Total Recall

Lotty Herschel’s Story: Work Ethic

The cold that winter ate into our bones. You can’t imagine, living where you turn a dial and as much heat as you want glows from the radiator, but everything in England then was fueled by coal and there were terrible shortages the second winter after the war. Like everyone I had little piles of six-penny bits for the electric fire in my room, but even if I’d been able to afford to run it all night it didn’t provide much warmth.

One of the women in my lodgings got a length of parachute silk from her brother, who’d been in the RAF. We all made camisoles and knickers out of it. We all knew how to knit back then; I unraveled old sweaters to make scarves and vests-new wool cost a fortune.

We saw newsreels of American ships and planes bringing the Germans whatever they needed. While we swathed ourselves in blankets and sweaters and ate grey bread with butter substitutes, we joked bitterly that we’d done the wrong thing, bringing the Americans in to win the war-they’d treat us better if we’d lost, the same woman who’d gotten the parachute silk said.

Of course, I had started my medical training, so I couldn’t spend much time wrapped up in bed. Anyway, I was glad to have the hospital to go to-although the wards weren’t warm, either: patients and sisters would huddle around the big stove in the center of the ward, drinking tea and telling stories-we students used to envy their camaraderie. The sisters expected us medical students to behave professionally-frankly, they enjoyed ordering us about. We’d do rounds with two pairs of stockings on, hoping the consultants wouldn’t notice we wore gloves as we trailed after them from bed to bed, listening to symptoms that came from deprivation as much as anything.

Working sixteen or eighteen hours a day without proper food took a toll on all of us. Many of my fellow students succumbed to tuberculosis and were granted leave-the only reason the hospital would let you interrupt your training and come back, as a matter of fact, even though some took more than a year to recover. The new antibiotics were starting to come in, but they cost the earth and weren’t yet widely available. When my turn came and I went to the Registrar, explaining that a family friend had a cottage in Somerset where I could recuperate, she nodded bleakly: we were already down five in my class, but she signed the forms for me and told me to write monthly. She stressed that she would hope to see me in under a year.

In fact, I was gone eight months. I’d wanted to return sooner, but Claire-Claire Tallmadge, who was a senior houseman by then, with a consultancy all but certain-persuaded me I wasn’t strong enough, although I was aching to get back.

When I returned to the Royal Free it felt-oh, so good. The hospital routine, my studies, they were like a balm, healing me. The Registrar actually called me into her office to warn me to slow down; they didn’t want me to suffer a relapse.

She didn’t understand that work was my only salvation. I suppose it had already become my second skin. It’s a narcotic, the oblivion overwork can bring you. Arbeit macht frei-that was an obscene parody the Nazis thought up, but it is possible Arbeit macht betäubt-what? Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t speak German. They had 1984-type slogans over the entrance to all their camps, and that was what they put over Auschwitz: work will make you free. That slogan was a bestial parody, but work can numb you. If you stop working even for a moment, everything inside you starts evaporating; soon you are so shapeless you can’t move at all. At least, that was my fear.

When I first heard about my family, I became utterly without any grounding at all. I was supposed to be preparing for my higher-school certificate-the diploma we took in those days when we finished high school-the results determined your university entrance-but the exams lost the meaning they’d had for me all during the war. Every time I sat down to read I felt as though my insides were being sucked away by a giant vacuum cleaner.

In a perverse way, cousin Minna came to my rescue. Ever since I arrived on her doorstep she had been unsparing in her criticisms of my mother. The news of my mother’s death brought not even a respectful silence but a greater barrage. I can see now, through the prism of experience, that guilt drove her as much as anything: she had hated my mother, been jealous of her for so many years, she couldn’t admit now that she’d been unfeeling, even cruel. She was probably grief-stricken as well, because her own mother had also perished, all that family that used to spend summers talking and swimming at Kleinsee; well, never mind that. It’s old news now.

I would come home from walking the streets, walking until I was too exhausted to feel anything, to Minna: you think you’re suffering? That you’re the only person who was ever orphaned, left alone in a strange country? And weren’t you supposed to give Victor his tea? He says he waited for over an hour for you and finally had to make it himself because you’re too much a lady-“die gnädige Frau”-Minna only ever spoke German at home-she had never really mastered English, which made her furious with shame-and she curtsied to me-to get your hands dirty doing work, housework or a real job. You’re just like Lingerl. I wonder how a princess like her lived as long as she did in such a setting, with no one to pamper her. Did she tilt her head and bat her eyes so that the guards or other inmates gave up their bread to her? Madame Butterfly is dead. It’s time you learned what real work is.

A fury rose up in me greater than any I remember since. I smacked her in the mouth and screamed, if people took care of my mother it’s because she repaid them with love. And if they don’t care for you it’s because you’re utterly loathsome.

She stared at me for a moment, her mouth slack with shock. She recovered quickly, though, and hit me back so hard she split my lip with her big ring. And then hissed, the only reason I let a mongrel like you accept that scholarship to high school was on the understanding that you would repay my generosity by taking care of Victor. Which I might point out you have failed utterly to do. Instead of giving him tea you’ve been flaunting yourself at the pubs and dance halls just like your mother. Max or Carl or one of those other immigrant boys is likely to give you the same present that Martin, as he liked to call himself, gave Madame Butterfly. Tomorrow morning I’m off to that precious headmistress, that Miss Skeffing you’re so fond of, to tell her you can’t continue your education. It’s time you started pulling your weight around here.

Blood pouring down my face, I ran pell-mell across London to the youth hostel where my friends lived-you know, Max and Carl and the rest of them: when they turned sixteen the year before they hadn’t been able to stay in their foster homes. I begged them to find me a bed for the night. In the morning, when I knew Minna would be with her great love, the glove factory, I sneaked back for my books and my clothes-it was only two changes of underwear and a second dress. Victor was dozing in the living room, but he didn’t wake up enough to try to stop me.

Miss Skeffing found a family in North London who gave me a room in exchange for doing their cooking. And I began to study as if my mother’s life could be redeemed by my work. As soon as I finished the supper dishes I would solve chemistry and math problems, sometimes sleeping only four hours until it was time to make the family’s morning tea. And after that, I never stopped working, really.

That was where the story ended, sitting on a hillside on a dull October day overlooking a desolate landscape, listening to Lotty until she could talk no more. It’s harder for me to figure out where it began.

Looking back now, now that I’m calm, now that I can think, it’s still hard to say, Oh, it was because of this, or because of that. It was a time when I had a million other things on my mind. Morrell was getting ready to leave for Afghanistan. I was worrying most about that, but of course I was trying to run my business, and juggle the nonprofit work I do, and pay my bills. I suppose my own involvement began with Isaiah Sommers, or maybe the Birnbaum Foundation conference-they happened on the same day.