by Sylvia True
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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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
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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 n
ame 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, h
e 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.
