By Blood A Novel

56.


The line was strangely quiet—no music, no static—so that I feared the connection had been broken, and I would have to call again and again and never find my way back to her extension. I was alone on the line for perhaps a half minute, but a half minute during which my heart pulsed fifty times—more, for I started counting to distract myself.

Are you there? she asked, finally coming back on the line.

I had not yet composed myself. But I managed to say, Yes, yes. I am here.

What good fortune to find me today, Professor. The Belsen roll of internees. I was looking at it two hours ago. The file is on my desk still. So. Mr. Linder told me you were looking for a Maria G.

She turned pages. She hummed; said something in Hebrew; hummed some more.

I waited. The pages turned.

I have to say I am sorry, Professor, she said finally. Your good fortune was for the timing only. Not good for the result. In the list, I see no one named Maria G.

She smacked her lips. Was she eating? Eating while she destroyed me!

You see, said Mrs. Knobloch, to the sound of paper crinkling—wiping her sloppy lips? Belsen was not completely Jewish until some months after the British soldiers came upon it by chance. Notice, I do not say “liberated” because … I shall stop. Another story for another time, Professor.

You should know, she went on, that many Polish people were in Belsen at the beginning. Mainly Catholics. They were German political prisoners, suspect collaborators, women kept for pleasure—who knows why? So your Maria G.—Maria, a Catholic name—she must be one of them. Polish Catholics, I mean. And you may assume that she went back to Poland. Why not? That was not the graveyard of her people.

She said nothing for several seconds. And I thought: Do not stop there, you heartless woman! Then I was ashamed of the thought. The graveyard of her people.

Is there nothing more? I asked.

Ach! Such impatience! The search through records by now thirty years old, and the tumult of that time—this is not so simple. Maybe British records can help you. They were in charge of the camp. Maybe they cared enough to keep such records. Our concern, you must understand, was taking care of the Jewish people imprisoned there and seeing them safely to Eretz Yisrael.

Hold on, please, she said, then clicked me off into another ether of silence. I am not sure how I endured that moment—and it was but a moment—during which I felt despair enwrap me.

Then she returned, apologizing, going on to say:

Do not believe I am lazy, Professor. We are alike, yes? People who search to find truth. Is not that who you are?

Yes! I answered. How good of you to say so. Yes. We are kin.

She laughed. Are you Jewish? she said.

Ah. No.

Then I am afraid we are not kin. We are people with abilities and values we hold in common. That is not a little thing, ah?

Certainly. Thank you. An important thing.

Now, she said, sighing, I went down the list through all the Ms, with last names starting with G. I found two more women with the initials M.G. This is not much, I think you would agree as a researcher. But we must wait until Sunday to continue.

I do not understand, I said. Why must we wait?

She laughed. Professor, you have reached the Jewish State. It is Friday. Shabbat. I am not very practicing, but I should have left hours ago—we are officially closed since two.

My mind screamed: Sunday! Two unendurable days until I find M.G.

Yet I steadied myself to say: Is it possible for you to call me in the morning? As early as is possible?

It will have to be a collect call, she said.

Of course, I said (however alarmed I was at my growing debt to the Bell System).

So do not fear, Professor. I will call you. But please to remember, our Sunday morning will be your middle of Saturday night.

This is perfectly all right, I said. At my age, it is difficult to find sleep in any case.

Ach! she said. This I understand!





57.


How the Fates were making sport of me!

I do not know what transpired in what remained of Friday’s daylight. I have no memory of it. Perhaps I lapsed into a sealed darkness, as I had but five times before, and many years ago.

I emerged into memory as dusk fell from the sky. Thick flocks of gulls circled the shore and set upon the seawall. Their black outlines filled me with dread; such that I began to wonder if I should avoid Mrs. Knobloch’s call altogether, for she might reveal yet another damning episode in the patient’s early life. In which case I will have failed the patient, and the crows will have had their victory over me.

I slept fitfully, and come Saturday morning I knew that my only hope was the office. I found the elevators under repair, compelling me to climb sixteen flights of stairs, two flights per floor. By the time I reached eight, I was fighting for breath. I stared, dizzy, down the long, empty hallways. I touched the cold marble walls to steady myself. I walked up and down, saw no one, heard no one, and could not face the confinement of my office. As I went by the mail chute, a letter came fluttering down. There was no story above eight! Where had the letter come from! I raced down the corridor and locked myself in Room 807.

