Where Madness Lies: A Novel

By Sylvia True

Germany, 1934. Rigmor, a young Jewish woman is a patient at Sonnenstein, a premier psychiatric institution known for their curative treatments. But with the tide of eugenics and the Nazis’ rise to power, Rigmor is swept up in a campaign to rid Germany of the mentally ill. USA, 1984. Sabine, battling crippling panic and depression commits herself to McLean Hospital, but in doing so she has unwittingly agreed to give up her baby. Linking these two generations of women is Inga, who did everything in her power to help her sister, Rigmor. Now with her granddaughter, Sabine, Inga is given a second chance to free someone she loves from oppressive forces, both within and without. This is a story about hope and redemption, about what we pass on, both genetically and culturally. It is about the high price of repression, and how one woman, who lost nearly everything, must be willing to reveal the failures of the past in order to save future generations. With chilling echoes of our time, Where Madness Lies is based on a true story of the author’s own family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781789044614

Sylvia True

SYLVIA TRUE was born in Manchester, England, and now lives in Massachusetts with her husband and dogs. She teaches high school. The Wednesday Group is her first novel.

Book preview

What people are saying about

Where Madness Lies

Sylvia True’s novel is a voyage into the madness of madness, tracing the Nazis’ seduction of Germany into the moral catastrophe of racial hygiene. The author shows us not only how the eugenics of race hygiene threaten a family held hostage by its cruelty, but how echoes of this struggle resonate years later in the safety of postwar America. The narrative is written in the voices of two women you can’t stop caring about. True tells a story of urgent and deeply consequential familial love across three generations.

Alex Rosenberg, author of The Girl from Krakow

Alternating between 1980’s Massachusetts and 1930’s Germany, Where Madness Lies is an intimate page-turner that is full of heart. This brave novel explores a little-known and horrifying footnote of the Holocaust, as well as longtime patriarchal tendencies to use women’s mental health against them, especially as a means of gaining power and control. Engrossing and devastating, Where Madness Lies reminds us of how much is at stake today, as democracy is threatened and fascism looms large. It also reminds us of the power of human connection and the inherent goodness of most people.

Heidi Pitlor, author of Daylight Marriage

Sylvia True has written a masterful novel. Where Madness Lies unfolds against the backdrop of the Holocaust and seamlessly reflects back to us our own perilous times. With lyrical prose and keenly observed detail, True takes a heartfelt and chilling look at what makes us human. Where Madness Lies is a story of illness and power, of regret and hope, fragility and strength and Sylvia True has told it with utter insight and beauty.

Annie Weatherwax, author of All We Had

Absorbing and intelligent, Where Madness Lies is a brave and uplifting reflection on an ever-sensitive subject. With deftly-rendered characters, True illustrates just how strong the connections are between past and present.

Maryanne O’Hara, author of Cascade

Brave, heartbreaking and utterly compelling, Sylvia True’s new novel portrays the cost of a shameful secret across three generations of a once proud aristocratic family. Moving seamlessly between prewar Germany and Reagan-era Boston, Where Madness Lies is at once a tragedy of well-meaning actions that lead to devastating consequences and a story of redemption and the healing power of truth. Written in clear and at times chilling prose, this book captured me on the first page and stayed with me long after I finished.

Stephanie Kegan, author of Golden State

Where Madness Lies

A Novel

Where Madness Lies

A Novel

Sylvia True

Winchester, UK

Washington, USA

First published by Top Hat Books, 2020

Top Hat Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East St., Alresford, Hampshire SO24 9EE, UK

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www.johnhuntpublishing.com

www.tophat-books.com

For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

Text copyright: Sylvia True 2019

ISBN: 978 1 78904 460 7

978 1 78904 461 4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951304

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Sylvia True as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

UK: Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

US: Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, 7300 West Joy Road, Dexter, MI 48130

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

For Oona and Finn

Contents

Author Note

Prologue

Chapter One McLean Hospital

Chapter Two A Parasite

Chapter Three Confessions

Chapter Four An Invitation

Chapter Five Reunions

Chapter Six Yellow Roses

Chapter Seven The Baby

Chapter Eight A Treatment Plan

Chapter Nine Trying to Help

Chapter Ten Another Plan

Chapter Eleven Holgart

Chapter Twelve The Asylum

Chapter Thirteen Tablecloths

Chapter Fourteen Diagnosis

Chapter Fifteen Visions

Chapter Sixteen The Lett ers

Chapter Seventeen Needs

Chapter Eighteen Another Ward

Chapter Nineteen Links

Chapter Twenty A Mischling (Mixed Breed)

