Lovers and Fugitives

PART ONE:

JE MAINTIENDRAI

I

Stranger In Tow

1

Saskia

He sat on the curb a short distance from the gate of the school yard, elbows on knees, face in hands. I tried not to look at the black-coated woman at his feet, sprawled in the gutter. I remember the date: May 15, 1940, the day after the bombardment of Rotterdam.

Though the Dutch had declared it an open city and were negotiating terms of surrender, the Luftwaffe’s bombers had swarmed in the sky, diving like birds of prey. The raid destroyed a quarter of Rotterdam and killed thirty-thousand. The air was replaced by smoke and the stench of burned flesh. With clanging bells, streetcars waddled aimlessly through ruins. The city’s charred buildings lifted mutilated structures in the gathering dusk: crippled silhouettes, brick, stone, steel and wooden corpses against the red firmament. The blood of Rotterdam had leapt into the sky, merging with the flames and the setting sun.

I am trying to look back soberly and calmly, or I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Statistics never affect anyone. Unless you are one of them. And I probably am, or will be.

After the capitulation I volunteered with two of my classmates to help transport orphaned children from Rotterdam to The Hague. We saw the devastation through the window of the Red Cross bus taking us from the station to the public school where the children were gathered: Pompeii after the earthquake. I thought the Germans could as easily have bombed The Hague instead. The day before the invasion Mother and I had come home from Uncle Bruno’s burial. How grotesque for anyone to die a normal death when all hell was about to break loose. A peacetime burial, followed by thousands of men, women and children bombed from the earth.

Next dawn, the shed with its white canvas awning collapsed in the garden beyond my room like a sailboat in the storm. Rose petals burst from flaming clouds and covered the lawn, the flower beds, and the pebbly paths between. I saw the sky turn black, and a swarm of sparrows fall on the carpet of rose petals. Masked men in black boots trampled down grass and flowers, crushing the lifeless birds. It all happened in a hush. I held my breath wanting to scream and tell, but my voice was quelled by the black boots, and I knew that no one would listen anyway, no one would believe what I had to say.

Thunder broke loose. Houses crumbled on the other side, in the street, windows broke and shattered in every room. The next moment all sounds of the howling wind and the moaning people huddled on curbs of the sidewalks in front of their ruined homes were displaced by singing enemy soldiers. They marched in goose step past the frightened, weeping civilians—a faceless mass of soldiers filling every street and road of the Netherlands, multiplying as they moved in a steady stream that grew and grew and grew.… Yet, as planes roared in the sky I knew in my dream that I was having my recurring nightmare, consoled in sleep that I was only dreaming until I opened my eyes and heard the steady hum of airplanes overhead.

At the first cannon shots I rushed into the hall. Mother darted from her room. The house shook as the nearby barracks were pelted. We embraced in terror, waiting for the end.

Those days of the invasion now culminated in all their gathered horror in this ravaged city of Rotterdam. Closing my eyes I compared the devastation with the awesomely handsome sight of that early morning in The Hague. The limpid sky was filled with dandelion seed floating above the garden city full of almond and magnolia trees, rhododendrons, camelias, roses, daisies and violets in bloom—an orgy of hues and scents in the burst of the morning sun. Those parachutes soared through the air like angels. Multiplying, coming closer, they reminded me of white mushrooms, poisoned toadstools of an uncanny beauty, bringing death and destruction wherever they fell to earth.

Four days of horror, fear and uncertainty, ending with the queen’s flight to England, betrayal, surrender. In the midst of a general panic I prayed for the strength and courage to bear a cruel life or a senseless death. I also prayed for the compassion that would never let me succumb to blind, bitter hate. But as soon as the bus stopped in front of the Rotterdam school building and I saw the eyes of those children waiting in stunned apathy in the courtyard, when I saw the dead woman and the stranger on the curb, I was filled with a murderous rage.

Mevrouw Marie Tilden, the bony nurse with the harelip, made me carry baskets with bread, cheese and cold cuts into the building. The children gathered inside, watching the girls and nurses prepare sandwiches and pour out drinks of Ovaltine and warm chocolate milk. Tears fell on the buttered white bread I covered with slices of Gouda cheese; everything blurred in my vision. What was to become of these children? What was to become of us all?

