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.
104.
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