By Blood (25 page)

Here’s where my recording starts, the patient said to Dr. Schussler.

There came clicks and whirring sounds, then a voice that penetrated the scratch and hiss of the tape.

And what a voice it was! Just as the patient had described it: low, resonant, a choir of sound. Now came a creamed-coffee alto, now a bourbon baritone, here and there a sprinkle of soprano laughter. The accent was too complex and blended for me to place. German, British English, Hebrew—but others seemed to play below the surface. Which? I did not know. Yet the accent was all the more alluring for the hidden identities of its components: a caravan of languages reflecting Michal Gershon’s sojourns through the world.

On the tape the patient and her mother are drinking tea—one could hear the occasional clicks of cups and spoons and saucers, the pauses as one or the other stops to drink. I imagined them in their armchairs, the tea set between them on a low table, the dim room surrounding them, the scrim of light that curtained the space.

Slowly I was able to strip Michal’s voice of its accent, of the age that had roughened the tone. And I was overcome by the recognition: It was the patient’s voice!

The patient was not an alien on this earth. She did indeed “look” like someone. Except it was not on the mere surface. She had inherited the more profound interior configuration of the body, the subtle crenellations of lung and diaphragm and sinuses, the delicate architecture of the airways; all of which combine to produce that aspect which is last noted but finally most determinant of one’s overall feelings about a person: that which produces a sense of pleasure or displeasure in her presence, an awareness of her graciousness or lack of it, a tug of intrigue or a drone of boredom; that which makes the plainest woman magnetic, the one most visually lovely an irritant: the voice.

Did the patient know this? Was she aware—when she described her mother’s voice as beautiful, low and resonant—that it was so similar to her own? Fixed as she was—as fixed as her adoptive mother had made her be—upon the surface features, the colors of eyes and hair, it was unlikely that the patient understood the quality of her own voice: its divinity. Had no one told her?

Our house had twelve bedrooms, her mother began, in the warm sound that was the ancestor to the patient’s voice. Eighteen fireplaces, a ballroom, Michal went on. Can you imagine this today? A very large room reserved for the rare social occasion called “a ball”? Four servants lived on the attic floor. Oh God! What a vanished world! Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and still hear the Berlin of my childhood.

She spoke of horses neighing, the ring of bicycle bells, the drone of organ-grinders. Trams rumbling down the boulevards. Cars racing in the streets, jamming the roads, backfiring and stinking.

My father was an art dealer, she said. Not that he made any money at it. He collected art out of a passion for it. Grandfather was very rich. And he did not mind funding my father’s artistic pursuits. My grandfather’s idea was: What is the use of having all this money if we cannot subsidize the artists and dreamers in this damned family?

She took several sips of tea.

We were the Rothmans, you see. Of the “Joseph A. Rothman and Company” Rothmans. The maker of the finest textiles. Established in 1809 by my great-great-great-grandfather. But you don’t even know my original name.

She laughed.

I was Margarette, Margarette Rothman. Oh, there was another whole life in that name. For seventeen years, I had that esteemed name and that wonderful life, from the “before time.” I saw my last ball in our ballroom when I was fourteen, the last swirl of dresses, the last incense of perfumes, the last salons.

The Rothmans, Michal continued. My father’s side of the family. They had lived in and around Berlin for three hundred years. My mother’s family was a more recent arrival.

She laughed.

Only a hundred years.

You see, she said after a pause, we were later called anti-German elements. I ask you, how many hundred years does it take to become a German?

We did not think of ourselves as Jews, you must understand. We considered ourselves to be … in English you would say, “Germans of Hebrew Heritage.” What we inherited: so many silver wine cups and little spice boxes. Otherwise no different from the Germans who were Protestant or Catholic.

The German Jewish community was very, very rich, very established. You must understand this, what the world was like for us then. Imagine it: the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse. A magnificent structure. Crowned by three domes. My parents told me that the emperor himself attended the opening in 1912. Seats for seventeen hundred people. It was our cathedral. Seventeen hundred well-dressed German Jews gathered for the Jewish New Year.

