Forgotten Songs...Inclusive

Yet there were weekends when his father really wasn't all there. Like the lights were on but no one was home. Tilly had warned Ted there'd be weekends like that -- she called these his "time out for Thorazine Days" -- and she had even advised her son how to handle things if he got wound up. Because Anders did indeed get wound up, as in: really, really manic. These things happened, Tilly said, because patients with manic-depressive disease were notorious for not taking their medications when they were supposed to, and when they missed a dose the usual outcome was a manic episode and a trip to the emergency room.

She'd tried to live with Anders when he came home from the hospital, and while she knew -- at least on an intellectual level -- how serious manic episodes could become, she'd never expected the crash course in handling aggressive outbursts she'd been forced into after his return. Ted had been terrified, at least in the beginning, because he simply didn't understand what had happened to his father, let alone why.

But more importantly, like many kids his age Ted began to internalize his feelings, to bottle them up and keep them hidden from view. Out of sight, out of mind? And, like many kids his age the one emotion he internalized was guilt. As in...what did I do to cause this? Because whatever it was, I must've been the cause, ya know?

Fortunately Tilly caught all the signs. Withdrawal into his room. No interest in school. Growing increasingly combative with his friends at school...all of the classic symptoms. So she didn't wait to see how bad things could get, because after working the psych wards for almost ten years she knew how this game played out. When Anders was lucid, when he was on his meds, she talked with him about her concerns and in the end he concurred. An amicable split before his psychosis inevitably grew worse was preferable, because at least that way the boy would grow up with decent memories of his father.

So...Anders and Tilly tried to keep things on an even keel, for Ted's sake.

Yet when Tilly spoke of Anders she had nothing but wonderful things to say about the man, and her new circle of friends in Brentwood and Westwood always wondered about that.

"Do you still love him?" one of these new friends asked her once.

"Oh, yes. Completely. And I always will."

"So...you aren't going to remarry?"

"Heavens no! How could I do something like that to him!?"

Which was about the most confusing thing her friends had ever heard.

And so it was in this circuitous way that Ted grew to understand the foundations of his father's disease. And in a curious way he began to look at everyone he met through the lens of a doting, almost overbearing psychiatrist-mother, wondering what was wrong with them, even what these people might be hiding. Yet his was soon a cynical way of looking at the world, and some might go so far as to say the seeds of a dangerous worldview had been planted within these developments.

This missing piece of this puzzle was, of course, Anders.

For just as surely as every planted seed contains a blueprint of the future, Anders had always been a gifted empath, a brilliant surgeon, and a supremely logical thinker. These characteristic traits passed along quite easily, too, so much so that when Ted took the College Boards during his sophomore year at the Harvard School for Boys he scored a perfect 1600. Yet by then absolutely no one doubted Ted's scholastic abilities.

And though he could have easily graduated and gone on to college -- before his fifteenth birthday -- he decided to stay in school. Because, he thought, he really wasn't ready for college -- not yet. Probably because he was having way too much fun, but that wasn't the only reason.

When people looked at Theodore Sorensen they saw a tall and quite thin kid that looked a lot like Gregory Peck, or maybe even a gangly Jimmy Stewart type. Girls didn't simply swoon when he walked into a classroom; no, most usually squirmed in their seats and then crossed their legs, a dangling foot swishing away nervously -- like a white-tailed doe's tail when a buck pranced by. So...maybe it helps to think of Ted as a young man who appreciated the attention of admiring glances, and high school became a comfortable place for him.

He was no longer an outsider, you might even say.

And so in high school Ted finally developed his father's innate ability to talk to people. He related to both his classmates and his teachers, perhaps using his father's empathic abilities, and everyone in school would remember him as an easy going if gangly kid who was super easy to get along with. He had, you might say, no enemies, and in his high school yearbook he was described by one friend as 'most likely to become a politician, and probably the president of Argentina.'

