By Blood A Novel

117.


Such was my unmoored state as the long Thanksgiving hiatus came to an end. Perhaps it was asking too much to hope that the patient’s return, of itself, would restore me to equanimity. Yet in no way could I have anticipated the next turn of events.

For no sooner did the patient take her seat in Dr. Schussler’s office than she said:

I went back to Tel Aviv.

(God, no! I wanted to cry out. We have already dispensed with this mother!)

I’m surprised, said Dr. Schussler (repressing her own shock, as one could tell from the creaks of her leather chair).

I believe, the doctor went on, that you had come to the conclusion that your life and Michal’s did not intersect.

(Exactly! Good work, Dr. Schussler. Remind her of her freedom!)

A silence of several seconds spread itself out between client and doctor into which car horns blared and radiators spat their steam.

Finally Dr. Schussler said:

It is because of what happened in Pebble Beach, yes?

Further silence from the patient.

Is that what propelled you to return?

Yeah. Sure. At Pebble Beach, it was clearer than ever that big-M Mother is no mother. And Michal, what kind of mother is she? What kind of mother throws out her own flesh and blood? Yeah. Going back. My last try. Last try to get myself a mother.

And did you? asked the doctor.

No.

No?

But I found someone else. Someone else I’m related to.

Oh! said Dr. Schussler. Wonderful!

The patient did not immediately reply.

Wonderful, repeated the doctor. Yes?

Maybe. Maybe not.





118.


I took a last-minute flight, said the patient, standby. I let the taxi driver suggest some hotel—it was fine. I dropped off my bag, and went directly to Michal’s house.

I found the door open. A crack. I gave it a little push. It fell open all the way.

I yelled out, Hello? Anyone there? I waited. No one answered.

I walked halfway down the hall and yelled again, Hello, hello.

Finally someone in the kitchen—from the direction of the kitchen—called back: Here. I am in here.

The kitchen. I stopped at the threshold. There was a woman in an army uniform standing with her back to me. There was a rifle slung over her shoulder. I saw groceries on the table—milk, bread, apples. She took off the gun. Put it in the corner.

Hello, I said again.

And the woman turned around.

She looked like me.

Exactly like me.

I was on instant recognition. But I should check, came to me. To be sure. Each feature. Eyes, mouth, chin, cheekbones, shape of the head—the same, the same, the same, the same. Hair dark brown, little halo of frizz—the same.

Gott! whispered Dr. Schussler.

(A sister! How did I not know there was a sister?)

Then I felt tricked. My eyes playing tricks on me. Seeing what I wanted to see. Another look. Army uniform, rifle over the shoulder, strange expression on her face: Suspicion? Disdain? Not me, not me, not me.

All this is happening in—what? A second? Two? And I’m thinking, How do I know what I really look like? In the mirror. A pose. Preferred angle. Flattering expression. Maybe someone would say we don’t look alike at all.

We were just standing there. Not moving. Then in some heavy accent the woman said, Who are you.

It wasn’t a question. Her tone was flat, dead flat.

I’m Michal’s daughter, I said. From America.

My sister—she had to be my sister—tipped back her head and squinted at me. Then she said in that same dead flat voice:

I am also Michal’s daughter.

We kept standing there, just looking at each other. She scanned my face, features, body. Like I did with her. She inventoried me—that’s what it felt like, being inventoried. Probably that’s what she saw in me. When I was checking. To be sure.

We are similar in appearance, she said.

I think more than similar.

Yes, more than similar.

I look like someone.

My head went light. Balloon light. I don’t know what expression Leni saw on my face. Leni—she told me later her name was Leni—I don’t know what she saw. My face felt inert. Like my whole body. Inert. My breathing, gasps for air—maybe she understood from my breathing.

But I saw something in her. Her expression was the same as when she first saw me. Head back. Squinting. Then her mouth slowly turned down.

She said: How did you come to be here?

I came to find my birth mother. Last summer. I’m adopted. Michal—she is my birth mother.

I knew it, said Leni. I knew something must have happened. Last summer. Something changed. So it was—

Me.