Saturday evening came. I went home, where I was surrounded by whisperings. The radio’s static-dashed reports of war in Cambodia. Faraway calls of gulls, now conflated with my crows. Hisses and cries; and, outside, the crash of the surf.

I must have dozed off, for I was awakened by the jangle of the telephone.





58.


This is the Bell System long-distance operator, said a nasal voice. Will you accept a collect call from Israel from Mrs. Orna Knobloch?

Orna, I thought.

Yes, yes, I hurried to say.

After several seconds of static, the connection cleared, and I heard the bright voice of Mrs. Knobloch. Orna.

You did wish me to call first thing in the morning, yes? she said, no doubt hearing the sleep in my voice.

Yes, yes. Just a short nap.

Ah, a little sleep is better than none, yes?

She drew in a breath and quickly said: We will begin where we left off for the Shabbat. The other women with initials M.G.

The first is Miriam Gerstner. As you are not Jewish, Professor, you may not realize that Miriam is a very common name for a Jewish woman. Very common, like Ruth and Sarah and Naomi. And the last name. Gerstner: a name that may come from anywhere in the Western European Diaspora.

Nevertheless, you may believe—

I believe there is not much for you here. All I can learn of this Miriam Gerstner is that she was in Belsen. And the date she left. After that, there is nothing more of her. It is, how do you say in American? A dead end.

I can add only one thing, she went on. Since Miriam Gerstner left Belsen before the founding of the Jewish State, she could have gone only on an Aliyah Bet ship.

Aliyah Bet? I asked.

Vessels making illegal runs to Israel.

Pardon, Mrs. Knobloch. Perhaps you mean Palestine. At the time, it was Palestine.

Excuse me, Professor. I do not intend rudeness. Always for us it was Eretz Yisrael. Which soon came true in 1948.

Of course. My apologies. Eretz Yisrael.

A humph came from Mrs. Knobloch’s end of the line. Then she quickly said, Apology accepted.

And the conversation moved on.

All right, so let us say that Miriam Gerstner is on an Aliyah ship. But all the ships were intercepted by the British, and everyone on them was sent to transit camps. However, there is no record of our Gerstner being in any transit camp.

Oh, she said with a laugh. One ship was sent back to Germany. The famous movie ship Exodus. But that happened later, ’47, after Gerstner left Belsen.

The date she left.

You said you know the date of her departure.

Let me see. Yes. She left on 18 May, 1946.

One day after she surrendered the patient. Yes. This must be the mother. I have found her, I have found her!

Wonderful! Mrs. Knobloch. Wonderful! Exactly the woman I am seeking. After so much research, yours and mine, Mrs. Knobloch, together we have found her.

As you wish, Professor. But what you have here is the date Gerstner leaves Belsen. Then she vanishes. Is enough for you?

Yes, I believe—

Before you believe anything, let me tell you of another M.G.

Excuse me, she said after a pause. Please do not mind. My travel today was delayed and I must be taking the breakfast at my desk.

Not again! I thought. Chomping and chewing and rustling paper as she tortures me!

Now … Here is the next M.G. She is a woman with the Israeli name Michal Gershon.

She pronounced it mee-CHAL ger-SHUN, with a gutteral CH.

She swallowed.

As with Gerstner, she left Belsen on 18 May, 1946.

Again. The day after the surrender!

But I am sorry, Professor. She also disappears from our files. No records from transit camps, no arrival information, no housing assignments, no work assignments, nothing. She has an Israeli name, I am thinking, but I cannot find her anywhere in Israel. So, I think, another dead end.

But Professor! she went on. You will see I did not give up your cause. I am as determined as you seem to be. I am bloodhound. I am Sherlock Knobloch of Tel Aviv!

Oh, please tell me you found her, Mrs. Sherlock Knobloch.

I am next thinking, Many were injured in the War of Independence. Maybe that is why we do not have all the usual information. So I am going next to health and hospital records. And there she is! Our Michal Gershon.

Oh, Mrs. Knobloch. You are my savior!

