Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 Read Online Free PDF

living. She wanted to return to the
hospital. I advised a quiet sanatorium, plastic surgery, dentistry, and, of
course, diet and rest. Not until she could have some confidence in her
appearance and had regained a certain amount of strength did I make an effort
to discover the roots of her insecurity feelings; and then I ran up against a
blank wall, Mr. Emmett. She has forgotten everything that happened between the
time she was taken by the Gestapo, and the time she arrived in Hofstadt, a
period of some three months.”
                 “Everything
except a name,” Miss Bethke said quickly.
                 “Yes,”
the doctor said, “of course. A name. Kissel.”
                 “Reinhard
Kissel,” the girl said. “Dr. Reinhard Kissel.”
                 Dr.
Kaufman said, “At first, of course, we thought that this Kissel had been the
cause of the traumatic shock Miss Nicholson had received while in the hands of
the Gestapo, which had caused her to withdraw as far as possible from contact
with life. Later it developed that, on the contrary, she wanted to meet this
man Kissel to reassure herself about something that had happened, to which he
had been a witness…” He bit cautiously into his hamburger, chewed and
swallowed, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. “What she wants, in other
words, is for somebody to tell her what happened during the three months she
was with the Gestapo. This in itself will not necessarily help her to remember
the parts that her consciousness has suppressed, but it will make her feel safe
in beginning to try to remember.”
                 The
nurse had cleaned her plate and was redefining her mouth with dark lipstick.
She looked up. “Perhaps,” she said. “But doesn’t it depend on what Kissel says,
rather?”
                 The
doctor frowned. The girl pressed her lips together and then smoothed the
lipstick with the tip of her forefinger, watching the results in the mirror of
her compact. “I mean, Kissel might say something that wouldn’t help the patient at all, mightn’t he?”
                 “Please,
Miss Bethke.” After a moment, the doctor went on. “When I saw that my efforts
to establish communication with the patient—in the psychoanalytical sense, of
course; she never actually refused to talk to me—were meeting with violent
resistance and were, in fact, retarding the whole process of recovery, I
realized that I would have to be satisfied, for the time being, with a partial
cure, as a surgeon might leave a shell splinter in a man’s body if the
operation of removing it seemed too hazardous. I can say that I have been moderately
successful. For the past few months Miss Nicholson has been living at home,
driving about a little, accompanying her parents downtown occasionally, and
even doing simple errands alone. You understand, Mr. Emmett, she wants to be
cured, with reservations. She wants to be a normal person as long as no one
asks her to reveal the source of her abnormality. Today—” he glanced at his
watch, “—or, rather, yesterday, she took the plunge of attending a cocktail
party given by one of her mother’s friends. I was rather encouraged by her
willingness to undertake this ordeal. However, unfortunately or perhaps it may
prove, fortunately, a young man who had had a little too much to drink was
allowed to question her about her experiences, upsetting her so thoroughly that
she ran out of the house and drove away. Miss Bethke followed and called me
while Miss Nicholson was cashing a check. We have been keeping the patient in
sight, trying to work out some way of taking advantage of her action without
subjecting her to undue risk.”
                 “Taking
advantage…” Emmett murmured.
                 Dr.
Kaufman smiled. “We have learned that a Dr. Reinhard Kissel, recently admitted
to this country, is teaching at a small college near Denver . With Miss