After Dachau Read online

  It was a classic, but what did it actually amount to? Having a fish pond in the backyard was hardly unique to that one house. It would have been different if it had been a pagoda or a pyramid. The loose brick was no longer there to be counted, so it all comes down to a toy boat, a counterfeit coin, and a recollection of being sick in a town with a name that, to my surprise, proved to be unique. I was unable to find even one more O’Neill (or anything like it) anywhere else in the world.

  It wasn’t much, but I’d seen the glint of gold with my own eyes and could no longer doubt its existence. I wanted to see more—and in extractable, weighable, usable amounts.

  The obsession was finally upon me.

  Seven more years flew by, and by the time I next saw gold everyone had gotten used to writing year dates starting with 20 instead of 19.

  AFTER A HUNDRED DISAPPOINTMENTS, you learn not to let your nerves start sizzling every time a new report comes in. You play it cool, because, after all, you know that no matter how good it looks, it’s probably just going to end up being more of the usual garbage. But it was hard to play it cool in the case of Mallory Hastings, age twenty-eight, of Oneonta, New York.

  As events had been reconstructed, she skidded off the road late one night during a snowstorm. She couldn’t manage to get the car back on the road but figured a passing car would soon stop to offer assistance. In any event, she stayed in the car with the engine running, not suspecting that the exhaust system had taken a hit and was now leaking carbon monoxide into the passenger compartment. Luckily someone did come along to assist before long, but not before Mallory had lost consciousness. She was rushed to a hospital, where she lay in a coma for two days before beginning to show signs of returning consciousness.

  Her mother and a nurse were at the bedside ready to reassure her that all was well, but when Mallory opened her eyes and took her first look around, she reacted with abject panic, which seemed to get worse the more they tried to reassure her, until the nurse summoned a doctor to administer a sedative. The doctor didn’t want to give her any kind of sedative at this point and tried his own hand at calming her down, with no more success than the others had had. Finally he decided that administering the sedative was going to be the lesser of the two evils.

  When everything grew calm again, they tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Mrs. Hastings had never seen her daughter behave this way. The doctor rechecked the X rays, confirming that there was no head injury—not even a bruise.

  The nurse asked them if they’d seen the gesture Mallory had made repeatedly with her right hand. Now that she’d drawn their attention to it, they did remember it.

  “It looked like something in sign language,” the nurse offered.

  Mrs. Hastings replied indignantly that her daughter didn’t know sign language.

  “All the same, that’s what it looked like,” the nurse insisted.

  “Why on earth would she be using sign language?” Mallory’s mother wanted to know.

  “Well, you notice she didn’t say anything.”

  “That’s true,” the doctor said, “but it can’t have anything to do with her signing. If she didn’t know the language in the first place, she certainly didn’t learn it while she was in a coma!”

  When Mallory began to stir again a few hours later, the doctor, nurse, and mother were again on hand, but this time Mallory was in restraints that would prevent her from injuring herself.

  “It’s all right, Mallory,” her mother said, stroking her daughter’s forehead. “Everything’s fine. You’re fine, the car’s fine, everything’s going to be all right.”

  But even before she opened her eyes, Mallory was writhing in agony.

  “I’m going to make a suggestion,” the doctor said hastily. “Let’s leave Mallory alone for a while and let her collect herself at her own pace.” He dragged the others outside and stationed himself in front of the door, leaving it open a crack in order to observe. “She’s calming down,” he said after a minute. Then, after another minute: “She’s got her eyes open and is looking around the room. She seems fine now.”

  But just then, without changing expression, she emitted a terrific groan, which seemed to startle her as much as anyone else. She looked around wildly and again briefly struggled against her restraints before settling down.

  “Gwawk,” she said after a moment—or something like it. Once again she seemed as surprised as anyone else at this accomplishment.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Mrs. Hastings demanded plaintively.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” the doctor said.

  “Has she lost her voice?”

  “On the contrary, she seems to be finding it.”

  “Are you saying that’s her voice?”

  The doctor gave her a stern medical glare. “Mrs. Hastings, I’m not saying anything at this point. You know as much as I do—and a great deal more, since you’ve known her from birth!”

  “But you’ve got to do something!”

  “What the devil would you suggest, Mrs. Hastings? Do you want me to sedate her again?”

  “No,” the woman said, suitably crushed.

  “Well, I do have a suggestion,” said the nurse. “You’re a man, and Mrs. Hastings is upset. I’d like to go in there alone and see if I can talk to her.”

  The doctor checked the crack again and watched for half a minute. “All right. That’s probably a good idea. Just go slow with her.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” the nurse said, and pushed her way in.

  When she caught Mallory’s eye, she put her index finger to her lips in the universal “no talking” gesture. Mallory looked at her gravely, then lifted her chained right hand as if to reply. The restraint visibly upset her, and the nurse released her from it. Then she offered her some water, which she took gratefully through a straw.

  In a quiet tone the nurse said, “Can you hear me all right?”

  Mallory nodded.

  “Can you speak?”

