Lynda Plante - Entwined

Luis had no thought of what he would do next, he was at a loss. Without Ruda he didn't seem able to function in the world to which he had introduced her.

He knew just one thing. He had to wait until the headstone was ready.

The sky was clear and cloudless the day he went to say his last good-bye. Grimaldi could see it immediately, towering above the other tombstones, and his breath caught in his throat. He had done something right. Immediately after Ruda's death, when he had been inconsolable, blaming himself, the tears he had shed had broken from him in gasping sobs. Now he wept gently, tears welling up and spilling down his cheeks.

He towered above her, his wonderful head resting on his paws, his black mane, his wide black eyes. His jaw was open in warning not to touch or trespass upon the grave. Carved in gold was his name. MAMON.

After the tragedy Rebecca was in a catatonic state for quite some time. She had no memory of Ruda's death. She was kept heavily sedated until Dr. Franks felt she was mentally and physically strong enough to continue the sessions under hypnosis.

Helen Masters had returned to France. The baron wrote her about Rebecca's treatment, as if the letters were in some way therapeutic for him. The sessions took place every other day, to give Rebecca time to absorb and accept each new insight. Under deep hypnosis she began to recall the incidents that her adopted mother had sought to cover up. Her breakdowns were linked directly to Ruda's proximity. Whenever Ruda had tried to contact her, be it out of hatred or love, Rebecca's rages began. Louis Marechal checked the date of each incident against circus schedules. In each case, unbeknownst to Rebecca, Ruda had been physically near.

Rebecca's more recent mental breakdowns had coincided with the arrival of Mamon in Ruda's life. Mamon's strong will and expressiveness had forced Ruda to use all her determination to train him. In teaching him to learn the colors of the pedestals, she had tapped into Rebecca's subconscious. When Ruda was in close proximity, these color drills created havoc in Rebecca's head.

Gradually the jigsaw puzzle became clear: Rebecca was taken back to Birkenau. She described horrifying events, as she saw them when she was a child. At times she was quite cheerful. She spoke about the babies, how she had wanted one as a doll. She chattered on, about the funny thin people, the wires, the other children. At one session she actually stunned Dr. Franks by laughing.

"What is so funny?"

She recalled a young guard who used to play with the children.

He would rip up little bits of paper, put them on the end of his nose and blow them away like snowflakes. "We called him the Snowman!"

"Was this man kind to you?"

She fell silent, and Franks repeated the question. She whispered that he was not very nice, not all the time. Franks tried to find out why, but she was unsure... she said he would take children across the wire fences to the gray hot place where they baked bread. Whoever he took away never returned.

She talked at length about what her Papa had given her: the white frilly dress, the white socks, and patent leather shoes.

She giggled and she said she loved him. "I got a dolly with yellow hair. He said it was as yellow as the dirty Jews' stars."

The sessions disturbed Louis. He felt a hopelessness, a fear that Rebecca would never be returned to him. Often he had to walk out of the viewing room, but always he came back.

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..."

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?"