In addition, she had her mother-in-law visiting for two whole months. And yet she was genuinely cheerful about having Granny with us and seemed to enjoy her company, despite all the effort required.
It was while Carol was organizing social events for Granny that things began falling apart. In a letter to her parents dated May 10, 1959, she described how it all began.
I was having one of these bridge bun fights for [George’s] mother and sure enough the morning of the do, María brought Julia in and said “Señora, I’m afraid Julia has chickenpox.” I had to phone everyone up and tell them [that the bridge party was off]…. Douglas was also in bed with a cold and Jeff came home from school with a fever and a cough. It was really the most hellish day I can remember.
And yet organizing Granny’s social life continued, even as Carol too started to feel ill.
I felt as if I was coming down with a cold, but sort of said to myself “Oh, I’ll just work it off, I’ve too much to do.” Never will I say that again in B.A…. Well we had dinner parties and dos for Mother and I just wouldn’t go to bed.
By George’s birthday, she was really sick: “May 1st [Friday] is a holiday here and also G.E.B.’s [George’s] birthday, but I was feeling terrible so I went to bed, hoping I would be well enough to go to Uruguay next day.”
My parents had planned to take Granny across the river, the Uruguayan border, for a brief visit to Montevideo. This was to help Granny avoid an Argentine surcharge on her return passage for overstaying her sixty-day visa. But since Carol was now feeling “much worse,” she stayed at home, and George and Granny took the ferry to Uruguay on Saturday, May 2.
The doctor called and diagnosed Carol’s symptoms as asthmatic bronchitis. María, despite having her own liver trouble, nursed her, just as she nursed everyone else in the family. María’s nursing included things you didn’t forget, like warm enemas and thermometers held under your armpit for long periods of time. She also made sure we had our lessons ready for our tutor, kept us in clean clothes, put us to bed on time, and did a hundred and one other things for our family.
Carol felt especially grateful to María, she told her parents.
Mom if I can’t have you when I’m sick, María is the best substitute I could ever have. She had Martín off looking for drugs the doctor had ordered on a Sunday when they are closed and Tina off looking for a nurse to come and give injections. We got the injections but no nurse (it’s always that way down here).
A professional nurse did come to the house on Monday, but the cure may have been worse than the disease: “She came with a needle ten feet long and just about killed me,” wrote Carol.
The next day, she still wasn’t feeling better.
Tuesday I was sick at my tum all day and by then I hadn’t had a thing to eat except a baked potato on Sunday, since Saturday. Well something was not agreeing with me and Doc took me off all medicine by mouth and I got it at t’other end.
When it became clear she wasn’t getting any better at home, the doctor put her into hospital, on Wednesday, May 6.
The clinical record of my mother’s extensive medical treatment in Buenos Aires is dated July 17, 1959. It was compiled and signed by Dr. G.F. Mercer, an Anglo-Argentine physician who was Carol’s main doctor at the hospital where she was treated—actually a clinic, La Pequeña Compañía de María (the Little Company of Mary). Dr. Mercer’s report provides an important—but not the only—source for this account of my mother’s sickness. Julie and I came into its possession some twenty years later, when Grandma Gray gave us our grandfather’s papers after he died.
Dr. Mercer’s report began:
SUMMARY OF THE CLINICAL RECORD OF MRS CAROL BLACKSTOCK
THIS 24 YEAR OLD WHITE MOTHER OF THREE WAS FIRST SEEN IN MAY, 1959, BECAUSE OF COUGH, WHEEZING, ORTHOPNEA AND VOMITING. SUBSEQUENTLY, HER CHIEF COMPLAINT BECAME THAT OF WEAKNESS AND NUMBNESS OF LOWER EXTREMITIES.
…IT APPEARED TO BE A CASE OF ASTHMATIC BRONCHITIS…. SHE DEVELOPED PERSISTENT VOMITING WHICH WAS NOT CONTROLLED BY PROMAZINE BY MOUTH OR CHLORPROMAZINE [DRUGS TO TREAT, AMONG OTHER THINGS, NAUSEA AND VOMITING]…. VOMITING FINALLY REQUIRED ADMISSION.
