By Blood (20 page)

The patient was early. The ten o’clock client still had eight minutes remaining in his session; then the therapist would take her ten-minute intersession break: eighteen minutes to wait, during which there was nowhere for the patient to be but in the hallway, marching up and down that long, dim corridor, under the watchful eyes of the marble sentries.

I thought I heard the crinkling of paper. Yes: Surely she carried the envelope I had sent her. In her very hands the paper I had held! Was hers a march of anxiety or excitement? Each time she retreated down the corridor, I feared it was the former, anxiety, and I rued sending the envelope so precipitously. But as the patient turned back toward me, I encouraged myself to believe that her early arrival, so unusual and uncharacteristic, was a sign of happy anticipation.

Up and down she walked, my spirits rising and falling, when finally the door to Dr. Schussler’s office opened. She bade goodbye to her ten o’clock, then, seeing the patient, said:

I will be just a few minutes. You can go in if you like.

The sound machine went silent. The doctor left. The door was open. The patient went in, took her seat. The envelope rustled in her hands.

For ten minutes we sat, the patient and I, each on our respective side of our common wall—this time with the door to the corridor open. I could hear each breath she took, each slight sniffle, each tiny crease of the parcel she held—my parcel! I had no choice but to sit absolutely still, for surely, should I even breathe deeply or shift a leg, she would hear me just as clearly as I was hearing her. It was a delicious intimacy: this side-by-side anticipation.

At last I heard the doctor’s limping footfalls on the carpet. At last she crossed the threshold of her door, closed it shut behind her. And in that instant the patient said:

I got something!

Yes?

I got something back from one of the agencies, about my adoption!

(It was a cry of happiness!)

Let me read this to you, she said to the therapist.

Then she read aloud the letter from “Colin Masters.”

(My words in her mouth!)

The therapist gasped upon hearing the name “Bergen-Belsen.” Then she sat immobile until the letter’s end.

Isn’t that wonderful? said the patient. I know where my mother was. I know where I came from. The Bergen-Belsen displaced-persons camp, in Celle, Germany. And maybe he’ll send me more information. Here. Look at the pictures he sent.

I could hear the rest of the papers being withdrawn from the envelope, the sound of the doctor shuffling through them.

Finally Dr. Schussler said: Some of these pictures are quite shocking. Are you sure you are not dispirited by them?

No, said the patient. Not at all. I looked at the women preparing food, at the babies. One of them might be me! I can’t explain my excitement. Here. I existed here. I don’t come from some vague unknown gray space in the universe, but from this particular place, a place on a map. I can’t explain it. I felt a kind of realness that I had never experienced before.
Physical
realness.

She paused.

And I wish I could play for you the cassette I received, she went on. It’s a recording of the just-liberated inmates singing a Hebrew song. I have never heard anything so … heartbreaking in my life. If one of the voices was my mother’s, I couldn’t be prouder of her than if she’d been—I don’t know who, the Queen of Sheba. Do you understand? I come from these extraordinary people, I realized I am … overwhelmed with … Oh, God. I can’t express it.

The patient stuttered softly, as if she was considering, then discarding, words that might describe her state. Joy! I wanted to supply. Joy is what you are feeling!

The therapist said nothing for a full minute, which allowed her patient to experience the moment silently, a change of technique for the doctor, for in the past she would have pressed in by now with “Any words?” or “Do you feel this is related to …?”

Then, being the horrid woman she was, she said:

Have you told your parents?

Huh? said the patient, awakening from her joyous dream.

Your mother and father, your adoptive parents. Have you told them about your news?

The patient bolted upright in her chair.

No! she said in a dark, ugly voice, one that seemed to come from a creature other than the young woman just finding her happiness. Why should I tell them? she went on, speaking as a dybbuk. Mother forbade me to discuss this matter further. “Forbade”: her word.

Well, said the doctor, because they are the ones who raised you and think of you as their daughter. And I do not believe it is in your interest to keep shutting them out of your thoughts.

How dare the doctor do this! The patient immediately reverted to the depressed creature she had been. Her joy was banished; her newly found life was roped to the old one; her sense of being real suddenly made false again. It had to be the work of Dr. Schussler’s guilt, I decided. All that angst over her Nazi father’s misdeeds—the moment Dr. Schussler saw the pictures of Bergen-Belsen—up it rose.

It was more than I could bear. I shut my ears to the rest of the session!

I was more determined than ever to get information about her mother to the patient. I could not leave her alone in the clutches of that Nazi daughter. The therapist’s professionalism had crumbled at the very idea of Bergen-Belsen. I thanked God that the patient had not been adopted out of Drancy, the transit camp into which the doctor’s Obersturmbannführer father had dumped the Jews of France. Who knows what ugly motives hide in the shade of guilt?

I continued my research and soon found information I believed would hearten the patient.