Chapter Twenty-One Lisbet

Chapter Twenty-Two New Directions

Chapter Twenty-Three Day Pass

Chapter Twenty-Four Mercy

Chapter Twenty-Five Truths

Chapter Twenty-Six After

Chapter Twenty-Seven Home

Chapter Twenty-Eight Inga

Chapter Twenty-Nine Arnold

Author Note

Both of my parents fled from Frankfurt before the start of World War II. My mother’s side of the family moved to Switzerland. Their reasons for leaving Germany were multi-layered. It wasn’t only because they were Jewish. There was another factor, something that in 1935 might have been even worse than Judaism. There was mental illness, kept secret for many years.

My mother’s mother, we called her Omama, was the family matriarch. She cared deeply about her grandchildren and desperately wanted us to master the art of refinement so that we could be accepted into the highest circles of society. When she left Germany, she lost her money, her position, and her status; but she still played the role of aristocrat, though there were moments when her guard came down and loneliness poked through.

This is her story, and mine as well. The names have been changed, and some of the details are how I imagined them, not exactly as they might have been. But the bones of the story are true.

Prologue

Dresden, Germany June 1947

Partial Testimony of Dr. Paul Viktor Bohm—Medical Director of Sonnenstein Psychiatric Hospital and Deputy Director of Action T4.

Q: When mentally ill patients were selected and sent by transport to euthanasia stations, such as the one you were director for, by what methods were the mercy deaths given?

A: They were led to a gas chamber and were disinfected by the doctors with carbon monoxide gas.

Q: In other words murdered.

A: Yes, I suppose so.

Q: And you agreed to this because of orders from Bouhler? A: I agreed to it because we were releasing patients from lives of misery.

Q: And these patients, some children, were placed in this chamber in groups, I suppose, and then the carbon monoxide was turned into the chambers?

A: The basic requirement was that the disinfection should not only be painless, but also imperceptible. We photographed patients, for scientific reasons, before they entered the gas chambers, thus providing a diversion. Then they were led into the chamber which they were told was a shower room. They were in groups of perhaps twenty. They were gassed by the doctor in charge.

Q: And these patients thought that they were going in to take a shower?

A: If any of them had any power of reasoning, they had no doubt thought that.

Q: What diagnoses would lead a doctor to believe a patient should be euthanized?

A: Feeblemindedness, Schizophrenia, the congenitally crippled, to name a few.

Q: After Sonnenstein had constructed their gas chamber, you were asked by the Reich Committee for Research on Hereditary Diseases to visit Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Can you tell us the purpose for the visit?

A: To provide assistance and advice in the construction of similar chambers.

Q: In order to euthanize mental patients?

A: I believed that was the case, yes.

Q: You believed Buchenwald to be a mental hospital?

A: No, of course not, but I believed they had some mental patients there and that the doctors would employ a similar protocol to the one we used.

Q: Did you survey any of patients?

A: I did not.

Q: Dr. Bohm, from what you have told the court, are we to understand that you are in part responsible for the prototype for the gas chambers used to kill millions of Jews?

A: A number of psychiatrists were consulted.

Q: But you would agree that the gas chambers used in the concentration camps were fashioned after the chambers you and other doctors constructed in mental institutions?

A: It could be viewed in that way, yes.

Chapter One

McLean Hospital

Belmont, Massachusetts 1984

Sabine knew there was no molecule that made fear, yet fear was what she breathed on that cold, damp November night, as she stood in front of the steel door with a wire-mesh window.

She wanted Tanner to step up and press the bell, to show her that he was with her on this. Instead, he played Eskimo noses with their three-month-old baby, as if they were at home about to eat spaghetti, not standing at the entrance of a mental hospital.

When Sabine finally pushed the red button, a man, wearing a tan sweater and faded jeans, who looked about twenty-six, her age, stepped into the hallway.

Visiting hours were over at eight, he said, nodding toward the stairs.