Her voice became bitter.

Our cathedral did not stand for long. I last saw it just before my parents left. It was destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht.

You see how they came to hate us.

Why would they come to hate you? the patient on the tape asked her mother.

Because we were doing too well. Ah. Here is the new pot of tea at last.

See the pattern on this set? said Michal after she had served the tea to the sounds of clicking cups and clanging silver. Look at the roses, the tiny roses. Each painted by hand. This is Rosenthal porcelain. From before the war, I mean before the first war. I searched and searched in the Sunday markets until I found it: the pattern my mother had for her dinner service. I have just these two cups and saucers and the creamer.

All gone. My mother’s beautiful things. Service for twenty-four, all the pieces you can imagine on a table.

She said nothing for several seconds; there came the sound of her settling back in her chair.

All gone, she said again. Looted by my husband’s family with the help of the Nazis. All the china and silver and crystal and linen. The feather beds and sofas. The mahogany furniture and the paintings—let’s not forget the fortune in fine art carried away by the Nazis—all the things they were jealous of and hated us for. Looted by that band of thieves.

I don’t understand, the patient said. Your husband’s family?

Michal sighed, almost a sob.

I’m getting ahead of myself, she said. Let me go back. Let me stay awhile longer in that … in that “before time.”

She stopped to drink her tea, then said:

Oh! We knew everyone. All the famous artists of Weimar, and the ones who would become famous, some of them because of Father. There was Max Liebermann, of course. Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Hannah Hoch, Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner. But do you know even one of these painters?

The patient must have shaken her head no.

Ach! Of course not, she said. American cultural limitations. I am sure you know no one but Monet and Picasso.

Renoir? said the patient weakly. Degas?

Her mother laughed.

I am sorry, dear. Most everyone loves the Impressionists. But hatred of them was one of the liveliest parts of our evenings. Our drawing room was crowded every night my mother was receiving—Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays. The artists and their girlfriends—or boyfriends, in some cases. Musicians and poets. My sister’s beauties. Hangers-on and would-bes. Desperate former members of Russian nobility and society. Intellectuals. Professors. Not once did the question of our being Jews have any part of these evenings—oh, yes, there was one time.

Ludwig Meidner was drunk, said Michal. Meidner, the painter. He held forth one night, excoriating Max Liebermann for having altered his scandalous portrait of Jesus in the temple. It was an old painting, from 1879 or 1880, but it remained controversial among the artists in the drawing room. In it, Max originally showed a twelve-year-old Jesus talking to the elders. One elder wore a Jewish prayer shawl. But the real problem—for the crown prince of Bavaria, among others—was that Jesus was portrayed as Semitic, swarthy. How brave! How new! It was maybe Max’s best painting, because so much of his work was derivative of Corot and Manet. Too many
Münchner Biergärten
and
Bäuerinnen
. And in the middle of all that work was this daring painting: Jesus as a Jew. Of course, what else could Jesus have been—a Hindu?

Max wasn’t there that night. This took place in about … Let’s see. I was twelve. Max was an old man by then, and he had retreated to his country house on the Wannsee. Huh! The house on the Wannsee. Expropriated later, of course. Only to become the site of the Wannsee Conference. You know the Wannsee Conference?

Where the final solution was planned, said the patient. Ah! said her mother. This you know.

There came the sound of clicking silverware, someone shifting in her chair, sighs.

But I am getting ahead of myself again, said the patient’s mother. Let me go back …

A long pause followed, the tape hissing.

So everyone was there that night, in the drawing room, Michal went on, her voice striving but just failing to reach its former energy. And drunken Meidner was shouting and swinging his glass about, she said. He was in his late thirties, a madman; his paintings were challenging, dark, angry. He began railing about how Liebermann had repainted the picture. The coward! No painter with respect for himself and the craft would do such a thing! Repainting the finished canvas—what kind of coward does such a thing? Repainted Jesus, turned him into a little blond darling. A blond boy! To satisfy the fine German sensibilities—Jesus had to be a
Münchner
, German, Aryan. Why not just put a Bier stein in his hand?