After liberation, the camp disappeared from the news. Then it reappeared in dramatic fashion: with coverage of the “Lüneburg trials,” British military tribunals at which the guards and commandants of Bergen-Belsen faced justice. It was not the content of the trials I wished to communicate—the transcripts made for grim reading—but an event that happened concurrently: a meeting in Belsen of hundreds of Jews from the British zone.

The organizers did not ask for permission from the British; it would have been refused in any case. But a Jewish leadership had arisen spontaneously, in the earliest days after liberation. Taking advantage of the Lüneburg trials and the arrival of many foreigners, they organized the “First Congress,” as they called it. By the time the meeting was over several days later, the Jewish internees had elected their own leadership, their own governing councils, their own committee members. At the head of this “government” was one Yossele Rosensaft.

I thought it remarkable that the survivors should outwit their British overseers and establish, so quickly, a self-governing community. It was this dynamism I hoped to convey to the patient. Perhaps she could see that this Bergen-Belsen, the D.P. camp, was no longer Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp.

There was a newspaper photograph of Rosensaft. It shows a compact man in a dark suit whose body, in another life, might have been that of a gymnast. His hairline is receding; his brow wide and noble; his head and face distinctly triangular in shape; his eyes intense. The reports describe him as a charismatic, a “man of the people.” I thought the patient would be proud to know the stock from which she came—rebels, organizers, fighters.

I quickly assembled this information, including copies of news reports and photographs, and mailed it to the patient the day after her session. But the postal clerk could not promise delivery by the following Wednesday morning. It might not arrive before her next session!

I therefore passed a fitful week. Temptation lured me into thinking that it might be best, in the future, to deliver the parcels directly to her door, even to risk her noticing the complete lack of a postal cancellation. There would be no time lag, whispered my demons. You could reach her before she gets back to that Nazi-daughter doctor. You will arm her with hope! they declaimed in my mind.

But I was stronger than they were; the patient was my shield; the demons did not ensorcell me. I put my energies to better use, continuing to assemble information about Belsen, also contacting the agencies that had provided aid to the camp. I wrote to them as a professor doing research for a biography. Did they have any records pertaining to a Belsen internee whose name was given only as Maria G.? I told them all I knew of her—her birth date, the birth date of a child born to her in the camp, the date she surrendered the child for adoption, anything I could recall from the adoptive mother’s story—and begged them to provide any further details their files might reveal.

Still, as busy as I was, the demons kept up their whispering. What will you do, they chided, if Wednesday comes and the patient still has not received your envelope? Will you finally heed us and go to her?

I got another parcel! the patient said gleefully.

(Thank God! I thought.)

She had barely sat down when out came the envelope.

It’s fascinating, she said. What happened there. Amazing!

(I nearly cried aloud with relief.)

The patient withdrew the photographs and passed them to the therapist, all the while relaying (quite accurately) the information I had sent her, going on to extol the achievements of the Belsen internees, their endurance, their determination, their bravery.

The therapist—for once—kept her own counsel. Aside from a few polite invitations for her client to continue—Yes? Really! How interesting!—she said nothing, allowing the patient to talk without interruption for nearly the entire session. The result fulfilled all my hopes: the patient now heartened, able to see beyond the darkness of the Holocaust into the time that followed, the time and place from which she came, about which she could feel pride. And since the information was new to the doctor as well (I presumed), there was nothing she could say to mediate the patient’s newfound happiness. Perhaps it even lightened her own sense of guilt: to know that the remnants of Europe’s Jews were not an entirely defeated people, that her father’s work had not achieved its exterminating goal.

Finally the patient ended her soliloquy, sitting quietly for several minutes, breathing deeply. Until she said:

I had no idea they—we—had such heroism. It’s not something you normally associate with Jews, is it?

The therapist started in her chair, shaken from what seemed her imposed detachment.

Are you referring to me, personally? she asked. Something
I
do not associate with Jews?

No, said the patient, with a laugh. You. One. It’s not something one associates with Jews, is it?

The therapist paused before answering.

There is the stereotype, she said. Such as those we have talked about. The stereotype of the weak Jew, yes.

Lambs to the slaughter, said the patient. Isn’t that what everyone believes, that the Jews went to the Holocaust like lambs to the slaughter?

The therapist gasped. Then coughed.

Excuse me, she said. No, they did not go to the slaughter, she said in a hard voice. They were taken by force.

Of course, the patient said. What was I thinking?

Patient and doctor sat without speaking for a full minute, the tension between them palpable through the door. This therapist has to reveal her bias! I thought. She must not leave the patient with this sense of being unfeeling and uninformed. Just when the patient was making progress in her self-identification as a Jew—how dare Dr. Schussler presume to lecture the patient about the sufferings of the Jewish people!

But the damage was not complete, thank God. The material I had sent the patient prevailed. I heard the rustling of paper, then the patient saying:

Don’t you think I look like him?

