Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  We follow the light of Daddy’s torch to the garage.

  ‘Now choose your weapon,’ he demands. I stand examining the selection in front of me, unable to move.

  Daddy pokes my axe with the barrel of his gun. ‘I said choose!’

  My father leads me and my axe into the bush, which thickens a few doors from our house. I pick my way through the undergrowth guided by the narrow beam of light from Daddy’s torch.

  Daddy indicates a copse of bushes in front of me. ‘Now start chopping!’

  I raise the axe above my head and thrust it into the first bush. It topples. I hack into the rest of the bushes in quick succession, leaving a trail of destruction in my path. I stand back, arms aching, to admire my handiwork. Then look longingly into Daddy’s eyes.

  Daddy shakes his head, and waves his rifle in the direction of another clump of bushes. I get to work.

  ‘Get down you stupid girl! Look they’re over there! They’ve found us. Ssh!’

  I duck. I can’t see anyone.

  ‘You were too noisy! Stupid child! You’re going to get us both killed!’

  We crouch behind a fallen log, listening out for the sounds of an invisible enemy. I’m trembling from a combination of fear and cold, feeling exposed and hidden all at the same time. I’m just thinking that we should change position when Daddy runs off without saying a word. I don’t know whether to follow him, but the longer it takes for me to decide, the further away Daddy is getting. The sound of his footsteps has all but disappeared by the time I clamber to my feet to follow. Without a light to follow, and with legs of jelly, I struggle to track my father down, guided only by the sound of twigs and branches, snapping in the distance.

  ‘Daddy, wait!’ I shout in desperation.

  The light of a torch held centimetres from my face burns my eyes. ‘Are you stupid? They have machine guns! Sshhh! Over here! ‘He shouts, grabbing me and pulling me along with him.

  As we squat behind a large eucalypt, Daddy signals for me to keep quiet but he doesn’t need to; I’m too terrified to make any noise. Now that the bush has gone quiet I can take a breather. I glance up at the few stars flickering above, but the peace only lasts a moment before Daddy runs off into the bush at full pelt, rifle pointed ahead, trigger finger at the ready.

  I nestle down in my hiding place, listening to the noises of a bush gone mad. I can’t tell if the sounds I’m hearing are Daddy running, or whether they’re the enemy chasing after him. What if some of the noises are the noise of battle, of Daddy facing the enemy and fighting them alone? What if Daddy is wounded or worse? I think about making a break for it, but am too terrified to venture out into the open bush, in the dark, alone. I could come face-to-face with the enemy and they might have their machineguns with them. I decide that it’s better not to risk it and stay put. I wait alone in the dark for what seems like an eternity and am just about to stage my escape when Daddy comes racing back, brandishing his rifle in the air.

  ‘I drove them away, princess! I drove them away! Are you proud of your Daddy? Of course you are, princess!’ Daddy sweeps me up off my feet and flies me around in circles like he used to when I was little. Only difference is that he is holding a rifle firmly in his hand. Daddy’s excited; he looks like a person who’s hit the jackpot.

  ‘That’s great, Daddy. I’m really proud of you!’ and I give him a big hug. ‘But Daddy can we go home now please?’

  ‘Of course, princess! Anything. Pick up your axe.’

  I look around me but my axe is nowhere to be found. I’m worried how Daddy will react when I tell him that I’ve left it behind in the thick of the bush.

  ‘Never mind princess, let’s go and find it!

  I’m relieved that Daddy takes me to find my axe and that he’s in such a jolly mood! But I’m concerned that the enemy with the machineguns is still waiting for us. Daddy’s making a lot of noise; he doesn’t seem worried at all. I traipse along quietly in Daddy’s shadow, heart thumping. We find my axe, retrieve it and march a victory march out of the bush together. By the time I emerge, I’m dog tired, scratched from head to toe, and my nerves are utterly frayed. If not for having to hold it together for Daddy, I would have collapsed there and then.

