Total Recall

X In the Mind Reader’s Lair

When I finally woke the next morning, my head was heavy with the detritus of dreams and difficult sleep. I once read that a year or eighteen months after losing them, you dream of your dead as they were in their prime. I suppose I must sometimes dream of my mother as she was in my childhood, vivid and intense, but last night she was dying, eyes heavy with morphine, face unrecognizable as disease had leached flesh from bone. Lotty and my mother are such intertwined strands in my mind that it was almost inevitable that her distress would overlay my sleep.

Morrell looked at me questioningly when I sat up. He had come in after I went to bed, but I was tossing, not sleeping. His impending departure made him feverishly nervous; we made love with a kind of frantic unsatisfying energy but fell asleep without talking. In the morning light he traced my cheekbones with his finger and asked if it was his leaving that had disturbed my sleep.

I gave a twisted smile. “My own stuff this time.” I gave him a brief synopsis of the previous day.

“Why don’t we go to Michigan for the weekend?” he said. “We both need a breather. You can’t do anything on a Saturday, anyway, and we can give each other better comfort away from all these people. I love Don like a brother, but having him here right now is a bit much. We’ll come back in time for Michael and Carl’s concert on Sunday.”

My muscles unknotted at the thought, and it sent me into the day with better energy than my tormented night warranted. After stopping at home to take the dogs for a swim, I drove into the West Loop to the Unblinking Eye, the camera and video place I use when only the best will do. I explained what I wanted to Maurice Redken, the technician I usually work with.

We ran my copy of the Channel 13 video through one of their machines, watching Radbuka’s naked face as he went through the torments of his life. When he said, “My Miriam, where is my Miriam? I want my Miriam,” the camera was right in his face. I froze the image there and asked Maurice to make prints of that and a couple of other close-ups for me. I was hoping Rhea Wiell would introduce me to Radbuka, but if she didn’t, the stills would help Mary Louise and me track him down.

Maurice promised to have both the stills and three copies of the tape ready for me by the day’s end. It wasn’t quite ten-thirty when we finished. There wasn’t time for me to go to my office before Don’s appointment with Rhea Wiell, but I could walk the two miles from the Eye to Water Tower if I didn’t dawdle-I hate paying Gold Coast parking fees.

Water Tower Place is a shopping mecca on North Michigan, a favorite drop-off place for tour buses from small Midwestern towns as well as an oasis for local teens. Threading my way through girls whose pierced navels showed below their cropped T-shirts and women pushing expensive baby buggies overflowing with packages, I found Don leaning against the back entrance. He was so engrossed in his book he didn’t look up when I stopped next to him. I squinted to read the spine: Hypnotic Induction and Suggestion: an Introductory Manual.

“Does this tell you how Ms. Wiell does it?” I asked.

He blinked and closed the book. “It tells me that blocked memories really can be accessed through hypnosis. Or at least the authors claim so. Fortunately I only have to see if Wiell has a sellable book in her, not sort out whether her therapy is legitimate. I’m going to introduce you as an investigator who may help collect background data if Wiell and the publisher come to terms. You can say anything you like.”

He looked at his watch and fished a cigarette from his breast pocket. Although he’d changed clothes, into a pressed open-necked shirt and a tweed jacket, he still looked half-asleep. I took the book on hypnotic induction while Don lit his cigarette. Broadly speaking, hypnosis seemed to be used in two main ways: suggestive hypnosis helped people break bad habits, and insight or exploratory hypnosis helped them understand themselves better. Recovering memories was only one small part of using hypnosis in therapy.

Don pinched off the glowing end of his cigarette and put the stub back in his pocket. “Time to go, Ms. Warshawski.”

I followed him into the building. “This book could help you end that expensive habit for good.”

He stuck out his tongue at me. “I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands if I quit.”

