[rattigan]

It was 1936. The Olympics. Hitler’s games.
Jesse Owens had just completed the 4 x 100m relay and won his fourth gold medal. Talk that
he was subhuman because he was black and Hitler’s refusal to shake his hand were touted
around the world. Even the most racist Germans were amazed with the efforts of Owens, and
word of his feat slipped through the cracks. No one was more impressed than Rudy Steiner.
Everyone in his family was crowded together in their family room when he slipped out and
made his way to the kitchen. He pulled some charcoal from the stove and gripped it in the
smallness of his hands. “Now.” There was a smile. He was ready.
He smeared the charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair
received a once-over.
In the window, the boy grinned almost maniacally at his reflection, and in his shorts and tank
top, he quietly abducted his older brother’s bike and pedaled it up the street, heading for
Hubert Oval. In one of his pockets, he’d hidden a few pieces of extra charcoal, in case some
of it wore off later.
In Liesel’s mind, the moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around it.
The rusty bike crumbled to a halt at the Hubert Oval fence line and Rudy climbed over. He
landed on the other side and trotted weedily up toward the beginning of the hundred.
Enthusiastically, he conducted an awkward regimen of stretches. He dug starting holes into
the dirt.
Waiting for his moment, he paced around, gathering concentration under the darkness sky,
with the moon and the clouds watching, tightly.
“Owens is looking good,” he began to commentate. “This could be his greatest victory ever. .
. .”
He shook the imaginary hands of the other athletes and wished them luck, even though he
knew. They didn’t have a chance.
The starter signaled them forward. A crowd materialized around every square inch of Hubert
Oval’s circumference. They were all calling out one thing. They were chanting Rudy
Steiner’s name—and his name was Jesse Owens.
All fell silent.
His bare feet gripped the soil. He could feel it holding on between his toes.
At the request of the starter, he raised to crouching position—and the gun clipped a hole in
the night.
For the first third of the race, it was pretty even, but it was only a matter of time before the
charcoaled Owens drew clear and streaked away.
“Owens in front,” the boy’s shrill voice cried as he ran down the empty track, straight toward
the uproarious applause of Olympic glory. He could even feel the tape break in two across his
chest as he burst through it in first place. The fastest man alive.
It was only on his victory lap that things turned sour. Among the crowd, his father was
standing at the finish line like the bogeyman. Or at least, the bogeyman in a suit. (As
previously mentioned, Rudy’s father was a tailor. He was rarely seen on the street without a
suit and tie. On this occasion, it was only the suit and a disheveled shirt.)“Was ist los?” he said
to his son when he showed up in all his charcoal glory. “What the hell
is going on here?” The crowd vanished. A breeze sprang up. “I was asleep in my chair when
Kurt noticed you were gone. Everyone’s out looking for you.”
Mr. Steiner was a remarkably polite man under normal circumstances. Discovering one of his
children smeared charcoal black on a summer evening was not what he considered normal
circumstances. “The boy is crazy,” he muttered, although he conceded that with six kids,
something like this was bound to happen. At least one of them had to be a bad egg. Right
now, he was looking at it, waiting for an explanation. “Well?”
Rudy panted, bending down and placing his hands on his knees. “I was being Jesse Owens.”
He answered as though it was the most natural thing on earth to be doing. There was even
something implicit in his tone that suggested something along the lines of, “What the hell
does it look like?” The tone vanished, however, when he saw the sleep deprivation whittled
under his father’s eyes.
“Jesse Owens?” Mr. Steiner was the type of man who was very wooden. His voice was
angular and true. His body was tall and heavy, like oak. His hair was like splinters. “What
about him?”
“You know, Papa, the Black Magic one.”
“I’ll give you black magic.” He caught his son’s ear between his thumb and forefinger.
Rudy winced. “Ow, that really hurts.”
“Does it?” His father was more concerned with the clammy texture of charcoal contaminating
his fingers. He covered everything, didn’t he? he thought. It’s even in his ears, for God’s sake.
“Come on.”
On the way home, Mr. Steiner decided to talk politics with the boy as best he could. Only in
the years ahead would Rudy understand it all— when it was too late to bother understanding
anything.

THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICSOF ALEX STEINER
Point One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did nothate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter.
Point Two: Secretly, though, he couldn’t help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse—gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business—propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers.
Point Three: But did that mean they should be driven out completely?
Point Four: His family. Surely, he had to do whatever he could to support them. If that meant being in the party, it meant being in the party.
Point Five: Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid ofwhat might come leaking out.

They walked around a few corners onto Himmel Street, and Alex said, “Son, you can’t go
around painting yourself black, you hear?”
Rudy was interested, and confused. The moon was undone now, free to move and rise and fall
and drip on the boy’s face, making him nice and murky, like his thoughts. “Why not, Papa?”
“Because they’ll take you away.”
“Why?”
“Because you shouldn’t want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is . . .
not us. ”
“Who are Jewish people?”
“You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s Jewish.”
“I didn’t know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?”
“No, Rudy.” Mr. Steiner was steering the bike with one hand and Rudy with the other. He
was having trouble steering the conversation. He still hadn’t relinquished the hold on his
son’s earlobe. He’d forgotten about it. “It’s like you’re German or Catholic.”
“Oh. Is Jesse Owens Catholic?”
“I don’t know!” He tripped on a bike pedal then and released the ear.
They walked on in silence for a while, until Rudy said, “I just wish I was like Jesse Owens,
Papa.”
This time, Mr. Steiner placed his hand on Rudy’s head and explained, “I know, son—but
you’ve got beautiful blond hair and big, safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that
clear?”
But nothing was clear.
Rudy understood nothing, and that night was the prelude of things to come. Two and a half
years later, the Kaufmann Shoe Shop was reduced to broken glass, and all the shoes were
flung aboard a truck in their boxes.

Это и правда хорошая книжка. Вообще она из тех, про которые плохого-то и не скажут, из-за тематики. Примерно та же фигня происходит с Оскаром кстати. Недавно видела афишу фильма, на которой с каким-то даже апломбом было указано что это главный претендент на Оскар. На афише. То есть вы фильма еще не видели, а вам - уже. Я не знаю, может он хороший, но там про рабство и... ну в общем вы поняли.
Но она правда хорошая. И, что со мной случается довольно редко, мне действительно нравится то, как она написана, какой язык. Уж не знаю, имею ли я моральное право рассуждать об этом в отношении английского языка, потому что в отношении русского - определённо нет. Но вот такие дела.