  Teddy is waiting for me when I get back to my room. The minute the door clicks shut behind me I burst into tears and collapse into Teddy’s arms; Teddy cuddles me while I let it all out.

  The next day I lock myself in the bathroom with my penknife and cut into my arms; the pressure of Daddy’s escapades has been too much for me to bear.

  My timing sucks, because no sooner do I turn the lock in the bathroom door that I hear my mother banging on the door.

  ‘Baba, Baba what are you doing in there?’

  ‘Just a moment!’ I cry in a panic, painfully aware of how little patience my mother has for waiting.

  ‘Baba, BABA DID YOU HEAR ME?’

  I open the door; my arm is bleeding.

  ‘Baba, how could you be so silly? You know how much I have to deal with and now this?’

  ‘I’m sorry Mum.’

  When my mother takes my penknife away, leaving me with my wounds, I feel completely bereft.

  I accompanied my father on countless escapades in the last years of his life and each one was more terrifying than the last. My father was a great warrior because he always managed to defeat his enemy and escape physically unscathed. I was proud of him and yet, lived my life in fear, in a constant state of high alert, trying to predict when the next crisis would hit and what the outcome might be.

  And then one October day I went off to school and was called out of class. My father was dead. And the amazing thing was that after he died, the enemy never bothered me ever again. It was curious - despite being chased by my father’s enemy over many months I didn’t ever see any sign of them.

  I will never know precisely how or why my father died, but the moment my mother broke the news, I knew that he hadn’t died from an attack. I’d been party to too many escapades to accept that his enemy had not played a part in his death. When I learnt that my father had been shot, I concluded that his enemy had finally caught up with him. And for some time after he died, I feared that the enemy would come after me, and kill me as well.

  But then I wasn’t privy to the report my father’s psychiatrist had written, a document I found under my mother’s house, decades after my father died.

  Dear Sirs,

  In reply to your letter of the 24th January 1969 I have to advise that the above named was my patient intermittently from the 27th May 1964 until the 6th August 1968. He suffered from a paranoid psychosis with multiple systematised delusions of persecution and episodes of severe depression of mood. He had various types of psychiatric treatment both in hospital and as an outpatient. At no time did he attempt to take his own life. I understand that he died as a result of a gunshot wound in the stomach. While it is possible that the wound was inflicted with suicidal intent the abdomen is an unusual sight for suicidal gunshot wounds.

  Yours faithfully

  Nor, at the time, had I found the single sheet of paper bearing the innocuous line: ‘The flowers in the vase need changing’ repeated on every line. Each time that line was written, it was penned in a different handwriting style. When I compared the writing on the sheet of paper to that in the letters from 1965, I found that the style used on each line, matched that in each individual letter. It seems that my father, wishing to establish the evidence he needed to justify his delusional world, had spent time mastering a variety of handwriting styles. These styles represented individual persecutors and supporters, each one a figment of his deluded mind. He created the characters who then wrote the letters. He put the letters in envelopes, addressed them in the matching styles and posted them to himself.

  My father had not only constructed a sophisticated delusional system, but he had also mounted a body of evidence to justify his behaviour to the outside world. My father’s enemy had been nothing but a series of delusions. And the cons
piracy he lived daily during his final years had arisen from his paranoia. The repeated sightings of enemies and bugging devices, armies and their weapons were hallucinations; constructs of a mentally ill father whose persecutions had come alive. As his daughter I was roped into my father’s madness and had no way of judging its veracity. I didn’t question it for a moment; to me, a child who had learnt not to question, every aspect of the bad conspiracy against my father was devastatingly real.

  While I can only assume that my father died by his own hand, I will never know whether he intended to commit suicide or whether he shot himself in a delusional fog, attempting to escape the enemy who existed within his head.

  I will never, ever know the whole truth.

  chapter 24

  ‘Cathy, you’re going to have to start coming out of it.’

