By Blood (34 page)

The last of these sessions drew to a close. Given my agitated state, I dared not move until Dr. Schussler was safely out of the office. Then I quickly gathered my things and left.

Despite our having arrived at autumn, it was a blistering hot day. (I had utterly given up all attempts to understand San Francisco’s climate; aside from summer fog, the good people of the city inevitably described whatever weather was present as “very unusual for this time of year.”) The days were shortening, however, and I soon found myself strolling toward Union Square in the cooling air of approaching sundown.

I came to a bench (perhaps the very one from which I had followed the Indonesian girl and boy, all those many months ago). And suddenly it was as if a veil had fallen from my eyes; or, more accurately, a muffler from my ears.

For no sooner did I feel the cool of the stone beneath me than Michal Gershon’s story leapt into clarity. It was exactly as if the recording of her voice had been cut into a hundred pieces and then reassembled as a coherent, linear narrative. And I knew the precise instant when Michal’s feelings toward Belsen had changed, the fulcrum moment that had bred Miriam Gerstner’s hatred toward Rosensaft, Wollheim, and Bimko. And I understood Dr. Schussler’s silence, how blessed it was; why she had not pressed this understanding upon her patient.

The fulcrum moment came, I was certain, on the closing day of the First Congress of the She’erit Hapletah.

I could all but see Michal, then Miriam, sitting in the last row, watching Hadassah Bimko shaking hands, nodding hellos, being adored, as she made her way to the stage.

As Michal described Bimko’s entrance, why did she feel obliged to mention the doctor’s testimony at the Lüneburg trial? Bimko’s being stout and plump? Her near-humiliation by the defense counsel? The implication that Bimko might have been not a victim but a collaborator with the infamous Josef Mengele; her collaboration accounting for her survival and good health? Why use the lawyer to defame her?

And then the story of the congress’s final minutes. All the newly elected leaders shaking hands.
Rosensaft and Bimko embracing on the stage
.

Miriam rises to sing “Hatikvah.” She is pregnant and dizzy and sweating—and watching the embrace. She nearly tumbles. And then I understood: It was not merely her physical balance that was lost. It was the moment when her life in Belsen—the first time she had ever wanted to be a Jew—turned back upon itself.

From the moment I had first heard the story, I knew that something was wrong, off. But I could not bring it to consciousness, could not understand exactly why I was so discomfited. And immediately thereafter, Michal had begun to relate her story in fractured pieces, as I have said. Straining to understand her, I did not have time for reflection, review. And I was preoccupied with Dr. Schussler’s absence from the conversation.

But now, as I sat upon the bench in Union Square, it was as if each fragment of Michal’s story glared at me nakedly from within the circle of its own spotlight:

A mention of a “difficult pregnancy.” Something about “spotting,” premature contractions, fluctuations in blood pressure. Waiting in endless lines for extra rations. Resentful stares, jealousy, as she received additional food. These details had been dropped like salt grains into other stories, and thereby quickly dissolved in the overall wash of events. And, as if she had not already obscured the story sufficiently, into this mix she stirred suggestive mentions of Rosensaft and Wollheim and Bimko. The presence of Dr. Bimko in a tale of a difficult pregnancy was to be expected. But what did those men, Yossele Rosensaft and Norbert Wollheim, have to do with the gestation of my dear patient?

I sat in the square and reviewed the other clues Michal had left behind, over the course of many weeks, traces that had resided in parenthetical remarks, asides, snickers, bits of dialog, flashes of anger. The mufflers having fallen from my ears (so to speak), my review required but fifty or sixty seconds; after which the real thread of the story revealed itself to me. The secret lay in five separate scenes, previously mentioned by Michal weeks apart, cut away from the broken time line and aligned in narrative order.

First was a brief interaction between Miriam Gerstner and Yossele Rosensaft. It came following some committee meeting. She said something personal to him. Personal how? She did not say. And she felt quite hurt when he was dismissive, or else he had dismissed her; in any case, she felt dismissed, dispensed with, discarded.

The next scene is more elaborate, again played by Miriam and Rosensaft. The place: a camp building, a hall, after a wedding. Miriam danced with Rosensaft. Afterward she took his arm, wanting to walk out for a breath of air. He dropped the triangle that had supported her arm, turned to her, looked into her eyes, then—as she returned his gaze—he gave her “a little chuck under the chin.” After which he “walked away laughing.” If this was not bad enough, he returned to the floor, danced with another woman, to whom he also gave “a little chuck under the chin.”