The children fed, I followed the nurse into a schoolroom, where five infants were spread on blankets on the floor. The doctor had just finished examining them, and a redheaded young nurse was kneeling between two tiny ones, the soles of her white shoes showing under the dark skirt, holding a bottle of milk in each freckled hand as she fed them both, talking to them in a soft, soothing voice. My classmate Vicky sat in a corner, feeding another one on her lap. The remaining two were older, huskier baby boys, showing hunger and discomfort, one yelling and crying in spurts, the second one rotating his head, lips pursed in a birdlike motion in search of food.

Nurse Tilden picked up the little bird and handed him to me along with a bottle of milk. I sat on a school bench, holding the soft, quivering bundle, listening to the baby’s eager, sucking sounds as he found the nipple. Everything grew still as soon as Mevrouw Tilden began feeding the last of the babies.

When the children were filing out of the yard into the bus, I stopped on the sidewalk to pour myself a cup of coffee from a thermos bottle on an improvised stall. The man was still sitting on the curb. He seemed to have turned to stone. I refilled my cup and went over to him. He didn’t look up. I put the cup into his hand. He held it but didn’t drink. The dead woman lay sprawled on her stomach in the gutter. Most of her face was bedded in the curve of her arm. Though I tried not to look at her I had seen the white powdered cheek beneath the brown hair, the corner of tightly closed lips painted the color of the dried blood that crusted the back of her head, and the one wide-open gray eye, staring at nothing.

I said, Please, drink up. We must go. He took a few sips. You can’t stay here. We’re taking the children to The Hague. Can we drop you somewhere?

After a moment he pointed at the woman. I promised to take her to her parents in Cleveland, America. He spoke Dutch with a heavy German accent.

Who is she?

My wife.

I’m sorry. But there’s nothing you can do for her now. He looked up unseeingly. He handed me the mug. Are you Jewish? I asked. He did not answer. Then he seemed to nod, though I wasn’t sure.

Saskia! Mevrouw Tilden called impatiently, clutching a sleeping baby in her arms. We are going to miss the train.

I had to hurry. By now almost everyone was in the bus. I could see Vicky sitting with a baby in each arm; the redheaded nurse was just climbing in, carrying her two charges.

That man, Mevrouw Tilden, I said, moving toward the bus, —we can’t leave him here. He has a German accent. I think he’s Jewish. Says the dead woman was his wife.

Doesn’t look Jewish to me. Could be a spy, a deserter. One never knows.

I don’t think so. I followed her back to the stranger.

May I see your papers? She gently rocked the sleeping baby on her shoulder, but her voice was harsh.

I don’t have any.

No papers? Nurse Tilden looked at me in triumph.

We left them in the burning house.

Is there anyone who could identify you?

He shook his head. We lived on Teilingerstraat. The whole street was bombed out. All dead. We ran …

What’s your name?

David— He showed a flutter of apprehension.

David what?

David He … He corrected himself. David Joseph.

Nurse Tilden pulled me aside. I wash my hands of him, she whispered. I think we ought to alert the Dutch authorities.

Please, don’t! I turned back to David Joseph. Do you know anyone in The Hague?

Yes. We have friends.

What’s their address?

He shrugged. Sanders. Betty and Dirk.

Good. We can take you to The Hague.

You are mad! cried the nurse. How old are you? she asked him.

Twenty-five.

A perfect age for an experienced soldier!

I held out my hand to David Joseph and pulled him up from the curb. I had to do it. I would do it again. He looked at me as if awakening from a trance. Together, we walked to the bus. When I let go of his hand, he rubbed dark stains on his pants with his palms.

It’s the chicken broth, he explained in his broken Dutch. The chicken flew out of the pot and landed in the lilac bush when the balcony fell down.

The bus pulled away. I looked back through the glass at the heavy-legged body of the woman abandoned in the gutter. David Joseph did not.

The dimly lit train rushed through the night. He sat among the homeless children, his slender, sensitive tapered fingers dangling between his knees. I faced him in my corner seat with one of Vicky’s babies in my arms. He seemed oblivious to the sorrow of these orphans, incapable of containing memories, consciousness, future dreams. I felt his deadly fatigue. It made an empty vessel of his body. Yet in spite of his gaunt looks, his ashen color, his state of shock, I was intrigued by his aristocratic features, some indefinable strength. After a long day full of shock and horror his benumbed, trancelike state took hold of me too.