The therapist hummed. Let me see again, she said.

Look at the shape of his head, said the patient. Triangular. Like mine. The same narrow chin. Also the brow: very broad, like mine. And the eyes: deep set.

(Yossele Rosensaft!)

Of course he’s darker than I am, the patient went on. But I keep coming back to that distinctive head. It’s rare. So much like mine. It’s what always made me feel like an alien in my family—nobody but me has this weird triangular head. You can’t imagine how hard it is not to look like anyone. And then I saw this picture and … don’t laugh.

She paused.

It came to me that he could be my father.

When the therapist said nothing immediately, the patient jumped in to say:

Or some relative of his. I mean he may not exactly be my father, but … It seemed to me I was part of this family.

(I was filled with joy. How much better that the session was over and the therapist could do nothing to ruin the moment.)

Ah, but look at the hour, said the doctor. We will have to discuss this next time.

All of this was happening too quickly, I thought when I returned home. I was delighted at the patient’s reaction to Rosensaft. Yet her sudden identification with him—the need to see him as her father, instantly, with the evidence of just one photograph—communicated to me the urgency with which I had to find Maria G. The patient had to know her relatives, have hard information about them, what had happened to them, and soon, or else begin to drift into fantasy; thence, I feared, back into depression.

She had said to Dr. Schussler: You can’t imagine how hard it is not to look like anyone.

And I thought of my dear boyhood friend Paul, whose singularity had been a release from oppressive parents—or so I had always supposed. Now, in light of the patient’s words, I relived that distant summer afternoon with Paul’s clippings from his boot boxes. I now considered what anguished energy had driven him to create that collection of aging family faces, in secret, over the course of years: what hard work had gone into convincing himself that looking like one’s kind was not a comfort but a nightmare.

My motives fell into confusion. I had posited Paul as an icon for the patient, and for myself, an image of the self-created individual, freed from the ownership implied in the inheritance of one’s parents’ genes: You are not of them; they do not own you; you owe them only the normal gratitude for having been raised up and fed by them; you may become what you need to be.

Yet now I wondered: Was I doing the right thing in aiding the patient’s search for her mother? I thought of her twenty-ninth birthday. Celebrated in Puerta Vallarta. Quietly? Privately? Not telling the sexy Dorotea? The patient did not say. On the day of her birthday, December 26th, I had sat alone in my office, pondering her experience of that singular day: the first in which the “birth” portion had acquired flesh.

Now she knew she had come out of the body of a particular woman, a Maria G., in a physical act, at a specific time, in a specific place. Did this fact overwhelm all the prior birthdays? Did the old birthdays suddenly seem to be vaguely superfluous affairs, parties with cakes yielding over the years to dinners with wine, all the while detached from their origins, the physical facts, from the blood and guts of
birth
?

At none of her prior birthday parties could her mother—the woman she called Mother—at no time could this woman embarrass the patient with tales of her hard labor, the hours of pushing and breathing, the pain of the child actually coming out of her loins, the months following wherein she knew she would never again have that taut belly, those pert breasts. Therefore she had no guilt to lay upon her adopted child, who did not owe anything to this woman for a body robbed of youth.

But now there was a body, a mother to whom a physical debt was due. And not just any mother, but a Jewish one. The patient was thereby lashed not only to Maria G. but, through her, to an entire tribe, thousands of years of history, familial relationships going back in time—if one believes it—all the way to Avram, who took the name Abraham as he accepted the One God.

Was it wrong of me to abet the patient’s search, to “flesh out”—literally—the reality of Maria G.? It had all happened stepwise, I told myself. The adoptive mother was cold and rejecting. The patient was alone. The therapist could not divert her client from a quest for origins. The patient had fallen victim to the dark, circling birds of depression. And I had to help her; I was the only one who could help her. And now that I had stepped upon the path of information-giver, whetting her appetite, it was more urgent than ever that she receive an answer to the question she had posed above all others: Where did I come from?

I spent the night feverishly assembling another packet. I had to send something—anything, to extemporize until I had the hard information I needed. Fortunately I had already gathered information related to the orphaned children at Belsen. The patient herself was not an orphan. As far as we knew, her mother was very much alive when she had been surrendered. Yet I thought the patient would feel closer to her origins if she saw the photographs of the children at Belsen, and their caregiver, the camp doctor, Hadassah Bimko.

In the summer of 1945, Jewish institutions in Britain tried to move some of Belsen’s children to England, in a humane gesture. Yet Bimko and the rest of the camp leadership ferociously fought this plan. They wanted their children to go to Eretz Yisrael or else stay with their own people in the camp. And they achieved their goal of emigration. In April 1946, about a year after the camp’s liberation, the British issued special certificates for children, and Hadassah Bimko led a hundred of Belsen’s orphans to Palestine.

