The Rhythm of Memory by Alyson Richman Page B

find that tedious and boring. I want to help people. It’s as simple as that.”
    “Simple?” his analyst questioned him, trying to evoke some self-reflection in this young psychiatry resident. “I think the reason that you are interested in helping people, especially considering your family background, is anything but simple.”
    Those days of sitting on the analyst’s couch were over, and finally Samuel found himself where he’d always wanted to be—with a practice that was devoted to helping victims of war. Most of his patients had come to Sweden from volatile political climates such as in Algeria and Czechoslovakia. Some of the older ones were Polish Jews who had spent the past twenty-five years speaking to no one, not even their children, of their time in the camps. Somewhere deep inside, he hoped he might meet a French Jew—someone who might know what had happened to his maternalgrandparents and his uncle’s family, as if this knowledge would somehow appease something deep within him. Something that he knew had quietly destroyed his mother.
    But Samuel had no such luck. The immigrant community was small, and most of his patients were more recent survivors from countries he had never even visited.
    He realized that one never gets used to hearing stories of torture. Yet, the strength of the human spirit continued to amaze him. He learned to trust his intuition and to guide his patients back into memories that had often been shut for years.
    Just by looking at the face of a new patient, Samuel could often gauge the extent of his or her torture. Ironically, the women who looked the most placid, the most vacant, were usually his most troubled victims. They were the ones who held everything deep within, speaking not one word of their vicious torture, the rapes, they had kept secret for years. If he had stuck them with a needle, they wouldn’t have uttered a sound. That was how deep the pain was for them.
    In a white-walled room, with a few small paintings of innocuous landscapes that were meant to calm, he sat and spoke with them. He spoke five languages, French, Spanish, English, German, and his Swedish, which, though not perfect, was getting better. Mostly, he was there to listen. But he was also there to steer them through their memories, so they could get on with their lives and learn to reconcile the atrocities of their past.
    At first, he was skeptical about the position. He spoke limited Swedish and knew little of the customs or the land. But upon his arrival, and after his first few days on the job, Samuel realized that his foreignness was an advantage. When an immigrant walked into the room and saw that the doctor too was an outsider, he or she relaxed.
    There was absolutely no way Samuel, a very Sephardic-lookingJew, could be mistaken for a Swede. He had inherited his parents’ dark looks. His skin was olive, his hair black, and his thin, narrow face had a natural intensity to it.
    In Peru, he blended in with the local coloring, although the natives’ features were far more Indian than typical Spanish. In Sweden, he felt like a shadow walking the streets, his curly hair bobbing in an ocean of blond. His prominent brow, his wide, dark eyes, and small, curved nose often making him feel self-conscious. The few weeks he had spent in Stockholm had been an entirely different experience for him. There, he discovered students from almost every country congregating in the streets, the cafés, the energy escalating, and the leftist philosophies floating through the air.
    But in Göteborg, it was quiet. The cafés were filled with couples drinking tea and eating small cakes, the bars filled with businessmen and their sons. Samuel rarely went out after work, instead choosing to return home and drink his Nescafé in solitude.
    One sunny afternoon, Samuel found himself noticing a beautiful young woman not far from the city park. He had brought with him one of his medical journals and a brown bag of seed to feed the