Liberation Army—its motto “Death to the Fascist Insect That Preys on the Life of the People”—who apparently had joined forces with her captors, taking for herself the nom de guerre Tania, banding with them in a bank robbery and murder (appearing on security cameras sporting an assault rifle and looking rather jaunty in a beret)—the fugitive Patty Hearst had been captured by the FBI.
A month earlier, there had been a shootout in Los Angeles between the police and six members of the SLA, and all six group members had been killed, either by bullets or as a result of a fire that had been started by police tear-gas canisters. Patty Hearst’s reaction at the time was to send a tape saying that the “fascist pig media” had painted a distorted picture of her “beautiful brothers and sisters.” Now, however, when the FBI came for her, she walked out quietly, saying, “Don’t shoot. I’ll go with you.”
The late edition of the San Francisco Examiner (her father’s newspaper) reported that Patty, upon leaving her arraignment, raised her handcuffed hands in the black-power salute. Her hair was died a brassy red. In an AP photograph taken through a car window, the top half of her face is obscured behind large, tinted aviator glasses. But her mouth dares you. The lips are drawn back to form a perfect triangle; the lines of her even white teeth exposed, upper and lower—a shark’s smile, a mouth you would not want to see swimming toward you out of the depths.
The story of Patty Hearst had fascinated me—it was one of the few news events I had followed while in San Francisco. How could I not? How did this heiress to the Hearst fortune, granddaughter of the legendary scoundrel William Randolph Hearst, she who was set up for a life in high society—how did she go from kidnap victim to the rifle-wielding “Tania”?
And how had the transformation been achieved within fifty-nine days? For that was the mere slip of time between her capture and her first communiqué saying she had joined forces with her captors. Was a person so malleable? Could sweet Patty, engaged to a wispy man with the unfortunate name of Steven Weed, be swept away so easily, so quickly?
Or was Patty Hearst one of us, her fate already inscribed within her, an inheritance from her notorious grandfather. Perhaps that shark’s smile was always there, merely waiting for a salty sea.
86.
The patient returned to Michal’s house as directed.
So now we come to the time after the war, said Michal’s voice on the tape. As we agreed. Just before the very end. Where it was supposedly all over.
Mother and daughter sat in the same upholstered chairs they had occupied the day before. It was early morning, the patient told Dr. Schussler. The room was in shadow. Without light, it was cold, smelling of ancient damp from the stone walls.
There were rumors that the German army was in retreat, Michal continued. The skies were filled daily with bombers, and from the look on the faces of our torturers there was suddenly—how shall I put it? Suddenly they looked like men and women in whose dark minds something had lit up. I don’t mean their consciences. I mean they knew they were going to be punished. The effect was for them to hate us all the more. Because one day we were useful to them, doing things they wanted done. Then—I cannot give you the exact moment—then suddenly we were … evidence.
But where were you? the patient interrupted her mother. In what camp was this?
I told you it does not matter! Every one of us went through the same thing, internally, the ripping-out of every shred of self-respect. What is this constant need to retell the stories in horrific detail? That child frozen. That woman experimented upon. That man electrocuted. All the many ways humans can be humiliated. Why tell everyone how to do this! It is practically pornographic. Yes! It’s pornography to keep disclosing exactly what was done.
She had been ranting; now she was breathless; she said nothing more for several seconds.
All I know is this: One day I was called to an assembly and immediately pushed onto a train. It was a regular passenger train, but we were packed in, so that no one could move. People were sick, emaciated, exhausted, many half-naked—all jammed in together.
I cannot tell you how long that trip lasted, she continued. When you have to remain on alert at every moment, time