Don and Rhea appeared from another elevator, Don saying, “Don’t you see, sweetheart, this lays you open to the kind of criticism people like Praeger make, that you lead people to these memories.”
“He knew he had been in England after the war,” she said. “That isn’t something I thought of or led him to. And those memories of the lime pits—Don, if you’d been there—I’ve listened to many bone-chilling memories from my patients, but I’ve never wept before. I’d always kept my professional detachment. But to see your own mother thrown alive into a pit she’d been forced at gunpoint to fill with lime, to hear those screams—and then to know that the man responsible for your own mother’s death had such power over you, locking you into a small closet, beating you, taunting you—it was utterly shattering.”
“I can see that,” I said, breaking into this private conversation. “But there are so many curious leaps in his story. Even if Ulrich somehow knew this one small boy escaped the lime pit, how did he keep track of him all through the vicissitudes of war, first in Terezin and then to England? If Ulrich really was an Einsatzgruppenführer, he’d have had plenty of chances to kill the kid during the war. But on Ulrich’s landing papers, it says they docked in Baltimore from a Dutch merchant ship which sailed from Antwerp.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t start from England,” Rhea said. “As for your other point, a man with a guilty conscience might do anything. Ulrich is dead; we can’t ask him why he was so obsessed by this small boy. But we know he thought having a Jewish child would help him get past immigration problems in America. So if he knew where Paul was, it was natural for him to take him, pretending to be his father.”
“Ulrich had an official denazification certificate,” I objected. “Nor was there any mention of Paul’s Jewishness in the landing documents.”
“Ulrich probably destroyed those once he was here and felt safe from prosecution,” Rhea said.
I sighed. “You have a pat answer for everything, but Paul has a shrine to the Holocaust; it’s filled with books and articles on survivor experiences. If he’s immersed himself in these, he could be confusing other people’s histories with his own past. After all, he says he was only twelve months old when he was sent to Terezin. Would he really know what he’d been seeing, if in fact he had witnessed his mother and the rest of his town being murdered in the way he describes?”
“You know nothing about psychology, or about survivors of torture,” Rhea said. “Why don’t you stick to the things you know about, whatever those might be.”
“I do understand Vic’s point, Rhea,” Don said. “We need to talk seriously about your book. Unless there’s something specific in these journals of Ulrich’s, saying This boy I brought with me is not my son, he’s someone named Radbuka—well, I need to examine them in detail.”
“Don, I thought you were on my side,” Rhea said, her myopic eyes filling with tears.
“I am, Rhea. That’s why I don’t want you to expose yourself by publishing a book that has holes someone like Arnold Praeger and the Planted Memory folks can find so easily. Vic, I know you’re guarding the originals like the national vault, but would you let me examine them? I could do so in your office, under your eye.”
I made a face. “Lotty’s walked off with them, which makes me angry, but also worried—if Paul was shot by someone looking for them, they’re about as safe to lug around as naked plutonium. She’s promised to return them by the weekend. I did copy about a dozen pages and you can look at those, but—I understand the problem.”
“Well, that’s just dandy,” Don said, exasperated. “How did you get hold of all this material to begin with? How do you know about Paul’s shrine? You were in his house, weren’t you?”
I nodded reluctantly—the situation was past the point where I could keep my presence on the scene a secret. “I found him right after he’d been shot and got the ambulance to him. The place had been ransacked, but he had a closet hidden behind the drapes in his Holocaust shrine. His assailant didn’t think to look there. It was a truly dreadful place.”
I described it again, the wall of photographs, the telltale balloon comments coming out of Ulrich’s mouth. “Those things you say he took from your office, Rhea, they were there, draped around pictures of you.”
“I’d like to see it,” Don said. “Maybe there’s some other crucial piece of evidence you overlooked.”