Sabine didn’t think she could speak without her voice cracking. She glanced at her husband, who looked away.

I saw Dr. Lincoln an hour ago, she managed. He told me I should come here. To get admitted.

The man gave a tired sigh and led them down the hallway. Her head lowered, Sabine took furtive peeks. If not for the glassed-in nurses’ station at the end of the corridor, North Belknap Two might have passed for a college dorm, with its wooden doors decorated with posters of Bon Jovi, Van Halen, and kittens dangling from trees with the words, hang in there, in bold.

The man pointed to a dining area where a few scattered people sat alone at tables of varying shapes and sizes.

You can sit in there, he said.

Let’s go to the back, Sabine whispered to Tanner, wanting to get a sense of the place, to make sure there weren’t any people like in the movies—zombies wearing stained gowns and spewing nonsense.

Tanner unzipped Mia’s purple snowsuit. The moment she was out, she kicked her legs and smiled, her dark eyes glistening with the joy of being free. Sabine kissed her baby’s forehead and felt like the luckiest most miserable person alive.

A heavy man with a mop of blond hair shuffled in from a swinging side door with a bowl of cereal filled to the brim, milk lapping over the edges. His expression was hollow, and Sabine’s heart raced.

Maybe we should go, she said.

Tanner jumped up, his round eyes shaded with fear. Yeah, you don’t belong here.

The scar that ran through his right eyebrow looked more prominent.

But she couldn’t go back to the bed where she couldn’t sleep, to the kitchen she couldn’t clean, to the back steps where last night she’d smoked a cigarette for the first time in over a year, hoping it would calm her. Instead, the smoke stung her lungs and made her dizzy. When she looked at the burning tip, orange with specks of black and gray, she couldn’t resist. Sabine brought it close to her wrist and felt the heat. The ember point singed her skin, and a tendril of smoke curled upwards. This kind of pain was much easier to bear. After the fourth burn she put the cigarette out, carried the butt to the back of the yard and flicked it into the woods behind the fence.

Let’s wait, she told Tanner now.

A tall, thin, elderly man approached with loping steps. Maybe he was the doctor. Maybe he would help. But as he came closer, Sabine noticed his slippers and yellowed fingernails.

There’s cyanide in the coffee, he grumbled. With that he turned and walked away, leaving behind a vague scent of mold.

Come on, Sabine, Tanner pleaded. I’ll stay home from work tomorrow. We’ll figure this out. This place isn’t right.

If a doctor hadn’t walked into the room at that moment and introduced himself, she would have left. He looked how Sabine imagined a psychiatrist should: salt and pepper beard, dark hair graying at the temples, wire rim glasses. The only deviation was that one of his pant legs appeared to be haphazardly trapped in his black sock.

Sabine Connolly? he asked.

Yes, she answered, feeling excited, as if by knowing her name he’d confirmed that this was all going to be fine.

Dr. Baron brought them to a small, windowless room beside the nursing station. It was a stark and institutional. Sabine sat and reached for a tissue, but the box was empty. For a moment she wondered if it meant something. Was it some sort of sign she shouldn’t ignore? But the thought vanished as she watched Tanner bounce Mia on his lap.

She sat across from Dr. Baron, making sure the sleeve of her baggy green sweater covered her burns that had blistered into the shape of a four-leafed clover. With her back straight and her ankles crossed, she smiled, determined to show that she wasn’t a lost cause—even if her hair was a frizzed-out mess and her eyes were red and swollen.

Dr. Baron glanced down at his clipboard. So, you saw Dr. Lincoln?

Sabine nodded.

Major depression. Suicidal ideation, he mumbled.

I might be a little depressed, she said, embarrassed at how glaring he’d made her condition sound. I mean, I just met Dr. Lincoln today for the first time. Maybe I’m fine.

A part of her hoped this new psychiatrist would agree. If he believed she was fine, maybe she’d believe it, and that might stop the panic, the feeling that she was walking on a tightrope and about to fall off.

He asked a series of standard questions. Age. Physical health. Occupation.