In The Hague, two doctors and a number of medical aides awaited the children on the windswept platform. Mevrouw Tilden took the baby from my arms and handed him to one of the aides. She dismissed me with a manly handshake, saying that I had been a great help, urging me to be careful. Was I taking him to his friends? I nodded.

I still think, at eighteen, you’re old enough to know better. Well, God be with you.

I turned to the forlorn man in the soiled gray suit, waiting for me at a distance, staring at nothing at all. I took his hand, a dead weight in mine. He let me guide him out of the station into the darkness of the blackout. He walked with bent head and shoulders, the night sky seeming too much of a burden for him to straighten his back. Next to his tall, stooping figure, I felt smaller than I was.

We had crossed the square when it flashed through my mind that I ought to have gone to a telephone booth to look for his friends’ address. We climbed into a bus heading for Scheveningen. I found two empty seats in the rear. With his hands clasped on the back of the seat ahead of him, he made an effort to hold himself up. I feared he would pass out, asleep, before we reached our destination. A ghostly apparition, the bus glided through the black waters of the night. I wondered what Mother might say about my coming home with this stranger in tow. I couldn’t worry about that. Life having lost all proportions, personal concerns were trivial. I was haunted by the woman in the gutter, whose parents were waiting for her in Cleveland, America. He had not looked back at her. I wondered why. What touched me so deeply about him? I couldn’t tell.

Only one more stop to van Neckstraat. I got up and stepped into the aisle. This is where we get off.

He followed me like a sleepwalker. Under a sky full of stars I began to discern silhouettes of houses, trees, bushes. After Rotterdam it seemed ludicrous to be in a city of flowerbeds, taps with running water, where light could be turned on at the touch of a switch. Reeling in sleep-drunkenness, the stranger collided against me. I gripped his arm. Without support he would collapse. It was indisputable: he was in no condition to go on to his friends tonight.

Not much farther, almost there, I encouraged. The night was laden with the fragrance of honeysuckle and roses. Roses—their flaming petals restored to their stems of reality from my shattering nightmare. I guided David Joseph up the garden path to Uncle Bruno’s benedenhuis, the ground-floor apartment of the red brick duplex house where we had lived for the last year, after moving to Holland from Paris. Mother had lost her job and her working permit, and my uncle had secured a position for her in a hospital in The Hague. Since his health kept deteriorating Mother was glad to help him, in turn. Besides, she felt we would be much safer in a neutral country.

I heard the front door opening, the voice in the dark, anxious, familiar. Saskia? a moment later I felt Mother’s hand drawing me inside, then Mother’s thank-God-darling embrace.

We have a visitor, I said, nodding toward David Joseph swaying on the threshold. I looked at my mother with the stranger’s eyes: her full figure gave out a substantial warmth. Their voices crisscrossed in a formal counterpoint:

You must excuse …

Please, let’s go inside.

The door closed. A bulb’s cold light flooded the narrow corridor. The stranger covered his face with his hands. Is he hurt? Mother wanted to know. I looked at her drawn features, the short brown hair streaked with silver. In contrast to her large body in the navy blue robe, her head was quite small. There was not a wrinkle on her brow. Shock and tragedy had given her features a leaner, more angular look, but had not killed that impish spark that would light up at the slightest provocation in her slanting, gray-brown eyes. Was this how the stranger would see her?

It’s the light, I explained. I’ve brought him from Rotterdam. We must let him sleep.

"Food’s on the stove. Enough for two. Perhaps a bath

He must sleep right now.

I went into the rectangle of my room, picked up a paisley shawl, a brown sweater, a pair of worn stockings and two books from my bed, transferring them to the only chair. I tore the blue cover off the bed, removed one pillow and one blanket and carried them into the living room. I would sleep on the couch. Come, I said to the man. He followed. I scarcely had helped him take off his coat jacket when he fell on my bed, eyes closed. Mother stood in the door frame, watching me remove the stranger’s dusty black shoes, watching me warily pull sheet and blanket out from under his body and draw them over his spotted trousers, over his blue-shirted chest that was gray with the ashes of a murdered city.

2

In the bathroom, I turned the cake of green soap in my hands. The water ran lukewarm through my fingers as I kept seeing the endless serpent of the invading army, marching through The Hague. A thousand boots like one. Was it but yesterday? After a long wait a traffic officer had severed the serpent by cutting the air with one hand. As soon as pedestrians and vehicles had crossed the street, the halves of the serpent had fused. Again, I felt the paralysis taking hold of us all at the sight of the venomous snake.

