Entwined (60 page)

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Six months after Ruda's death, Franks decided Rebecca was strong enough to delve more deeply into the past, sometimes without hypnosis. She talked of the woman whom Ruda had nicknamed "Red Lips." Franks surmised that the woman was the notorious Irma Griese, known for her beauty—and remembered for her cruelty to the inmates at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Rebecca recalled that Griese always smelled of flowers.

"Ruda said she wanted to be like her when she grew up. Red Lips used to have a whip tucked into her boots, like a lion tamer, and when she was near, because of her perfume, we didn't smell the bread. They made bread, day and night. Papa told us that was why the flames were red, the ovens had to be hot for the sweet bread."

At the next session, Franks noticed a physical change in his patient. The child in Rebecca was beginning to recede, she was subdued. When he asked if she was feeling unwell her voice took on a strange dullness.

"My frock is dirty."

Franks waited but she said nothing more. He hypnotized her again and she sat throughout the session with her head deeply bowed. She no longer smiled.

"Where are you, Rebecca?"

She slowly lifted her head. Her eyes were dead, her mouth open. "Ruda's gone with the Snowman!"

"Where are you?"

She spoke in an almost drugged monotone as she described sitting in the dentist's chair in the glass booth with the dark green curtain. Rebecca seemed old now and wizened, yet she could have been no more than four.

She spoke of seeing what they had done to Ruda, how they had forced her to look at her sister through the glass window.

"Papa took out Ruda's insides. He said it was because I was naughty. He cut off Ruda's hair, and put something in her belly, he said it was a baby like me. Papa said I was a bad girl because I couldn't remember…I tried, I tried hard to remember! Tried to feed her…"

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That night, after that session, Rebecca refused to take her sleeping pill. She rang the bell by her bedside with insistence. She didn't want Maja, she didn't want Louis, she wanted to see Franks. By the time he came over from his house she was hysterical. As he walked in, she attacked him.

"Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why are you making me remember these things.
Why? You are killing me!
"

"No, no I'm not. I am helping you. These things happened to you. You have to face them, go through them."

"Why?"

"So that you may heal, leave with your husband, and be with your children. These events are real. You have been denied the remembrance, and all I am doing now is allowing you to recall the past. If you wish, I can stop. It is up to you."

She became quiet and sat on the edge of the bed. "I want to tell you something…about Ruda."

Franks rested his chin on his hands, waiting. Rebecca tugged at her blanket as she explained how she had seen Ruda through the glass. Then she looked up. "It was a mirror. I didn't see Ruda, it was a mirror."

"I don't understand, what mirror?"

"He cheated me,
he lied to me
." She twisted the blanket around and around in her hands in a wringing motion. Franks quietly asked who had lied to her and she let it out.

"Papa lied! Don't you understand? It could not have been Ruda saw.

Rebecca became visibly more and more distraught, and Franks suggested that she rest. She dismissed the idea with her hands. "No, no, listen to me. I understand now. I mean it wasn't logical, how could her hair have grown overnight? He didn't show me Ruda. It was me, in a mirror."

She went to the window and gripped the white painted bars. "I saw myself in the mirror. Not Ruda, but me. They gave me cakes, sweets, milk—and I ate everything, I saved nothing for her."

Franks put his arms around her shoulders. "You were a baby then. You cannot blame yourself, there is no guilt."

"There is. She hates me. I ate and ate, and she went hungry."

"Nobody hates you, and you should rest. Try to get some sleep. Rebecca?"

She sighed and flopped down onto the bed. "Rest? You open my mind and expect me to sleep at night?"

She closed her eyes. "The memories plague me, even when I'm alone. It's as if I cannot stop the past…"

"No matter how painful, that's good. What are you remembering?"

"A soldier, the one who took me away from the camp. He took my hand and asked if I wanted some chocolate. I demanded a piece for Ruda also because she was inside me. She needed a piece of chocolate, but…please, please don't leave me alone."

Franks assured her he would stay. He watched as she stared at her reflection in a small mirror, repeating over and over, "It was a mirror…"

Throughout the session, which lasted the entire night, Franks was able to piece together what it was she was desperately trying to release.