Mother, she answered, and felt a swell of shame. Sleeplessness and agoraphobia had forced her to drop out of grad school in biochemistry. She was too anxious to hold down a full-time job. The last part-time job she’d had was at an animal shelter, but she stopped that near the end of her pregnancy. Lately she’d felt incapable of being a good mother. Her hands trembled at the wheel of a car. The aisles in the grocery store made her claustrophobic. She couldn’t cook or do laundry without feeling overwhelmed.

Do you ever feel euphoric? Dr. Baron asked.

I was happy when Mia was born, she replied, knowing that she wasn’t actually answering his question.

Hallucinations?

None.

Any mental illness in the family?

Absolutely not. She was the weak link in an illustrious chain.

He jotted a few notes.

Will they be able to help me here? she asked, hoping her desperation didn’t show.

We will certainly try, he said, giving her a piece of paper. If you could just sign where the X is, we can get you checked in and show you to your room.

She noticed the word voluntary written in bold, which comforted her. She signed the form and passed it back as Mia began fussing. Tanner handed the baby to Sabine, who put Mia on her breast. As she suckled, Sabine forgot where she was for a few moments. The only thing that mattered was making sure Mia’s needs were met.

There’s a nurse waiting for you, Dr. Baron explained. She’ll show you to your room.

When he stood and walked to the door, he seemed shorter than when she’d first met him.

Wait, she said, surprised by the sharpness in her voice. How many days do you think it will take for me to get better?

If he had an answer, he didn’t share it. I’m afraid babies are not allowed to spend the night.

But it was a hospital. Surely they didn’t separate mothers and babies.

I nurse her. Sabine snapped her bra closed, pulled down her sweater, and wrapped her arms around Mia. A few fibers brushed against her burn. She took a deep breath and stopped herself from wincing.

I’m sure she’ll do fine on formula, Dr. Baron said. He looked down at his feet and straightened his pant leg.

Get out. The voice was clear, as if it were spoken into Sabine’s ear. But she knew better. She didn’t turn—would never give away that she’d heard something the others hadn’t.

I won’t leave my baby, Sabine said. She glanced at Tanner, who had shifted forward on his chair, his eyes darting around nervously, as if he might be the next one to get trapped. You can’t just stop breastfeeding like that, she told Dr. Baron.

I am sure this is very hard.

I can’t stay. The words came out hushed and terrified. Tanner stood. Sabine looked up at him. She’d leave with him. They couldn’t stop her. Tomorrow she would find a better plan.

The form you signed states that you have to stay for at least three days, Dr. Baron explained. Three business days. Weekends don’t count.

Tanner reached for the baby.

It was voluntary. She held onto Mia as she glanced around the room, looking for something, anything that might help. The dingy, white walls felt too close, and yet when she looked at Tanner, he seemed farther away. Her eyes were playing tricks.

Good luck, Dr. Baron said, and walked out.

Sabine stared at the door.

Tanner tugged Mia away and put her back in the purple snowsuit. Sabine’s hands clapped to her chest. She wanted to protect herself, and Mia. And to stop the small shoots of splintering pain. It hurt to breathe.

Tanner zipped the snowsuit. We should have left before.

I’m walking out with you, Sabine said. They can’t stop me.

The door opened and a woman, who introduced herself as Nurse Nancy walked in.

I’m leaving with my husband and baby, Sabine told her.

If you try to leave we will have to restrain you, Nurse Nancy said too perkily, before locking her eyes on Sabine’s. You don’t want to be in a straitjacket.

Sabine glared at Tanner, who looked at the door, ready to bolt. It was her fault she was stuck here. She’d found Dr. Lincoln’s name in the Yellow Pages that morning. She’d asked Tanner to take her, she’d pressed the red buzzer—and signed the form. But that was before she knew they would take Mia.

I’ll accompany you to the door where you can say goodbye, Nancy said.

Sabine walked alongside Tanner, clutching Mia’s mittened hand.

The man who had let them in opened the steel door and stood in front of Sabine. A dull static pulsed through her. How many years had she feared a place like this? How many nightmares had she had about it? How many warnings?

She remembered the orange tabby she had killed. It had attacked her in her college dorm room, flying through the air with its claws aimed at her chest. It gripped her T-shirt and hissed. Just as it was about to sink its fangs into her face, she ripped it off by the scruff of its neck and slammed its body against the wall. When the tabby whimpered, she felt a pang of remorse and loosened her grip. The cat lunged. She slammed it harder. There was a high-pitched wail and then a moan of defeat. Its limp body, a large clump of fur, was stained red.