Lothario
, Michal had whispered on the tape.

Had Miriam been romantically interested in Rosensaft? The third and fourth and fifth scenes, all involving Norbert Wollheim, brought the question into relief. It was not clear where those interactions took place—Michal reported only shards of these conversations with him. In one, Wollheim is saying that she can have “no claims” upon Rosensaft’s time (or else he said she had “no claims” upon Rosensaft himself; Michal spoke too quickly for me to hear it clearly). In the next scene (also played upon a blank stage) Wollheim says something on the order of: You and I have more in common than you have with Yossele. And finally, on another bare stage, he tells her: “Rosensaft is with Bimko. They are going to be married.”

Suddenly it was all so clear. How could I not have seen it? Hidden beneath the dry brush of political meetings and committees, underneath the passions of Zionism and the debates about the future of the Jews, another story smoldered: Wollheim wanted Miriam; Miriam wanted Rosensaft; Rosensaft wanted Hadassah Bimko. The eternal tale that could play itself out anywhere: a prosperous city, a country estate, a
displaced-persons
camp.

What a sad story it was, I thought, as evening came on and Union Square began to bustle with office workers hurrying home. For the longer I contemplated my scenario, the more convinced I was of its veracity:

A woman survives what seems a lifetime of horrors and is surprised—stunned—to find herself still healthy, young. She begins to discover a new identity, a new life, one in which she is popular, active, involved; in which she learns new languages; where she is valued for skills she never imagined she possessed. She falls in love, reaches out for a husband when she discovers she is carrying a child, most likely his child. Then her new identity as Miriam is slowly forced to shrink, as if her range of motion must contract in proportion to the expansion of her belly. She is envied for her special foods and rations, and her popularity fades. The man rejects her. Her difficult pregnancy keeps her from the activities in which she was engaged. She has to give up her places in groups and committees. Slowly, what overtakes her is a sort of nineteenth-century confinement, literally a confinement in the hospital, wherein she falls under the care of Dr. Hadassah Bimko, the lover of the man she desires. And it is precisely at this point—when she is forced to remain bedridden, overseen by her rival—that the good doctor, that angel, becomes “that stinking, chain-smoking little troll.”

I whispered a passionate “thank you” to Dr. Schussler. And this gratitude was for her gracious silence; for relinquishing her therapist’s imperative to probe, and probe ever deeper; and, most of all, for allowing the patient some degree of ignorance about the story of her inception. The patient certainly had intuited the starkness of her origins. But it would have been cruel to inflict upon her the knowledge that her very existence had snuffed out a nascent life. For Maria-become-Miriam was barely born when her newfound joy was drained from her. Her moment of belonging, of wanting to be a Jew for the first time in her life, was taken from her by the being she called “a tiny ball of starving cells.”

It was not the patient’s fault, of course. But she had come along when she had come along. Her mother was about to be judged: Was she truly a victim? She was hallucinating from hunger; barely able to stand. And inside her was the tiny patient, her starving cells awash in her mother’s fear.

The patient grows toward birth, submerged in the noxious brew of the dying Miriam’s emotions: a flood of vengefulness, bitterness, hatred, cynicism, sorrow, and despair. O my dear patient! Even in your pre-life: consigned to the tribe of the inherently unhappy.

I put my head in my hands and cried. People walking by me in Union Square gave me a wide berth, as I sobbed uncontrollably, how long I do not know, only that night came on, and the square filled with frightening characters, and yet I wept. I was overwhelmed with the depth, breadth, urgency, and sheer inescapability of my kinship with the patient. We were born to darkness. It was our task—our imperative!—to think, plan, use our minds (the only strength that remained to us) to fight for the life of our flesh. And—to hell with our ancestors; we will show them; they do not rule us—to thrive! Or, at the very least, remain alive.

The next session confirmed—indeed made me certain—that I had arrived at the truth about the patient’s birth.

The patient had barely settled in when she said to Dr. Schussler: Michal told me I almost didn’t make it.

Make it? asked the therapist.

Almost didn’t get to live.