  Mallory shook her head, then shrugged and nodded, then shook her head again.

  “You don’t know whether you can speak or not, is that it?”

  Mallory nodded emphatically. And lifted her right hand to sign rapidly. The nurse glanced at the door, hoping that the gesture had been caught.

  “Do you speak sign language?”

  Mallory nodded.

  “I’ll get someone here who talks sign. Will that be okay?”

  Again she nodded.

  The nurse thought for a moment then again asked if Mallory could hear her.

  Mallory signed wildly, pointing to her ears and to the nurse’s lips, then shook her head.

  Inspired, the nurse put her hand over her mouth and asked the question again.

  The young woman began thrashing in her bed.

  “Okay, okay,” the nurse said. “I understand. You’re reading my lips, right?”

  Mallory nodded.

  Once a sign reader had been brought in, the situation became clearer—and simultaneously more mysterious.

  Mallory could hear but didn’t understand what she heard. The reason? She was deaf. No one seemed able to follow this. How could she be deaf if she heard what was being said? If she could hear it, why couldn’t she understand it?

  Because she was deaf.

  The translator explained it this way. “The last thing she remembers before she woke up in this bed is being deaf. She could read lips, but, because she was deaf, she didn’t know what sounds were being produced by those lips. So when she started hearing those sounds here today, she didn’t know what to make of them. And she still doesn’t. She can hear us talking, but it’s just gibberish unless she uses her eyes to read our lips.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Hastings declared emphatically. “There has never been a single thing wrong with Mallory’s hearing. She studied violin, for God’s sake!”

  “Have you ever studied violin, Mallory?” asked the translator. When Mallory was finished signing, the translator turned
to the others and said, “She wants to know who Mallory is.”

  Mrs. Hastings swayed and would’ve fallen if the doctor hadn’t grabbed her.

  EVERY MEDICAL SPECIALIST within two hundred miles wanted a chance to solve the mystery, which only seemed to deepen as time went on. As far as anyone could tell, Mallory’s ears and vocal apparatus worked as well as anyone else’s and always had done so. Physically, she was a normal, healthy young woman. No grounds, neurological or psychological, could be found for what everyone understood to be a condition of amnesia. Emotionally, she was an impenetrable conundrum.

  Teams of speech therapists worked with her daily to build a connection in her mind between the spoken language she was hearing and the facial language she was seeing, and, of course, to teach her how to speak (again). She was indifferent to their efforts, often ignoring them completely or preferring to sleep. She settled into hospital life and seemed to have no interest in “recovering” or resuming a “normal life.”

  Mallory had been a librarian, second in command at Oneonta’s main library. When “reminded” of this, she shrugged. She’d been an avid reader of murder mysteries, and a friend brought her the latest from one of her favorite authors. She flipped through the pages and set it aside. But then it seemed to give her an idea.

  She asked for a book with pictures in it—but she asked in sign, which her friend didn’t understand. A speech therapist was called in to translate, but he refused.

  “Mallory can tell us what she has on her mind,” he said. “Can’t you, Mallory? There’s nothing wrong with your voice, and you’ve got to start using it to get the things you want. That’s what it’s there for.”

  They could see she was tempted to tell them to go to hell, but then, after thinking about it some more, she evidently decided she really wanted that book.

  “I want a book with pictures,” she said—or at least intended to say. She had to make several trials before it was intelligible.

  “What kind of pictures?” her friend asked.

  “Pictures of people.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “Many,” Mallory said. “Many.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Different kinds. All different.”

  Her friend still didn’t quite fathom what she was getting at but promised to look around and see what she could find.

  The therapist said, “Wouldn’t you like to see a newspaper? Or a magazine?”

  “No!”

  That was one word she’d mastered.

  Both of Mallory’s parents were profoundly distressed, of course, but Mrs. Hastings was the more eloquent of the two, threatening alternately to sue the hospital into oblivion if they didn’t fix whatever they’d done wrong and to flay her daughter alive if she didn’t stop playing the fool. After four days, hospital officials tried to explain to her that there was no reason why Mallory couldn’t go home, but she was obviously not going to do so if Mrs. Hastings continued to terrorize her.

  The woman said, “Why, Mallory knows very well I wouldn’t harm her!”

  She stubbornly refused to hear anyone say that Mallory evidently knew no such thing.

  Mallory’s friend returned with an armload of coffee-table books filled with pictures of people—movie stars, fashion models, musicians, workers, farmers, people at sporting events, at political rallies, at concerts, on holiday, in courtrooms, on street corners. Mallory went through them like a threshing machine, giving each page no more than a glance, then furiously swept them all off the bed and buried her head under a pillow.

  “What is it, Mallory?” her friend asked, stunned. “What are you looking for?”

  Mallory shook her head wordlessly.

  Her friend gathered up the books and was about to leave when it occurred to her to wonder if Mallory wanted to keep them. After voicing the question, she realized she was wasting her breath, since Mallory probably couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing. She carefully set the books down on the bed, close enough to Mallory that she couldn’t avoid feeling them against her hip. With a convulsive twist of her body, Mallory sent them flying off the bed a second time.