We went behind a newsstand on the ground floor, in a dark alcove which held the elevators to the office floor. It wasn’t exactly secret, just out of the way enough to keep the shopping hordes from straying there by mistake. I studied the tenant board. Plastic surgeons, endodontists, beauty salons, even a synagogue. What an odd combination.

“I called over to the Jane Addams School, as you suggested,” Don said abruptly when we were alone on an elevator. “First I couldn’t find anyone who knew Wiell-she did her degree fifteen years ago. But when I started talking about the hypnotherapy, the department secretary remembered. Wiell was married then, used her husband’s name.”

We got off the elevator and found ourselves at a point where four long corridors came together. “What did they think of her at UIC?” I asked.

He looked at his appointment book. “I think we go right here. There’s some jealousy-a suggestion she was a charlatan, but when I pushed it seemed to stem from the fact that social work had made her rich-doesn’t happen to too many people, I gather.”

We stopped in front of a blond door with Wiell’s name and professional initials painted on it. I felt a tingle from the idea that this woman might read my mind. She might know me better than I knew myself. Was that where hypnotic suggestibility got its start? The urgent desire to be understood so intimately?

Don pushed the door open. We were in a tiny vestibule with two shut doors and a third one that was open. This led to a waiting room, where a sign invited us to sit down and relax. It added that all cell phones and pagers should be turned off. Don and I obediently pulled out our phones. He switched his off, but mine had run down again without my noticing.

The waiting room was decorated with such attention to comfort that it even held a carafe of hot water and a selection of herbal teas. New Age music tinkled softly; padded chairs faced a four-foot-high fish tank built into the far wall. The fish seemed to rise and fall in time to the music.

“What do you think this setup costs?” Don was trying the other two doors. One turned out to be a bathroom; the other was locked.

“I don’t know-installing it took a bundle, but looking after it wouldn’t take too much. Except for the rent, of course. The nicotine in your system is keeping you awake. These fish are putting me to sleep.”

He grinned. “You’re going to sleep, Vic: when you wake up-”

“It isn’t like that, although people are always nervous at first and imagine the television version.” The locked door had opened and Rhea Wiell appeared behind us. “You’re from the publishing company, aren’t you?”

She seemed smaller in person than she had on television, but her face held the same serenity I’d noticed on screen. She was dressed as she had been on camera, in soft clothes that flowed like an Indian mystic’s.

Don shook her hand, unembarrassed, and introduced both of us. “If you and I decide to work together, Vic may help with some of the background checking.”

Wiell stood back to let us pass in front of her into her office. It, too, was designed to put us at ease, with a reclining chair, a couch, and her own office chair all covered in soft green. Her diplomas hung behind her desk: the MSW from the Jane Addams School of Social Work, a certificate from the American Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, and her Illinois license as a psychiatric social worker.

I perched on the edge of the recliner while Don took the couch. Wiell sat in her office chair, her hands loosely crossed in her lap. She looked like Jean Simmons in Elmer Gantry.

“When we saw you on Channel Thirteen the other night, I immediately realized you had a very powerful story to tell, you and Paul Radbuka,” Don said. “You must have thought about putting it into a book before I called, hadn’t you?”

Wiell smiled faintly. “Of course I’ve wanted to: if you saw the whole program, then you’re aware that my work is-misunderstood-in a number of circles. A book validating the recovery of blocked trauma would be enormously useful. And Paul Radbuka’s story would be unusual enough-powerful enough-to force people to pay serious attention to the issue.”

Don leaned forward, chin on his clasped hands. “I’m new to the subject-my first exposure came two nights ago. I’ve been cramming hard, reading a manual on hypnotic suggestion, looking at articles about you, but I’m definitely not up to speed.”

She nodded. “Hypnosis is only one part of a total therapeutic approach, and it’s controversial because it isn’t understood very well. The field of memory, what we remember, how we remember, and maybe most interestingly why we remember-none of that is really known right now. The research seems exciting to me, but I’m not a scientist and I don’t pretend to have the time to follow experimental work in depth.”

“Would your book focus exclusively on Paul Radbuka?” I asked.

