"When I come to, I lie on the ground and watch. But all I can see is the big legs and broad backs of those men. No sign of my poor Rivka. But I hear her. Good God, do I hear her. At first, her screams are louder than their laughter. Then I can only hear their laughter. That's worse. My father once told me laughter was the music of the soul. But if you don't have a soul, it's a cry for blood.
"Afterwards the swine pull up their pants, still laughing. They pass around a flask, throw back their heads to drink, wipe their mouths with the backs of their hands. At last they go. And the screams and laughter move down the street. Rivka lies still, her eyes closed, uncovered like a woman should never be, blood oozing from between her legs onto the snow. A neighbor helps me carry her back into the house. Finally, we hear the horses hooves, and the devils are gone again."
The peddler seemed to have dried up. Whatever fuel had driven him to retell this story was spent. His hands—small and withered with spread fingers—lay on the table like forgotten things. Charlotte touched the back of his left hand, stroked the cool, thin skin. Slowly, he came alive again.
"That night, I slept on the floor, praying for my brother's soul and crying for my daughter's innocence. We had to leave. We knew about the Jews here. They worked in factories or sold things off carts. So we came here. We had some distant relatives in Berlin. They took us in. The Germans are good people. They opened their arms to us."
The time between then and now lay like a lead ball in the silence.
"Last night, when she screamed, I was the little mouse again, the one who crawls into the wall and hides in the dark until the Cossacks are gone."
"If you had fought them, both you and Rivka would be dead," Max said.
This wasn't the first time Max had said these words to Bielski, Charlotte thought. She recalled his strange behavior at the cabaret. Something pulled him in two directions. The peddler rose to his feet.
"That crazy boy of mine—he's probably lost everything off the cart."
Outside, Bielski disappeared among the carts.
Max, his hands in his pockets, walked away quickly, talking as if to himself. Charlotte strained to hear his words.
"People like Bielski love Germany even more than I do. But he and the others from the shtetl walk about chattering like squirrels, bowing and scraping. Liebermann paints them, but I keep my distance—except for Bielski. And he came to me."
At the street corner, he stopped, leaned against a traffic sign.
"They're foreign, go to synagogue, talk funny. When I was a kid, I pointed at them—'look at the strange people.' My mother smacked my hand. 'They'll soon be German, just like us,' she said. But I didn't believe her—still don't."
And how did Max fit in? Was he more German than Bielski? Jewishness and Germanness seemed like the medieval humors—blended differently in each individual.
The muscles in Charlotte's neck hurt from the pain of Bielski's story.
"It's the rabbi who makes them different. In the east it's 'Yes, rebbe. No rebbe. Lift your robe, so I may kiss your ass, rebbe.' They say it all day long in the shtetl. They come here, bring the shtetl with them. And they expect the rest of us to like it."
"But, they've suffered."
His eyes darkened.
"When I first met Bielski, he didn't guess I was a Jew."
"I came here once with a cousin," Max said. "Gerda still had one foot in the shtetl, wanted her fortune told. I was waiting outside for her. Suddenly this little man came up and starting talking, talking at me. I didn't want to listen, but I couldn't stop him. After that, I forced myself to come back. I promised Bielski. And I let him tell me things I don't want to know about."
"But it's the truth—"
"I don't need to know about that kind of hatred. Anyhow, at first Bielski just thought I was a nice, sympathetic German."
"And you are," she said.
The tightness left his face. He would, she knew, want to separate himself entirely from Bielski's world. Would she be the final act in Max's personal assimilation play?
They crossed the street and stepped onto the curb. As they put more distance between themselves and the Jewish market, Max's step grew lighter. Finally, he stopped and gestured toward a pub window. Inside two men were playing billiards. Max raised his thumb and squinted, and Charlotte knew he was calculating the distance between a crooked elbow and a hip, transferring a portly body to his canvas, daubing a set of overalls with reds and yellows.
She was learning that a painter did not absorb pain directly but broke it down into parts, integrating it gradually into his soul, often blending it with his own pain, then giving it back— in oil—transformed.
Eating Porcelain
Charlotte wore a sweater buttoned up to the top and sat on a bench at the Friedrichstraße subway. She sketched people quickly, creating balls of motion as they walked past her. Later, she'd fill in the detail—the slumped shoulders, the frayed clothes, the sad look. She added the prostitute leaning languidly against a lamppost. At home, she'd fuss over the woman's army top boots, the unlaced peasant blouse, the leather skirt.
The clock struck noon. Charlotte packed her bag and hurried to visit Max.
He was barefoot, his hair uncombed, and his clothes rumpled. The kitchen table was covered with stacks of election leaflets embossed with the hammer and sickle. He'd been in the middle of stuffing them into his backpack.