FIRST HOSPITAL ADMISSION: THE PATIENT WAS A YOUNG, WELL DEVELOPED, THIN WOMAN APPEARING ACUTELY ILL…RETCHING CONTINUALLY. SAVE FOR THE PROLONGED EXPIRATION AND SCANT WHEEZES, THE PHYSICAL EXAMINATION WAS ENTIRELY UNREMARKABLE.
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been assured it’s well known that the symptoms of asthmatic bronchitis—shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, tightness in the chest, and excess mucus production—do not typically include “retching continually” or “weakness and numbness of lower extremities.” With the benefit of hindsight, Dr. Mercer would have done well to consider those particular symptoms in arriving at his diagnosis.
To her parents, Carol described her stay in the clinic with a pinch of humour.
I am still not really all better as I lost about eight pounds and have to get my strength back but I think I’ll live now. There was a period when I was afraid I wouldn’t and then another when I was afraid I would.
Dr. Mercer reported that after three days of treatment, she was well enough to go home, which she did on Saturday, May 9.
It’s unclear how long George stayed in Uruguay with Granny during Carol’s illness. In her letter to her parents about this first episode, Carol didn’t mention his presence at all, saying only, “George and Mother had quite a nice time in Uruguay and all that, which she will tell you about.”
She ended her letter with words that now seem prophetic: “Again I’m sorry to have been so long in writing but things, as I’ve said, have not been quite right.”
* * *
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BACK AT HOME, according to Dr. Mercer’s report, Carol remained “asymptomatic” for six weeks, except for two days at first of vomiting and a chronic cough.
Granny sailed for New York on May 18. Carol explained to her parents that she couldn’t send much in the way of presents home to Canada with her mother-in-law: her luggage was already stuffed with a fur coat she’d bought for Aunt Katherine. I guess the family trust was in pretty good shape after all.
Later, Carol wrote to Granny about what happened after we saw her off on the boat.
You know you just about broke Dougie’s heart when you left. He has never quite gotten over the fact that you left him. We drove the car out to the last pier and watched you sail away. Poor Doug started to cry and then came the heart-breaking wail, “She’s gone.” Next thing we knew we were all crying. That old saying “It hurts the ones you leave behind most,” is so true.
Contrary to Dr. Mercer’s statement that she was “asymptomatic,” Carol experienced some new complications at the end of May. She wrote to her parents about the remedies the doctor prescribed.
About a tonic for me. The doctor gave me several different types of drugs and I got all sick and funny. My face swelled, then my tummy, then my feet. So I stopped taking everything. I am still not better. My feet are sort of numb and tingling and I wheeze. I spent four days in bed last week. I get so tired of it. It is sort of depressing to be sick.
Along with the wheezing, there was now the troubling numbness in her feet. Whatever medications the doctor was prescribing, they weren’t alleviating those symptoms, so Carol stopped taking all drugs. It isn’t clear whether this was the doctor’s decision or Carol’s own—if the latter, it would indicate limited confidence in her doctor.
Carol wouldn’t report any further trouble until mid-June. In the meantime, life resumed at full pace. Despite having been sick the previous week, she mustered the strength to rejoin the social whirl and even enjoyed herself.
Last Monday we went to the Colon. Full dress. 25 of May. Big Day. I wore my pink dress, pearls, long white gloves, new bag you gave me for Xmas. María did my hair (as usual). She put it up at the back like a pony tail only the tail was fi
ve thick ringlets. I wore a very big black velvet bow on top. Of course I have to change my facial expression to match my hairdo. Sweet and niave [sic] or smart and sofistacated [sic]…. It is fun when you have long hair. You can do so much with it. María is always fiddling around with new ways. She is very much like you. “Get your slippers on, button up your coat.” “Have you got everything?” “Oh here’s your perfume, dab a little on later.” “No, you look just fine, I like [it] like that, I don’t care what the Señor says…” We have a very good box with the Krapfs and the Crockers. It was the National Anthem and a short ballet by Bizet and then a long ballet by Ravel. It was excellent and such fun to see everyone in their finest gowns and jewels. We had coffee and cognac at intermission and saw all our friends. Afterwards we went to a French restaurant and had dinner. This was at one o’clock in the morning.