Everyone was yelling. Why go into this now? Aren’t things bad enough for Jews? Meidner was a Jew. Max Liebermann was a Jew, but only as the Rothmans were: just barely.

Every good memory leads to the bad, Michal went on, her voice almost a whisper. It is impossible to keep “before” and “after” separate in one’s mind. Weren’t things bad enough for the Jews? Ah! If only that had been the worst. One looks back and sees that there were fissures through which we might have seen the future, but of course one lives drenched in the past, that wet cloak that weighs around one’s shoulders.

The patient stopped the tape.

Michal shuddered, she told Dr. Schussler. Just as if a cold wet cloak had actually dropped on her. Then she called for Gerda to come and take away the tray and told me, You have to leave now. I’ll tell you the whole story, but it must come slowly. Come tomorrow at the same time and we’ll resume.

I rose without question and walked toward the far end of the room. Obeying, allowing myself to be sent away. Then—maybe because I had put some distance between us—before I left the room, it came to me that I still did not have an answer to the one question I’d been determined to ask. So I walked back and stood over her.

But I have to ask you, I said. You must tell me … When I walked in here, you knew me right away. I know you’re tired. But you can’t understand what it’s like to live not looking like anyone. Not related to anyone. Please: You knew me immediately. So who is it? Who do I look like?

Her face went blank for a moment, and I was afraid she would shout and wave me away again. But then she smiled, very slowly, very sadly. My sister, she said finally. You have her face exactly. Her figure. Her grace. Your pointed chin, the haze of hair around your face. It was as if my sister had come back from the grave and stood before me.

Nothing of my father?

Her face hardened. She snorted. Ha! Whoever that might be.

I looked down at my watch and was shocked to see that the session had gone well overtime. I had been so engrossed in the story that I had lost track of the hour; perhaps this had happened to Dr. Schussler as well, I thought. But then in a soft voice she said:

We have gone overtime tonight because I thought it best not to interrupt you. Sometimes a session is that critical, and I wanted to let you continue as long as possible. But I am afraid we must stop now.

I understand, said the patient. And thank you.

But before you go, let me ask: Did you believe what your mother told you?

About?

About your looking like her sister.

Well … Yes … I did. And I have since. But now I suppose …

She stopped speaking, and there was hardly a sigh or a crinkle of leather issuing from the neighboring office. This went on for a good half minute, an eternity in a conversation, until the patient said at last:

I guess it all fit so well with my fantasy. When big-M Mother first told me the whole story, she kept asking me if I really wanted to know the truth. Remember? And I had a moment where I wanted to cling on to one last fantasy. The rich woman in her house in Berlin who held salons. A grand house full of the intelligentsia of prewar Europe. And here was my actual birth mother fitting right into that dream. But something in me knew it was all too good to be true. A mother so beautiful, still young-looking but for that problem with her back or her hip—oh, that just makes the story better: a war wound of some kind, from a bombing, maybe. Then add artists of Weimar. And
then
the beautiful lesbian sister. And I look like her!

She paused. I really did want to believe her. But now that you ask …

She was quiet for perhaps twenty seconds, then said:

Why are you asking?

It only seems odd, said Dr. Schussler, that she would not have told you right from the beginning. Why not, when you walked in, say, My God! The image of my beloved sister! Or when she told you Gisella was a lesbian—why not then?

The patient hummed. Maybe I sensed that. Maybe I did. So you think … You think she’s not saying …

She could be telling you some things she believes you would like to hear, said Dr. Schussler. Also perhaps what she would prefer to remember.

I don’t understand. Is there something else you think was, well, a lie?

Weimar was not … Germany was … It was a very difficult time.