They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

71 Autumn 2011

Hans-Jürgen seemed a completely different person from the cool charmer I felt I’d grown close to, back at the Scientologists’ HQ, and from the person I’d spoken to for comfort in these final months with Nicos. Four years ago, after running away from my life, he had been a great mentor. But what I hadn’t seen before, in those months I stayed with the Scientologists, was just how messianic he was. Back then I was just grateful to be away from Roel Albazi and to feel safe. It was as if all the time that we had been a thousand miles away from each other he had tried to close that gap by being so warm and caring over the phone. But now I was here, he seemed, at least in his body language, to be trying to push back to a distance between us again.

In this bizarre castle, running his own show, his own cult — because that’s what we were, albeit a benign one — he was pretty much revered as a god. But he seemed to be doing his very best to appear accessible to everyone, to give the impression that if he was a god, then he was just a regular one, not special. A kind of Ordinary Joe god.

Our dinner date was something of a disappointment on several levels. I’d expected, at the very least, to be somewhere on our own, where we could talk in private. Instead, keeping up his ‘just a regular Joe’ god status, we queued with our trays along with everyone else at the Refectory buffet. There was hot and cold food, something-for-everyone options, each labelled for some reason with an exclamation mark at the end. Meat! Pescatarian! Vegetarian! Vegan! Nut-free! Gluten-free! Lactose intolerance!

We then sat opposite each other in the middle of one of the rows of communal tables, with other residents on either side of us, who all told us they loved us, and we told them we loved them, too. At the far end was the guy with the crazy hair I’d exchanged a smile with this afternoon. We caught each other’s eye again and exchanged another WTF? smile, before I turned my one hundred per cent focus back on Hans-Jürgen, trying to break down that strange barrier that seemed to have appeared between us.

To my surprise he’d not yet said anything much about Nicos. I guess I’d told him pretty much all there was in our long phone calls. He didn’t seem even remotely interested in his friend’s welfare.

I started by asking him how the Association of Free Spirits had come about, flattering him with how wonderful I thought the atmosphere here was. Although... Privately, looking around at everyone in their clinical white tunics, I could for a moment have been at a convention of cruise ship cabin stewards.

He launched into PR mode, as if he was responding to an interview question from a reporter. As he spoke, his eyes gleamed with the cold zeal of the fanatic, although his wonderful, mellifluous voice retained all its calm and its seductive charm.

He told me the Association of Free Spirits was his brainchild and entirely funded by him. Lowering his voice, and checking no one either side of us was listening, he confided that he’d inherited a family fortune, substantially founded during the Second World War from supplying aviation components to the Luftwaffe.

What troubled me, despite his concern not to be overheard, was that he seemed to think that was OK. And of course, all these years later, maybe it was. Perhaps I was too judgemental. Particularly as Hans-Jürgen seemed such a genuinely caring person, on a mission to use his vast inheritance to try to change the world. One of his visions, he explained — and he seemed to have many — was to reprogramme the violence in so many people’s DNA and channel it into a force for good.

There was something about this that made me think of a history documentary I’d once watched with Roy, about a rock festival in San Francisco, back in 1969. It was the so-called Summer of Love, when hippies went around wearing bells and necklaces of flowers and Scott McKenzie stole the hearts of every person in the world who truly cared, with his song ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)’.

Back then, it seemed there had been a real feeling of optimism. That yes, everyone could make the world the awesome place it should have been. They really could! All they needed was love.

But the Vietnam War was still raging, along with many other wars, and then the big one — 9/11, and the collapse of the Twin Towers — and the world was back to the dark place it always seemed to have been.

Except that Hans-Jürgen genuinely believed we could change it. That we had to change it if we were to survive as a species. I was fine with that; as the mother of a young child, I was all for doing everything I needed to change the world.

But as we continued to sit in the packed Refectory, while Hans-Jürgen concentrated on cutting into a thick piece of pork, for a moment his mask slipped and I was no longer looking at a visionary, just a rich, sanctimonious, smug guy.

I can’t pinpoint when exactly or why I felt it. It was just the way he glanced around, so proprietorially. As if revelling in the fact that every single person in this grand old schloss was here because of him.

Then he looked across at me again and I suddenly saw the old warmth and the deep penetrating gaze from four years ago. ‘So there is a problem with your son, Bruno, yes?’

I shrugged.

‘We have some very upset parents, Sandra. If you are happy, I will tomorrow have Bruno assessed by our resident doctor, Herr Borg.’ He looked at me deeply again. ‘Because it is not possible to have a repeat of today.’

‘Of course, I understand. Is Dr Borg a psychologist or psychiatrist?’

‘Neither, but he is a very smart physician; he will assess your son and decide if he should see perhaps a child psychologist. Of course, with your permission. Would you agree to this?’

‘And if I don’t agree?’

His mask slipped even more and suddenly I wasn’t looking at the friendly, caring Hans-Jürgen Waldinger I thought I knew, but a total stranger. A hard, cold businessman.

‘If you do not agree, Sandra, then it will not be possible for you and Bruno to remain here — and this would make me sad.’