I thought the patient would be cheered by this story and moved by the example of Hadassah Bimko (the only woman in the camp’s leadership, as far as I could tell). The next morning, Thursday, as soon as the stores opened, I rushed to make xeroxes of the photographs at a copy shop, and then was first in line at the post office with my envelope. I had enclosed a note saying, “From the information you have given us, we do not believe you were orphaned in the Bergen-Belsen displaced-persons camp. However, we thought you might wish to see what happened to other youngsters who, like yourself, had spent their early days in the camp.”

That would hold the patient for a week, I hoped. Then what relief I felt when she did not begin the next session with questions about her mother. Instead there came a panicked cry about her work.

It’s pandemonium! she said. You’d think the world had come to an end. May Day, May Day! everyone keeps shouting, because the change took place on May 1st, and we feel like we’re going down.

Evidently there had been some change in rules surrounding brokerage trades. If I understood the patient correctly (something that required great concentration on my part, as I had never traded stocks and bonds in all of my life, an inexperience shared with most of the United States population), commissions on securities sales had been a fixed percentage, no matter how large or small the trade. Now, however, the percentages could vary and could be negotiated. I did not see how this mattered so very much, but to the patient and her colleagues the change was “momentous” and “deal-changing” and “a jolt to the industry.”

We will need to recalculate everything, she exclaimed.

But the therapist—damn her!—did not allow the patient to continue talking about this “momentous” change in her client’s working life. All too soon, Dr. Schussler posed the how-are-you-really question. And the patient replied: I got another packet in the mail. About a woman in the camp. Bimko, Hadassah Bimko, a doctor. Of course I wondered, despite myself, if she knew my mother. And if I should try to find this Bimko.

How would you go about it? asked Dr. Schussler.

I’ll write to that nice Colin Masters, she said, to see if he knows anything about where Bimko is.

No! I thought. She could not write to the agency—of course there was no Colin Masters there.

I could no longer wait for replies from the agencies I had contacted; I had to make progress, and quickly. I began making phone calls: to each agency, to different departments in each agency, to different people in the different departments—I would make a pest of myself, I decided, until I found someone with information about the mysterious Maria G.

The days went by. I did not go to the office; I stayed home in my bare, mean cottage with my telephone. My calls became more urgent. Another week passed. I put together some random information for the patient—pictures of the camp schools, youngsters doing calisthenics—any photograph showing a child in Belsen, buying myself further time. My efforts were successful; the patient spoke favorably of the parcels. Yet concurrently with her growing knowledge of the camp there grew in her a surging desire to know the true facts of her origins. She became impatient with the therapist; she was annoyed by her work; she was restless and anxious. She began to question the motives of “that Colin Masters.” Why was he being so helpful? she wondered. What role had he played in my abduction? I was afraid for her, for myself; I kept up my calls.

Then, after two weeks of telephoning and being transferred from extension to extension, I reached a Mr. Linder in the New York offices of the Jewish Agency. It was nine in the morning New York time, and I found him at his desk. I told him I was working on a biography of a woman who had lived for a time in the Bergen-Belsen displaced-persons camp. I knew but a fragment of her name: Maria G. I explained I wished to chronicle her experiences after her release.

Great! he said. Terrific. You professors haven’t done much about what happened to Jews after the war. So what you need to do is send a request letter on university stationery. I think to a Mrs. Knobloch in Tel Aviv. Wait. It’s just about four p.m. in Israel, and she might still be in. It’s no problem to call her—we make calls to Israel at the drop of a hat; we have everyone’s number. If she’s there—or an assistant or a secretary—I’ll found out if she’s the right contact. And I’ll get her address.

A request on university stationery.

I panicked while I waited three long minutes until Mr. Linder came back on the line. Did I have any university stationery with me? Yes, I told myself, yes, I would find it, somewhere in my dreadful cottage, I would find it. But if the stationery is not there! Make a fake letterhead, I told myself. Like the one for the Chicago agency. A print shop: a fake. Better yet, I would say that I had already delivered my formal letter of request—to whom? Whom else had I called? The Immigrant Hebrew Aid Society. Why not? Yes, I’ll say that.

Thus somewhat becalmed by the last resort of deception, I did not fear Mr. Linder’s return to my call.

I talked to Mrs. Knobloch, he said. A meeting ran overtime, so she was there. She’s the right one. I told her what you wanted. And she laughed. Said we should go ahead right away. Said someone must’ve made sure of you, or no one would’ve transferred you all around to get me. I mean me, who you’re talking to.

Of course her surmise was wrong. But there was no need to say that.

Mr. Linder said, Hold on. I’ll transfer you.

In no time at all, a woman’s cheerful voice with a Hebrew accent came on the line. Hello, Professor! she sang out. Please to wait a little. Some papers I must sign now. Please to hold.