"I think I've captured the mood," she said, opening her sketchpad.
He didn't look up.
"I have to finish these leaflets. We've got to beat the Nazis in this election."
She didn't want him to be political today. Hadn't disrupting Goebbels' speech been enough? His comrades had attacked the stormtroopers with brass knuckles and rubber hoses. She felt she was living between two armed camps.
"What's the difference between you and them?" she asked.
He looked at her, his eyes wide.
"Both sides wear uniforms and look humorless."
"I don't wear a uniform."
"I didn't mean you."
She dropped her sketchpad on the table, sending an unbound stack of leaflets sliding to the floor. Grumbling, he picked them up. He looped his arms into the backpack and swung it onto his back. She boarded the tram with him and watched him get off at Potsdamer Platz.
From the streaked tram window, she saw him join a group of men in tweed caps. They pushed leaflets at passersby who ignored them. A truck pulled up across the street, and stormtroopers jumped out of the back. As her tram moved forward, Charlotte craned her neck to see, but when it rounded the corner, she lost sight of them.
***
It was late. At dinner, Charlotte had ordered fresh trout in lemon sauce, and Max had gotten something French in wine sauce. Her mother, who struggled with new ways of serving potato, thought she was out with Lulu. She mustn't know about the restaurant.
On the way home, Max seemed preoccupied. Without a word, he went straight into his studio and stood gazing at a large canvas. He'd been working on it for days. Prussian soldiers, their grinning faces resembling buttocks, raised knives against a group of huddled young girls, whose mouths formed black holes of fear.
"I'll add another monster," he said.
"No room for hope?" she asked.
Even during dinner he'd been in a fierce mood. Charlotte knew that horses trampling corpses would be as close as he could get to painting something nice now. But he backed away from the easel. She placed her hands at his waist and stroked his sides. Sandalwood oil—wasn't that the balm that Asians used to calm agitated individuals?
Raising his sweater, she moved her lips across his chest, sucked the nipple, and heard his groan of pleasure. Nuzzling his chest, she leaned into his sweet spicy aroma. She closed her eyes, led him to the sofa, and envisioned his fragrant body on a silken bed, surrounded with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds.
Pretending to spread sandalwood oil, she stroked his entire body, her nostrils tingling at the imagined fragrance. Br
ushing his ankle with her lips, she heard him speak.
"Artemisia Gentileschi."
"You mean Mary Magdalene," she said.
"I like the baroque painter better."
By comparing her to the woman who'd painted the wildest version of Judith cutting off Holofernes' head, Max was making love to her like no other man could.
She slipped off her clothes, straddled him, gently took his limb into her hands, bent over it, and traced its length with her tongue. She moved her knees forward, felt the heat of his thighs between hers, and slowly eased him inside her, thinking the words that fired her senses.
Cinnamon. Cloves. Nutmeg. Cumin.
"If I am Artemisia, you are the Prince of the Spice Islands," she said.
"I was thinking of the gray-green plant with the lovely smell. My mother used to give it to Herr Esch to put in French sauces," he said.
"Your smell is sweeter, though," she said.
Afterwards, he dozed off. She reached for his bathrobe and slippers and went to her easel. She quickly mixed colors, then painted a ground that consisted of gray with splotches of orange and gold. With tiny brushstrokes, she made a cerulean sky that shaded into azure. Faces appeared in the seams where one color blended into the next. Her brush gave the faces bodies. She stood back, surprised. Where had she seen these faces?
It was the first time she'd painted something that she couldn't recall seeing, something that only lived inside her. Suddenly she felt very tired. She wanted a bath. As the water tumbled into the bathtub, she undressed and stepped into the water. Immersing herself to her shoulders, she enjoyed the memory in the ache of her thigh muscles.
Eyes closed, she imagined a bazaar in Marrakesch, full of colorful carpets, soft silks, and sweet perfumes. The scratch of a pencil on paper reached her ears. Max was sitting on the stool next to the bathtub, drawing her.
"Who said you could come in?"
"I missed you. Don't move—I'm doing the nose."
"I was thinking of asking you to marry me, but now I'm tired of you. Next time I'll lock the door." She stepped out of the bath.
He kept scribbling.
"Your hair," he said.
She arched her back and toweled her hair furiously, then posed for him with her wet hair. He took colored pencils from his pocket, moved his hand in circles over the page. At last she turned to the mirror and brushed her hair.
The next day he showed her the painting, now on canvas. The face lacked detail, but her hair was a tangle of color— chestnut, amber, marmalade, and sienna. Fingering the ends of her short brown hair, she realized he was as crazy as she was— in the same way too.
No, not in the same way, not as long as he insisted that the Red Front was the only answer to the chaos of the republic.