As soon as Ted got his license Tilly bought him a little BMW, a '75 2002 tii -- in British Racing Green with a tan leather interior, and soon enough everyone recognized Ted simply by the sound his little green Beemer made as he raced away from campus, headed up Beverly Glen bound for Sunset Boulevard -- and home. He went on his first date in high school in that car, and she would also turn out to be his last date because, as it happened, they fell so deeply in love during their senior year together that he asked her to marry him -- only, she insisted..."after we finish college."

And that's what happened, too -- except by that time Katharine Gold had decided to go on to med school so she saw the wedding happening four years later than previously expected. Theodore Sorensen was, however, neither amused nor inclined to wait. And even then Katharine knew better than to make Ted angry.

+++++

Saul Rosenthal hadn't seen it coming, of course.

Divorce was an unspeakable thing, at least it still was in his world, so to learn of the Sorensen's divorce 'through the grapevine' had rattled him. But, he thought when he first learned of the split, to abandon a sick spouse was just too much. Had Tilda always been so evil?

But...how could this have happened?

He had been spending, or so it seemed, half his time in Denmark and the other half in Israel, at least in the years right after the war, but his work in Israel was now almost at an end. Deciding to open the new Music Company location in San Francisco had already required more and more of his time so after he learned of the Sorensen's split he didn't need to make excuses to his staff -- he just called SAS and booked another one-way seat to Los Angeles.

After taking the train up from LA he found Anders at the 'Little Dutch House' packing boxes and profoundly depressed. Over dinner that evening Anders said he could 'no longer justify the expense' of such a grand old house and that he needed to put it on the market, so of course Saul did what Saul always did. He bought the property and leased it back to Anders, and for a song. Then he went and purchased a little apartment building close to Fisherman's Wharf and moved into a tiny studio apartment on the top floor. He, of course, paid cash. "It's only money!" he told Anders after the deals were wrapped up.

"Yeah," Anders replied, "but not everyone bleeds hundred dollar bills, Saul. Where'd you make your money?"

And Saul answered that question the way he did whenever someone was stupid enough to ask him that: "You don't want to know."

And perhaps Saul Rosenthal was reluctant to talk about such things with good reason. He had helped resettle survivors of the camps first in Palestine and then, after 1948, in Israel. He was paid for his services by those who could afford them, and those who couldn't...well, he helped them, too. Still, he would have never made much money doing these things. And while the music company was a profitable enterprise, especially the rights management end of the business dedicated to publishing music scores, even that income wouldn't have accounted for the staggering ledgers and balance sheets his accounts accrued in more than one Swiss bank.

No, not hardly.

Because Saul Rosenthal's main preoccupation in life was settling scores, and that meant working for special interests around the world who wanted to see all the Nazis who fled Germany at the war's end punished. Not brought to justice; punished. Killed, by and large, as in extrajudicial killings not sanctioned by any government, anywhere. And by the mid-1960s Saul had made, literally, tens of millions of dollars doing exactly that, and at the height of his operation he commanded a shadow network that spanned the globe.

But all that was fading in relevance now. Rosenthal was what most would consider an old man in the 1960s, that he was a man living in the valley of the shadow. He'd killed so many people during the war, and after, that he could no longer remember them all. He'd killed men. He'd killed women. He'd killed children, the children of evil men who remained out of reach -- to send a message. And now he was paying the price, or at least he had been.

Until he met his grandson, Lloyd. The Old Man, that is.

Whose father was someone he knew well, that precocious boy -- Harry Callahan -- but which could only mean one thing. When he'd first gone to Canada right after the war ended, to help Imogen and that sailor get to Vancouver, he'd fathered her child -- and yet he'd never known. Imogen -- and Lloyd -- never told him that Lloyd was incapable of such an act, that a war wound prevented such a thing from happening. And both had apparently decided to never tell Saul, Harald's true father, of his paternity.

So, what to do? He had settled people as easily as he'd settled scores, but how to be a father?

Keep his distance, let time and destiny play their role? Let the symphony unfold from a distance? Or remain close and shape the outcome? But how could he? What was destiny, after all, other than the sum total of uncorrelated events shaping an unforeseen outcome?

