Here the screen showed furious people yelling into the mikes set up in the aisles for questions. One man shouted the insult that Margaret Sommers and Alderman Durham had both made earlier, that the reparations debate proved that all Jews ever thought about was money.
Another man yelled back that he didn’t understand why Jews were considered greedy for wanting bank deposits their families had made: “Why aren’t the banks called greedy? They held on to the money for sixty years and now they want to hang on to it forever.” A woman stomped up to a mike to say that since the Swiss reinsurer Edelweiss had bought Ajax, she assumed Edelweiss had their own reasons to oppose the legislation.
Channel 13 let us watch the melee for about twenty seconds before Blacksin’s voice cut in again. “The most startling event of the day didn’t take place in the insurance session, but during one on forcible conversion, when a small man with a shy manner made the most extraordinary revelation.”
We watched as a man in a suit that seemed a size too big for him spoke into one of the aisle mikes. He was closer to sixty than fifty, with greying curls that had thinned considerably at his temples.
“I want to say that it is only recently I even knew I was Jewish.”
A voice from the stage asked him to identify himself.
“Oh. My name is Paul—Paul Radbuka. I was brought here after the war when I was four years old by a man who called himself my father.”
Max sucked in his breath, while Carl exclaimed, “What! Who is this?”
Don and Morrell both turned to stare.
“You know him?” I asked.
Max clamped my wrist to hush me while the little figure in front of us continued to speak. “He took everything away from me, most especially my memories. Only recently have I come to know that I spent the war in Terezin, the so-called model concentration camp that the Germans named Theresienstadt. I thought I was a German, a Lutheran, like this man Ulrich who called himself my father. Only after he died, when I went through his papers, did I find out the truth. And I say it is wrong, it is criminally wrong, to take away from people the identity which is rightfully theirs.”
The station let a few seconds’ silence develop, then Dennis Logan, the anchor, appeared in a split screen with Beth Blacksin. “It’s a most extraordinary story, Beth. You caught up with Mr. Radbuka after the session, didn’t you? We’ll be showing your exclusive interview with Paul Radbuka at the end of our regular newscast. Coming up, for fans who thought the Cubs couldn’t sink lower, a surprising come-from-ahead loss today at Wrigley.”
IV
Memory Plant
Do you know him?” Don asked Max, muting the sound as yet another round of ads came up.
Max shook his head. “I know the name, but not this man. It’s just—it’s a most unusual name.” He turned to Morrell. “If I can impose on you—I’d like to stay for the interview.”
Like Max, Carl was a short man, not quite as tall as I am, but where Max smiled good-naturedly on the world around him—often amused by the human predicament—Carl held himself on alert—a bantam rooster, ready to take on all comers. Right now, he seemed edgier than usual. I looked at him but decided not to quiz him in front of Don and Morrell.
Morrell brought Max herbal tea and poured brandy for Carl. Finally the station finished its lengthy dissection of the weather and turned to Beth Blacksin. She was talking to Paul Radbuka in a small meeting room at the Pleiades. Another woman, with wings of black hair framing her oval face, was with them.
Beth Blacksin introduced herself and Paul Radbuka, then let the camera focus on the other woman. “Also here this evening is Rhea Wiell, the therapist who has treated Mr. Radbuka and helped him recover his hidden memories. Ms. Wiell has agreed to talk to me later tonight in a special edition of ‘Exploring Chicago.’”
Blacksin turned to the small man. “Mr. Radbuka, how did you come to discover your true identity? You said in the meeting that it was in going through your father’s papers. What did you find there?”
“The man who called himself my father,” Radbuka corrected her. “It was a set of documents in code. At first I paid no attention to them. Somehow after he died I lost my own will to live. I don’t understand why, because I didn’t like him; he was always very brutal to me. But I became so depressed that I lost my job, I even stopped getting out of bed on many days. And then I met Rhea Wiell.”
He turned to the dark-haired woman with a look of adoration. “It sounds melodramatic, but I believe I owe my life to her. And she helped me make sense of the documents, to use them to find my missing identity.”
“Rhea Wiell is the therapist you found,” Beth prodded him.
“Yes. She specializes in recovering memories of events that people like me block because the trauma around them is so intense.”