We didn’t know what to say after that. The clock ticked. I heard a car go by. Leni stopped scrutinizing me. Finally she said,

And how did you find her to be? I mean, what sort of reception did she give you?

Why do you ask?

She tipped her head to one side and laughed.

I am imagining she was not happy to see you.

Yes. Right. She sent me away.

So why did you come back?

I don’t know.

You should not have come back. You should leave.

I was startled, a little afraid. I didn’t know what to do. But just finding her—a sister, almost a twin—it never occurred to me to turn around and leave. I kept staring at her. And she stared back: Standing taller. Shoulders back. Chest high. A soldier. A soldier’s stance.

Leave? Do you really think I could leave now? I said. Just when I find a sister—we have to be sisters.

Yes. Sisters. What else could we be?

It was strange. We didn’t say more about how alike we were. As if it was too weird. Or something we couldn’t cope with right then, or wouldn’t, not knowing each other. Almost doubles—what it meant. In Leni: no sign of joy, tentative joy, or happiness, or relief. Something else.

We exchanged names. She told me then: Leni Gershon. We said what we did for a living—she’s an engineer, a civil engineer. We compared birth dates—she’s just a year and a half older than I am. We both said we didn’t know about the other’s existence.

So why do you think I shouldn’t have come back? I said finally.

You may not like what you find out. About Michal. About where you came from.

My body bent over into a sort of crouch. Being tired. Maybe to defend myself. I don’t know from what—yes, I knew, from her, something steely in her. How she towered over me.

And what did Michal tell you?

Everything.

Leni laughed. Well, not everything. You did not know about me. So you could not have come here looking for me. Then why are you here? What is it you hoped to gain by returning?

One thing, I said. The truth about why she gave me away. Why she never looked for me.

Heh. That is two questions.

I said nothing.

Are you sure you want to know? she asked.

Everyone has warned me off, I said to her, finding some bravery in myself. Mother—my adoptive mother. And a … a doctor that I see. And Michal. Everyone warning me. Thinking they’ll spare me something. But I’ve already heard some awful things—and I survived. See? I’m back. And if there’s more that’s bad, I can take it.

Then I suddenly lost my little surge of courage. I couldn’t go on. If I said, I don’t have a mother, I need a mother, I came back to find a real mother, I’d break down in front of her. I could tell she wasn’t a person who wanted to deal with sobs and tears. And I didn’t want to look weak in front of her.

But she must have seen it in my face. She let go of her stance. She went “at ease,” I suppose. Then she sighed and said:

Sit down. I will put the groceries away. Then we can talk.

She scraped back a chair for me, and I sat as the apples and milk went into the refrigerator. Bread, other things still in the bag, into cabinets and pantries. She picked up the rifle and put it in some other room. Then she came back, sat down in what had been Michal’s chair last time I’d come.

She put her arms out on the table, leaning on her elbows, hands together, a triangle.

First, she said, before I tell you anything, you need to know a little about who I am, who I am in relation to Michal.

Her daughter.

Wait, please. “Daughter” tells you nothing. When Michal brought me here, it was very bad for me. Very bad. I was angry, furious. I hated her. Nine years old and hating everyone and everything around me to my bones.

Brought you here? From where?

Later. I will get to that later.

But why—

Later.

From her tone, I knew better than to keep asking questions. So I only said,

But you’re still here.

Heh. Where else? Look. I had to come to terms with it. I am here, she is here. After all, she is my mother.

Mother, I said. Your mother. Maybe in time you forgave her for whatever happened. Maybe in time … you came to love her?

Leni laughed at me.

Are you still so sentimental about “mother”? Even after Michal sent you away? Between me and Michal, it is more like an armistice. We stopped fighting. We came to accept each other. Rely on each other. For day-to-day things. But love … Do you know what love is?

I was going to jump in and say of course. Then I thought of big-M Mother, drinking and disapproving. And about Michal, her face full of love—vanished in a moment. A few girlfriends, maybe, when it seemed like love in the beginning, the sex time. But … love?

I looked at Leni’s face. Almost a duplicate of mine. And so hard, defended. And I saw myself in that, too.

Not really, I said.





119.