“Since Don-I hope you don’t mind my using your first name?-Don called yesterday, I’ve been thinking it over; I believe I should use some other case histories, as well, to show that my work with Paul isn’t-well, the kind of fly-by-night treatment that Planted Memory therapists like to claim.”

“What do you see as the book’s central point?” Don patted his jacket pocket reflexively, then pulled out a pen in lieu of his half-smoked cigarette.

“To show that our memories are reliable. To show the difference between planted memories and genuine ones. I began going through my patient files last night after I finished work and found several people whose histories would make this point quite strongly. Three had complete amnesia about their childhoods when they started therapy. One had partial memories, and two had what they thought were continuous memories, although therapy unlocked new insights for them. In some ways it’s most exciting to uncover memories for someone who has amnesia, but the harder work is verifying, filling in gaps for people who have some recall.”

Don interrupted to ask if there was some way to verify memories that were uncovered in treatment. I expected Wiell to become defensive, but she responded quite calmly.

“That’s why I earmarked these particular cases. For each of them there is at least one other person, a witness to their childhood, who can corroborate what came up in here. For some it’s a brother or sister. In one case it’s a social worker; for two, there are primary-school teachers.”

“We’d have to get written permission.” Don was making notes. “For the patients and for their verifiers. Witnesses.”

She nodded again. “Of course their real identities would be carefully concealed, not just to protect themselves but to protect family members and colleagues who could be harmed by such narratives. But, yes, we’ll get written permission.”

“Are these other patients also Holocaust survivors?” I ventured.

“Helping Paul was an incredible privilege.” A smile lit her face with a kind of ecstatic joy, so intense, so personal, that I instinctively shrank back on the recliner away from her. “Most of my clients are dealing with terrible traumas, to be sure, but within the context of this culture. To get Paul to that point, to the point of being a little boy speaking broken German with his helpless playmates in a concentration camp, was the most powerful experience of my life. I don’t even know how we can do it justice in print.” She looked at her hands, adding in a choked voice, “I think he’s recently recovered a fragment of memory of witnessing his mother’s death.”

“I’ll do my best for you,” Don muttered. He, too, had shifted away from her.

“You said you’d be concealing people’s real identities,” I said. “So is Paul Radbuka not his real name?”

The ecstasy left Wiell’s face, replaced again by her patina of professional calm. “He’s the one person who doesn’t seem to have any living family left to be upset by his revelations. Besides, he’s so intensely proud of his newly recovered identity that it would be impossible to persuade him to use a cover name.”

“So you’ve discussed it with him?” Don asked eagerly. “He’s willing to take part?”

“I haven’t had time to talk about it with any of my patients.” She smiled faintly. “You only broached the idea yesterday, after all. But I know how intensely Paul feels: it’s why he insisted on speaking up at the Birnbaum conference earlier this week. I think, too, he’d do anything he could to support my work, because it’s changed his life so dramatically.”

“How did he come to remember the name Radbuka?” I said. “If he was raised by this foster father from the age of four and wrenched from his birth family in infancy-have I got that chronology right?”

Wiell shook her head at me. “I hope your role isn’t to try to set traps for me, Ms. Warshawski. If it is, I’ll have to look for a different publisher than Envision Press. Paul found some papers in his father’s desk-his foster father, I should say-and they pointed the way to his birth name for him.”

“I wasn’t trying to set a trap, Ms. Wiell. But it would certainly strengthen the book if we could get some outside corroboration of his Radbuka identity. And it’s remotely possible that I am in a position to provide that. To be candid, I have friends who came to England from central Europe with the Kindertransport in the last months before the war began. Apparently one of their group of special friends in London was named Radbuka. If it turns out your client is a relation, it might mean a great deal, both to him and to my friends who lost so many family members.”

Again the rapturous smile swept across her face. “Ah, if you can introduce him to his relatives, that would be an indescribable gift to Paul. Who are these people? Do they live in England? How do you know them?”

