By Blood (39 page)

I couldn’t say another word, the patient told Dr. Schussler. It was more than I could deal with right then. I just sat there staring at the wall. But then something awful occurred to me.

Michal went looking for you, I said to Leni. She looked for you and found you.

Leni’s response was to drum her fingers on the table, look out the window, finally turn to me. She looked so hard into my eyes that I could hardly stand it.

Yes, she said. Michal looked for me. I am sorry for you to learn this now because—

Michal never looked for me.

Leni’s fingers kept drumming.

Why didn’t she ever look for me?

Leni leaned forward, gripped the edge of the table.

Look. Do not compare our situations. They are not at all the same. You see, once Michal had been exposed as a Jew, she was afraid that the child she had given birth to—me—she was afraid I would become an
Ausschusskind
. Do you know what that is? What they called a garbage child. She was afraid that whoever or whatever was raising me would find out that the mother was Jewish. And they would toss me out, send me to some unspeakable orphanage, where I would become one of the castoffs upon whom the Nazis performed terrible experiments. She could not rest until she knew what had happened to me.

Leni gave a bitter laugh.

Of course I did not become a garbage child or a Nazi experiment. I was being raised in a rich, proper Nazi family who were secretly guarding the future of the race. The first that anyone in Germany knew I was Jewish was when Michal found me.

And how did they know she was Jewish? Leni went on with a laugh. She is so fair and blond. She could have passed for “Aryan.” But she had to say she was Jewish or my German parents never would have let me go—guarding the future of the race, and all that.

I was nine years old. My parents could never again feel the same way toward me. They had never been exactly warm parents, were mainly dutiful. Then … Then Michal appears. She appears and my whole world goes to hell.

Now I did indeed become a sort of garbage child. Because my German parents were too shocked even to look at me. Their obligation was over. Worse, they barely knew what to do with me. I wandered around their house—it was their house now; not mine. I was afraid they would send me—where? Drop me on the doorstep of a synagogue? Leave me in the woods to die? I was actually relieved when Michal came back to get me six months later. She had made the arrangements, and I was off to Israel, the place my German parents had taught me should be wiped off the face of the earth, every Jew within it killed.

She laughed again. The same bitter laugh.

It was terrible, Leni continued. As I told you, I was furious. Hateful. There I was, a product of the Reich, a superior Aryan being, suddenly living in
the Jewish State
.

Oh, she said, sighing. There is no sense reliving it for you. I am sure you can imagine the rest, what awful years I had, what rebellions and scenes. Then somehow it all stopped. Maybe I just matured. Or I resigned myself to the situation. But now—now that I come to think of it—the big change might have been when I began my compulsory service. Michal had a low opinion of the IDF leadership. But when she saw me in uniform—who knows? I looked at her and saw maybe she had some pride in me. In any case … eventually … I made peace with Michal.

Peace? Or what you said before—armistice?

All right. Something in between. But to this day, I will not talk with Michal about what happened after she came for me—I did not want to talk about it with you. I still cannot forgive Michal for destroying my childhood.

We were silent for a time. Leni turned her empty coffee cup around and around.

Then she looked at me, her eyes slowly running over my face.

So now you know, she said.

I looked back at her. She was crumpled into her chair. Her eyes were vague, unfocused. And I saw what telling this story had cost her.

Thank you, I said to her as gently as I could.

Yes, said Leni, low and soft. Look what Michal had done to me. She expected to save me, not plunge me into years of self-hatred.

And when she saw me standing there …

It was nothing about you.

What I thought were bad memories—

Nothing about you.

What she saw was …

The wreck of my life, said my sister.

Immediately she stood up and began bustling around, opening and closing cabinets, drawers, closets.

With her back to me, she said: Michal will be home soon. I think you should leave before she gets here.

Yes, I said. I think I should go.

Abruptly she spun around.

Yes. Go. Leave. Forget all this. Go back to America. Hold on to the life you have there. This is no place to be looking for love. Michal gave all she had left of love when she sent you away, kept you away. Do not expect anything more.

She will be here any minute, Leni said.

She walked me down the hall. She opened the door. And I turned to her.

Should we stay in touch? I asked.

Leni put her hand on my shoulder. It was electric. Her face like mine, her touch.

I will leave the decision to you, she said.

Doctor and patient sat quietly, the end of the session closing in upon them. Dr. Schussler crossed her legs. When her client said nothing, she crossed them again.

Until the patient finally said:

I don’t know what to think about any of it. It’s all so—

A door slammed somewhere down the corridor. Footsteps raced by.

Our time is up, isn’t it?

Yes, said Dr. Schussler. I am afraid so.

The patient stood but did not open the door.

The doctor rose from her chair; walked toward the patient.