Carol clearly enjoyed expressing her feminine side and being admired for her beauty and flair for fashion.
A week ago Mr. and Mrs. Beaulne [of the Canadian embassy] had a formal dinner for the Irish Minister and his wife who are leaving. It was a lovely party. I wore my white lace and María did my hair in ringlets and I made that piece of red velvet you gave me years ago into a bow…. I made quite a sensation. (Don’t read this out loud to anyone. It wouldn’t sound very nice. But you know what I mean).
George was busier than ever, as Carol wrote to her parents on June 1.
You have faint hope of hearing from George. If his Mom hears from him every two months she’s lucky. I will work on him though. He is terribly busy at the office. And we go out so much. This week we will be out every night.
Carol even felt well enough to spend a weekend 185 miles south of Buenos Aires at the estancia (cattle ranch) of Peter (Pedro) and Bibi Fischer, owners of the Ola bathing suit company, whose fashion show they’d attended. The Fischers were a handsome thirty-something couple with lots of money, and George and Carol had hit it off with them. Peter and his brother Chico (some expats took local nicknames) were German—“pre-war German,” as Carol was careful to note in a letter to her parents. It was still the post-war era, after all, and this was Argentina. Bibi was Danish, tall, and svelte. She and Peter both spoke perfect English.
They have a lovely 1959 four seater MacCaulay [sic]. I flew for most of the way. It is great fun and very easy…. I really can’t explain it very well, but I have the most wonderful feeling of freedom in the country and for the first two or three days after I get back to the city I feel so frustrated and hemmed in…. We rode all afternoon and then went in when the sun went down and had dinner. George and Pedro played chess and the rest of us played bridge…. We had breakfast [the next morning] and then went off to the other estancia (they have 2) to see the cows.
Carol had clearly recovered somewhat.
As usual, she remembered to mention us kids in her letter home.
Julia…is so cute and sweet and María just adores her. She always takes her with her on her day off…. The boys are getting along very well in school, but they have a terrific amount of homework. They have a tutor who comes three times a week for two hours.
Life in general was busy again. Carol wrote on June 10, wishing Grandpa a happy Father’s Day.
We do hope you have a lovely day and I wish I could be with you. I love you very much.
Things are hopping around here as usual. We are terribly busy at this time of year. Last Saturday we went to a very nice dance at the Club. There are only two other English couples in the Club. The rest are German or Argentine.
This was the Club Hípico. It was in San Isidro, an upscale suburb just west of Acassuso, and only a ten-minute drive from our house. I have a letter from the club accepting Carol’s application for membership, dated April 13, 1959, and written in the flowery Spanish prevalent at the time. I also have the club’s activity booklet from 1959, complete with local advertising, including an ad for Ola bathing suits, the Fischers’ company. Mom loved to ride so much that she wanted us kids to learn; she took us on Sundays for lessons. She loved wearing her riding breeches with the brown stripes on the sides and her dark-brown leather riding boots.
My own memories of Club Hípico are mixed, largely because of an accident I had there. On a visit in April 1959, I fell, fracturing my arm. Mom took me to the British Hospital of Buenos Aires, where the arm was set in a cast. A few months later, I was taken to the same hospital for some tests, and the following year I went there a third time, to have my tonsils removed. The British Hospital was a sizable and highly regarded institution, founded more than a century earlier. It would also play a part in my family’s story.
* * *
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MOM STARTED VOMITING again around June 12. She spent most days in her bedroom with the door closed, and we didn’t see her very much. Sometimes, I could hear her retching in the bathroom. This was upsetting for us, so María kept us away from Mom most of the time.
I had no idea what was happening. I just felt bewildered. I worried vaguely, but had no real conception of what mortal illness was, or how serious her condition might be. I still had a child’s faith that everything would turn out all right. María’s job was to keep us distracted, which she did very well. She didn’t try to explain what was wrong with Mom—she didn’t know herself. I’m sure Mom simply didn’t want us to worry, didn’t want us to see her in that condition. I can understand her desire to protect us.
Then she got even sicker. Her vomiting went on for almost a week. Dr. Mercer recorded the circumstances in his clinical record.