Separated from my own existence I stared at a stranger’s reflection in the mirror: at shoulder length chrome yellow hair opening like curtains at either side of an oval face; at cerulean eyes remindful of my father’s; and again, at a mobile mouth, like his, incapable of concealing emotion. I felt mesmerized by the reflection of a husk that might fall to dust at the hiss of the snake.

Saskia!

Mother was reheating the stew when I entered the kitchen. Tell me what happened, she said. Who is that man?

I paced the floor, hands behind my back as if tied. Probably a German Jew.

Probably! she turned around, alarmed. I told her how I had found him in a state of shock, next to the dead woman. Stop shuffling about like a polar bear, she ordered. Sit down already. I pulled a chair close to the kitchen table. Mother dished out the food. You are so gullible, she reproached. He could’ve planted himself next to any dead woman pretending she was his wife.

He said he has friends here. They can verify what he told me. I’d better call them right now.

You eat. I’ll take care of it. What’s their number?

I ran into Uncle Bruno’s studio. Dirk Sanders’ name was in the directory. A woman’s voice answered at the first ring. Betty Sanders? I asked. Yes. No, she didn’t have any friends by the name of Joseph. She sounded suspicious. I’ll let you talk to my son. A man came to the phone. He asked was Mr. Joseph tall and lanky, with dark eyes and hair, and was the dead woman’s name Ursula? I said that he had never mentioned her name. The only David we know, the man said curtly, is David Held.

That’s him! I cried, relieved, remembering how he had started to say David He … before changing to Joseph. Dirk Sanders promised to pick him up as soon as I called him in the morning. Why on earth had he changed his name from Held to Joseph, I wondered, since Joseph definitely sounded more Jewish? I was nonplussed.

The stew was ice-cold, Mother reproached. She put it back on the stove. Well? she asked eagerly, pouring herself a cup of tea. I told her that the Sanders only knew a David Held, explaining why the stranger must be their friend.

If he isn’t, you’ve gotten us into a nice mess.

How would he know about the Sanders if he weren’t the right David? I realized the logic of my statement as soon as it was pronounced.

Mother sipped grimly. I still think you were foolhardy. To invite him here, of all places! And why did he change his name? Doesn’t sound kosher to me.

Or too kosher. I watched her put the food back on my plate. Maybe he has a reason. He was bombed out, so here’s his chance to disappear.

You have some imagination! Come on, eat your stew! I poked at my beans. How many times am I supposed to reheat it? I thought of the eyes of those children. I could smell the stench of burnt flesh. I pushed the plate away. Mother looked at me. I warned you not to go to Rotterdam, she said. You never listen.

If Mother would only stop her reproaches. I was too exhausted for arguments. Didn’t she realize there was no safety in suspicion and fear? Daddy might have said I was too impulsive, but one word, one glance—he would have understood. Mother was literal: if you took a chance you had to know why. Perhaps her attitude was necessary, but I couldn’t understand her recriminations. She kept rubbing them in like astringents into her patients’ bedsores.

"What about your day? I asked after a long silence. Did they bring in the wounded from Rotterdam?"

She nodded. The hospitals are overcrowded. There isn’t enough of anything—nurses, beds, medicine. Hell has come to us. Why do you go look for it?

I’d like to help, like you.

We’re lucky they didn’t bomb The Hague. There’s a lot left to be grateful for. Mother’s big arm moved in a semicircle, a striking contrast to the slim hand with the lapis lazuli ring that now hinted at all the things deserving gratitude. Then she assumed her cheerful nurse’s tone. "Still, I agree with your grandfather. ‘Who looks for shlamazel’ he used to say, ‘is a shlemiel.’"

I burst out laughing. Soon my eyes filled and laughter turned into weeping. That’s better, Mother comforted, holding me close, patting my shoulder until I grew calm. Now have a couple of bites, darling. Force yourself.

I shook my head. She poured herself more tea. There’s something about him that reminds me of our Daniel, she said. How worried he must be! Daniel, I mean. I’m afraid we’ll be completely cut off from the United States.