The patient seemed on the verge of tears. Yet several minutes had passed since the carillon had chimed the three-quarter hour. Dr. Schussler took in the breath that tells a patient—somehow, subliminally—We must stop now.

The days went by. The next session began. As if no time at all had passed, the patient resumed her story precisely where she had left off: after telling Leni she had no experience of love.

It’s funny, she said. Leni seemed to relax just then. No, did not relax. Was maybe a little … friendlier. We made chitchat. About what kind of place I have in San Francisco. About where she lives, nearby, alone, “for the moment,” as she put it. Then she asked about my life, my life before I found Michal, and after.

I gave her as quick a summary as I could. Born in Belsen. Michal’s excuse for giving me away, so I wouldn’t be a Jew. A quick trip through my nutso grandfather, the hand-off to big-M Mother and Father, all the way up to Michal, her story, her shooing me away. I tried to be a little glib about it. It didn’t matter that Leni’s mood had changed. She still wouldn’t want me breaking down right in front of her.

But she surprised me. When I finished, she looked at me with a kind, almost mournful, face.

I am sorry all that happened to you, she said.

We said nothing for a while. I stared at the chair jammed against the wall, she out the window.

Then she said, Something to drink? Orange juice? Coffee? Tea?

Coffee, thanks.

She made instant coffee. Nescafé. I’d noticed that a lot of Israelis don’t fuss over things like coffee. Seems they like things plain, quick, practical.

Now you, I said when she put the cups on the table. Your story.

My story, she said, shrugging. This will take some time.

I’m not in a rush.

She laughed. All right. But to get to me, we have to start with Michal. Did she tell you about what happened before the Nazis took her? About her marriage to Albrecht Gerstner, about the false pregnancies and such?

Yes, said the patient. The whole story, starting with her family going to Amsterdam.

And did she tell you about how her father-in-law betrayed her?

Yes, that they nearly took her from her husband’s graveside, then later came for her in the house.

And where did she say she went from there?

She refused to say anything about that time. Only that she was sent to a labor camp.

Leni broke into barking laughter, which utterly baffled me.

Well, Leni said, trying to stifle her laughs, labor did have something to do with it.





120.


It is an implausible story, Leni began. But survivor stories are all like that. Most of them. If not for something impossible or ridiculous or shameful—stealing bread, sleeping with guards—or pitiful—hiding in dirt basements, living off grass and weeds in the woods—or lucky—being young, healthy, with a strong constitution—or astoundingly brave—stealing guns from guards, jumping from trains—they would not have survived. So see Michal’s story in that light. Is all of it true? Maybe yes, maybe no. Many survivors do not want to describe in detail what happened to them. The Shoah is a national bond here. But it ended only thirty years ago. Many of the survivors are just into their fifties. They were a generation that did not go in for therapy and talking cures.

So …

I think you already know that Michal was taken from the Gerstners’ house directly to the train station. Her name was Maria then, but that is too strange, so I will call her Michal. She was about to be shoved into a packed car on its way to Theresienstadt, when an old friend came by. A former beau from her years in Gymnasium.

Leni laughed. I should say “another” beau from her Gymnasium days. There were more than a few, as she tells it.

All right. Now. This former beau was by then a Nazi officer, and he was shocked to see her being rough-handled by a low-ranking brute of a soldier. He grabbed her away, saying that he knew Michal, he could swear she was not a Jew, that she was a good Catholic who had lost her papers in a bombing raid. The duty officer did not look convinced—papers lost in bombing raids was a common ruse used by Jews in hiding. So the former beau quickly made up a story that she was pregnant with a child fathered by a senior SS officer—who would take some heads if he discovered his fiancée in Theresienstadt!

The duty officer had enough fear of the senior officer’s rank that he went along, saying, if she was really pregnant with a good Aryan child, then he knew exactly where she should be. There were general orders, he said. Pregnant Aryan women who were not living with husbands or family were to be taken to a special maternity hospital.

Which, in many respects, said Leni, it was.

After spending two nights in a dormitory, Michal was transported to a small village in the vicinity of Poznán, Poland. She was very frightened. She had already been caught in one false-pregnancy scheme, and now she was on her way to a maternity hospital, where they would certainly know she was not pregnant. It was the winter of ’44. The transport was a small, freezing bus. It took her east, where she could see what the war had done. Ruins, cold, somewhere in Poland—she was sure she was going to her death.