Yet Saul Rosenthal might never have worried about such meanderings, if only because he had already made his definitive contribution to the arc of Harry Callahan's life. A genetic contribution, if you will, the same swirling combination of emotive factors and physical traits that defines every sentient thing. And yet...the frightening matrix of Saul's heartfelt empathy sat astride the hidden soul of a dispassionate killer, and both traits had already been set in stone within the Harry, just as his mother's brilliant, if tortured, outlook had settled within those very same codes.

And in exactly the same way, Ted Sorensen's life had been pre-defined in sequences of nucleic acids. Empathy -- foundering in a sea of paranoia; malice -- hiding in generosity's shadow.

Yet these two men, and in ways neither would completely understand, could be seen as two sets of swirling strands of dancing nucleotides primed to interact, a biologic happenstance destined to collide from time and time over the span of their brief existence -- as each made their way down the broken road of time towards what could only become a final...confrontation.

Yet the Callahan-Sorensen nexus was a powerful force, one that stood to unravel the very fabric of time. And as each made their way through time to the inevitable collision, it might have been that both were little more than pawns on a much larger board, and so it might have remained.

But...we get by with a little help from our friends, don't we?

Part II: The Broken Road

Chapter 8

Beverly Hills, California 15 December 1972

She'd caught his attention the very first time he saw her; at school, just before a dance -- while walking to the campus dining hall. She was just a few yards ahead and the shape of her legs was mesmerizing, yet so too was her long, jet-black hair -- which hung to her waist. She was wearing black tights and a black sweater, yet he first noticed that her tights seemed to accentuate her legs every curve and sinew, and he simply couldn't take his eyes off of them as she made her way to the dance.

The occasion was the annual Christmas Dance, and this year it was at the girl's school. The night was pure Southern California: freeway smog and jets overhead tempered by eucalyptus groves and even a few maples; the sky was otherwise clear and almost crisp. Ted Sorensen didn't have a date and he was kind of glad of that now, because of those legs. And even from halfway across the campus of the Westlake School for Girl's he could hear outrageously loud music blaring from inside the dining hall -- in this case King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man -- and after going inside he kept a close eye on the girl, paying close attention to who she talked to as she started to mingle in the pulsing strobes.

After a few minutes of watching her and noting that no boys were drifting her way he decided to make his move -- just as I Talk to the Wind started to play. He walked right up to her and held out his hands, and she seemed to settle easily into his embrace as they slow-danced through the number. By the end of the song the live band was setting up onstage, so Ted Sorensen leaned in close and asked Katharine Gold if she wouldn't like something to drink. When she nodded enthusiastically they went out onto the commons and got a couple glasses of punch; with no real plan in mind he walked with her for a while, then went to sit on an out of the way bench.

Katharine Gold was considered a peculiar sort, in a roundabout way. Usually quite shy, when she'd first seen this boy and the way his eyes engaged hers she'd immediately felt at-ease, so much so that she would recall years later that all her usual defenses had instantly slipped away. They'd talked and talked and in fact never returned to the dance-floor, content to sit and drift through these first magic moments. And perhaps that magic was their common ground -- because both recognized this coming together for what it was. They'd read enough Shakespeare and Byron and Milton to know the score, and though -- perhaps -- both doubted such moments were anything other than contrived contextual plot devices, it didn't take them all that long to understand that what was happening to them was very real. The peculiar, bookish girl slipped away and went into hiding -- for a while -- and the boy began falling in love.

Near the end of the evening she'd called her father to let him know that a friend would be driving her home from the dance, yet Ted took his time that evening, not racing over Beverly Glen at his usual breakneck pace -- instead wanting to draw out the magic, to make the moment last. By the time he turned right off Sunset onto Alpine he was already so smitten he could hardly concentrate.

"Turn right, into the next driveway," she said just then, pointing to an ornate iron gate flanked by walls of tall shrubbery.

And so turn he did, though in his trance still not yet realizing where he was. When he switched off the engine and went around to get her door, only then did he look up and take a measure of his surroundings -- at the impeccable neighborhood and at her palatial house. Even by Beverly Hills standards this place was huge and he was instantly on guard, even as he held out his hand to help her out of his little green Beemer.