IN MID-JUNE THE PATIENT AGAIN DEVELOPED VOMITING. SEEN AT HOME, NO CAUSE COULD BE FOUND FOR THE DISTURBANCE…. TREATMENT WAS ATTEMPTED AT HOME ON THE BASIS OF THE PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE AND IT WAS THOUGHT THAT THERE WAS PROBABLY A VERY LARGE PSYCHO-NEUROTIC COMPONENT TO THE PICTURE…. RE-ADMISSION WAS THEN REQUESTED THOUGH RESISTED BY THE PATIENT.
It’s not clear who requested Carol’s readmission to the clinic, and Dr. Mercer’s account doesn’t say why she resisted going back there. Perhaps she lacked confidence in him and wanted to be treated elsewhere. Although he failed to record the exact date of Carol’s readmission, or even the name of the hospital, her letter home said it was June 17 when she was “again taken to Little Co. of Mary.”
La Pequeña Compañía de María, a small hospital founded only six years earlier, in 1953, already had a very interesting history. In 1955, Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi war criminal who found refuge in Argentina after the war, and his wife, Veronika (Vera) Liebl, had their son delivered at the clinic. The story is recounted in Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer, by German philosopher and historian Bettina Stangneth.
Vera Liebl gave birth to her son in November 1955, in the Pequeña Compañía Maria [sic], a Catholic hospital in Buenos Aires. “I was not officially allowed to claim my son as my own, as I was not officially married to my wife,” Eichmann explained later, as if it were not clear to everyone that the missing marriage certificate could never have been the reason. Astonishingly, the nurses referred to the child quite openly as “Baby Eichmann,” but it would still have been careless to register the birth under this well-known name. Eichmann’s son was registered as Vera Liebl’s illegitimate child and was given his father’s pseudonym [Ricardo Klement], plus a middle name that was a tribute to the priest in Genoa who made this “triumph” possible: Ricardo Francisco.
It’s apparent that the clinic was war-criminal-friendly and had a flexible attitude toward record-keeping. This was in a nation that, under Juan Perón and his cronies, had encouraged and protected Nazi escape pipelines and support groups in collaboration with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1975, the clinic would be taken over by a German order of nuns, Las Hermanas de María de Schoenstatt, and given a new name, Mater Dei (Mother of God). With a former client like Adolf Eichmann, what clinic wouldn’t want to change its name?
It’s distinctl
y odd that my mother was sent back there for treatment of a serious and baffling condition—especially when a larger, more established, and reputable institution, the British Hospital, was available. Since I’d been sent there previously, the British Hospital was well known to our family, as it was throughout the expatriate community in Buenos Aires. And since Dr. Mercer’s treatment of Carol at the clinic had been conspicuously unsuccessful, it would have made a lot of sense to send her to a different doctor. Who, then, sent her back to Dr. Mercer—evidently against her will? There seems little doubt it was George: in those circumstances, and in that time and place, husbands were generally considered to have authority over their wives’ health care.
On first reading Dr. Mercer’s report, I assumed Carol simply hadn’t wanted to return to hospital. Now, having read her descriptions of the doctor’s ineffective treatment, I believe she didn’t want to return to that hospital. If it was the clinic that had delivered “Baby Eichmann” and registered the birth under a false name, who could blame her? Carol may or may not have known about Baby Eichmann, but she could easily have heard the story. According to Stangneth’s book, the nurses and doctors at the clinic knew all about the baby’s parentage, and Carol got to know the nurses very well. She also got to know members of the well-heeled German community of Buenos Aires, where the Eichmanns and their fellow Nazi fugitives, such as the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, moved freely under false identities.
It’s now well documented that the Eichmanns’ presence was known to scores of people, including Western intelligence agencies. Eichmann, alias Klement, even worked for the German automaker Mercedes-Benz in Buenos Aires, where he rose to become a department head. A year after Carol’s treatment at La Pequeña Compañía de María, Eichmann was abducted by Mossad agents on a Buenos Aires street and spirited away to Israel, where he was put on trial, convicted of numerous crimes against humanity, and executed.
Murder in the Family Page 7