When she got to the hospital, of course the doctors knew immediately she was not pregnant. But instead of the transport to Auschwitz she expected, the doctors were surprisingly casual about the whole thing, saying something like, Oh, well. Such a pity you lost that pregnancy. It is too common these days. No fruits and vegetables. The stress of the war. Here you can rest and get a proper diet.

Just what sort of “hospital” was this? Michal wondered. It was a large stone structure, columns at the entry. There were extensive grounds around it, now covered with snow. Tall trees. Linen-wrapped hedges to protect them from the cold. When she had first arrived, she followed a nurse across the sprawling main floor, to a registration room, where they took down her particulars. She gave her name as Maria Gerstner, of course. Then the nurse walked her through a library, a drawing room, a solarium. They took an ornate ironwork lift to the third floor—Michal took particular care in describing it; something from the “before time.” Then the nurse brought her to what she said was Michal’s bedroom. A private room with two floor-to-ceiling windows draped with silk brocade, warm brown, tied back with gold tassels. Michal also described this in detail, again saying it reminded her of the “before time.” The bed was wider than any she had ever seen before. There were many pillows, and a bedspread made of the same brown silk.

She went to dinner in a dining hall with white-tile walls. Hard walls that echoed the voices of the women. She thought there were thirty, maybe thirty-five women. They were called “patients.” Michal noticed that the other “patients” were all blond, blue-eyed women like herself. Everyone spoke at least a little German. But many were comfortable only in Polish, or Czech—they were called Sudeten Germans by the staff. The women at the table did not speak among themselves except for the most commonplace things—How did you enjoy breakfast? Is your room warm enough? Do you need salt? A rule, evidently, because Michal noticed certain glances in the direction of the thin-faced matron who sat at the head.

Doctors examined her daily and found her to be in “excellent Aryan health.” Despite the rules, the women found ways to tell her just what sort of hospital she was in.

It was a tranquil place. The women had soft beds, well-heated rooms, trees near the windows that would give shade come spring. They ate the finest foods. Entrecôte, veal, capon, trout. Buttered potatoes, spinach, kale, carrots, peaches, oranges—Michal described these foods in detail—fresh fruits and vegetables in the midst of war, rationing, hunger. The miracle was the fresh oranges, the mysterious golden oranges.

And then, to repay the good offices of the Reich for its munificence, if they were not currently pregnant, it was generally known that these pampered women should not be averse to enjoying the company of visiting Nazi officers. It was something called Lebensborn, meaning “life spring,” a nasty little Nazi eugenics program to ensure the future of the master race.

The therapist gasped.

This is … unexpected, Dr. Schussler said.

Yes, said the patient. A shock.





121.


(Please God, no, I thought, as I sat listening. Lebensborn! How could I have known?)

Lebensborn, said the patient. I had no idea beyond what Leni told me later. But even then, she was sketchy, talking only about how it affected her life and Michal’s. No background, nothing about why no one seems to know anything about it. When I got back home, before this session, I went to the library. Nothing, just a newspaper article from a small town in Kentucky that called it all bunk. It said Lebensborn centers were maternity hospitals. The story that they were brothels: bunk.

She paused, then said:

Do you know anything about it, Dr. Schussler?

The doctor said nothing, then:

I know it is … controversial.

You mean the argument over maternity hospital versus whorehouse.

No, said the doctor. Whether Lebensborn existed at all.

She inhaled deeply, as if needing a drag of a Viceroy.

But why would Leni talk about it? Say it’s something that happened to Michal?

Well, there is some testimony from women who say they were kept there.

Say?

Most are not believed.

Rain sketched the windows, a soft rush against the panes.

The doctor took another drag on her invisible Viceroy.

The truth is not yet known, she said.

(You must tell her, Dr. Schussler. Tell her, once and for all, about your guilt at being German.)

So you say Michal is lying, said the patient.

As we have discussed, said Dr. Shussler. Michal has … embellished her experiences before.

And Leni? She’s lying too?

