where did he get the money to rent an apartment in Celle while we were all behind barbed wire?
And there were complaints about Rosensaft’s near-dictatorial powers. No one questioned his motives. It was the concentration of his authority that was at issue. His insistence that all aid be funneled through the Central Committee, which he ruled. That all major political decisions be approved by the Central Committee, which he commanded. That the organization of the camp itself be under the control of the Central Committee, of which he was the undisputed king.
Her voice was suddenly bitter.
Behind his back, she said, people called him Little Stalin.
102.
Stalin! I thought as the session came to an end. How quickly did Rosensaft, who had dazzled and fascinated the young Miriam, become Stalin!
Something was wrong. Michal’s bitterness, her cold cynicism, was too strong to be caused by mere politics. But what lay behind it? The patient did not press her mother. And, in the next series of sessions, Dr. Schussler did not intervene to discuss the question.
To make matters worse, Michal’s narrative at this point became oddly disjointed, proceeding by theme, not by chronology. It would have been no matter if she were relaying only a brief portion of the story. But she was portraying eight months of her internment in Belsen: three months from the First Congress in late September 1945 (the establishment of Rosensaft’s power, Michal had said), to the patient’s birth in December. And then another five months until Michal left Belsen in May 1946.
Michal told and retold the events of this period, going over and over the time that followed “the almost happy days.” But the story came in lightning strikes, a phrase here, a paragraph here, wild spikes in random order. Rabbis were “fat, bearded, crabby old men.” Wollheim, whom she had described as aristocratic and learned, became “Rosensaft’s poodle.” The joint leadership of Rosensaft and Wollheim was “autocratic,” “unscrupulous,” “tyrannical,” “self-serving.” She laughed and jeered, spat and snorted and clicked her tongue. Something more than camp politics had to be behind this bitter, bitter mood.
And what emotional swordplay was responsible for the most drastic change in Michal’s characterizations: the transformation reserved for the doctor? Hadassah Bimko, who began as the ministering angel saving the camp from typhus, became the heartless rich girl, Rosensaft’s corruptor. Finally to become “that stinking, chain-smoking little troll.”
Why did Dr. Schussler not probe her client? How could she not notice the fundamental change in Michal Gershon’s narrative? Two weeks went by, and I awaited her entry into the therapeutic conversation, to no avail. And it came to me that she had not said anything of consequence for some time. Had the doctor fallen victim to the sweep of Michal’s narrative? Was her guilt preventing her from intervening? There was no telling, as I heard none of the usual indications of boredom, no creaking leather as Dr. Schussler shifted about her seat, no slishing stockings as she crossed and recrossed her legs. She simply maintained her silence for reasons I could not divine.
As a consequence, a powerful need developed within me: I had to hear her voice once again. The shushing Ss and spat-out Ts that had first intruded upon my consciousness; that had first informed me of the doctor’s existence—that had lured me into my relationship with the patient!—I must hear them again. Yet the therapist persisted in her all-too-brief ritual phrases, good morning, good afternoon, as-we-were-saying-last-week, our time is up.
Come back to me, Dora Schussler, I thought. But the silence wore on; and the longer the doctor remained mute, the more her passivity seemed hostile, a willful withdrawing from me. For she had turned me into her creature, a sort of patient. Not one of my many therapeutic practitioners had ever cured me of a bout of obsession, yet Dr. Schussler had accomplished just that. I had come to trust her, need her—she had engendered in me this trust, this need—and now where was she?
103.
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