Gradually, as the telepathy succeeded beyond his first expectations, Mengele did not want Rebecca to see that her twin had not been rewarded or fed as he had promised, so he tricked her by placing a mirror across the booth's window. Thus, Rebecca did not see Ruda in the white dress, but she saw herself. Only now did Rebecca recognize the deception. She became consumed by guilt because she had not understood the horror of it.

Franks watched Rebecca wrestle with her own conscience.

"How could I know? And Papa was very pleased with me, he kissed and cuddled me and one of the
Schutzhaftlings
took me over to the warehouse to choose a new dress. I wanted to show off my new dress. We passed a group of inmates designated to clean latrines and they spat at me! One woman hurled mud at me…I remember the way they shouted after me. The children hit and kicked me and I cried and cried. I shouted back that when Ruda came back she would make them cry, too. They told me she'd gone with the Snowman; that she would never come back for me."

Two days after Rebecca had been given the new dress, the camp was liberated. In the mayhem that followed Rebecca and a number of other children from her ward ran into the main hospital wing. She ran from bed to bed looking for Ruda.

Ruda was skin and bone. Lice crawled like black ants over her shaven head. Her skin was paper thin, a deathly bluish white, and tubes full of congealed blood protruded from her stomach. A filthy bandage partially covered a jagged wound in her distended belly. Rebecca saw the pitiful bundle of rags, and perhaps had even known it was her sister, but she was so horrified that she ran away screaming, right into the arms of the young soldier. He held her tightly, he too was crying. He carried her from the ward, not wanting her to see the corpses, the dying.

They went past the glass partition, and, unwittingly, past the mirror…and Rebecca saw Ruda again—this time she was with her, in the soldier's arms. It was at this moment that Rebecca began to believe totally and utterly that she and Ruda were one.

Aware that the adult Rebecca had emerged at last, Franks talked with her about the events that took place at the time of the liberation. When Mengele realized that the Russians were advancing he hastened to destroy all the evidence of his experiments. With manic energy he cleared the camp of the dying; only days before the liberation, thousands lost their lives in the gas chambers. Mengele himself escaped after burning all the documents along with the corpses.

Never brought to justice, never paying for his crimes against humanity, the "Dark Angel" haunted the survivors. The young, whose minds he had twisted, whose bodies he had tormented and crippled, were taken to hospitals and institutions. Many siblings were separated in a desperate bid to give them the medical care they needed so badly. Ruda and Rebecca were just two of these tragic children.

Rebecca was given many carefully chosen books from Franks's personal library to help her understand fully those nightmare years. She had become calm, and often discussed her reading with the doctor. Then late one afternoon, Maja called to Franks at home saying that he was needed urgently at the clinic. Rebecca had become destructive, abusive, and violent. In a rage she had systematically wrecked her room, though she hadn't hurt herself or any of the nurses. As Franks hurried along the corridor, he heard her hoarse screams, and a terrible banging and thudding of furniture being hurled against the walls. He looked through the peephole and asked Maja to bring him a chair. He sat outside the room until the banging and the shouting stopped. Then he entered the room.

Rebecca stood by the window, exhausted. She was utterly drained, her eyes red from weeping. He knew instantly that this was no longer Ruda's rage. At last this was Rebecca's own blazing fury at what had been done to her. Finally, she had embraced her anger, and she was cleansed.

After almost a year of treatment, Franks thought that Rebecca was ready to be told the truth about Ruda. Louis was not allowed to be present, but he was nearby, as he had been throughout the entire year.

Sasha had stayed with him at the hotel during her school holidays; no nanny, just father and daughter. In the time together, he had tried to explain her mother's illness in terms she could understand. When Sasha asked if her mother was well now, Louis had hesitated, knowing Rebecca was at a critical point. Franks had cautioned him that learning of Ruda's death might cause a major setback. Considering her delicate state, the impact of hearing that Ruda had been alive and had now died could send her over the edge—an edge on which she had balanced precariously for years. Louis told Sasha that they would know very soon.