  For months Kate bore witness to the world of enemies and conspiracies that had engulfed me during the last few years of my father’s life. As the memory of each escapade abated, we would sit together in disbelief, reflecting on the madness that a young girl had faced alone. As the relentless terror and confusion I had suffered came alive in Kate’s consulting room, I struggled to contain the angst that came with revisiting my father’s delusional world.

  While struggling to accept my mother’s ignorance of my father’s escapades I continued to question Simon. Most of the time he talked about Dad being spaced-out, but on one occasion he recounted an incident, reminiscent of those I’d experienced. During the incident in question, my semi-comatose father had sprung to life and verbally assaulted my brother.

  ‘Dad really lost it; I’d never seen anything like it. I thought he was going to hit me.’

  Both the intensity of my father’s reaction, and the suddenness of it, had shocked Simon. Buoyed by Simon’s story I asked again.

  ‘Catherine, I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything like you’re describing. And quite frankly I can’t imagine Dad doing those things. He was always so gentle.’

  And again!

  ‘Now that I think of it, Catherine I have a sense of something. Something’s there, it’s only a feeling but it relates to something you’re saying.’

  My brother had given me a glimmer of hope. It wasn’t much, but he agreed that he would try and recall more and that if he did, he’d share the details with me. My mother however denied the very possibility of any of the events I recalled. While I accepted that my mother couldn’t authenticate memories that she didn’t share, I struggled to process the protestations of unconditional love which accompanied her repeated negation of my claims.

  ‘Baba, you know that I’d give my life for you if it would make a difference don’t you?’

  ‘Baba, if it would be better for you for your mother to disappear I’ll go and live in Italy! Or I’ll disappear altogether.’

  ‘You know Baba. I’ve been searching my heart for answers and I’ve asked myself many times, whether I’d do anything differently…’

  During these conversations my mother would often break down. One part of me would want to comfort her, as I would anyone in distress, but another would be paralysed into inaction, grappling with the realisation that my mother’s tears were for her. Her concern was not even partially for me and never had been.

  ‘…but I wouldn’t. There’s nothing that I would change. I did my best. I gave you and your brother everything. I always put your needs first. I don’t think you quite understand how it is for a mother.’

  If only my mother could have accepted a modicum of responsibility for what had happened to me, for not being there, for not protecting me, I might have been drawn to comfort her. But my mother continued to justify herself by projecting blame onto others as she always had. Under heightened pressure from my returning memories, my mother mustered new arguments in support of her rigid view of the world.

  ‘I used to think that your brother was like your father, but I was wrong. You’re much more like him than Simon is.’

  And in questioning my sanity she also openly questioned my therapist’s expertise. Always one to disparage the practice of psychology she suggested that I see a psychiatrist for a second opinion. I told my mother that I’d already consulted a psychiatrist, as well as a number of psychologists during Kate’s holidays. I informed my mother that none of those practitioners had discredited my memories - that while they couldn’t confirm them, they couldn’t deny them either.

  I explained how childhood abuse can affect a victim’s behaviour for a long time and that a lot of my behaviour and reactions were consistent with a history of childhood abuse. My mother ignored what I told her and summarily dismissed the composite opinions of the therapists I’d seen. She continued to draw parallels between me and my father and suggested that I too was delusional.

  Around this time, my mother phoned a close friend of mine and asked her to meet for coffee. My friend, who was clued in to the issues I was having with my mother, suggested a phone conversation instead.

  ‘Now listen, Sophie,’ my mother reportedly began, ‘You don’t have to say anything; you just have to listen!’

  Sophie’s description of my mother’s monologue reminded me of the one-way interchanges my mother had subjected me to all my life. She recounted my mother’s stream of self-justificatory statements as well as the overriding intimation that I was mentally ill.

  Simon told me that my mother had consulted a psychiatrist, not to help her, but seeking a diagnosis for me. I confronted my mother about it, but she denied that she had ever said, or implied, that I was mentally ill. My mother’s abject denial of these facts was confusing in the face of third party confirmation to the contrary.