Better worry and be safe. I was glad for my brother. I could imagine him scanning the newspapers in New York. I could imagine the parents of the dead woman, in Cleveland. At the thought of the stranger I was filled with inexplicable sorrow, as if the burden of a collective tragedy had accumulated on his shoulders. Again, I saw him carry the sky on his back. Something seemed fateful about our encounter.

I couldn’t sleep. The sofa was too short, bristles of horse hair pierced my sheet. I kept wondering how soon the Germans would be looking for us. No matter where we try to run, I thought, they will always follow. Wide awake, I stared at the night. I was back in Germany, in Rostock, in my grandmother’s apartment, with the many aunts, uncles and cousins who were now dispersed all over the world. The last Christmas just before Hitler was like the beginning of the end. Bored with religion, Grandmother would turn any holiday, Jewish or Gentile, into a festive occasion. She would observe Hanukkah, singing in Hebrew at the top of her voice, while lighting the candles in the menorah: this would sometimes be followed by Silent Night, Holy Night, when Christmas happened to coincide. Each year she celebrated Christmas, the tree reaching almost to the ceiling. We must have one for the maid, she would say, meaning the children too.

Year after year the tree grew smaller. Grandmother’s singing was replaced by a black lacquered music box supporting a toy Christmas tree that turned on its axle in rhythm with the old carol. We children loved it. But that particular Christmas Eve—we had no idea it was to be our last together as a family—the toy tree began to turn faster and faster. Silent Night, Holy Night, galloped into a wild, orgiastic revelry. I saw the wonder die in the eyes of my youngest cousin. At last, the tree no longer moved. Daddy examined the box. It was beyond repair. I stole out of the room, overwhelmed with grief. In the hall I heard Daddy calling my name, I ran into his arms, sobbing. Oh, Daddy, it was such a lovely tree!

Yes, it was. I can still hear his voice. I can still see how his blue eyes grew almost black when he was sad. I didn’t know what troubled me, but he knew. I understood now, as I lay in the dark living room on my late uncle’s couch, aware of the man beyond the wall in my bed, that Daddy and I had shared the prophetic knowledge of an epoch coming to an end because a toy tree had turned too fast. Long before the raid on Rotterdam, long before my father’s death in Toledo, Spain, long before the other kids in school had told us we Jew-pigs must sweep the streets, long before any of this, everything we cherished had fallen out of tune, changing Silent Night, Holy Night into Howling night, Walpurgis night.

3

He lay on his side facing the wall, the sheet pulled up over his shoulder. His hair had the color and sheen of a blackbird’s feathers. The back of his head was round, growing gracefully slender to the nape of his neck where the hair tapered to a finely barbered V.

I leaned against the door, watching him. I knew he was awake, probably tracing a map of his past on the wall’s white surface: valleys, mountains, forests and rivers now dammed, held back from flowing into the sea of his life. A map he would erase as it took shape—like the countries of Western Europe canceled out by the advancing enemy army. A chart of his past, an obsolete historical document. Mother had turned her back to me in the same way after hearing the news about Daddy’s death.

He turned and sat up. Come in, he said, not looking at me. I went to the French windows, unlocked them, pushed them apart. He closed his eyes against the blinding sunlight. I dropped Uncle Bruno’s tartan robe on the foot of the bed.

I don’t even know your name, he said in German.

I stopped in front of him. Saskia Stark.

After Rembrandt’s Saskia?

Yes.

His eyes, now washed clean with sleep, were almost black, with amber pinpoints at the bottom of their wells. I did not want to fall into those wells. I looked away.

Why are you so kind to me, Saskia?

You needed help. Like those children.

I was sure you were Dutch. Your blond hair, your accent—until I met your mother.

Goodness, it’s almost noon! I promised to call your friends. If they are your friends …?

Did you talk to them?

They don’t know any Joseph.

My real name is Held.

I know.

The Nazis have me on their blacklist. But don’t tell the Sanders. We didn’t mention it, because we didn’t want to alarm the old lady. They are the only people here who know me. They especially liked Ursula.

I’ll run a bath for you, I said. There’s a razor and shaving soap. You may try one of my uncle’s suits. It’s right out there, in the hall closet.

Uncle?

This was his apartment. He died a few days ago.

While he bathed and shaved I busied myself in the kitchen. I had already set the table in the dining room. I must study later, I told myself, lowering some eggs into boiling water. Schools had been closed since the invasion. Still, Mother insisted I mustn’t neglect my studies for the finals. How could I face death without a high school diploma?