(Not one of us moved, none drew breath; as if we, too, if not careful, might fail to achieve life.)

I was thin, Michal told me. Lethargic. Cranky. Irritable. In her exact words: I was “delicately devoted to being alive.”

There the patient stopped; and the doctor asked:

And how did you feel when your mother said this?

The patient laughed. That all my emotions now made sense, she said. It’s just as I am now. I’ll never change. I’ll always be stuck in this irritable self, unsoothable and uncomfortable in my skin. I’ll always have a delicate devotion to being alive.

(No! I thought. You must resist this thought. We can, must, overcome the life of the womb.)

The therapist hummed, as if deferring a response.

Michal said I was born in a freezing
Kinderbaracke
.

Children’s barracks, said the doctor.

Well, of course you’d know the word, said the patient.

Dr. Schussler sighed. She was not about to be drawn into another discussion of her German heritage.

It was the dead of winter, of course, the patient continued. Born in December: a very bad idea if you’re in a displaced-persons camp, in a freezing children’s barracks. With a mother who was glad to be rid of you.

What makes you say that? asked Dr. Schussler.

She told me she had no milk. She had to beg one woman, then another, to nurse me. Beg. Because those other women also had children at risk, if not as delicately devoted to being alive as I was. Wet nurses! Was this some nineteenth-century novel? But Michal claimed—she swore!—my fragile state had nothing to do with why she gave me away.

Again the doctor deferred a response.

She claimed it had to do with that Hadassah Bimko, the camp doctor, the only woman in the Central Committee.

(Now here is indeed the nub of it, I thought.)

According to Michal, it all started with something I’d read about in one of the packets from the Chicago agency. Some British Jewish organization wanted to take Belsen’s orphans to England, where they’d find homes for them with Jewish families. But the camp leadership protested, saying the children would either stay with them or else go to Palestine. As I said, I’d read about it—which surprised Michal. Anyhow, it was considered a big victory when the British caved in and granted emigration visas for the children.

Here. I’ve cued the tape. Where Michal’s reaction startles me.

Shameful! said Michal as the recording began to play. Using those poor children as pawns in their Zionist games! The children would have been much better off in Britain. England was not in great condition after the war, but at least the war was
over
there, finished. Imagine those children toddling in peaceful English gardens, she said, on the stoops of friendly streets. Now picture them in Palestine, where the Irgun is blowing up British installations, where there is a nasty little war brewing between Jews and Arabs. Why would they take those poor orphans there if not to make a political point? It had nothing to do with the welfare of the children!

So, Michal continued, Bimko travels with a hundred orphans from Belsen, and then she’s given another
thousand
children who came from God-knows-where in the British zone. And when she gets to Palestine, she is suddenly enraged to find various Zionist organizations interviewing the children, trying to send them to appropriate homes. Bimko wanted them to stay together. But she’d arrived without a plan, and what did she think was going to happen? That the children would be placed in an instant kibbutz?

And there she is, said Michal, that savior, that great leader, taking eleven hundred children into a war zone for the glory of Zionism—or for her personal glory?

Michal paused, then said: It was Bimko’s trip to Palestine that made me decide.

Decide what? asked the patient.

To give you up for adoption.

I don’t understand.

I refused to let you be a pawn in the Zionist cause.

I saw no future for anyone, Michal went on. I had lost my illusions about the Zionists. Power was concentrated in a very few hands, as I have told you. Also about Bimko poisoning Rosensaft.

(Said the woman who had lost her lover to her rival.)

The only course was to leave Belsen. And the only possible place I could go was Palestine. And I did not want that life for you. Every time I thought of taking you there, the image of Hadassah Bimko and her orphans rose before my eyes, and I decided, each time, that I would find a better future for you.

(Bimko again, I thought sadly. If only I could find a way to tell the patient how this Bimko had changed her mother’s life.)

There was a Polish woman I had befriended in the camp, said Michal. A Catholic, therefore free to roam about and find her postwar fortune. She had found employment of a sort at a nearby … monastery, convent, I cannot remember which. They donated food to Belsen, and because I volunteered in the kitchen, I spent time with her. Her name was Bibianna Lobzjeska. One day we were working side by side in the pantry, and she began talking about some group that was gathering up Jewish children who had been left with monasteries and convents before the war.