Of course, Professor, I cannot tell you what is in those records. Even I cannot see them. But what we have is her name on a file, also a date of admission and release. I cannot give you the actual dates, but I will say they are both in 1948. So maybe she was injured in the war. Or simply suffering from some other newcomer ailment—who knows?

Is there nothing more? I asked, almost begging. No continuing contact? Perhaps a follow-up with a doctor? Where she went after she left the hospital?

Professor, please to be happy to know she left the hospital and so in 1948 is not dead!

Dead. I had never considered it. Thirty years from the patient’s birth date: her mother might be dead.

Where shall we go from here, Mrs. Knobloch?

She sighed. From here I do not know. Let me think a moment.

Another bite. The rustle of a napkin to wipe her mouth. Get to it, woman!

All right. Sherlock Knobloch will not give up. Perhaps the next step is the Jewish Agency. Let us say our Michal Gershon received absorption assistance from the Agency—absorption, to help new immigrants get settled. If so, the Agency should know where she was at that time. But, Professor, as a researcher, you know that “let us say” indicates we are starting with a supposition. Finding her address in this manner is—how do you put it—something long …

A long shot.

That is it, a long shot. In any case, I am now thinking you should contact the Agency. Or we will do it for you. Yes, better we do it. To us they will answer much sooner.

I told myself: I will succeed! Despite the supposition, despite the long shot, I would find the mother of my dear patient. There had to be a clue somewhere in all that I had learned.

Thank you so very much, Mrs. Knobloch. You have given me a wealth of information with which to continue my research. I believe that one of these women—Miriam or Michal—is the she whom I have been seeking.

Are you sure, Professor, because—

Yes, I interrupted her. I believe I have found her. With your help, I hurried to add.

So, said Mrs. Knobloch. Let me with you review. You came to me looking for a Maria G. As we discussed, Maria is a Catholic name. Then: no later record of her. Probably back in Poland.

Then you think maybe it is Miriam Gerstner. Common name, as common as the name Maria for a gentile. Her last name from Europe anywhere. Gerstner leaves Belsen on 18 May, 1946. Then disappears.

Then we come to Michal Gershon. All we know is the date she left Belsen. And some hospital records.

Finally, what do we have? The initials of the three women are the same. Two dates are the same, the Belsen departures. Then nothing at all for one woman. And for the other only a hospital file. Excuse me, for a researcher that is not very much certainty for you.

No! I thought. How can she sit there—drinking something again!—and deny all the work I have done. No. I refuse to be disrespected. Somewhere in there is my elusive Maria G.

Nonetheless, I said, I think there is enough for me to continue my search.

Mrs. Knobloch sighed heavily.

All right. I will send you copies of the files in question. You maybe can see details I cannot. Do not worry if a few weeks pass—all the papers to be put together and copied. Meanwhile, we will try for Gershon’s last known address. It will be in the packet, if we find it.

Mrs. Knobloch, I said to her, I very much appreciate the scrupulousness of your reply. But I do believe—

You want to believe?

Yes. I do believe I am very close to finding the woman I am seeking.

She laughed. Who am I to tell you what to believe?





59.


Stung by Mrs. Knobloch’s sarcasm, I returned to the libraries, as I am always pleased to do, there to find several authoritative histories of German Jews during the Holocaust. I learned there was an order (if one may use the word “order” in this context), a sequence the Nazis followed in their attempt to eradicate European Jewry.

Jews outside of Germany were taken as those nations were conquered. But the murder of the German Jews was done in stages, a “slowly closing noose,” as one source said. There were some suggestions that Hitler delayed taking German Jews en masse to avoid horrifying his own citizens—who preferred order and rules: Ordnung. Therefore he took his own Jews step by step, to spare the “sensibilities” of “good Germans.”

Within Germany, the Nazis established a perverse hierarchy of Jewish “privilege.” The least privileged, those taken first, were Jews who had come into Germany fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe—Ostjuden, as they were called. The sensitive German citizens saw them as a sort of insect invasion; therefore any horrors visited upon them were not disorder, in their eyes, but a pest extermination.

Taken later, over a year or more, were German Jews who were “useful” to the Nazis: those working in defense industries, in labor camps.

Going up the line of privilege were Jews who were married to so-called Aryans.

Rounded up last were those German Jews, primarily women, who were married to good Germans, had converted to Christianity, and assumed their husbands’ Christian names. But in the end, marriage or conversion or name-change meant nothing. They, too, were taken.