She may simply be repeating what Michal told her.

You’re saying everyone is lying! I can’t believe it.

The doctor shifted about in her chair.

There is some hard evidence of Lebensborn, she said. I have heard about an old business registration. With Lebensborn in the name.

From that time? During the war?

Yes.

So something was there, said the patient.

One tattered record, I believe.

Doesn’t that mean it existed but was kept secret?

Well, said the doctor with a laugh. You may say Lebensborn was not there. Or you may say it was there but kept a secret. One cannot prove something with a negative—prove that something existed because we have almost nothing about it.

(Sophistry!)

Why are you doing this? asked the patient. Why are you questioning everything?

The doctor took a deep breath. Please believe this, she said. It is my hope that you will think deeply about what you have learned. And come to know, within yourself, what is true in what your mother and sister have told you. And what may be a kind of truth they have told themselves.

(Was this some kind of excuse? Her German denial? Or had she been doing this from the beginning, asking the patient to question what she had been told?)

I’m completely confused, said the patient. Yes. No. False. True. My truth. Theirs.

I will leave you with this, said Dr. Schussler. The problem with Lebensborn is that there are too many versions. Fair-haired children kidnapped from Poland close to the German border. Orphaned Germans raised to see themselves as specimens of a master race. A maternity hospital that pampered German women, also to preserve the future of the master race. Or maybe just a normal maternity hospital. Or, yes, perhaps a place where women entertained good Aryan men to produce healthy Aryan babies. I am not sure we will ever know.

The patient inhaled deeply.

Why can’t this all be true, she said. Who says Lebensborn has to be only one thing? And about Michal. Maybe she embellished things. Maybe she said a few things she wanted me to hear, or not hear. But it was to protect me, in her mind, from things that were true. But what I don’t understand is why would she talk about Lebensborn if she risked the whole world branding her a liar?

Yes, said the therapist. These are good questions.





122.


I’d like to go on, said the patient. Go on with what Leni told me.

Of course, said the doctor. Please do.

The patient settled into her chair.

So, she said, after the shock about Lebensborn, I got my wits about me. And I asked Leni: Was it some sort of whorehouse?

I was relieved for a minute, when she answered, No, not exactly. The women were “free” to refuse the attentions of this man or that.

Then she went on to say:

But if they did not accept someone eventually, they were sent away, away from the warm beds and good food, so the inducement was there.

And in Michal’s case, the alternative was—

There was no alternative, said Leni. It was Lebensborn or roam around Poland without papers. Or worse. Be sent to a real labor camp. Yes, the women could refuse a man who disgusted them. Not for the woman’s sake. But because the doctors believed the environment of the womb would be disturbed by the mother’s unhappiness. The idea was to create a beautiful environment for the gestation of perfect Aryan children.

But if Michal was safe and warm in this Lebensborn place, what happened that she was sent to Bergen-Belsen?

Ah! said Leni. It happened very abruptly. One of the “visitors” was a relative of her dear father-in-law, Dieter Gerstner. He exposed her, and that very day she was put on a train for Belsen.

Belsen. We sat there thinking of Belsen.

And the rest of the story you know, said her sister.

But let me ask you. Her being discovered, was it right near the end of the war?

Yes. Maybe so. Is that important?

Well, yes. I’m counting months. I was born in Belsen. Born a little prematurely, eight-plus months. But that seemed okay given the situation. I thought my father was someone in the camp, one of the Zionist leaders, at least I hoped so. But … if Michal left the Lebensborn hospital, say, somewhere near the end of March ’45. If I count from there to my birthday on December 26th: nine months exactly.

Ah, I see, she replied. More coffee?

No, thanks.

Leni didn’t make some for herself, the patient told Dr. Schussler, just sat there holding her cup, saying nothing more about my calculations.

So I turned to her and asked, Where do you come in? Where did baby Leni get started?

She kept staring down into the empty cup.

Oh, yes, she said, looking up at me. We now come back to where I was before Michal brought me here.

I waited for her to go on. She said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then finally:

Now let us do my calculations. Michal was taken to the Lebensborn facility in the winter of ’44, in early February, she told me. Then I am born on 15 November of the same year. So now I, too, will count back nine months. Which puts my conception in February.

