space.
'Surely these don't all belong to my father?'
Dr. Blumenthal shook his head. 'Some are mine, and some belong to colleagues. Our names are on the cartons. Since I don't own a car and I have this space, it's become a depository for a whole generation of psychoanalysts.'
David had always liked Dr. Blumenthal, his father's mentor and oldest friend. With his dancing eyes, kindly features, and wild white curly hair, he looked a little like Albert Einstein without a mustache.
'You weren't here when it happened?'
'Friede and I were visiting our grandchildren in New York. After we came back it was a couple of days before I noticed the hasp had been chiseled loose. The padlock, you see, was still intact. I was in the process of unlocking it when the assembly fell out of the door. Then, when I looked inside-a terrible mess, papers scattered everywhere. I called all concerned. We spent a weekend sorting things out. None of us could find anything missing so I didn't bother to report it. That's why I was so surprised when you told me what your father said.'
'Surely you've noticed how strange he's become?'
'Yes, of course. Everybody has. But the change in his interests may not be as bizarre as people think. Kabbalah, after all, is based on the belief that one can attain great illumination about the nature of God by exploring deeply within. I wonder if the process is so different, really, than exploring the unconscious through free associations and dreams.'
'Still…'
'I know. In the year and a half since Gideon died… But you say it was Gideon's file that was taken?' Dr. Blumenthal shook his head, perplexed. 'I had my own file on him. I wonder…' He moved toward a stack of cartons, removed one, and began prowling through the one beneath.
'You had a file on Gideon?'
The doctor nodded. 'For a while he came to me professionally.' He glanced up at David. 'Nothing strange in that. One never treats one's own child. If one of our children needed help we'd send him to a colleague. A great honor to the person, a gift of trust. I sent my own daughter to Avraham. And he… but I'd have thought…'
'No,' David said, 'I was never sent to anyone.'
'Ah, here it is.' The doctor extracted an old-fashioned marbled cardboard folder tied together with string. 'But now, David, you must tell me what this is all about. Otherwise, even though he's dead, I can't…'
'Yes, I understand.'
As they walked back to the house, the old man put his hand on David's arm. 'You were upset back there. I noticed. Perhaps for a moment even a little depressed. But you shouldn't have been. If your father didn't send you to one of us for treatment that only means he didn't think you needed it. To feel badly about that would be the same as feeling jealous because your brother got extra attention when he had the misfortune to break his leg.'
The interior of the house was dark, furnished with heavy German pieces from the 1930s. After David explained why he was so curious about Gideon-his father's cryptic comments and the strange fact that the psychological portions in Gideon's medical folder were now missing from the central files of the IDF-Dr. Blumenthal agreed to speak freely of what he knew.
'I didn't see him often. Perhaps two dozen times over the years. In no sense was he in treatment; we would just meet occasionally to talk.' He untied the dossier, quickly reviewed the papers inside. 'Most of these visits were during his adolescence. He had the typical troubles of a boy that age-self-image, sexual identity, some special problems having to do with your mother, and also a rather well-defined self-destructive streak. Later in his twenties he came to see me four times. He feared that he was homosexual. He found himself attracted to other men, but he resisted these feelings and wanted to be cured. We discussed his undergoing regular therapy, but he said this wasn't feasible. If the Air Force found out he'd be finished as a pilot, and he loved flying; he couldn't bear to give it up. I tried hard to reassure him. He was, you see, attracted to women too. But because of his great physical beauty men approached him frequently, and when they did their longing for him had the effect of arousing him as well. That, I think, was his problem. We're all bisexual to a certain degree. But his very attractiveness, which you probably envied as an advantage, became a kind of curse. Every time someone made an advance it only emphasized his ambiguity. Had he been less beautiful he would have been left alone, and thus better able to combat the sexual feelings he despised.'
Dr. Blumenthal consulted his dossier again. 'The last time he came to me was a few months before he crashed. I remember he was very troubled. In 1981 he had flown an important mission. Perhaps you didn't know this-he was one of the sixteen pilots who flew Operation Babylon.'
David was surprised. The brilliantly executed surgical strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor ranked with the most daring exploits of the Israeli Air Force.
'…a secret of course. The names of the pilots were never released. They were our best pilots, some even said the finest fighter-bomber pilots in all the world. Gideon had been elated by the mission. He thought of it as the high point of his life. But when he came to me he was depressed. He had finally become involved with another man. He was terribly frightened he'd be found out, frightened of disgrace, perhaps frightened most of all of the possible reaction of your mother. And yet he felt helpless to break it off. I had the feeling then…well, I could have been wrong.'
'What?'
'That he feared he might be blackmailed by this man. Not for money. I don't think that. And I'm certain it had nothing to do with espionage.'
'What then?'
'I don't think he knew himself. Just that he felt trapped, that he was being led along somewhere, and that sooner or later he might be forced to do something against his will.'
'I don't understand. What did he say?'
'I didn't make a transcript, David. My notes are only impressions of what I think I hear between the lines.'
David nodded.
'But there's something else here. Another kind of note.' Dr. Blumenthal shook his head. Suddenly, David thought, his face was flooded with grief. The doctor handed him a page out of the dossier. 'Look there at the bottom.'
David squinted. Blumenthal's handwriting was spidery and difficult to read. But finally he was able to decipher the bottom line: 'Treatment? Problem of exposure. Unorthodox Solution?'
'What does this mean?'
'At the time I didn't know, which accounts for the question mark. But just now…' He shook his head again. It could explain…'
'What?'
'The fact, David, that your father even had such a file. I didn't mention this to you before, but when you came to me this morning I thought this whole business about Gideon's file and the break-in was extremely odd. Of course Avraham kept papers pertaining to his sons. Every parent does. But why would they be mixed in with his patient files? Then you told me he referred to Gideon's being more perplexing than any patient he ever treated. That, I think, is a clue to the 'unorthodox treatment' Gideon was talking about. Suppose your brother, feeling he had nowhere else to turn, took his problems to your father. And suppose your father tried to treat him-an impossible task, a thing that simply cannot be done. The treatment failed, as it had to. Gideon killed himself. Your mother fell ill and died. Your father, blaming himself, became consumed by guilt. He renounced everything, sold his beautiful house, gave up his profession, went to live in a wretched neighborhood and immerse himself in Jewish mysticism. If you look at everything he's done this past year from that point of view, then his behavior starts making sense.'
David nodded. 'And so does the stealing of all these papers. Whoever removed my brother's military records would also want my father's file.' He paused. 'But only someone very close to Gideon would have known he'd been my father's patient. You didn't know.'
'No.'
'So it had to be Gideon's lover, this man you say he feared might push him to do something against his will…'
Later, when Dr. Blumenthal walked him to the street, David asked why Gideon hadn't come to him for