"You better come on up. I'm sure Dad wants to meet you."

And, quite uncharacteristically, Ted began to feel a little uneasy in his skin, even a little unsure of himself -- because in his limited experience this place represented something quite unusual, even for him. This was money. Houses like this represented power. And as these were the things Ted Sorensen aspired to beyond all others, he found himself wondering about things like fate and destiny.

And as they walked up steps to a massive bricked entry, the massive front door opened well as they approached, and Sam Gold stepped out into the ambiguous amber glow of flickering gaslights -- and Ted's heart just about stopped. Sammy Gold had been one of the biggest stars in the Hollywood of the 40s and 50s, and yet at the pinnacle of his career he'd moved behind the camera and was now more well known for producing and directing -- but only the biggest productions -- over at Paramount. And now here he was, his right hand extended in peace, yet when Ted took Sam Gold's hand in his he felt almost like an amoeba under a microscope. Searching eyes, knowing sidelong glances, nodding appraisals...moments unlike any he had known before.

Sam Gold was unlike any other man he'd ever met. He simply didn't look the part of the doting father, either: urbane and articulate, he was tall and a neatly pressed kind of slim; his short hair was bright white, combed neatly. And while it was eleven at night Gold was still so elegantly dressed it defied description: ivory slacks and a light blue linen blazer, shoes that matched his slacks and that had to have been custom made in London...and Ted took it all in, processing what he saw, instantly calculating the odds of his surviving such an encounter whole and intact.

Yet after sizing the boy up Sam Gold took him by the shoulder and invited Ted into his home.

And into another world.

Fate. Destiny. Nucleic acids. So we unfold, like flowers to the sun.

+++++

Saul Rosenthal came of age in a somewhat progressive reformed Jewish household, a fairly new tradition nonetheless though quite typical of Jewish communities in northern Europe during the first decades of twentieth century. His parents embraced confronting the unjust exercise of power with reason and compassion, and the two brothers -- Saul and Avi -- had learned to navigate through their adult lives in much the same way. Saul joined Denmark's Foreign Ministry soon after he graduated from University, while Avi, the more gifted mathematician of the two, naturally gravitated towards the exciting developments taking place in the university's physics department. Both had been, of course, more or less infatuated with Imogen Schwarzwald for as long as they'd had hair on their chests, though both understood she enjoyed Saul's less pretentious company more.

Saul was the taller brother and he was considered the handsomer. He was a gifted athlete and an accomplished long distance runner all through school, and he had always taken better care of himself. Where Avi was unkempt and often frankly neglectful of his self, Saul was always smartly dressed and clean. You might even say that Avi was better suited to the shadows of academia, while -- perhaps -- that explained why Saul was so well regarded in the more refined circles of diplomatic work. There was no doubt that his more polished demeanor contributed to Saul's earning a posting to London soon after he finished his foreign service training, that happening in late early 1933 -- and this posting came despite his religious background.

Yet almost immediately, after the elections in Germany in 1933 the European landscape shifted awkwardly into the unknown, as, too, did Denmark's.

And while some saw the shift for what it was, and what such a shift meant for the future of Europe, most Europeans outside of Germany simply turned away from the implications of Adolph Hitler's meteoric rise to power. Even as the German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei had grown more virulently anti-semitic in the late 1920s, there was still a lingering disbelief in the air that all this could happen again, and that for all Hitler's blustery talk he was simply nothing more than just another boorish, unwashed politician from a darker corner of the Austrian working class. The German people would soon come to their senses and turn back to the more progressive ideologies of the Weimar Republic.

"They just have to, so just you wait and see..."

Such were the hopes and dreams, anyway.

But there were many people, more often than not those raised within the lingering shadows of European anti-semitism, who took such men as Hitler -- and the stated intentions of those close to him -- with utmost seriousness. Avi and Saul Rosenthal were two such people; they watched and listened and learned all they could about Hitler's rise to power and they soon saw it for what it was. They were also among the few who chose to act, yet even these actions differed. Of more interest to us now, Saul Rosenthal chose to meet force with force.