to tell you.
You’re German, the patient said, or at least you speak German. It meant nothing to me before: where you came from, even who you were—are. But now. With all this. So you’re German. And if you’re not Jewish …
That smile: I could feel the steel of it through the wall.
It would help if you were Jewish, the patient said.
The jagged shadows played across the floor.
You see, I don’t know any Jewish people, the patient pressed on. I’ve met Jews, of course, but I’ve never been close to one. I have no idea what it means to say, I’m a Jew.
From the Hotel Palace across the way came the forlorn wail of the doorman’s taxi whistle.
It would help if I could talk to you about what it means to be Jewish.
Dr. Schussler fell back against the cushion of her chair.
Ach! she breathed. Who I am is not important. We are here to discuss who you are.
The doctor stood.
Oh, God, said the patient. It’s time for me to go, isn’t it?
(Well past time, I saw by the glow of my watch dial.)
The patient remained seated. I don’t want to go out there.
The taxi whistle called again.
She laughed. Please don’t make me go.
She withdrew a tissue from the box.
Call me if you need to, the therapist said.
The patient stood. Then she paused in the doorway. There was a rustle of fabric.
Please don’t hug me, she said. What is this hugging thing you’ve gotten into? It’s weird, this hugging.
Then she left, slamming the door behind her.
Dr. Schussler immediately lit a cigarette, picked up the phone, dialed. This is Dr. Schussler again, she said after a time. Have you given Dr. Gurevitch my last message? Yes. I see. But—I understand. Please say it is urgent. Yes, the same message. Patient three.
32.
Now came disaster. All through the patient’s session, something had teased at the back of my throat. By evening, it was a hot scratch. Whatever it was then invaded my nasal passages—a mere cold, I hoped. But the next night I awoke shivering: a hundred and two, said the thermometer I always kept with me when traveling (one never knows when affliction will come upon one). An hour later, the bed was soaked, and again I lay shivering under my wet sheets. One hundred and three, said the thermometer.
Morning found me aching in every joint. The San Francisco Chronicle (which I stole from my neighbor’s doorstep) said some dreaded Asian flu had descended upon the population. And it was clear that I had been claimed as one of its victims.
Five days remained before the patient’s next session: I was determined to attend, no matter how ill I might be. But then came sneezing, then coughing; and along with these symptoms—noisy, irrepressible symptoms!—came panic. The sound machine was no match for such explosive sneezes, such exclamatory coughs. If I should go to the office—at any hour—I would be discovered.
Wednesday came, and I was desolate. The flu had not relented; my cough was thunderous. There was no recourse but to stay home, in my miserable cottage, watching the rain that dripped daily from a soaked, leaden sky. There I thought of nothing but the patient, the convoluted emotions she must be experiencing, the torments of being cast into one identity—Catholic! Father hates Catholics!—then another—Jewish! Grandfather hates Jews! (What relief I felt that I myself had not succumbed to my own family’s suspicion of Jews!) The utter cruelty of the Catholic Church, stealing the Jewish babies it had taken under its protection. Then the double-dealing of her grandfather, his prejudices, his despicable desire for a “pure Aryan” child. The patient as an Oedipal object traded between father and son. At every turn, someone to reject her, hate her, abandon her. And only two sessions remaining before the Christmas break—two castrated, fifty-minute hours—and nothing but the therapist’s skills to rescue the patient from the landslide that had fallen upon her.
Then, no sooner did I think of the therapist’s skills than a frightening thought threaded its way through my consciousness. I could not stop hearing the end of the session—or rather, what had happened after the session’s official closing. I recalled Dr. Schussler’s haste in reaching for the telephone, her words rushing forth, a quaver in her voice, so uncharacteristic of her usual Teutonic control. Gurevitch: She was trying to reach that Dr. Gurevitch. It was “urgent,” she said. And, in a terrifying instant, the other moments in which I had heard “Gurevitch” stood before me, each a