The tabby had befriended her, slipping in at night, and nuzzling on her pillow. She never really understood how he got in, and she didn’t think about it much, because when he curled up next to her, the feeling that she wanted to tear off her skin subsided.

The night she killed him, as she stood paralyzed in the middle of the room, holding his bloody body at arm’s length, someone knocked.

Come in, she called.

It was the RA, Cindy, a passionate rule-follower. You were screaming.

Sabine held up the cat. Only there wasn’t a cat. And Sabine could see the confusion on Cindy’s face.

Just a bad dream. Sabine turned to face the window. Of course, there had never been a cat.

Her slips into delusion happened infrequently, after bouts of sleeplessness and panic. They only happened at night. When she was alone. A blessing. A relief not to have to explain. Not to get thrown in some institution that would lock her up.

Yet here she was. Inevitably.

Now she stood in a locked ward, feeling paralyzed once again as she watched her daughter’s purple hood descend through the wire-mesh window.

* * *

Arlesheim, Switzerland 1984

Inga pressed her fingers on the envelope, enjoying its plumpness. Yes, there would be parts of this long letter from her daughter that rambled, but that didn’t matter much. She would read Lisbet’s letter at least three times. It would take half the morning, which would make the rest of the day breeze by. The drab, vague emptiness would be lifted today.

She used her silver letter opener and began reading, skimming the weather report that filled the first two pages. Next came stories about Lisbet’s skating students, then something interesting about Inga’s grandson, about how the bank he was working for insisted on paying him a higher salary. Page six had a sweet account of a bunny in the garden, and then suddenly, Inga read a sentence that didn’t belong. She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and tried again. But the words didn’t change.

She put the letter down and held onto the edge of the desk. The room seemed to darken, and the fir outside the window appeared almost black rather than green. She remembered herself as a young woman, kneeling next to a hospital bed. Vials of medicine littered the floor. A metal bowl with traces of yellow stomach fluid sat next to her.

After a minute or two, she felt more settled. She wiped her brow with a handkerchief, made tea, and checked all of the clocks in the house, even though she’d already set them all hours earlier. Each clock had a certain tone, a bell, a cuckoo, or a chime, and she liked them all to ring at exactly the same time. It was fastidious, but it was also a task that kept her busy. Distractions, she had learned decades ago, helped one move forward, kept time plotting at a bearable pace.

By the time she returned to her desk, the tree was once again its handsome forest green, and she was once again herself. She reached for the miniature painting that sat on the top shelf. In it, her sister Rigmor wore a red gown that showed off her slender shoulders and porcelain skin. But it was her stance, deferential and poised, that revealed her soul.

Forty-nine years ago, when Inga and her mother left Germany (she did not like the word fled), the large portrait of Rigmor that hung in the main drawing room had stayed behind. She had taken the miniature, the test-sample that the artist had painted.

Rigmor had been Inga’s better half. Yes, the phrase was used for spouses, but it was better suited, in Inga’s case, for a sister. Interesting, how in the past few days, even before the letter had arrived, she had been drawn to the portrait.

She straightened her spine and picked up the letter once more. In the ten pages Lisbet had written, there was only that one line, a deathblow of a sentence, nested in trivialities.

Sabine has been admitted to an asylum with the name of McLean.

Inga went to the kitchen, where she put three jars of her homemade jam in a basket. Then she slipped on her tweed coat, put the letter in her handbag, and set out to visit Arnold.

A year ago, she had not been entirely pleased when he reentered her life, but she had come to look forward to visiting him, to reading him the correspondences from her daughter. Their conversations brought comfort to her, perhaps because he’d known her in her prime. He’d seen her at her best…and her worst.

Her right hip nagged with arthritis as she climbed the hill that led to the nursing home, called, of all things, The Sonnen Heim. The Sun Home. It was absurd that institutions used the word sun in their name, as if they were trying to mask the darkness inside their walls.

At the door, Inga composed herself and pressed the bell.

Frau Sommer, the matron exclaimed. I don’t believe we were expecting you this morning. Inga noted a slight disapproval.

I have come for an informal visit and was hoping Arnold would be available.