Please do not worry, said Dr. Schussler. There is no need for you to decide anything now. You will need a good deal of time to … integrate Leni into your life, if at all.

They stood quietly for a moment, then the patient said:

Thank you, Dr. Schussler. I mean it. I could not have gone through any of this without you.

And then she went out the door, leaving behind that present for her therapist.

So did we come to the tenth of December, on the cusp of the Christmas therapeutic hiatus.

Suddenly we were deep into the rainy season. Trees writhed and shook, tormented by wind. Umbrellas flipped inside out, shoes were ruined, hats bounced down the street and lay sodden in gutters. Inside the office, the windows rattled in their sashes, the glass fogged, and the radiators spat and hissed and clanged in valiant effort against the cold. Across the way, the windows of the Hotel Palace glowed golden against the soaked gray stone of the facade. A bellman hefted up a suitcase in one room; two young girls jumped on the bed in another. One felt content to be indoors on such a day, as indeed I did, curled up like a restless child awaiting a rainy-day tale.

The patient arrived as usual. Without delay, she took her seat. And then, in an odd, tense voice, she said:

Something very strange has happened.

Oh? replied the doctor.

Here, said the patient. Read this.

There came the sound of crinkling paper, the doctor humming as she read.

God! the doctor whispered under her breath.

They say they’re very sorry for the long delay. I got it yesterday. This morning I called them.

And?

They don’t keep any kind of archive. There’s no such person as Colin Masters.

(Oh, God, no!)

A gasp escaped from the doctor.

So who the hell has been writing to me? shouted the patient. How the hell did anyone know about any of this? Did you—?

No! said the doctor. How can you think that?

Right, said the patient. So who? I went back and looked at all the envelopes I’d gotten, and not one came from Chicago. It had a letterhead saying Greater Chicago Catholic Adoption Services, but every single envelope was postmarked San Francisco. How could I have been so stupid to not see it?

You were excited, said Dr. Schussler. Why would you look for that?

But who’s been writing to me? Who? Someone arranged for me to find my mother. Someone’s screwing around with my life. Who’s doing this?
Who!

A long break in the conversation followed. The radiators clanged. Car horns played. The doorman’s taxi whistle wailed again and again, as if in vain.

I knew it, the doctor said just above a whisper. I knew it.

What? asked the patient.

Shhh
came from the doctor.

Why?

Please keep your voice down. Be still. Do not move. I just cannot—I am sorry. Stay here.

She marched toward our common door. Where she stopped, standing so close that her angry breaths seemed to fall directly upon me.

I know you are there, she said in a venomous voice. I know what you have been doing.

Then she raced from her office and positioned herself before my outer door. Where she began pounding. Open up! she shouted. Open up! The door shook in its hinges. The doorknob rattled. Open up! she shouted again.

Help me! I screamed in my mind to my marble sentries. Send her away, my hard-stone guardians!

Yet she pounded on.

Open up! Open up this minute! I know you are in there.

I know you are in there.

I looked at the transom: shut. At the deadbolt: secured.

Open up! she kept shouting.

At last Dr. Schussler gave up her pounding, then stood still on the other side of the door. Her breath came between clenched teeth. The position of her mouth, her foot, the place where her fist had met the door—from these points, I could see the outline of her body. Feel the strength that had rattled the doorknob. She was tall—and so strong! She was not the tiny woman of a certain age I had imagined. Now only the thin square of fruitwood, so tenderly varnished, hid me from her. The brass fittings—hinges, lock, handle, worn by time—they were all that stood between me and the sudden appearance of Dr. Schussler in the living flesh.

For a slim second, I think of revealing myself, doing as she commands. Open the door, confess my existence, the role I had played. I almost welcomed it: discovery.

When abruptly Dr. Schussler stepped back, returned to her office, slammed the door.

I always knew there was something strange about that room, she said to the patient.

You mean someone was in there listening?
Is
listening now?

I should not have told you. But there were calls, breathing, I feared … Forgive me. This outburst. It should not have happened. But now. Now we have no choice.

Yes, said the patient. No choice.

We were all together for one long moment more.

Then came a click. And the breath of the sound machine rose like a foul mist on the air, thick as a closing curtain, designed to hide the patient from me forever, before we had come to the end.

Pushkin Press was founded in 1997. Having first rediscovered European classics of the twentieth century, Pushkin now publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books, and everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary. Pushkin Press books, like this one, represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world. Pushkin publishes widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Hermann Hesse, as well as some of the most exciting contemporary and often prize-winning writers, including Pietro Grossi, Héctor Abad, Filippo Bologna and Andrés Neuman.

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You can hear the BBC recording of “Hatikvah” as sung by the Bergen- Belsen internees at http://soundcloud.com/pushkinpress/bergen-belsensurvivors- sing .

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