City of Shadows by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788635141
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2019-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Berlin possessed one network of information that was unavailable to both Inspector Schmidt and Prince Nick – its Jews.

Esther, leaving Bismarck Allee, turned north toward Moabit and walked through increasingly depressed and darkening streets until she reached a small wooden house next to a synagogue. All things considered, she would have preferred not to be out at night, but if she could help to find Natalya’s killer, she was damn well going to, and time was pressing.

Rabbi Smoleskin chided her for infrequent attendance at the synagogue. “We haven’t seen you in a while, Esther.”

“There’s been trouble, Rabbi.”

“Troubles are what Jews are good at – troubles and chopped liver.”

She was ushered into a passage where the only light came from the tallow taper in the rabbi’s hand. The house smelled of chicken soup. In the thousand miles she and Rosa and the children had traveled from Siberia, passed along like parcels from settlement to Jewish settlement, sometimes in houses, often in huts, that smell had been the one constant, as if they had followed its trail by sniffing, like dogs. However poor their hosts, a hen had been killed in their honor because hospitality demanded it.

From the back of the house came voices and the clatter of crockery, but she was not paying a social call, and the rabbi took her into the cramped, cold room that served as his study, which was where troubles were dealt with. Books were what it consisted of, mainly; when her host had set his taper in the grip of a holder, its small, clear light showed them piled like bricks around the flaking plaster of the walls, as if holding up the room.

That had been another constant of her and Rosa’s journey, Esther thought – always a book somewhere, even if the roof had holes in it big enough to see the stars, always a book.

When she’d told him everything, Rabbi Smoleskin pulled at his beard. “That was a sin you connived at, Esther. And seems two poor women died for it.”

“And another girl is in danger. Help me put it right, Rabbi. It’s a big hospital, the Elizabeth. There must be a Jew in it somewhere.”

Knowing her demographic statistics, she had expected Jews in Germany to be few and far between – they were, after all, less than 1 percent of its population – and she had found it extraordinary when she’d finally arrived in Berlin to find that most of its citizens considered themselves swamped by them, an effect created by the Jews’ visibility. They dominated large sections of business, the arts, the professions, owned many of the big department stores – out of all proportion to their numbers. Despite big class differences, despite quarrels between Orthodox and non-Orthodox, the Berlin synagogues were largely in touch, passing information across the great sprawl of the city. Moabit, which poor Jews left when they could, sent out its children, sometimes across the world, more often to better jobs in Berlin itself, and it knew where they were.

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