my Nazi bastard father.
This last statement was said with such venom that it seemed not to have come from the woman who had been speaking with such assurance in the cold argot of psychotherapy. Dr. Schussler slammed off the recorder, stood, then paced about her office. She continued to smoke, and again I saw her as if from above, the doctor circling, a trail of smoke glowing pink in the nervous light of the hotel sign.
Then she abruptly stopped and turned on the tape recorder.
Note to transcriber, she said. Delete the sentence containing the phrase “Nazi bastard.” Then: No. Keep it. STET, I believe you say. Keep it. Ja. Keep.
The doctor took a long drag on her Viceroy. Then, still standing, she said:
Transcriber: Please to note my pause, my initial instruction to delete the “Nazi bastard” sentence, and my subsequent decision to retain it. Now, continuing with the journal of consultations with Dr. Gurevitch concerning the patient previously coded as three:
I have already spoken to you, Dr. Gurevitch, about my family history. But this aspect of our discussions was quite brief, as we were necessarily focused upon the patient. However, before we can understand fully all the factors at work in this countertransference, you should know that my father was not simply an officer in the German army, as I perhaps led you to believe. He was not merely a foot soldier in the Wehrmacht, not merely one of those men who fulfilled what he believed was his duty to his native land … Nein …
Wind gusted at our windows, which shuddered in their old frames. The doctor fell into her chair.
My father was a member of the Schutzstaffel, she said. An Obersturmbannführer. A true believer in the Führer and the Master Race. When he was at home, he wore his uniform at the dinner table, so proud of his collar insignia with its three diamonds, his hat with the twin lightning bolts of the SS. Hitler had just come to power. Vater made us to stand behind our chairs and shout “Heil Hitler!” before we could eat, a new form of saying grace, said our mother. Even our little brother, five years old, saluted perfectly with a stiff hand and an upraised chin.
The doctor laughed.
I was fifteen, very sheltered, still a girl. My sisters were nine and seven. We could not help but find all this saluting very funny. We shouted “Heil Hitler!” and giggled, to Vater’s rebukes, which made us only to giggle the more … Aber … But of course … it was not funny … You see: My father was instrumental in the deportation and murder of the Jews of France.
This last statement was spat out to the best of Dr. Schussler’s Germanic abilities: the F-sound start of Vater like hot steam through her teeth.
Before the invasion of France, she went on in the same mode, Vater’s job was to get money to amenable French candidates for office. Fascist rightists. Anti-Semites. Nationalists who wanted to purify la belle France. My father did his work well, evidently. By the time German tanks had poured through the Ardennes Forest, and the Wehrmacht had erased the Maginot Line, the friends of Germany were waiting for him.
But, ah! I do not suppose he had to work so very hard. The government of Léon Blum—when was that? 1935? ’36? What a trauma it must have created for the French to have been led by a Jew! What nightmares it must have engendered to have had this Jew—so Jewish-looking!—at the helm of their nation while the rest of Europe could not wait to throw their own Jews into the fire. How ready they must have been to rid themselves of this psychological stain upon l’honneur de la France.
Dr. Schussler stopped; stood.
I am sorry, Dr. Gurevitch, for this tone of cynicism, she said. But to know one’s father was at the heart of it …
The therapist remained standing, mute, as the recording machine ran on, the threading tape flapping against the take-up reel. Finally Dr. Schussler slowly sank into her chair and said:
You may recall, Dr. Gurevitch, that I had to watch the war from afar. I was in this country when Hitler invaded France, beginning my studies for the doctorate at Columbia University in New York City. There I met Helmut Schuessler—still spelled with its Germanic E to reflect our lost umlaut—Helmut, who was already an American citizen, and who would soon become my husband. And then I, too, became an American.