***
Charlotte sat in Frau Bernstein's parlor, admiring the gilded frame on the portrait of Max's grandparents. Frau Bernstein was talking about the collapse of the Austrian bank.
"Bad for Bernstein's. Bad for the republic."
Banking was not Charlotte's favorite topic.
"The German Danat-Bank is next. Bank of England would have gone the same way if it hadn't abandoned the gold standard. England's the place to be," Frau Bernstein said, placing her cup onto the saucer with a stony click.
For a moment her gaze rested on her son, but then she turned to Charlotte and spoke in the hushed tone of a confidante.
"I don't mind his becoming an artist," she said.
Charlotte waited. This was only the prologue to her real message. Women who talked bank language didn't want their sons to be artists.
"As long as he pops into the store a few times a week," Frau Bernstein said, resting a knuckle on Max's knee, and leaning over him toward Charlotte. "But I don't like how he runs around with those ragged revolutionaries."
"Mother, we can't simply let the Nazis take over," Max said.
"Then support the republic."
"The world's laughing at this stupid little Weimar Republic. It's failed the working class. Families fight over one potato in the tenements."
"Maybe over a turnip, hardly a potato," Frau Bernstein said, picking up her silver cigarette case.
Herr Esch emerged from somewhere between the floorboards and extended a silver tray. On it were three ornate cigarette holders. While he lit her cigarette, Frau Bernstein kept talking.
"The crooks in New York destroyed the stock market. The money of the republic is worthless. We can't pay our workers," she said.
"Jews' fault?" It was Max.
Frau Bernstein rolled her eyes in the direction of Herr Esch. They sat in silence for a moment while Herr Esch finished pouring tea.
Max made a sweeping gesture toward the chandelier and the paintings. Then he waved a hand at the glass cabinet. It contained seventeenth century engraved copper discs from the Safavid capital of Isfahan.
"We don't deserve this as long as people are starving."
Frau Bernstein blew out a smoke ring.
"Nobody willingly eats copper plates."
"Not funny," Max said.
"It's reality—like your thing about the potato."
Max dropped his tone.
"I'll help with the store, but I won't abandon the workers."
Frau Bernstein's fingernails clicked on the wood of her chair.
"If you want to help the workers, support the republic. The damned Communists are handing the whole package to Hitler. If they keep tearing the republic down, people will beg for a sharp kick in the ass at the next election."
Max slapped the top of his thighs in a gesture of concession. Frau Bernstein wagged her cigarette in his face.
"Laugh in my face. That's what boys do to their mothers. But don't make a fool of yourself."
The light from the chandelier glittered on Frau Bernstein's rings. She rose.
"Excuse me, but all these words are making me feel rather vague. I must write down some numbers—you know, add them up, then subtract them."
She allowed each of them to kiss a cheek.
The fragrance of honeysuckle and lilacs drifted in through the open window. Charlotte moved to the sofa and sat next to Max. He turned and placed his head in her lap. She stroked under his chin and over his cheek, ran her fingers over his throat.
"Your mother's right," she said.
They didn't hear the sound of feet at the door. Herr Esch, his eyes cloud-gray under bushy eyebrows, stood on the threshold. He carried a tray with two wine glasses of wheat beer, Berliner Weiße, tinged green from a shot of woodruff syrup. Blushing, Max sat up. Charlotte reached for a sticky glass. Herr Esch handed Max a plate of smoked barbel fish, arranged in thin slices, then placed the tray between his arm and ribcage and moved backwards, bowing crisply.
In Herr Esch's presence, Charlotte felt like an outsider at Unter den Linden. He was always testing her manners, as if to determine if she was worthy of his attention. He'd probably seen her through the window at Café Rilke, decided that she carried her tray under her arm just like he did.
Max leaned against her, and she could smell his body. She unbuttoned his shirt and slid her hand over his ribs. He stroked her forearms. Their lips touched, and the familiar flame rose within her. In the hall, Herr Esch hummed a patriotic tune. She pushed Max away.
Idealist
She didn't really want to go with him to the slums. Her father had said workers were people who didn't wash their hands. That's why they had nasty jobs in factories. Still, she wanted to understand better, so at dawn she waited for him in front of her building, listening to a man in overalls scraping the sidewalk with a branch broom. The smell of hot granite filled her nostrils as the woman in the building next door poured steaming water onto her steps. A pair of horses snuffled their grain bags while their owner unloaded coal from the back of the wagon.
They rode the tram to Kreuzberg, got off at Jannowitzbrücke, and crossed the canal. A copper green church dome rose above the squarish cityscape. Plaster peeled from the houses' facades, and to
rn curtains hung behind splintered window frames. The smells of oatmeal and animals wafted from behind courtyard gates.
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