I was about to shelve the last volume I had consulted—its proper place right before me—when a series of thoughts rushed into my mind, thoughts as orderly as a logic proof.

First, Maria G. surrendered her child in Belsen, in Germany.

Let us therefore assume she was a German Jew.

Then, I asked myself, which of the German Jewish women were most likely to have survived the Holocaust and found their way to D.P. camps?

Those taken last.

German Jewish women Christian converts married to “Aryans.”

And a calm certainty washed over me. I had found her.

Maria G.

She was no Polish Catholic going home to Poland. She was Jewish, she had married a German, converted, and changed her name.

The name: The name was the clue! I read further and learned that many survivors in the camps took back their Jewish names. And it was just as Mrs. Knobloch had said. Miriam: a common name for Jewish women. Gerstner: a good last name for a German Jew.

The clues fell into alignment. My deductions had brought me to a firm conclusion:

A converted Jew named Maria G. comes into the camp then takes back her Jewish name—which is exactly why Maria G. disappears.

She reappears as Miriam Gerstner.

Next clue: Miriam Gerstner left Belsen the day after the surrender of my dear patient. This could not be a mere coincidence.

And I was sure: Miriam Gerstner and Maria G. were one and the same.

She was the mother. I had found her.

Then, in just a tiny slice of time, my hopes evaporated. I thought: Wait. Wait. There is no record of Miriam Gerstner ever having been in Palestine, later Israel, or anywhere else, for that matter. The evidence trail goes cold. Mrs. Knobloch’s words returned: dead end.

Defeated—I felt the past had defeated me. History refused to yield its secrets. Oh, I cannot help her, I thought, I cannot help my dear patient find her mother. “Colin Masters” must give off writing to her; Dr. Schussler would have to manage the wreckage.

But then, against my lifelong habit of racing to the bottom reaches of pessimism (my love for the patient propelling me up and forward), I forced mysef to persevere. Go on, I thought. There is one last M.G.

Gershon, like Gerstner, left Belsen the day after the patient’s surrender, making her a candidate. And this M.G. does not disappear. We know she is in Israel in 1948. But where to go from there? Was there truly a chance the Jewish Agency would find her?

I knew my only hope was the library, to read on. The librarian of Berkeley’s reserve section was my genius, my guiding star. Half an hour after I had queried her, she handed me a monograph: an anthropologist discussing the cultural environment among Jews in Palestine and Israel from 1945 through 1959.

Many Jews shed their European names during this period, said the author. The purpose was to break free of their long stay in Europe, which had ended in disaster. They took names that were more “Middle Eastern,” also names of places in Israel, to establish themselves, once and for all, in Eretz Yisrael.

Michal Gershon.

Which Mrs. Knobloch had described as an “Israeli name.”

And there it was: the only logical conclusion.

Maria G. became Miriam Gerstner who became Michal Gershon.

One woman, three names, moving through the twisted path of history.





60.


I was startled awake by the phone, then the voice on the other end. The Bell System operator. Would I receive a collect call from Israel from Mrs. Truva Golan?

I do not know this person, I replied.

Softly in the background, I could hear the operator conferring with the caller, soon coming back on the line to say: The other party says she is the assistant of Mrs. Orna Knobloch.

Yes, yes, I said in anticipation of some further developments in the story of my patient’s mysterious origins.

Good morning, Professor. We are about to send out the material Mrs. Knobloch promised for you. I would like to make sure we have the right address for you at the university, the exact building and room number where mail is received.

I am on leave, I told Mrs. Golan. Please take down my temporary address.

I am not calling the university now?

No, madam.

There was silence on the line.

I am afraid I have broken protocol, she said. We have a duty of confidentiality, which I’m sure you understand. We have vetted your university affiliation—

(they contacted the university!)

—and the department secretary verified your position on the faculty. But we cannot speak so freely without proper identification, without a formal letter of request, which I cannot seem to find. Forgive me. But I must send all the information to your verified university address, since …

I understand completely. There is no problem. I will simply have a colleague forward it to me.





61.


I was doomed. What colleague would sort through my mail and forward it to me? Who there still trusted me? Particularly as I was tracing information about a woman, a young woman … If the parcel was to be opened by the secretary, the department head would question the contents, and then … Oh, God, I would be banished from the university forever.

