Exodus - Leon Uris [219]
Kitty turned her head away and stroked Karen’s hair. “You’d better go to sleep,” Kitty said shakily. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”
Kitty stayed awake smoking one cigarette after the other and occasionally pacing the floor. Each time she looked at the sleeping child her heart tightened. Long past midnight she sat by the window listening to the waves and looking at Jaffa on the bend of the coast line. It was four o’clock before Kitty fell into a restless, thrashing sleep.
In the morning she was heavy with depression, her face drawn and her eyes showing rings of sleeplessness beneath them. A dozen times she tried to broach the subject. Breakfast on the terrace was in silence. Kitty sipped her coffee.
“Where is Brigadier Sutherland?” Karen asked.
“He had to go out on business. He’ll see us later this morning.”
“What are we going to do today?”
“Oh, a little of this and a little of that.”
“Kitty ... it’s something about my father, isn’t it?”
Kitty lowered her eyes.
“I guess I really knew all along.”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you, dear ... I ...”
“What is it ... please tell me ... what is it?”
“He is very, very sick.”
Karen bit her finger and her mouth trembled. “I want to see him.”
“He won’t know you, Karen.”
Karen straightened up and looked off to the sea. “I’ve waited so long for this day.”
“Please ...”
“Every night since I knew the war was ending over two years ago I’ve gone to sleep with the same dream. I lay in bed and pretended we were meeting each other again. I’d know just how he would look and what we are going to say to each other. At the DP camp in Caraolos and in Cyprus all those months I dreamed about it every night ... my father and me. See ... I always knew he was alive and ... kept going over and over it.”
“Karen ... stop it. It’s not going to be the way you dreamed.”
The girl trembled from head to foot. The palms of her hands were wet. She sprang from her chair. “Take me to him.”
Kitty took her arms and gripped her tightly. “You must prepare for something terrible.”
“Please ... please, let’s go.”
“Try to remember ... no matter what happens ... no matter what you see ... that I’m going to be right there. I’ll be with you, Karen. Will you remember that?”
“Yes ... I’ll remember it.”
The doctor sat before Karen and Kitty.
“Your father was tortured by the Gestapo, Karen,” the doctor said. “In the early part of the war they wanted him to work for them and they made things very hard. They finally gave up. He was unable to work for them even upon threat of danger to your mother and brothers.”
“I remember now,” Karen said. “I remember the letters stopped coming to Denmark and how I was afraid to ask Aage about my family.”
“He was sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, and your mother and brothers ...”
“I know about them.”
“They sent him to Theresienstadt in hope he would change his mind. After the war he found out about your mother and brothers first. He felt guilty because he had waited too long to leave Germany and had trapped your mother and brothers. When he learned what had happened to them, on top of the years of torture, his mind snapped.”
“He will get better?”
The doctor looked at Kitty. “He has a psychotic depression ... extreme melancholia.”
“What does that mean?” Karen asked.
“Karen, your father is not going to get well.”
“I don’t believe you,” the girl said. “I want to see him.”
“Do you remember him at all?”
“Very little.”
“It would be far better to keep what you can remember than to see him now.”
“She must see him, Doctor, no matter how difficult it is going to be. This question cannot be left open,” Kitty said.
The doctor led them down a corridor and stopped before a door. A nurse unlocked it. He held the door open.
Karen walked into a cell-like room. The room held a chair, a stand, and a bed. She looked around for a moment and then she stiffened. A man was sitting on the floor in a corner. He was barefooted