintz.
Her feter holds his frown, but then, as if he has plucked a thought from a passing cloud, he wonders aloud, “When was the last time you held a paintbrush in your hand, Ruchel?”
The sweet taste in her mouth turns to mud. She shakes her head. “Feter.”
“Think of the art you once produced, Rokhl. Only a year ago, you had the beginnings of a career. People were taking an interest in your art. You were starting to sell. Have you forgotten?”
And now she feels the darkness up close. “I haven’t forgotten my own life, Feter,” she answers.
“Then what is it? Why have you stopped?”
“You know why.”
“Because of what happened. Such a small thing.”
“A night in Bellevue was not a small thing, Feter.”
“No? So you think what? That’s you’re crazy now, Daughter? Ha!” he laughs. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but everyone is crazy. We have bombs that could burn continents into cinders. Who is not crazy?”
“That’s a different craziness.”
“Meshuga iz meshuga. How is it different?”
“It’s different,” she insists. “I shouldn’t have to explain.”
“You know, Rashka, sometimes I think,” her uncle tells her, “sometimes I think that you’d rather deny what happened. To us. To the Jews.”
Rachel glares, eyes like flint. “I don’t deny anything.”
“No?” he asks, raising the spoon to his mouth. “That’s good to hear. Because people should know. It’s important that people should know.”
“What people want to know is exactly nothing.”
“Then force them to know. Don’t be so courteous and give them the choice. Make them open their eyes. Teach the world with your paintbrush. All I’m telling you is this: You are gifted. But think how many gifted Jews,” he says, “are no longer with us.”
Rachel gazes back, her eyes gone wet.
“You think the world doesn’t care? Make it care. You think the world doesn’t remember? Make it remember. This what I’m telling you,” says Feter. “Put your gift to work.”
Rachel wipes at her eyes and retains her silence.
Feter leans farther forward, adding a confidential note to the urgency of his voice. “There’s a man. David Glass.”
The name casts her mind backward to Naomi’s photograph. Feter and the man Glass on the bench. The two conspirators at work in Tompkins Square Park. She has been waiting for her uncle to reveal himself. To reveal the fox’s scheme. And now that moment has come.
“You must know from him,” Feter tells her. “He a very influential art dealer.”
“Of course I know from him, Feter. Everyone knows from David Glass. Who doesn’t know?”
“Exactly. Who doesn’t?” her uncle agrees. Almost eagerly, he agrees, as if this is exactly what he wants to hear. “But what you may not know, Ruchel,” he is saying, “is that he is always on the hunt for talent. Like yours, my dear.”
Rachel frowns. Uncertain. “Oh, so you think so, do you, Feter?”
“After all,” he observes, “are you not the daughter of Lavinia Morgenstern-Landau? So for the sake of her memory, I encourage you. Open up your paint box, set a canvas on an easel, and begin the great labor.”
Rachel does not smile. “Begin the labor. Open my paint box,” she says grimly. “I understand.” She nods darkly. “Eema is gone, so you want to take me to market as the calf of a prize cow.”
He is stung! “Rashka!”
“It’s true, isn’t it, Feter. S’iz ams!”
“No, it is untrue.” Her uncle is adamant. “Es iz nit ams. I’m thinking of you, Rokhl. Nor du!”
“Nor ich? Nor du, Feter! You’re thinking of yourself, as you always have. It makes me wonder what else you’re keeping hidden from view. Eema always said this too.”
At this, Feter becomes obviously angry. Not just at having his generosity rebuffed but now this insult from his sister. “Child, you have no idea what my bond with your mother was about. You knew her for no more than what? A few years past a decade? I, on the other hand, knew her since the day of my birth. We were often competitive, the two of us. That’s true. Highly so. We argued sometimes over means. But we always, always saw the world through the same eyes. So don’t you dare lecture me, Rokhl, about my sister. Everything I did was to protect her. To protect you. I can only grieve that she isn’t alive today to testify to this truth, but she is not.