“Lotty, this isn’t your operating room. I don’t have time to stop at your place tonight, but in the morning I—”
“This is a very simple favor, Victoria, which has nothing to do with my operating room. You don’t need to leave the tape with me, but I want to see it. You can stand over me while I watch it.”
“Lotty, I don’t have the time. I will get copies made tomorrow and let you have one of your very own. But this one is for a client who hired me to investigate the situation.”
“A client?” She was outraged. “Did Max hire you without either of you talking to me?”
My forehead felt as though it were squeezed inside a vise. “If he did, that’s between him and me, not you and me. What difference does it make to you?”
“What difference? That he violated a trust, that’s what matters. When he told me about this person at the conference, this man calling himself Radbuka, I said we shouldn’t act hastily and that I would give him my opinion after I had seen the interview.”
I took a deep breath and tried to bring my brain into focus. “So the Radbuka name means something to you.”
“And to Max. And to Carl. From our days in London. Max thought we should hire you to find out about this man. I wanted to wait. I thought Max respected my opinion.”
She was almost spitting mad, but her explanation made me say gently, “Take it easy, Lotty. Max didn’t hire me. This is a separate matter.”
I told her about Don Strzepek’s interest in doing a book about Rhea Wiell, showcasing Paul Radbuka’s recovered memory. “I’m sure he wouldn’t object to sharing the tape with you, but I really don’t have time to do it tonight. I still need to finish some work here, go to my own place to look after the dogs, and then I’m going up to Evanston. Do you want me to tell Morrell that you’ll be coming up to view the tape at his place?”
“I want the dead past to bury the dead,” she burst out. “Why are you letting this Don go digging around in it?”
“I’m not letting him, and I’m not stopping him. All I’m doing is checking to see whether Rhea Wiell is a genuine therapist.”
“Then you’re letting, not stopping.”
She sounded close to tears. I picked my words carefully. “I can only begin to imagine how painful it must be to you to be reminded of the war years, but not everyone feels that way.”
“Yes, to many people it is a game. Something to romanticize or kitschify or use for titillation. And a book about a ghoul feasting on the remains of the dead only helps make that happen.”
“If Paul Radbuka is not a ghoul but has a genuine past in the concentration camp he mentioned, then he has a right to claim his heritage. What does the person in your group who’s connected to the Radbukas say about this? Did you talk to him? Or her?”
“That person no longer exists,” she said harshly. “This is between Max and Carl and me. And now you. And now this journalist, Don whoever he is. And the therapist. And every jackal in New York and Hollywood who will pick over the bones and salivate with pleasure at another shocking tale. Publishers and movie studios make fortunes from titillating the comfortable well-fed middle class of Europe and America with tales of torture.”
I had never heard Lotty speak in such a bitter way. It hurt, as if my fingers were being run through a grater. I didn’t know what to say, except to repeat my offer to bring her a copy of the tape the next day. She hung up on me.
I sat at my desk a long time, blinking back tears of my own. My arms ached. I lacked the will to move or act in any meaningful way, but in the end, I picked up the phone and continued dictating my notes to the word-processing center. When I had finished that, I got up slowly, like an invalid, and printed out a copy of my contract for Don Strzepek.
“Maybe if I talked to Dr. Herschel myself,” Don said now, as we sat on Morrell’s porch. “She’s imagining me as a TV reporter sticking a mike in front of her face after her family’s been destroyed. She’s right in a way, about how we comfortable Americans and Europeans like to titillate ourselves with tales of torture. I shall have to keep that thought in mind as a corrective when I’m working on this book. All the same, maybe I can persuade her that I also have some capacity for empathy.”
“Maybe. Max will probably let me bring you to his dinner party on Sunday; at least you could meet Lotty in an informal way.”
I didn’t really see it, though. Usually, when Lotty got on her high horse, Max would snort and say she was in her “Princess of Austria” mode. That would spark another flare from her, but she’d back away from her more extreme demands. Tonight’s outburst had been rawer than that—not the disdain of a Hapsburg princess, but a ragged fury born of grief.
Lotty Herschel’s Story: