“Wait here,” she said.
It was nicely furnished, with an Oriental carpet, pale green walls, and French doors that overlooked a quiet garden. It smelled of leather and old wood, and the furniture looked expensive. An upholstered sofa. A shiny brown side table with feet like lion’s paws. A tall leather chair at the doctor’s wide desk. Across from the desk sat a black-painted chair with a caned seat, clearly earmarked for the visitor. Could this really be where Herta spent her days? If so, it was quite a step up from her last office. She was certainly not eating beans out of a can.
“You are the last appointment,” said the receptionist. “The doctor’s had a long day. Two surgeries this morning.”
“Some things never change,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
I walked to the chair. “Oh, nothing.”
My hands shook as I grasped the wooden arms of the chair and lowered myself down. Built-in bookcases lined one wall, and a pink china clock sat on a shelf.
“I’ll be leaving now,” the receptionist said. “Here is your receipt. The doctor will be in shortly.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I glanced at the receipt: Dr. Herta Oberheuser was printed in pretty script across the top. My evidence!
I almost took the receptionist’s hand and begged her to stay in the room with me but instead watched her leave. What could possibly happen? She closed the door gently behind her. If this was indeed Herta’s office, how good it would feel to tell her off, then slam that door behind me when I left.
I stood and walked to the bookcase, the carpet muffling my steps. I ran one finger down a smooth, leather-bound book set and pulled out a heavy volume, Atlas of General Surgery. Herta’s specialty. I slipped the book back into place and stepped to the gilt-framed oil paintings on the wall of cows in a field. The desk held a blotter, a telephone, a facial tissue box, and a silver water pitcher on a china plate. The pitcher perspired. That made two of us.
I looked at the diplomas framed on the wall. DüSSELDORF ACADEMY FOR PRACTICAL MEDICINE. DERMATOLOGY. There was another for infectious diseases. No surgical diploma? I poured myself a glass of water.
The door opened, and I turned to see the woman who’d stepped out of the silver Mercedes slip into the room. I froze, my mouth suddenly full of sand, and then placed my glass on the desk. It was Herta.
She strode to the desk, clipboard in hand, wearing her white doctor’s coat, a black stethoscope draped around her neck. Thank goodness she didn’t offer to shake my hand, because my palms were wet.
I sat, my whole body jellying, as she eyed my paperwork on the clipboard, her attitude somewhere between bored and irritated.
“What can I do for you today, Mrs. Bakoski? New patient?”
“New patient, yes,” I said, clasping my hands in my lap to stop them from shaking. “Looking for a family doctor.”
She sat in the leather chair and pulled herself to the desk.
“Polish?” she asked as she uncapped her fountain pen. Was that a hint of disdain?
“Yes,” I said and forced a smile. “My husband is a grocer.”
Why was I shaking so? What was the worst that could happen? Commandant Suhren was in a pine box in a German cemetery. Or was he? The way Nazis were turning up in that town, I might see Suhren doing the backstroke in the lake.
“You live in Pl?n?” She frowned, lifted my glass from the desk, and placed a linen coaster under it.
“Yes,” I said.
“On School Street?”
“That’s right.”
“Funny, there is no School Street in Pl?n.”
“Did I write School Street? We are new to town.” Outside the window a magpie fluttered its wings.
“What can I help you with today, Mrs. Bakoski?”
How could she not recognize me when her face was so etched in my mind?
“Can you tell me your background?” I asked.
“I was trained as a dermatologist and have recently made the switch to family medicine after practicing for many years both at Hohenlychen Sanatorium and a large teaching hospital in Berlin.”
Once my heart stopped thumping so loudly, I became more comfortable with my role. She really didn’t recognize me.
“Oh, that must have been interesting,” I said. “And before that?”
“I was a camp doctor at a women’s reeducation camp in Fürstenberg.”
She leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled. There was no doubt it was her, but Herta had changed. She had become more refined, with her longer hair and expensive clothes. Prison had not broken her but had made her more sophisticated somehow. My whole body tensed at the thought. How was it that the criminal was enjoying such a luxurious lifestyle while the victim was driving around in a tin can?
“Oh, Fürstenberg is lovely,” I said. “The lake and all. Pretty.”
“So you’ve been there?”
That was the moment. I had a choice. To walk out having identified her or stay for what I really wanted.
“Yes. I was a prisoner there.”
The clock chimed the half hour.
“That was a long time ago,” Herta said. She sat up straight in her chair and organized phantom objects on her desk. “If you have no further questions, I have patients to see, and I am behind schedule.”
There was the old Herta. She could only be pleasant for so long.
“I am your last appointment,” I said.
Herta smiled. A first. “Why stir up old dust? You’re here for some sort of vigilante justice?”
All my rehearsed speeches went away. “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”
Her smile faded.
“You operated on me. Killed young girls. Babies. How could you do it?”
“I did my job. I spent years in prison just for doing academic research.”
“Five years. You were sentenced to twenty. So this is your excuse? Academic research?”
“Research to save German soldiers. And for your information, the German government for years has exercised the right to use executed criminals for such research purposes.”
“Only we weren’t dead, Herta.”
Herta took a closer look at me. “I served my time, and now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“My mother was at Ravensbrück too.”
Herta closed her desk drawer a little too hard. “I can’t be expected to keep track of every H?ftling.”
“Halina Kuzmerick.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar,” Herta said without a second’s hesitation.
“You had her moved to Block One.”
“There were over a hundred thousand H?ftlings at Ravensbrück,” Herta said.
“Don’t say H?ftling again.”
“I have no recollection of that person,” Herta said with a quick glance in my direction.
Was she afraid of me?
“Halina Kuzmerick,” I repeated. “She was a nurse. Worked with you in the Revier.”
“There were three shifts of prisoner nurses. You expect me to remember one?”
“She was blond and spoke German fluently. An artist.”
Herta smiled. “I would like to help you, but my memory is not the best. I’m sorry I can’t remember every nurse who sketched portraits.”
The clouds outside shifted, and sunlight poured through the window onto Herta’s desk. Everything slowed.
“I didn’t say she sketched portraits.”
“I have to ask you to leave. I really am busy. My—”
I stood. “What happened to my mother?”
“If you’re smart, you’ll go back to Poland.”
I stepped closer to her desk. “They may have let you out, but there are people who think you deserve more punishment. Lots of them. Powerful people.”
“I paid the price.”
Herta capped her pen and tossed it onto the blotter. Her ring caught the sunlight and threw a kaleidoscope of light about the desk.
“That’s a beautiful ring,” I said.
“My grandmother’s,” Herta said.
“You’re a sick person. Pathological.”
Herta looked out the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Relating to or manifesting behavior that is maladaptive—”
“This ring has been in my family—”
“Save it, Herta.”