Thus did I work myself into a panicked state, as was my wont. It was three o’clock in the morning. I could not go back to sleep. Nor could I sleep the entire day, one that seemed inordinately long, as the sun of springtime lingered, slanting into evening.

Five days of isolation followed.

At the end of which, I knew: I had to find Michal Gershon. To stop here, and deliver nothing more, was to add another abandonment to the patient’s life. I would find a way to receive the files. I had to believe they contained Michal Gershon’s address. This I would send to the patient. She would find her mother.

My new hope, though dim, was to find the patient’s mother alive and well and open to loving the daughter she had surrendered.





62.


I emerged from my isolation. I walked along the margin of the dusking ocean, wondering how I might retrieve Mrs. Knobloch’s files. An hour went by. Full dark fell upon us. Bonfires bloomed along the sands. I let the problem recede from my direct consciousness and listened to the surf, the rhythm of the sea. And by the mysterious process through which these thoughts arise, a plan came to me.

There was a postdoctorate student, a young woman who had remained friendly with me throughout—or at least civil and polite. I would call her, I decided, and tell her a near truth: I would say I was searching for the birth mother of a cousin who was adopted, a story that closely followed the path of my heart.

I was surprised when her telephone answered with a recorded message: Please let us know the date and time of your call, and leave a message at the beep. The beep came. I babbled. Another beep sounded, and the line hung up. I called again. At the beep, I tried to make my message more coherent, and was again cut off by the second beep. Answering machines were illegal, and rare; the Bell System owned all the equipment and had forbidden the use of the devices on their lines. Under normal circumstances, if no one was home, the phone simply rang and rang until the caller gave up. I therefore did not know how to behave in the face of that machine. I froze at the thought of being recorded; my words sounded stilted to me; I was aware that I was leaving a record of a lie.

She returned my call nonetheless, sounding quite at ease. She thought it “touching” that I was helping my cousin and asked no questions about the matter. Yes, she would stop by the secretary’s office often and “keep an eye out” for the envelope; yes, she would forward it; no problem, she said. I gave her my address in San Francisco. Then, at the end of the call, her voice grew tentative, and she asked:

But how are you, Professor?

I am … doing all right, I said.

She said nothing for several seconds, then:

I hope everything works out, she said. I would enjoy working with you again.

I nearly broke into tears. This was said so freely, so openly—the first hint that my life at the university was not a complete ruin.

Thank you, was all I could choke out in reply. And she rang off with another promise to forward my mail.





63.


The patient’s next session proved to be inconsequential. She spoke of the major event that had just happened in the world, the fall of Saigon, the dramatic and humiliating exit of the helicopters from the embassy roof. She discussed a matter at work, however desultorily. She spent a little time puzzling over the relationship between Clarissa and Andie—they never fought, it seemed. It appeared the hour would end with little accomplished, I thought with relief.

Then, as the session neared its close—as always, we analysands dangle ourselves before the fire only when we know it is about to go out—the patient suddenly sighed, sat quietly for a time, then said:

You know, Dr. Schussler. I can’t help thinking about my adoption. And it’s come to me that, not only have I been abandoned, but that I’ve been abandoned twice. First by whatever mother gave birth to me. Some Jewish woman named Maria—how odd, a Jew named Maria—a widow too desperate to raise me, or not ever married—or a prostitute, even. Why stop with nice mothers? Mothers come in all varieties, don’t they? Witness Mother, Mother with a capital M.

And then I was abandoned—junked!—by my grandfather. Whoever he was. Mad Catholic patriarch. Funny to think of how I could have bumped around in the world during those first months of my life. Why stop at two abandonments? Maybe others took me up and left me—nuns, priests, village ladies—why not? A whole Europe full of people ready to abandon little Jewish babies.

As I listened to the patient, I understood that all the pretty parcels I had sent, showing a decent life in the camp, could not wash away the stain. Only her birth mother could remove it. Perhaps by giving a mother’s love? Or, at the very least, a decent explanation of why she had never come for her.

Eight days later, Mrs. Knobloch’s parcel arrived, courtesy of my graduate student.

It contained a thick pile of papers. On the last sheet: Michal Gershon’s last known address.