  My relationship with my mother continued to deteriorate and at one point, she sought Dan’s advice as to how to mend the rift between us. As the breakdown in our relationship was distressing both me and my mother, my husband hoped, yet again, that he might help us bridge the gap. He went to talk with her, hopeful about a reconciliation, but returned from his visit, frustrated and angry. He recounted their conversation to me:

  ‘But Lucy, your husband was ill. He was seeing a psychiatrist for years. They gave him shock treatment for God’s sake!’

  ‘No Dan, he wasn’t all that mentally ill! Cyril was a wonderful man and a loving father. He loved and adored Baba. He would never have done those things to Baba, never!’

  ‘Come off it Lucy. Open your eyes. Can’t you see how much all of this has affected Cathy?’

  ‘Dan it’s been hard for me too. I don’t think you quite understand how it feels to be a mother!’

  ‘But Lucy, he was fucking mentally ill alright. We know he was. Not only did he do those things to Cathy but he was right off the air. And then, and then he shot himself. He bloody well shot himself! And you’re telling me that he wasn’t mentally ill? We have his psychiatrist’s report for heaven’s sakes!’

  Dan enlisted every argument and every negotiating skill he could to try and change my mother’s point of view, but there was no shifting her. After that meeting, he too was forced to accept that my mother would not change her perception for anyone, regardless of the consequences.

  I was devastated.

  For years I’d been a loving and devoted daughter, repeatedly putting my mother’s needs before mine, in a vain attempt to feel valued by her. But it had all been futile; my mother was not even willing to question her views to countenance mine. Nothing would ever change. My mother’s ongoing negation undermined my fledgling sense of self. Having worked so hard to reclaim it, I decided that I was no longer willing to put my ‘self’ at risk.

  When I finally broke off contact with my mother I felt a profound sense of loss. Consciously and subconsciously, I had yearned for a mother who would love, care and protect me… but it was never going to happen. It was time to accept that and move on. I didn’t wish my mother ill. On the contrary, thinking about her life and the traumas she’d experienced made me very sad and I mourned her isolation, knowing full well that my decision would exac
erbate her loneliness further. My mother’s life had been tough, but that did not relieve her of any responsibility. We are all responsible for our behaviour and its impact on others.

  As I reviewed the passing parade of friends my mother had dropped over the years, tradesmen she’d labelled as stupid, relatives she’d discarded, I understood the active role she played in her own isolation. Still, that didn’t alleviate my sadness or the sense of loss that I feel to this day. However it did help me to come to terms with my decision. My mother’s treatment of me was about her, and not about me or any inadequacy of mine.

  chapter 25

  It started off like a run-of-the-mill session from earlier years, intense but not unusually so. I lay curled into the side of my chair, recoiling from an ill-defined threat. My hands were clutching the armrests, my eyes squeezed tight; the grinding of my teeth made a chilling accompaniment to my moaning. As the onslaught took hold, five, ten, maybe twenty minutes passed during which my body arched its reply; shock waves thundered through my body, silencing any recourse to the assault against my person.

  ‘Cathy, Cathy, what’s happening?’

  I couldn’t speak.

  ‘CATHY!’

  ‘I…I. NO!’ A little girl’s high-pitched voice squawked.

  Another muscle spasm, then silence as I caught my breath.

  ‘Cathy, please come on. Please tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘She she does doesn’t know!’ A sensible-sounding older child’s voice announced.

  *

  Over the months preceding that session I’d been feeling calmer than I had for years. I’d processed a lot of the trauma generated by remembering my father’s delusional years and developed a narrative with which to relate it. Although I was still struggling to deal with the loss of relationship with my mother, and the deterioration of that with my brother, I no longer suffered the relentless blackness of mood which had previously cast a pall over my days. Life was looking up; I was becoming more sociable and more deeply engaged in a number of relationships, particularly with my own children. I could now actively listen to their concerns and offer advice should they seek it. I was even beginning to find some peace of mind. Much relieved and a little chuffed, I assumed that the worst of the memories had been recovered.