“I know two of them who live here in Chicago; the third is a musician who’s visiting from London for a few days. If I could talk to your client-”

“Not until I’ve consulted with him,” she cut me off. “And I would have to have your-friends’-names before I could do so. I hate to have to be so suspicious, but I have had too many traps set for me by the Planted Memory Foundation.”

My eyes narrowed as I tried to hear behind her words. Was this paranoia born of too much skirmishing with Arnold Praeger, or a legitimate prudence?

Before I could decide, Don said, “You don’t think Max would mind your giving his name, do you, Vic?”

“Max?” Wiell cried. “Max Loewenthal?”

“How do you know him?” Don asked, again before I could respond.

“He spoke at the session on the efforts of survivors to track down the fates of their families and whether they had any assets tied up in Swiss or German banks. Paul and I sat in on that: we hoped we could learn some new ideas for ways of looking for his family. If Max is your friend, I’m sure Paul would be glad to talk to him-he seemed an extraordinary man, gentle, empathic, yet assured, authoritative.”

“That’s a good description of his personality,” I said, “but he also has a strong sense of privacy. He would be most annoyed if Paul Radbuka approached him without my having a chance to speak to Mr. Radbuka first.”

“You can rest assured that I understand the value of privacy. My relations with my clients would not be possible if I didn’t protect them.” Wiell gave me the same sweet, steely smile she’d directed at Arnold Praeger on TV the other night.

“So can we arrange a meeting with your client, where I can talk to him before introducing him to my friends?” I tried to keep irritation out of my voice, but I knew I couldn’t match her in sanctity.

“Before I do anything, I will have to talk to Paul. Surely you understand that any other course would violate my relationship with him.” She wrote Max’s name in her datebook next to Paul Radbuka’s appointment: her square, printlike hand was easy to read upside down.

“Of course I understand that,” I said with what patience I could muster. “But I can’t let Paul Radbuka come to Mr. Loewenthal out of the blue in the belief that they’re related. In fact, I don’t think Mr. Loewenthal is himself a part of the Radbuka family. If I could ask Paul a few questions first, it might spare everyone some anxiety.”

She shook her head with finality: she would not turn Paul over to someone like me, an unskilled outsider. “Whether it’s Mr. Loewenthal or his musician friend who is part of the family, I assure you, I would approach them with the utmost empathy. And the first step is to talk to Paul, to get his permission for me to go to them. How long will your musician be in Chicago?”

At this point I didn’t want to tell her anything about anyone I knew, but Don said, “I think he said that he’s leaving for the West Coast on Monday.”

While I fumed to myself, Don got Wiell to give a précis on how hypnosis worked and how she used it-sparingly, and only after her patients felt able to trust her-before he brought up the kind of controversy the book was likely to generate.

He grinned engagingly. “From our standpoint, controversy is highly desirable, because it gives a book access to the kind of press coverage you can’t buy. But from yours-you may not want that kind of spotlight on you and your practice.”

She smiled back at him. “Like you, I would welcome the publicity-although for a different reason. I want as many people as possible to start understanding how we block memories, how we recover them, and how we can become liberated in the process. The Planted Memory Foundation has done a great deal of damage to people suffering from trauma. I haven’t had the resources to make the truth clear to a wider audience. This book would help me greatly.”

A silvery bell, like a Japanese temple bell, chimed on her desk. “We’ll have to stop now-I have another patient coming and I need time to prepare for my session.”

I handed her my card, reminding her that I wanted an early meeting with Paul Radbuka. She shook my hand in a cool, dry clasp, giving my hand a slight pressure intended to reassure me of her goodwill. To Don she added that she could help him stop smoking if he wanted.

“Most of my hypnotic work is in the arena of self-exploration, but I do work with habit management sometimes.”

Don laughed. “I hope we’ll be working closely together for the next year or so. If I decide I’m ready to quit we’ll put the manuscript aside while I lie back on your couch here.”