I know about this group, the patient on the tape interrupted her mother.

You
know
this group?

Yes, the patient replied. My mother—my adoptive mother—told me about it. That they essentially stole the children. Before any Jewish people could come for them, they farmed them out, clandestinely.

I did not know that! Are you sure? I thought the children were truly orphans, that no one had come for them, and—since the children had been baptized and had spent the better part of their lives as Catholics—it seemed logical and generous to find them Catholic homes.

No, said the patient. Not all of them. Some had people looking for them, maybe aunts or cousins, not parents but relatives. But unless it was the actual parent, they refused to give up the child. Sometimes not even then.

My God! But you see there were hundreds, said Michal. Hundreds of children given over by parents who were being rounded up by the Germans, parents who hoped their children would survive even if they did not. Well. I have to say, if the choice was between a good Catholic home and some distant cousins in a displaced-persons camp or a dusty farm kibbutz in Palestine where the children would have to learn to shoot rifles, I would choose the Catholic home. Otherwise, it is no better than what Bimko did: put children in harm’s way for the sake of a principle.

For the sake of a religion, said the patient quietly.

There was silence on the tape.

Pooh! said Michal finally.
Pooh
on religion.

You mean the Jewish religion.

Her mother said nothing for several seconds.

Knowing only what I knew, knowing only what I
could
know, said Michal finally, I asked Bibianna to put me in communication with the group.

And they came and got me.

Yes.

And how long until they came?

One month.

So quickly?

I was glad. I was relieved. I put you into the hands of a priest and told him I had been baptized as a Catholic, that your father was a German Catholic, and that I wanted you to be baptized and raised within the Catholic faith.

Wait! said the patient. You said you didn’t know who my father was.

That is only what I told him. I wanted to be sure they would give you to a good family. I wanted to be sure they did not see you as just another spawn of a converted Jew. It was not as if anti-Semitism had disappeared with the death of Hitler, you know.

Oh, I know, said the patient to her mother. I know. Anti-Semitism is why I am with my parents, my adoptive parents, and not with some insane, Jew-hating, fundamentalist Catholic sect.

What are you talking about?

Oh, yes. I didn’t tell you, did I? That nice Catholic life you put me into? I was first adopted by the man who is the father of my adoptive father. He was the chief nutcase in a fundamentalist Catholic cult that was about to remove itself from the sin of the cities to some compound in rural Illinois. And when he found out I was Jewish, that I had a Jewish mother, he wanted to dispose of me.

My God! whispered Michal.

Yes. God. It was all about his “God.” My father and grandfather were completely estranged, and somehow my father took me because of some bizarre struggle between them. I don’t know any more than that. Mother—my adoptive mother—was not exactly forthcoming.

The tape whirred; neither woman spoke.

I … said Michal. How … How could I know?

Of course you couldn’t know. You just dropped me into this priest’s hands and sailed away.

More whirring; more silence.

Okay, said the patient to her mother with a breath, that’s over and done with. I didn’t come here to berate you.

Really, replied Michal flatly.

There was a pause before the patient replied: Really.

Then what did you come for?

Another pause ensued.

Just to know, the patient said. To know where I came from.

The tape rolled on for several seconds.

Oh, I am so … completely sorry, said Michal at last. I only wanted what was best for you, what I thought was best for you. But I can only tell you the story as I know it, as it happened to me, and as I understood it. That is what you wanted, yes?

Yes, said the patient. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I came for. So, she said after a pause. You just picked me up out of a crib and handed me to a priest you’d never met. And he simply walked out of the camp—no questions asked? When this baby just disappeared from the
Kinderbaracke
—this little baby only how many months old?

Five months.

When this infant—me—when I disappeared, what did you tell them?

I told them I had sent you on to Palestine with a Catholic group, and that I was joining you there.

And off you went.

Yes. I was a convert. To him, I was a Catholic. He helped me get an emigration visa. And I went.

So you traded me for a visa! Everyone else in Belsen is stuck there, but you make a deal with Mr. Priest: I give you this baby, now get me out of here. God! Everyone traded me for something!

Oh, no, no. You must not think like that. The way I saw it, you were off to a good life and I was going to hell, at least to a different hell, one not surrounded by barbed wire.