Eumenides had spared me. The guard’s absence, I felt sure, was proof of his Providential purpose: He had been sent precisely for the one duty he had performed.
In my pocket was the notice requiring me to renew my lease else vacate the office. I should have returned it weeks ago. Up until the moment I stood staring at the empty podium, I had not been certain if I would sign the form or tear it up, leave the building, leave the patient and all that tempted me. Now I climbed to the mezzanine up the narrow stair I had not traveled for more than a year—the marble steps worn yet more concave—hastily signed the form, and dropped it into the manager’s box. Then I rode up to my dear office.
The cool interior of the building’s breath enveloped me; the cold marble reassured me once again: Everything will be all right.
I took my chair as always. First came the bongs of the church bell, then the patient’s footsteps. At last: The extinguishing of the sound machine. The breathtaking silence that followed.
Into which the patient said: I found her. Michal Gershon. I found her.
The therapist started in her chair.
And immediately a chasm opened between the patient’s last words and those still to come.
Was the woman named Michal Gershon truly her mother? What was my evidence? Initials. A date. Historical patterns. Almost nothing.
The laughing voice of Mrs. Knobloch mocked me: Who am I to tell you what to believe?
THREE
68.
Your mother, said the therapist. You found your mother.
No, said the patient. I can’t call her that. Mrs. Gershon. I found Michal Gershon.
(Please tell me she is your mother!)
Ah? How? What? piped the therapist.
Completely on impulse, said the patient. I bought a ticket from a travel agent, flew standby to Tel Aviv the next day.
And?
A mistake. A disaster. The worst experience of my life.
(No! This cannot be the whole of the story!)
The patient was silent for several seconds. Dr. Schussler’s venetian blinds banged against the sills in the faint hot breeze. The street was strangely quiet, deserted because of the heat.
There’s only one good thing about it, the patient went on. I don’t have to worry about mothers anymore. I’m free of all mothers. Adoptive, birth, natural, first, second, blood, not. She laughed. I’m Mutterfrei. You’ve heard of Judenfrei, free of Jews? Of course you have, being German. Europe cleared of all the Jews. Well, I did better than Hitler. I’m Mutterfrei.
(What a horrid way to express it. And a nice barb at the therapist, too. But yes, I thought from behind the protection of my wall. This is where you want to be, my dear patient: rid of them all.)
Suppose you tell me what happened, said Dr. Schussler.
What’s there to say? When someone says to you “Get out of here! Never try to contact me again!” what else is there to say? Want to hear it in her own voice? Here. I brought a cassette recorder. It’s all cued up.
There was a click, then a voice in a scratchy recording shouting:
Do not look for me again! I beg you: Never again try to contact me!
The patient immediately clicked off the recorder.
Okay, so I got it a little wrong. She didn’t exactly say, Never try to contact me again! She said: Never again try to contact me!
The patient said nothing more for several seconds. The venetian blinds rattled and bumped. All the while one could hear the slish of Dr. Schussler’s stockings as she crossed and recrossed her legs—one could almost feel the stickiness of her thighs as they suffered in their nylon casings. She was extemporizing: What should she possibly say in reply to that shouting voice?
Let us put aside the recording for the moment, the therapist said finally. First let us talk about your decision to go to Tel Aviv. Tell me how the trip came about, how you made your decision.
It was an impulse, said the patient. As I said. The city was fogged in. Andie and Clarissa went to Las Vegas, a place I hate. It would cost a fortune to fly to Tel Aviv at the last minute. But I’d just received a bonus. Why not go? I walked into a travel agency. Plane, hotel, done.
I had to change planes in New York, and all the while there was a little whisper in the back of my head saying, You can turn around; you don’t have to do this. Just the same, I kept going, in an out-of-body state.