By Blood (26 page)

And that is how the therapist left her patient! On that note of doubt! The one solace the patient had gained during the visit—the knowledge that she looked like a daring lesbian with her gorgeous girls—obliterated by Dr. Schussler. What kind of doctor sends one out the door saying, Perhaps you have cancer. Perhaps not. Come back in a few days. Yet this is exactly the condition in which my poor patient was turned out into the street past ten o’clock on a Monday night, when Market Street was returning to its seedy core.

Dr. Schussler finally gathered her things and left about fifteen minutes later, after which I found myself curiously agitated. I waited for the N Judah. The air was cool, the wind down, the fog having completed its invasion and now blanketing the night. The city lights played against the thick, low clouds—here blue, there reddish, there the dun color of hopelessness—so that I seemed to stand not under a natural sky but encased in a metallic dome. The streetcar rumbled toward me out of the fog; it screeched to a stop; the doors yawned open. Yet I remained rooted to the platform, unable to induce myself to climb aboard. After some interval, during which time the car gently rocked on its tracks, the driver did not look at me, and the three people in the car did not speak, the tram shut its doors and rattled off into the night.

Without intention, I found myself wandering “outbound” on Market Street (or such is the direction as calibrated by the good San Franciscans, who seem not to travel east or west, north or south, but into the city center and out of it). Beyond the wide boulevard of Van Ness came the no-man’s-land of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. And an unbidden thought came to me: The city through which I walked was a sister to Weimar Berlin. Two wild, depressed cities in a nation stupefied by inflation and unemployment, two countries humiliated by lost wars—World War I, Vietnam—chafing under the decline from greatness into shabbiness.

And all at once a gimlet eye opened in my mind as I reviewed Michal’s story. Something was amiss, as Dr. Schussler had sensed. Margarette Rothman may have been youthful during the time of Weimar, but not so young that she would not have been aware of the larger world. There was something of the fairy tale about her story—yes, the patient had hit upon it exactly. All that was needed was a viscount or two to turn the whole thing into a bad Victorian novel. The three-hundred-year presence in Berlin. Ballrooms, the art gallery, the famous painters, the salons. What about the hyperinflation, the poverty—all the misery shown in the work of the Weimar painters—the desperate whores and ugly fat cats of Otto Dix’s paintings, Grosz’s amputees and maimed war veterans—where was all that in her story? How many lies had she told the patient? Or to herself?

Suddenly my chest began to reverberate.
Doom-bah, doom-bah, doom-bah, doom-bah
.

Someone shouted at me, Come on up, Pops! Come on up!

What was happening? Where was I? I had been lost in my own thoughts, and now I looked up to see an open balcony, the source of the
doom-bah
rhythm pouring down upon the street. The sign on the balcony said “The Metro,” and it was from its second-story patio that the shout had come. A dense crowd of men filled the patio, all of them naked above the waist but for something crisscrossing their chests—leather straps studded with metal, I saw.

Come on up, Pops! yelled the voice again amidst hoots and whistles and proffered beer bottles, and men bumping hips and groins.

Where was I? I asked myself again, wheeling around and back until I found the street signs above the three-cornered intersection: Market, Noe, Sixteenth Street.

You’re in the Castro, old man! came the voice, as if understanding my confusion.

The Castro. Yes. I had walked out far enough to have entered “the Castro,” the “gay Mecca,” as it was called, a district I had not visited before nor had intended to visit now. I looked down at my watch. Eleven-ten. At midnight, the “owl service” would begin on the N Judah line, at which time a bus would be substituted for the streetcar, using a route I did not know. I should ask someone for the nearest tram stop, I told myself, and ask soon. I continued walking outbound on Market toward Castro Street itself, where there was a great crush of people, among whom, surely, would be someone who could direct me to the N Judah.

