Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

Radbuka’s lower lip stuck out, but before he could dig his heels in, Morrell intervened. “I’m going to take Radbuka up to Max’s study, as V I tried to do an hour ago. Max and Carl may join him there later, if they’re able.”

Don had been sitting quietly in the background, but he stood up now. “Right. Come on, big guy. Dr. Herschel needs to rest.”

Don put an arm around him. With Morrell at his other elbow, they moved the unhappy Radbuka to the door, his neck hunched into his oversize jacket, his face so expressive of bewildered misery that he looked like a circus clown.

When they’d gone, I turned to Lotty. “Who was Sofie Radbuka?”

She turned her frosty stare to me. “No one that I know of.”

“Then why did hearing her name make you faint?”

“It didn’t. My foot caught on the edge of a rug and-”

“Lotty, if you don’t want to tell me, keep it to yourself, but please don’t make up stupid lies to me.”

She bit her lip, turning her head away from me. “There’s been far too much emotion in this house today. First Max and Carl furious with me, and now the man himself shows up. I don’t need you angry with me as well.”

I sat on the wicker table in front of her settee. “I’m not angry. But I happened to be alone in the hall when this guy came to the door, and after ten minutes with him my head was spinning like a hula hoop. If you faint, or start to faint, then claim nothing was wrong, it makes me even dizzier. I’m not here to criticize, but you were so upset on Friday you got me seriously worried. And your agony seems to have started with this guy’s appearance at the Birnbaum conference.”

She looked back at me, her hauteur suddenly changed to consternation. “ Victoria, I’m sorry-I have been selfish, not thinking of the effect of my behavior on you. You do deserve some kind of explanation.”

She sat frowning to herself, as if trying to decide what kind of explanation I deserved. “I don’t know if I can make clear the relationships of that time in my life. How I came to be so close to Max, and even Carl.

“There was a group of nine of us refugee children who became good friends during the war. We met over music; a woman from Salzburg, a violist who was herself a refugee, came around London and gathered us up. She saw Carl’s gift, got him lessons, got him into a good music program. There were various others. Teresz, who eventually married Max. Me. My father had been a violin player. Café music, not the stuff of the soirées Frau Herbst organized, but skillful-at least, I think he was skillful, but how can I know, when I only heard him as a child? Anyway, even though I had no gift myself, I loved hearing the music at Frau Herbst’s.”

“Was Radbuka the name of one of that group? Why does Carl care so much? Is it someone he was in love with?”

She smiled painfully. “You would have to ask him that. Radbuka was the name of-someone else. Max-he had great organizational skills, even as a young man. When the war ended, he went around London to the different societies that helped people find out about their families. Then he-went back to central Europe, looking. That was in-I think it was in ’47, but after all this time I can’t be sure of the exact year. That was when the Radbuka name came up-it wasn’t anyone in the group’s actual surname, you see. But that is why we could ask Max to look. Because we were all so close, not like a family, like something else, perhaps a combat team who fought together for years.

“For almost all of us, Max’s reports came back with devastating completeness. No survivors. For the Herschels, the Tisovs, the Loewenthals-Max found his father and two cousins, and that was another terrible-” She cut herself off mid-sentence.

“I was starting my medical training. It consumed me to the exclusion of so much else. Carl always blamed me for-well, let’s just say, something unpleasant came up around the person from the Radbuka family. Carl always thought my absorption with medicine made me behave in a fashion which he regarded as cruel… as if his own devotion to music had not been equally absolute.”

This last sentence she muttered under her breath as an afterthought. She fell silent. She had never spoken to me of her losses in such a way, such an emotional way. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say-or not to say-about the friend from the Radbuka family, but when it became clear she wouldn’t expand on it, I couldn’t press her.

“Do you know”-I hesitated, trying to think of the least painful way of asking the question-“do you know what Max learned about the Radbuka family?”

Her face twisted. “They-he didn’t find any trace of them. Although traces were hard to find and he didn’t have much money. We all gave him a bit, but we didn’t have money, either.”

“So hearing this man call himself Radbuka must have been quite a shock.”

She shuddered and looked at me. “It was, believe me, it’s been a shock all week. How I envy Carl, able to put the whole world to one side when he starts to play. Or maybe it’s that he puts the whole world inside him and blows it out that tube.” She repeated the question she’d asked when she saw Paul on video. “How old is he, do you think?”

“He says he came here after the war around the age of four, so he must have been born in ’42 or ’43.”

“So he couldn’t be-does he think he was born in Theresienstadt?”

I threw up my hands. “All I know about him is from Wednesday night’s interview. Is Theresienstadt the same as what he calls Terezin?”

“Terezin is its Czech name; it’s an old fortress outside Prague.” She added with an unexpected gleam of humor, “That’s Austrian snobbery, using the German name-a holdover from when Prague was part of the Hapsburg empire and everyone spoke German. This man tonight, he’s insisting he’s Czech, not German, by calling it Terezin.”

We sat again in silence. Lotty was withdrawn into her own thoughts, but she seemed more relaxed, less tortured, than she had for the past few days. I told her I’d go up to see what I could learn from Radbuka.

Lotty nodded. “If I feel stronger I’ll come up by and by. Right now-I think I’ll just lie here.”

I made sure she was well-covered in the afghan Max had provided before turning out the light. When I closed the French doors behind me, I could see across the hall into the front room, where a dozen or so people still lingered over brandy. Michael Loewenthal was on the piano bench, holding Agnes on his lap. Everyone was happy. I went on up the stairs.

Max’s study was a large room overlooking the lake, filled with Ming vases and T’ang horses. It was at the far end of the second floor from where the children were watching videos; Max had picked the room when his own two children were small, because it was well-secluded from the body of the house. When I shut the door no outside sounds could disrupt the tension inside. Morrell and Don smiled at me, but Paul Ulrich-Radbuka looked away in disappointment when he saw it was me, not Max or Carl.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said pathetically. “Are people ashamed to be seen with me? I need to talk to Max and Carl. I need to find out how we’re related. I’m sure Carl or Max will want to know he has a surviving family member.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that would block out his hyperemotional state. “Try to relax, Mr.-uh. Mr. Loewenthal will be with you as soon as he can leave his guests. Perhaps Mr. Tisov as well. Can I get you a glass of wine, or a soft drink?”

He looked longingly at the door but apparently realized he couldn’t find Carl unaided. He subsided into an armchair and muttered that he supposed a glass of water would help settle his nerves. Don jumped up to fetch it.