"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

For the first time, she looked straight at him.
"You have come for the kids, right?"

"You have come for them. She complained again, that whore. She whores around in Vienna with the Americans, she gives me her kids to keep and almost no money, and she wants me to treat them like kings."
A slight noise of bare feet. Reb turned around. The three little boys had just appeared. One of them had a bluish bruise on a cheekbone; all three had whip marks on their legs.
"I have also come about them," said Reb. "She asked me to see how they were. Now will you kindly answer my questions, please."
She lowered her eyes first and said, with rancor: "I could put a little bacon in the soup."
"I was about to ask you to," said Reb, still looking at her.
He began to ask her questions. Who had engaged her, in September of 1941, as housekeeper in the Klimrod home? A
man named Epke, she said. This Epke, was he the owner of the house? No. In that case, who was above Epke and gave him orders? She couldn't remember his name. Rob smiled, moved his head. "Tttttt She really could not remember, she said. At least, not his name. But the man, yes. The boss.
"A very tall and very handsome man. Blond."
"In uniform?"
"In SS uniform," said the woman. "He was at least a general. He didn't come often."
And in September of 1941 were there still any servants in the house who had been there for a long time? For years? For example, a very old man with white hair whose name was Anton?

And did she know where Anton was today?
"He is dead," she said. "Right before Christmas of that year. He was run over by a military truck."
And no one else from the former staff? No one else. She and the four other servants had been engaged at the same time. By Epke?
"Yes."
She had unhooked a piece of bacon from a beam in the ceiling, had cut off a slice, then, after a moment's hesitation, a second one.
"One more, please," said Reb. "One for each child. And I think they could eat three or four more potatoes."
And how was the Klimrod house furnished the day she had entered it for the first time? She did not understand the question. "Furnished? Yes, of course," she said, surprised.
"The potatoes, please," said Reb. "Not too small."
And did she remember the books, thousands of them? Yes. And the paintings? Yes, there were paintings, many of them, if you could call them paintings; and also things in fabric, hanging on the walls; yes, tapestries. And statues.
Reb moved. His last walk had drained his remaining strength. He was afraid that this exhaustion, showing on his face, might weaken his position with this woman. He moved to a darker area and, to make himself taller, raised his arms, grabbing the beam that held the bacon.
"In the library, where there were all the books, there was a small elevator. Do you remember it?"
She had just finished peeling the potatoes. Her fat hand that held the sharp knife, thumb pressed against the tip of the blade, stopped moving. She frowned, searching her memory.
"A thing like a dumbwaiter? Which was hidden behind a board with drawings on it?"
The "board" was the tabernacle shutter. "Yes," said Reb. She remembered it. She had even opened it once, by accident, and had been shocked to discover the apparatus that no one had ever mentioned to her.
"When was this?"
"Before Christmas."
"Of 1941?"

"When exactly? In December?"
"Before."
"November, October?"
"November."
A few weeks after she was engaged. Reb's fingers tightened around the beam.
"Was there anything in the elevator?"
She said, right away: "A chair with wheels."
Had she looked at him at that moment, she would have realized how weak, how defenseless, and how despairing he was. But she was busying herself under the cauldron, rekindling the embers and adding wood. He walked out.
After a moment, he called the children and, when they had joined him docilely, he had them undress in front of the trough fed by a thin stream of clear water brought by a line of hollowed-out tree trunks. He washed them one by one.
"Do you have any soap, please?"
"And what else?" she sneered, in a tone that proved she was pulling herself together.
He cleaned the wounds as best he could, had them get dressed. He turned to the woman.
"When did you leave this employment in Vienna?"
"February. At the end of the month."
"And the furniture, the books, the paintings were still there?"
They had been moved out the night before she left, she said. Three army trucks driven by SS men had come and had taken everything away. At least, almost everything. The next day, secondhand men from Vienna had arrived and taken away the rest. Except for a table too big and too heavy to get through the doors.
"Epke was there?"