But when I turned the corner onto Castro, I was so amazed by the scene before me that I forgot my intention to ask after the streetcar. It was as if I had entered yet another city, this one inhabited by lumberjacks, cowboys, leathernecks, roughriders, policemen, firemen, musclemen, bikers—such was the demeanor of the hundreds of men (thousands?) who thronged the street. As I tried to negotiate the sidewalk, I was thrown from store window to gutter, into groups of lean, bare-chested men, then into ones covered in leather; next set amidst youths in tight T-shirts and jeans; then put shoulder-to-shoulder with stout, half-naked, extremely hairy men; and so on through the many types, each expressing such a stark and heavy masculinity that my senses were assailed with odors of maleness—now sweaty, now cologned, now something I could not identify but which seemed concocted of leather and tobacco and the chlorine of ejaculate. I thought, I must get off this sidewalk!

At that moment, a bar door opened and I was swept inside by the crowd.

Deafening music assaulted my ears. It was dark but for strobing blue lights, which revealed the bar’s inhabitants in epileptic flashes. So displayed, each face suggested menace—a false impression, I struggled to see, as it was soon clear that this bar catered to the milder tight-jeans-and-T-shirt types—but a suggestion clearly intended by the establishment, which had painted the walls black, and the floor black, and had illuminated the back bar with the sort of red one imagines as the color of Hades. Many eyes turned toward me. I did not belong there, they seemed to say. And I very much wished to leave—desperately wished to leave!—but again a scrum of bodies swept me along, and I soon found myself pressed against a stool at the far end of the bar.

I turned a shoulder in an attempt to slide through the crowd. And before me was a face that stopped me as if I had been turned into a pillar of salt. My dear student! I thought.

I looked into the face. I could see it only in blue flashes. Was it he? As the lights blinked over him, I looked at the eyes: childish rounds. At the body outline: slim, still adolescent. No! It could not be he! See! This youth sitting here does not know me, and besides, my dear student could not possibly be here, now, in San Francisco. He had returned. He had completed his “pilgrimage,” he said. He was back at the university. No! It was not he!

I pushed my way through what seemed a wall of flesh; was cursed at and elbowed and scoured by nasty glances; and finally reached the street.

I fought my way back toward Market Street. But as I approached the corner, I remembered that I did not know where I was going. It was nearly midnight. Where was the stop for the N Judah?

Before me, as if magically, was the most improbable of stores: a bead shop. I all but shook my head in disbelief at seeing this slip of a shop on such a street. Supplies for stringing necklaces and bracelets and earrings. Was this truly here?

The shop was empty but for an elderly woman, who sat upon a stool behind a vitrine filled with beads of various descriptions.

Can you please direct me to the nearest stop of the N Judah? I asked her.

Oh, yes, she replied in a sweet voice, going on to say that I should cross Market Street and go uphill until I passed a hospital on my right. Then, turning right, I would find the stop on Duboce, just below the crest of the hill.

It is the last stop before the tunnel, she said with a smile. But you had better hurry, dear. You’ll want to get there before the owl.

Her way of putting this—that I must get there before the owl—seemed to say that a dark, winged creature would descend upon the tunnel at midnight. And in that mood of dark enchantment, I hurried across Market Street as directed, then marched up the steep hill leading out of the intersection.

The night overtook me: the dunnish sky, its metallic dome, the cold of the fog. The higher I climbed, the more empty became the streets, until I seemed to be the sole creature about. Even the hospital, as I passed by it, appeared stilled and shut. Then, just as my good witch had predicted, I came to Duboce. I turned right, and glanced down the hill: She had not deceived me.

The platform was deserted, its lights enswirled in fog. My watch said 12:05, but I put aside my panic by reminding myself that midnight referred to the time when the last car left downtown, and surely it would need more than five minutes to travel this far outbound. I stared into the maw of the tunnel, at the dark outline of the hill rising above it, then back at the street, my eyes following the line of the tracks until they, too, were surrounded by fog.

When suddenly out of the mist swam a police cruiser. It slowed as it neared me, stopped. The officer riding shotgun gave me a once-over, and I felt guilt drip from me like the condensing fog. I am the one who did it, I thought, whomever you are seeking, whatever the crime. Then I saw him mouth “Zodiac.”

