Chapter 11
Necessary StepsErik did not know where I went to and why when I left him early the next morning. I had not had the heart to tell him. Yesterday had been very hard for the child, though without question he had benefited from the events. Albeit he still kept a distance, he no longer shied back at every noise he heard and at every move I made. His manner was becoming more unshackled, and I did approve that very much. Perhaps he would learn to be a normal boy by and by.
To keep my manner from being somehow hostile was a job too big for me when I took the seat opposite to the social worker in that small office of hers. Suddenly I came to understand how the people felt who had to come here because someone had purported them not to handle their children correctly . . .
"Well, Ms. Lubov, that was a very interesting mail you sent me yesterday. You can envision that it made me search through all the databases I could find - I even contacted a police officer, an old friend of mine, and asked him about what he could find out. Can you imagine how great an astonishment it was when I found out that a boy, described just like that 'hypothetical' boy you wrote about, is bitterly missed? And how interesting it was to hear that the boy is missed by a mental institution, missed since spring already?
Just like you to me, I called that institution and indicated that 'perhaps' I had heard something about that boy. By the way I tried to find out what was wrong with him, however the psychiatrist I spoke to was not at all communicative on the phone. Yet I must have stroke a sensible chord in him, for he was here in the afternoon, had come all the way from somewhere in the Bavarian woods.
He tried to threaten me. Yes, he really tried, but I simply told him that if he did not put his cards on the table, I would not be able to remember anything." She laughed.
By that time, I was all in a sweat and near to a nervous breakdown! That woman sounded as if she was telling about an inspiring film she had seen on evening's TV!
Questions were burning in my mind, hardly restrained: Had she given away details about where and by whom the boy was kept? Was Erik in danger? Had that psychiatrist perhaps employed the police or something like that?
"And finally, he had to tell me quite an amazing story, Ms. Lubov. The boy was abandoned by his parents immediately after his birth, that is, nearly eight years ago. They left him in the hospital because they felt not capable to care for him." For the first time, her eyes lay on me with concern. "That child has a severe deformity afflicting nearly his whole face. The plastic surgery in the hospital he was in felt not competent enough to handle that, so they immediately sent him to a special clinic, where they kept the boy through the next four years. It seems as if nothing they tried could correct his deformities, though they made him a real research object.
Accessory, they asked for help from said psychiatrist when, sometime after his second birthday, the child started to behave like a wild animal, reacting with fierce aggression towards anybody who tried to come near him. They made him an interdisciplinary case, and finally agreed upon placing him into the psychiatry, especially as the medical examinations and interventions became less frequent."
The social worker evidently had no longer any fun with the story. She had struggled through the last sentences, and now she took a deep breath and asked: "You look like I feel, Ms. Lubov. Do you want a glass of water, too?"
I barely managed a nod. Never before had I felt so sick and woeful!
After opening a window and handing me a glass of water, she went on: "For them, the asylum, and there the locked ward, seemed the only place to keep the child, as he appeared to be completely unsociable and incompetent to deal with people at all. You have studied a lot of sociology and psychology yourself, I do not need to talk to you about primal confidence and all that. Well, the boy has had no chance to develop something like that, of course. He never had the slightest chance of developing any normal attitude or behaviour towards anybody. To shorten it: somehow, he finally managed to run away after a whole life of torment, and did not show up until recently." She paused, than added: "That is, if the boy I am talking about and the boy you are talking about are one and the same."
That, of course, did mean the end. Neither the plastic surgery nor the psychiatry would be willing to give up their 'research object' so easily. 'They' would want to take him back, so that their research could go on. And Ms. Copp had been very clear: there was no chance in lying, the only way to go was the official way.
Slowly, I lifted my head, looked into the social worker's eyes and said: "No, I don't think so."