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Franks began in a soft gentle voice, asking her if she did recall going to the circus. Rebecca surprised him, looking at him with a tranquil, gentle expression.

"I was wondering when you would speak to me about it, but I know. And I know that her last words were about my safety…It all came back to me days ago, but I didn't want to tell you, I wanted to face it by myself. I needed time alone. She was, you see, always the stronger…"

"Do you blame yourself in any way?"

"Yes, of course. I endangered her, I ran into the clearing, I was stupid, but…I think she could have gotten him back in his cage. She was very calm."

She gave Franks a strange, direct stare. "She was also very disturbed, confused. I wish, I wish we had found you together, but…"

Franks leaned forward, "But?"

"But we didn't…Throughout my life I have been searching for a mother. I have expected too much, loved too much—and caused a lot of pain to those I have loved. Now at last I have found her. She lies within me. Having mothered my sons, my daughters—

albeit distressed them, terribly—I think I have found my first mothering experience—with you."

She smiled at him. "You have given me the unconditional, loving acceptance I have always sought, the support I have always needed, the understanding I have craved. You have given me back my childhood, but most important, through my relationship with you, I have learned to accept and love myself, to give myself the kind of caring that will heal me from the inside. I am going to get stronger. I know that, because I want to live—for my children, for my husband—most of all, I want to do something with my life. My experience must be used, you must use me, reach out for others like me, Dr. Franks, because I am strong now and I want to do this for me and for Ruda, who was the only mother I ever really knew "

Franks couldn't help himself, he leaped from his chair and wrapped his arms around Rebecca. "You're wonderful! You know what you are? A fighter…God bless you!"

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Dr. Franks, with his hands stuffed into his pockets, waited for the baron to arrive at the clinic. He had remained in Berlin, and brought his younger daughter, Sasha, to stay at the hotel. Sasha waited with her father for news of Rebecca, of her mother's recovery.

Louis knew by the expression on Franks's face that they had at last broken through.

Dr. Franks held Sasha's hand, smiling warmly. "You stay with me a few moments, Sasha." And to Louis: "Go and see Rebecca."

She was leaning against the chair. Louis was unable to contain himself; he sobbed as he lifted his arms to her. He clasped her to him, as if afraid to let go of her. They kissed and clung to each other.

"I'm coming home, Louis. I want to come home."

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Dr. Franks tapped on the door and asked if another visitor could be made welcome. He ushered in Sasha. The child hung back a moment, then ran into her mother's open arms, and Rebecca swung her around and around, then bent down on her knees and cupped the girl's face in her hands.

"Sasha! My beautiful Sasha…I am coming home!"

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The Mercedes made slow progress through the snowbound streets. Rebecca sat between Louis and Sasha. On her knees lay Ruda's black box. She opened it, and Sasha looked inquisitively inside.

"Do you know what this is?" Rebecca held up a small hard object. "It's a potato!"

"But it looks like a stone, Mama!"

"When we were in the camp they were prizes worth keeping, and my sister Ruda kept this potato, oh, for so long, and then when we came to eat it…it was hard, like a small rock. It became her talisman, this funny little hard potato!"

The car drew to a halt outside the clinic, and Dr. Franks hurried from the doorway in a woolly hat and a big scarf and squeezed himself into the backseat. Franks let Sasha sit on his knee as the chauffeur drove away.

"This is for your mama." Franks gave Sasha a small square leather box to hand over to Rebecca.

Sasha watched as Rebecca lifted the lid. It was a gold Star of David. She kissed it, then rested her head against Franks's shoulder.

"Thank you," she whispered, then gave a soft laugh. "You know, I think you have telepathic powers! This morning, before these two were even awake, I went to a synagogue to pray for Ruda. I have never been in one before. It felt…"

Dr. Franks had to look away, out of the window to the snow-laden streets. He was moved.

"Go again, go for the faith denied you, denied Ruda!"

They fell silent, a comfortable warmth between them. Only when they were within half a mile of the cemetery did Rebecca stiffen. She raised her head, sensing a presence. She knew Ruda was close by.