I began to shake; I thought I would fall down. A rumble rose from the tracks. Something creatural wobbled toward me: the one-eyed light of the streetcar. It screeched to a stop; I climbed aboard the too-bright car; the doors shut behind me. I saw the police cruiser drive off.

The streetcar entered the mouth of the unlit tunnel, its stone walls painted black. At moments, the tram lost its electrical connection, and we rode in utter blackness under the hill.

Finally we emerged at Cole and Carl, the first stop at the other end of the tunnel, on the west side of the hill. We had left the world of the Castro. From here, we would ride farther and farther away from the gay bars, into more respectable neighborhoods, where families huddled in their apartments and houses, worried over jobs and budgets, struggled against the stagnation and dereliction that had been visited upon our country, carefully locking their doors against the serial killer who was still at large.

At that moment, I thought of the patient and my dear student, and I ached with envy. They belonged to the wild world of San Francisco: to their very own Weimar of danger and carousing men and marvelous strange girls. Whereas I did not belong in the Castro, nor was I welcome at A Little More; and neither was I respectable, proper, productive. I have no family, I thought, no firm connections. I am dross, a castoff. Only the crows know what I am.

Two days slouched along at a dilatory pace. My mood was not improved by the fine fall weather that descended upon San Francisco, the very air betraying me with its fresh feel of a new semester. I could not help but remember my feelings at that time of year, the hopefulness of beginnings, the happy sight of students holding books they had not yet read but soon would. And I felt how far away I was, banished, haunted by the eyes of the boy in the bar, the round childish eyes in the strobe of blue light.

Then my loneliness grew teeth. My only defenses were thoughts of the patient. I told and retold myself Michal Gershon’s portrayal of her early life in Berlin, like a bedtime story one reads to a frightened child, a story that must be repeated exactly with each retelling. In this way, I suppressed my suspicions about Michal’s version of events—closed my gimlet eye upon them, as it were. Otherwise, if I persisted in my skepticism, I would find no comfort in the tale.

At last came Wednesday. Finally the session began. And a great tranquillity settled over me, for the story resumed: The patient was back in Tel Aviv. There she was to see her mother again, the mother I had helped her find. The scene was Michal’s little house, the patient told us, a room we had not previously visited: a small dining area that adjoined the kitchen.

The table was too big for the space, said the patient to Dr. Schussler. It was a big, heavy mahogany table with ornate legs. It had to be shoved into a corner to fit into the room, and the chairs on two sides were pinned between the table and the wall. Michal sat at the foot, where she could look out the window, and I sat catty-corner to her again, my chair nearly under an arch that separated the dining room from a small kitchen.

It was an odd arrangement because Gerda, that young girl, was sitting in the kitchen—right next to me but not “in” the room, if you know what I mean. She sat on a high step-stool with her hands on her knees, just sitting, staring forward. That loud clock I’d been hearing hung above her head. I was uncomfortable because I still didn’t know what the relationship was between Michal and Gerda, who seemed to be a sort of servant or maid.

(Ah! I thought, one of those German youths doing penance in Israel.)

Michal began by saying: I suppose we now must leave the “before time.”

She looked at me steadily, so unblinkingly that I could barely meet her eyes. There was something accusatory in that gaze, an accusation that
I
was the one making her leave the “before time.”
I
was the reason she had to remember all this. It was all
my
fault. And it was clear why she never wanted me to find her. She wanted to leave behind everything that happened to her, and I was part of that “after” life. And again I went through my whole inner drama: wanting to protect her from bad memories, hating myself for wanting to protect her, and so on. But before I could get to the anger—the rage, it was almost there, that impatience that explodes into fury—you know what I mean, Dr. Schussler?

I do, said the therapist.

Before it came flying out, Michal suddenly softened. She gave me the sweetest smile. That loving look came onto her face. So, my little American, she said. Do you know any history? Do you know when Hitler came to power? When the Nürnberg Laws were passed?

I was confused by this sudden shift in feelings. Again. Just like the day before: hate, then love, any moment hate could come back. I mumbled something like, Early thirties.

