you provided us, we were able to discern the following:
Given your mother’s last residence in Celle, Germany, and your statement that she was an inmate in a displaced-persons camp, we can state almost certainly that the camp in question was Bergen-Belsen, otherwise known as Hohne Camp, in the British Zone of Occupation. British soldiers came upon the Belsen concentration camp and liberated it, thereafter administering it as a displaced-persons camp.
I have enclosed a brief outline of the camp’s history, photographs, and what I think you will find most moving: a cassette recording of inmates singing the Hebrew song “Hatikvah,” which is introduced by a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation. While the images of the camp, as it was first found by the British soldiers, are disturbing, I would urge you to listen to the enclosed recording and to notice the hope in the voices of the survivors. One might indeed be your mother.
I will continue to research your situation and will send along any new information as I uncover it. As I shall be traveling extensively, it is best to wait for my correspondence, rather than sending mail to me, which may be lost amidst the piles of paper that will gather in my absence.
Sincerely yours,
Colin Masters
Archive Clerk,
Greater Chicago Catholic Adoption Services
I had spent a great deal of time deciding upon my name, in the end choosing one sounding formal and “English.” I gave myself a lowly title; it did not seem likely that a higher-up would bother with such a matter. I placed the letter, photographs, and cassette in a large envelope (wrapping the cassette to cushion it); then I stood in a long line at the post office. How I feared I would not reach Room 807 in time for the patient’s session! I worried over the postmark: Would she notice the letter had come from San Francisco? I fought to keep my worry at bay, reasoning that her excitement would overcome any impulse to scrutinize the postage.
Finally it was my turn at the counter. The postal clerk weighed the envelope; I paid; I saw the postage strip applied; I watched as Colin Masters’s reply fell into a bin. And I felt I had achieved a great triumph. I had not given in to my demons. I had not followed the patient home. I was helping her to find her origins, which I hoped would soothe her.
I reached the office in time. But the patient’s session was sorrowfully like the recent ones. How hard it was to hear her despair, knowing that my parcel was on its way but not yet in her hands. It would reach her next Monday or Tuesday, before her next session on April 30th. And now there was nothing for me but to wait—wait to see just what sort of deed I had done.
52.
The patient was early. The ten o’clock client still had eight minutes remaining in his session; then the therapist would take her ten-minute intersession break: eighteen minutes to wait, during which there was nowhere for the patient to be but in the hallway, marching up and down that long, dim corridor, under the watchful eyes of the marble sentries.
I thought I heard the crinkling of paper. Yes: Surely she carried the envelope I had sent her. In her very hands the paper I had held! Was hers a march of anxiety or excitement? Each time she retreated down the corridor, I feared it was the former, anxiety, and I rued sending the envelope so precipitously. But as the patient turned back toward me, I encouraged myself to believe that her early arrival, so unusual and uncharacteristic, was a sign of happy anticipation.
Up and down she walked, my spirits rising and falling, when finally the door to Dr. Schussler’s office opened. She bade goodbye to her ten o’clock, then, seeing the patient, said:
I will be just a few minutes. You can go in if you like.
The sound machine went silent. The doctor left. The door was open. The patient went in, took her seat. The envelope rustled in her hands.
For ten minutes we sat, the patient and I, each on our respective side of our common wall—this time with the door to the corridor open. I could hear each breath she took, each slight sniffle, each tiny crease of the parcel she held—my parcel! I had no choice but to sit absolutely still, for surely, should I even breathe deeply or shift a leg, she would hear me just as