I longed to think, a loving friend to the patient, a good man. As the days went by, I convinced myself that a thin envelope could indeed signal disaster, was perhaps a note saying, “You are fired. Paperwork to follow.” So I left it lying there amidst the embedded greasy remains of food whose preparation had preceded my tenancy in the cottage.
By Sunday night, I felt my resistance falling. The patient’s session was but one day away. I convinced myself that whatever the effect of the letter, I would be returned to health by the sound of my dear patient’s voice. I could pull her life over my head like a blanket covering (smothering, superceding, replacing) my own. Therefore I might open the letter and subject myself to whatever fate was contained therein.
It was late, nearing one in the morning. The traffic on the Great Highway was sparse; the ocean seemed tame, perhaps at ebb tide. My own breathing was the predominant sound in the house.
I went to the kitchen and opened the letter.
This is to inform you that the Professional Ethics Committee has taken up your case. Investigations will proceed through the fall semester. The Committee hopes to complete its work before the start of the spring semester; in any case not later than the beginning of the 1976–77 academic year.
As you have been interviewed previously, your participation is not needed at this time, and you should not expect further communications from the Office of the Provost until the matter is resolved. However, the Professional Ethics Committee may, or may not, keep you apprised of their progress, as they deem appropriate.
Sincerely yours,
Bill Selyems, for the Office of the Provost
What kind of special torture was this? A committee that may—or may not—see fit to keep me informed. An investigation that may be completed within a semester—or an entire calendar year! What was the point of this letter except to remind me that I had been hung by the neck. And yet provided with a tiny footstool that might hold my weight for a time—then any moment be kicked away.
I paced throughout the night, realizing I had underestimated the potency of the letter, underestimated how much hope—in the very back of my being, before the patient, before anything that had happened in San Francisco—how much of my future depended upon the university. Oh, God! I called aloud. Oh, someone! Oh, something! Show me there is a reason for my life! I should have opened the letter late on Monday, I told myself, not on Sunday night; for now I had to endure an entire day before I might receive the medicine of the patient’s voice.
I closed the curtains. It was a gray day, and I managed to sleep. I awoke at five in the evening; ate a sandwich; went to the office and waited. She was all that could save me, I thought. She must distract me from whatever was (or was not) happening at the university.
And thanks to God (or to whomever, to whatever Providence might or might not exist in the universe), here she was finally, not confronting Dr. Schussler, not demanding to know the details of her doctor’s life, abandoning that battle as I had thought she might. Instead she resumed her story right where she had left off: in Michal’s little house, where she sat with her mother in the dining area that adjoined the kitchen, at the table that was too large for the space.
It seemed as though we had been sitting there for hours, said the patient to Dr. Schussler, although less than an hour had passed.
82.
Michal was telling me about her friends who now wore the yellow star, the patient went on. About having to walk right by them. She was afraid to associate with them. Her father-in-law watched her constantly, she said. He never said it exactly, but the implied threat was that if she did not behave herself, if she brought even a whiff of Jewishness into the family, he would somehow force Albrecht to divorce her, and then she would be on the next train to Auschwitz.
Some of her old friends and acquaintances tried to go underground. U-boats, they were called, after the submarines. They tried to disappear, blend into the woodwork, pass as regular Germans, helped out by sympathetic non-Jews. She was terrified when she ran into one of her friends who was not wearing a star—terrified that her recognizing them would give them away. Because everyone knew she was