And she said to me, good enough. Hitler came to power in 1933. The Nürnberg Laws were passed in 1935. There wasn’t a Jew in Europe who didn’t know that something terrible was coming.

Then Michal reached into her pocket and took out a coin. She held it by the rim, between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand—squeezed it hard, moving it back and forth, pressing grooves into her fingertips. It was a funny gesture, administering a little pain to herself, it seemed, like the pinch you give yourself when you’re getting a shot. All during this time—you’ll hear it on the tape—she picks up that coin, cuts grooves in her finger, then slaps it down on the table. Picks it up, slaps it down. Let me start the tape.

There was a long hiss, and finally, above the annoying drone of the poor-quality machine, came Michal Gershon’s beautiful voice.

Let us be clear, Michal was saying. I am only going to talk about what came just before the war, and what came after, where you are born and enter the story. Understand that. The middle, the Holocaust—too long, too dark, too many endless things to say. I would like to start just as you enter the story, but you cannot understand the “after” unless you know something of the time just … before all that. Do you agree?

What choice do I have? asked the patient.

Michal laughed.

None.

My parents left in 1938, she continued on an intake of breath. The whole family left. Only I remained.

Where did they go? asked the patient on the tape.

To the Netherlands, Michal replied. Then she stopped speaking.

The tape whined and hissed for fifteen long seconds. One could hear the ticking of the clock that hung in the kitchen. It seemed that all Michal Gershon’s resistance to remembering her “after” life had been distilled into those sounds: the clock tick, the machine drone, the sinister whisper of the tape.

Then came a loud clack—the coin slapped down on the table? Yes, that must have been it, the slap signaling Michal’s determination to continue. For now her words tumbled out in a monologue:

They went to the Netherlands, she said. They were sure they would be safe in Amsterdam. Such a mistake. The Dutch are still seen as such nice people. They get a “good rap,” as the Americans say. And all because of Anne Frank. The world thinks the good Dutch people hid her. Ah! But they also betrayed her. Consider that the Germans needed only two thousand soldiers to keep the entire country subdued. The Dutch police did all the work. Eichmann himself was dumbfounded at how easy it was: at the willingness of the good Dutch people to turn over their Jews.

She laughed.

My parents rented a house on the Prinsengracht, she went on. On the canal. They settled in. They received funds from—I’ll get back to that. I’ll just say that all seemed well for while. Then … the roundups began. Roundups of the Jews, done with the quiet but thorough compliance of the Dutch police and bureaucracy. What else could they do? the good Dutch people told themselves. Poor us! We are conquered! Well … My parents were rounded up early. They were too prominent, too visible.

For a while, I still received letters from them. They tried to be reassuring. They said at first they were only going to be resettled. Then that they were “only” going to a work camp. Finally I received a strange, cheery postcard that said, We are resettled in a lovely valley.

She paused.

Then nothing, she said. I never found my family again.

I turned off the tape at that point, the patient told Dr. Schussler. Michal stopped speaking for a long time, and in that silence, with the clock ticking away madly over my head, it seemed somehow wrong to keep the recorder going. I didn’t dare say a word or ask a question, because Michal’s face had fallen in on itself again. She picked up that coin and pressed it hard, then harder; I could see the tendons flexing. Finally she cleared her throat and said:

Anne Frank was sent to Bergen-Belsen.

This startled me and I said:

Did you see her there?

She gave me this terrible look.

How naïve you are! How stupid! By the time I got to Belsen, Anne Frank and her sister were stinking corpses in tattered clothes, half returned to the earth.

I just sat stunned, the patient told Dr. Schussler. What could I say to that? The clock ticked, Michal said nothing, and Gerda shifted around on her clanking stool.

Finally I thought to ask Michal:

But how is it you stayed in Germany when your whole family left?

Ah! she said, with a long breath. Then she gazed out the window for some seconds. Finally she turned her cool light eyes on me and said:

Start up again your little machine.

Now comes the first part of the story.