Chagall was an innocent, her mother tells her, wearing her paint-stained smock. Naive as a child. It’s amazing that he survived himself, much less survived the war. But that was his luck. Always in the wrong place but never at the wrong time.
A college girl in a black turtleneck, her blond hair in a boyish garçon bob, approaches Rachel as if she is something that needs sweeping back out onto the sidewalk. “May I help you?”
“Yes. I want to see Mr. Glass,” Rachel tells her.
“Mr. Glass is not available.”
“Tell him, please, that I’m the niece of Mr. Landau?”
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Glass is not available.”
“Tell him I’m the daughter of Lavinia Morgenstern. She knew Chagall. When he was in Berlin. Tell him I’m here to see The Red Muse.”
“The red?”
“My mother’s painting. I want to see it. Is it in the back room? I could just take a peek.”
“Uh, no. No, that’s not possible.”
“Just a peek, nothing more.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“Rachel Perlman. That’s my name now. In America, but once, I was Rokhl Morgenstern. He knows my uncle—Mr. Glass, that is. I’ve seen them together in the photograph.”
“As I said, Mr. Glass is unavailable. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“I think they must have struck a secret bargain.”
“And I think I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“So I’m being polite. I’m being polite,” Rachel tells her. “But you must understand. He had no right, my uncle. He thought he was still the great Kunsthändler, making his deals, but he had no right. That painting, if it belongs to anyone, it belongs to me.”
“Miss, this is private property,” the girl says.
“She was a monster. Der Engel. But if she is anybody’s monster, she is mine. I paid for her in full. And now, you think you can deny me? Pretend that I am nobody? I am the daughter of Lavinia Morgenstern! The founder of the Berolina Circle of Artists! A member of the Prussian Academy!” She hears herself shouting at this young slip of a girl, whose eyes are now bright with fear at the onslaught of the crazy lady.
“I can call the police! If you won’t go, I can call the police.”
“Call the police! I am an artist. Don’t you understand that? An artist! I have my rights too! That painting is mine! So tell the exalted Mr. Glass that he made his deal with the wrong Jew! Tell him that!” Rachel shouts and then abandons the room, sweeping back onto the sidewalk, her face streaming in tears. She hears the door lock behind her to keep out the mad interloper. But she doesn’t look back.
***
Their last hiding place as U-boats is a bicycle repair shop in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The owner of the shop is dead, his body buried in some frozen corner of the Ostfront, but the widow, Frau Huber, is making a little on the side to supplement her pension payments by hiding the odd Jew or two in her dead husband’s vacant shop. The windows are painted over for the blackout. It’s one long room down a set of steps in the Falckenstein Strasse. The place has a grimy feeling to it and an odor of wood rot and machine oil combined with the reek from the stinking night pail. So—a palace! They are gaunt, underfed, and street-worn like most all U-boats. But then that could describe most Berliners by this point of the war, so their very shabbiness affords them some lumpenproletariat camouflage when they venture out into the beyond.
They sit in the Café Bollenmüller up the Friedrich, her mother tensed, overtly watchful. As usual, Eema has brought Rashka along because the sight of a hungry child is the only leverage available to her to influence price. She has explained this to Rashka. Explained that her job in this transaction is to look pitiful and underfed. A little waif. Sometimes it works, other times not. If the seller is a woman, then maybe such tactics have a better chance of depressing the cost of the counterfeit ration cards or some small identity document, like a postal card, or whatever it is she is hoping to purchase. But Rashka is never very talented at this, and this time when she tries to present a sympathetically heartbreaking face, her mother is disappointed in the outcome. “Never mind,” says Eema. “You look like you’re farshtopt.” Constipated. Blocked. “Just sit and think about nothing.”
Rashka attempts to follow this instruction as they sit this time in the perilous calm of a café morning, not buying but selling. Eema is trying to sell the last of her mother’s jewelry. A white-gold bracelet studded with tiny diamonds. A piece that dates back to the imperial epoch of the Österreich. Rashka tries hard to think about nothing. Nothing but a zero. A void. But still, thoughts intrude. She cannot help but look at the faces. Aryan faces? They look not so much different than they did before Aryans existed. Only paler. Thinner.
She cannot help but play a game. Who is the crooked-over old man blowing the steam from his cup? A veteran of the last war, maybe? Unmarried. Bitter because he could not recover from his wounds. She would paint him in blue and black with yellow eyes. Then there’s the younger woman with the middle-aged man. They seem hardly connected, staring separately into the air as they consume their coffee and bun. Yet there is some link chaining them together. A marriage where love has been left behind? She would paint him in greens from shoes to hat and her all in yellows with purple lips.
When the buyer arrives, it’s a man. A black marketeer. The rumor is he was a gem cutter in Antwerp, a diamantaire, run out of the business because of underhanded trading. But who really knows? People like to make up stories. They like the world to fit together, especially when nothing fits together any longer. He’s a frowning, unhappy specimen, with a sagging face and eyes as sharp as drawn knives. All it takes is a glance under the napkin at the table for him to instantly size up the value of any piece of merchandise. He mumbles a price. Eema looks displeased. She frowns, using her mouth only. Her eyes remain the shiny black rocks into which they have hardened. “Please. It must be worth more than that,” she insists.
The man only shrugs. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
“Those are diamonds,” Eema points out. “Diamonds,” she repeats.
“So find somebody else to buy them if you think I’m cheating you,” the man suggests.
“I’m only asking. A few more marks? Couldn’t you see your way? For the sake of the child.”
Really, Rashka despises being used as an object of pity in these transactions. She breaks away from her mother’s dealing and returns to the stories she’s telling herself in her head, all inspired by the crowd around them. A woman abandoned by her husband? A man sick with a disease that he pretends is not killing him? But then she catches the eye of another girl. Across the room is a schoolgirl not much younger than her. Velvety brown eyes, creamy skin with a cool ash-green underpainting. Her sable hair is woven into a braid, and she wears a burgundy beret. Sitting with a wrinkled old grandpa who is lost in the consumption of a bowl of soup, the girl dares to offer Rashka a tentative smile. Rashka dares to smile back.
She will never know the girl’s name. This small exchange of childish smiles beyond the strictures of their isolation will compose the sum total of their communication. But yet. For that instant, Rashka can spot the lonely yearning they share. She can recognize herself. Another solitary heart.