So you were born—

I was Lebensborn.

We said nothing. I suddenly felt ashamed. For both of us. The shame of where we came from.

Leni took a deep breath.

Michal told me she got pregnant almost immediately. I was born, full-term and fat, as chubby as a cherub, according to Michal. That is all she remembers of me as an infant. They did not even let her nurse me. She gave birth, and I was taken away. Then she did not know what happened to me. None of the women knew what happened to their babies. It was rumored that, after the babies were weaned, they were raised in some special kindergarten facilities, or else were given to the wives of high-up married officers to be raised as their own children.

Leni paused.

Well, she said. That is what happened to me.

What happened to you?

Leni abruptly stood with a screech of her chair. She began pacing: two steps, turn; two steps, turn.

I was given to a Nazi family to be raised, she said.

My God!

Leni stopped pacing.

Yes, to good, devoted members of the National Socialist Party. Not the worst of ogres, mind you. My father was not a guard at a concentration camp. He did not pack Jews into trains. During the war, he was a soldier, an officer. He led a division on the Eastern Front. Which fought bravely, evidently. Hence the reward of me, what they believed was a perfect Aryan child.

My mother was a good Hausfrau, Leni said, pacing again. My German parents—which is how I still think of them, although I haven’t seen them in over twenty years—my German parents were decent-enough people, but very stiff and formal. And of course prejudiced. Your ordinary, everyday anti-Semites, saying the things everyone said: Complaints about being “Jewed,” or “dirty Yids,” and so on. We were rich. There were maids, nannies, tutors. The war itself was never discussed. Vater—my German father—refused to talk about it.

But you said he wasn’t—

No. Not that sort of guilty past. The memory of the horrors of the Eastern Front. Death and gore. And all for nothing, he believed.

So they, your parents, your German parents, knew all about it. About—all that?

They never spoke of my origins. I thought they were my “real” parents, that I was their “real” child. All they told me was that we had an obligation to the lost Reich, to the future of the race. It was a big secret. I was never to tell anyone, now that the “American Jews” were running Germany, they said. I came to awareness with the idea already in my mind, so they must have told me when I was very young, and must have kept telling me. I was conceived as a higher being, and a higher being is what I was supposed to remain. Great achievements were expected of me, superiority in all things.

She looked out the window, at nothing it seemed.

Are you all right? I asked her.

She took a big breath and said: Yes. All right.

I saw her compose herself. Back erect. Shoulders back. But she couldn’t clear her eyes of that vacant stare.

So, Leni continued, half turning to me. I had no idea that my parents—my German parents—were not my real parents. Not until Michal appeared one day and said she was my mother.

And about my father … Michal would never say. Only that he was decent in his lovemaking—some women were used brutally. He wanted his bedmate to have pleasure—he made sure she had it. She absolutely had to enjoy herself, another sort of tyranny, I always thought, if you do not care for a man and he refuses to stop until you climax. They spent two weeks together, then he returned whenever he was on leave.

Michal knows his name, she said hurriedly, but she will not tell me. She says she “forgot” it. Nonsense. She does not want me to find him. He was just “a depositor of Nazi sperm” is all Michal will say about it.

We sat quietly. I think we were both trying to imagine this depositor of Nazi sperm. Then I broke in to say:

He kept coming back, you said. Maybe up until the end, right before Michal was exposed?

Yes. No. I have no idea.

But about my counting months. If he was there near the end … it’s possible … he might also be my father.

We surveyed each other’s face once again, looking for evidence: Did we have the same father?

I cannot say, Leni replied finally. We look alike, and neither of us looks like Michal, which would seem to indicate yes, we look like our father. That we both came from the same depositor of Nazi sperm. But then again, I cannot comment about any of Michal’s relatives, because she has nothing of them, no pictures, nothing. But of course there was once a whole family of Rothmans, hundreds of them if one counts all the generations and all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who were still living before the war. And we might look like any one of them.

We were quiet. The time “before the war”: completely lost.

Finally I said to her: So am I also … Lebensborn?

Many seconds went by before Leni said: Maybe.