Of course. The matron gave a small, almost imperceptible bow. Will you wait in the green room?

Inga placed her basket on a chair in the foyer. Invited or not, she never arrived empty-handed.

The green room, a small lounge that looked onto the gardens, was furnished with a beige couch and two burgundy colored armchairs. Inga sat on the smaller chair and perched her handbag on her lap, gripping the thin leather strap. The room had the advantage of good light, and the disadvantage of harboring one of the worst paintings of the Matterhorn that Inga had ever seen.

A nurse wheeled Arnold in. As he met Inga’s gaze, he did not hide his concern. His brow furrowed, and the right side of his mouth, the working side, curved downward.

The moment the nurse was gone, he asked, What has happened?

Are they feeding you well? she replied.

My dear Inga. That is not why you are here.

She pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of her starched blouse and kneaded it. He waited. His eyes misty from cataracts, looked a bit like marbles covered with thin white tissue.

She undid the clasp on her handbag, took out the letter, and handed him the relevant page.

The third sentence in the second paragraph, she said. It is underlined.

As she watched Arnold read, she thought of the day, almost a year ago, that he knocked on the door of her chalet, wearing a three-piece suit and holding a cane. She’d recognized him immediately, though it had been forty-eight years since she’d last seen him. He still had all of his hair; it had turned completely white. She had no idea what to say. They had promised each other there would be absolutely no contact. No letters, telegrams, or phone calls. He had honored the agreement until that point.

He said he had come to see her one last time, for a final truce. Truce seemed the wrong word—they had never battled, after all. She agreed to meet him for dinner later in Basel, but only with the promise that he would not speak of their time together before the war.

The evening had been more pleasant than she expected. She enjoyed his stories about his work in the States, and was pleased that he’d found love. A month later he telephoned from a hospital. He’d had a stroke after their dinner, and his left side was paralyzed.

He had no one left. Inga found a nursing home in her village, and took meticulous care of the logistics in getting him placed there. She even helped with some of the expenses. She knew she owed him nothing, but it saddened her to imagine him alone.

Well? Inga asked now.

Tell me again, how old is Sabine?

Twenty-six, she replied.

And there were no signs?

Some melancholy as a child perhaps. Inga thought of how Sabine had sometimes been withdrawn. Certainly nothing recent that I was told of. But Lisbet had often kept Inga on the outside, viewing her as meddling and even controlling, regardless of Inga’s good intentions.

She just had a baby, did she not? Arnold asked.

Inga nodded. Three months ago.

Post-partum depression, perhaps?

From where Inga sat, she could see the words: Sabine has been admitted. Inga thought of Lisbet, of how she would not be able to manage this, how she would put her head in the sand. Inga loved her daughter, though she did not always understand her.

I doubt you really believe that, she said and snatched the letter from Arnold’s lap. Tears stung her eyes. The thought of Sabine in some institution, forlorn and in distress, pained Inga. She fought to regain her composure as she stared down at the Oriental carpet.

Inga, Arnold said gently. You must not jump to conclusions. There is not enough information, yet, to assume something terrible.

The air felt close, the room hot. She folded the letter and fanned herself with it. Then I suppose it will be up to me to get the information. I will go there myself.

Surely Lisbet will go; she can tell you what you need to know. He took a breath. The stroke made it difficult for him to talk sometimes. I think it’s unwise to rush.

I am not rushing, and Lisbet will not go. Lisbet was likely fretting and rubbing an eyebrow. Such a handsome, kind woman, but with the disposition of a nervous mouse. Sabine, could be on a ward with truly mad people, or be given the wrong diagnosis.

Things are different now. Very different. Medicine has come a long way. There are some excellent drugs. He put a hand on the arm of her chair. You mustn’t worry.

She felt as if she had a piece of coal inside of her chest, black carbon that had been inert for many years, and had just now begun to smolder again. Yes, of course I know times are different. She pressed a hand on her heart. But I cannot just sit in Arlesheim and wait for a letter that may or may not come and may or may not have any useful information. I cannot do nothing.

You could make some phone calls, he said.

She shook her head. It is always best to have conversations face-to-face, especially when there is difficulty, and the chance of misunderstandings.

"Your hip is bad. You are not young. I worry this will