  Her friend gathered them up again and left without saying another word. At this point (she would later say), she knew the woman in the bed “wasn’t Mallory.” Mallory, she insisted, would never behave that way, not in a million years.

  BECAUSE THE New York newspapers carried the story (in a predictably souped-up version), we heard about it in Tunis almost immediately, and I took the first available flight out. I might have saved myself the trouble, since hospital officials saw no reason to let me in, and Mr. and Mrs. Hastings turned up their noses as soon as I explained who I was. Members of the sensationalist press had standing, but I was persona non grata (and a foreigner as well, despite my famous name and the fact that I’d grown up within sight of Central Park).

  Leaving a local associate to stand watch at the hospital, I took the opportunity to pay a visit to the ancestral home, arriving unannounced, as I always did, because it seemed not to make the slightest difference whether my parents knew I was coming or not. They greeted me as if I’d been gone a week, when in fact it had been close to four years.

  “What good luck,” Mother said cheerily. “Uncle Harry’s coming to dinner. He’ll be so glad to see you. He always asks for news of you.”

  “Does he really?” I replied, mildly surprised to hear that he hadn’t given up on me by now.

  Mother liked doing things in the baronial style to which our means presumably entitled us, so dinner was like a state affair, for which everyone dressed, including me. My room was untouched, with racks of clothes that I’d left behind, and I had my pick of four virtually identical suits of evening wear. Mother had come along to advise, and tutted when she saw them, for naturally they were no longer quite in the pink of fashion. I caught her eyeing my waist to see if the measurements on record with my tailor needed to be adjusted and knew that a new array of dinner jackets would be awaiting me on my next visit. I also knew there was nothing in the world I could say that would dissuade her from ordering them.

  Dinner was charming and fun, and I heard all my parents’ news, which is hardly ever really news. The old things the very rich do are so stupendously wonderful that they almost never have to trouble themselves to do new ones.

  Naturally they wanted to hear all about my adventures, which they listened to with only the slightest air of condescension. They saw no great difference between someone like Rudolph Kintmacher of Johannesburg and Eddie Tucker of Council Bluffs, though Mother would say “What fun!” about the first and “How sad!” about the second, treating them both like elaborate fictions cooked up for her amusement.

  Uncle Harry, taking it a bit more seriously, wanted to know what I made of it all. “Do you really think Rita May’s soul lives in Eddie Tucker’s body?”

  “I truly don’t know what to think,” I told him. “Can you come up with another explanation?”

  While he was pondering this, my father shifted in his chair in a way that reliably summons the attention of the table and said, “What I can’t see is that it matters a damn. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say there is such a thing as a soul animating my body. And let’s suppose you could certify beyond doubt that this identical soul once animated the body of Julius Caesar. Isn’t that the theory, more or less?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  “Well, what difference could it possibly make? Why would anyone care, since I don’t have access to the memories of Julius Caesar?”

  “But that’s the whole point,” I said. “Suppose you woke up one morning and found that you did have access to his memories.”

  “Then I hope someone would have the good sense to pack me off to the loony bin,” he said, and concluded the meal (and the discussion) by tossing his napkin onto the table in front of him.

  As hard as I tried to avoid being sequestered with Harry, he tried harder to corner me, so we finally ended up tête-à-t�
�te.

  “I hope you won’t mind if I’m blunt,” he said.

  “I’ll brace myself for it, Uncle Harry.”

  He frowned, not quite sure he liked my jaunty tone. “It’s just that I wouldn’t want to see you lose yourself in this reincarnation business,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen to other men. They start a thing as a hobby, then it swallows them up. They come to a point where they can’t think of anything else, can’t get involved with anything else.”

  “Aren’t you swallowed up in your work?”

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “And if I weren’t, I’d be useless to it.”

  “And the difference?”

  “The difference is, Jason, that this reincarnation thing is going to come to nothing. You can spend a lifetime on it—six lifetimes, if you like—and in the end you’ll be exactly what you are right now, a voice crying in the wilderness, with no one listening and no one caring. You’re trying to prove something that’s no more susceptible of proof than ghosts or second sight or life after death. When you’re all finished, it’ll be just the way it is now: The believers will believe and the unbelievers won’t, and your work won’t have made a particle of difference.”

  “Whereas yours does.”

  “Walk with me a week, Jason, and you’ll know it does.”

  His earnestness made it impossible for me to be indignant. He wasn’t trying to insult me or to hurt my feelings.

  “What would you like me to say?” I asked him.

  “That you’ll give some serious thought to what I’m telling you.”

  “All right, I’ll do that.”

  He confessed he couldn’t ask for more than that.

  • • •

  The next morning I located some of my mother’s stationery and went to work on a letter.

  Dear Mallory (if I may):

  My name will mean nothing to you. I suspect that all the names of the people who are haunting your life at the moment mean nothing to you. But although you don’t know me (and I don’t know you), I’m going to make three important guesses about you.