The kettle whistled like a siren. It made me jump. Everything made me jump since the invasion: kettles, door bells, car horns, phones. That reminded me to call the Sanders. I told Mrs. Sanders that Mr. Joseph was the right David.

That poor Ursula! I couldn’t connect the dark sack in the gutter with that name. What a tragedy! Is he all right?

He’s much better this morning.

We’ll be over in about an hour.

I did not hear him come into the dining room. When I turned around he was there, in my uncle’s blue suit. It was too large for him. It feels good to be clean again, he said. He had shaved off the dark stubbles. He looked thin and pale with his large eyes deep in their sockets, his strong, carved face, lips that were full and sensitive.

You must be starved.

We sat down side by side at the round table. He was hiding his tears when he took in the still life of bread, butter, cheese, eggs, Dutch honey cake, red and golden jams on the white linen cloth. He took a slice of bread and buttered it quickly, as if ashamed. We ate in silence.

So it’s just you and your mother? He was stirring his coffee. I noticed his little finger, stiff, useless, on the hand holding the spoon. Where is she?

At the hospital. She works as a nurse.

No brothers or sisters?

One brother. He was sent to the States right after the Nazis took over.

The lucky fellow. And you got stuck.

My father was a surgeon, I explained. His Jewish patients depended on him. Then, in thirty-six … I stopped. He waited for me to say more. We were about to join Daniel in New York when he was suddenly ordered to do major heart surgery on SS Commander Schurke.

He would have been a Schurke by any other name, David said, looking young and charming when he smiled.

He was known for his cruelty. I hoped he would die on the operating table. But my mother explained the Hippocratic oath. She feared the Nazis would blame my father if anything happened to the man. She was shocked when I said Dad ought to twist that oath just a little, so Schurke couldn’t torture and kill any more innocent people.

David waited for me to go on. It was like a prophecy, I told him. The operation was successful, but two days later Schurke died of an embolism. My father was warned that the Nazis were about to arrest him for murder. He had a sea captain for a friend who smuggled him into Denmark as a stoker. My Mother and I met him in Paris three days later. We went on to Madrid to await our visas from the States.

What went wrong? David Joseph asked after a silence.

Everything. The visas didn’t arrive, we were caught in the civil war, my Dad offered his services to the Loyalists. He made arrangements to have us sent back to Paris.

Those last moments in Madrid were as indelible as the penmark in Daddy’s right cheek. On his lap in the dingy hotel room, I had taken in each detail of his face: bushy brows, receding hair, the once luminous eyes weary, bloodshot: the eyes of a man thrown off balance, faced with exile, possible death. Yet I heard the determination in his voice. Words trying to dispel my fear were like wind blowing at clouds: Your mother needs you. I don’t know what’s going to happen, only that there’s a long journey ahead. He wasn’t just referring to the journey back to France. Don’t be afraid. If you love truth, and have faith in life and in your own actions, your fear will change into strength. And your strength will be passed on to others.

Easy to say. In the desert without Daddy, how was I to conquer fear and exchange its tarnished, encrusted coin for shining courage? How was I to lean on myself in such a wasteland?

Think of a Roman fountain. The jet rises and splashes into a marble basin. When that spills over the water trickles into a second bowl, and the second into a third. The water runs from cup to cup, flowing and resting at the same time. So it shall be with us.

I felt the stranger’s eyes. My hands trembled when I poured him more coffee. I’m sorry to bring back bad memories, he said.

You can guess the rest.

He nodded. But he couldn’t guess how Daddy’s cup had broken. I would never forget the voice of René Lebrun, a young French soldier of the International Brigade who had managed to escape to bring us his account: Dr. Emmanuel Stark was shot during a massacre, caught while tending the wounded. The Falangistas had turned on music, loud enough to disguise the din of the guns and the cries of the condemned whose red blood dyed the white walls near Toledo. René Lebrun had seen the execution from his hideout across the plaza. As the guns were raised and fired, the popular American tune, amplified and distorted from a scratchy record, had blasted across the hot, glaring September afternoon.

I can’t give you anything but love, baby … that’s the only thing I’m thinking of, baby …

(I always felt vaguely responsible for my father’s death. Somehow he had shared my obsession to destroy his hated patient, to free our own kind from that henchman. Had he