Forgotten Songs...Inclusive

"I think so, sir."

"Any date set yet?"

"I think he's going to try and make if over Thanksgiving break, sir."

"Makes sense. I assume you'll go?"

"I'd like us all to go, sir."

"Me? I've never even met your father, Ted. That might not be the best..."

"Sam, I haven't had a father in a long time, not really. That's what divorce means, practically speaking, because I hardly know the man now."

"He's your father, Ted."

"And so are you. Anders is a shadow to me now, sir. Someone I used to know, and more than likely someone I'll rarely if ever see after he leaves."

"It's a horrible thing when a father turns away from his family."

Ted looked down, nodded his head slowly.

"But I suppose you're correct. And all of this is behind your desire to get married now? You feel the need to repudiate your father, to prove him wrong. Yet Ted, wasn't it your mother who pushed for the divorce -- after your father's breakdown?"

"Yessir, it was."

"And yet you don't feel any hostility towards her, do you? Isn't that odd?"

"She did everything for me, sir."

"And yet you think your father didn't? Given the circumstances, isn't what he gave up all that he had to give?"

Ted looked out the window again, at his reflection in the glass.

"I'm not trying to push you around, Ted, but sometimes cynicism blinds you to certain obvious truths, but more importantly cynicism keeps you from learning after you make mistakes. In a way, cynicism is like a wall you build, brick by brick, between your soul and a greater wisdom. Cynicism keeps you from seeing your life as it is."

Ted turned and looked at Sam. "Did you lose family over there, sir? In the camps?"

"Of course I did, Ted. I lost six million brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. I lost every soul, just as you did, and as your father did, as well. That is the horror from which your father runs, Ted, and it is that which we acknowledge every Sabbath. So perhaps you'll join us next week? Perhaps you'll start to push aside the bricks in your wall?"

Part II: The Broken Road

Chapter 10

Tel Aviv, Israel 22 November 1976

Most guests invited to Anders Sorensen's marriage to Deborah Eisenstadt arrived on commercial flights from California. Theodore Sorensen, as well as Sam and Katharine Gold, arrived by private jet, in this case by Sam's Gulfstream II, and in a curious way this conspicuous arrival set the tone surrounding Ted's introduction to Israel. He was accorded a different level of deference by state bureaucracies that the others did not experience, and none of these little things escaped Ted's notice. Power was power, as he was learning, yet passive displays of the symbols and accoutrements of power often meant that more obvious exercises of gross power were often unnecessary.

And somehow, within a day of his arrival in Tel Aviv, all of the invited guests knew that Ted had arrived by private jet. Unknown to these guests, however, was Katharine Gold's 'condition' -- for she was now quite pregnant -- though still barely 'showing'. Also, though Tilly Sorensen had been invited to the wedding she chose not to come, for -- oddly enough -- she was still rather angry about the whole second marriage thing. The Callahans chose not to attend, as well -- for Imogen had never felt comfortable with the Sorensen's divorce and she did not want to be seen taking sides. Tilly therefore spent her Thanksgiving at the Callahan house in Potrero Hills.

Anders had asked Saul Rosenthal to stand with Ted under the chuppah, while Deborah, a recent emigre from Soviet Armenia and without parents, had no onto stand with. For Deborah was indeed alone, and it was becoming clear to all concerned that she had been characterized by the authorities as some sort of 'mail-order bride'... She was certainly much younger than Anders, and quite good looking too, but little else was known of her background. Not by Anders' friends and associates, and not by Anders himself.

Ted was not amused when he learned of this, yet had he known more about the precarious history of Armenian Jews he might have at the very least been more understanding. As it was, once Ted heard the first faint rumblings surrounding Deborah's background he grew more skeptical by the hour. More skeptical and, in both word and deed, less understanding. Or...perhaps, cynical?

Yet for some reason his father seemed quite happy when he was standing beside Deborah, and with Sam's steady counsel never far away Ted took a cautious 'wait and see' approach. Kat, for her part, was as gracious as could be to Deborah -- which of course meant that Deborah was soon never far away from either Anders or Katharine. For her part, Katharine would soon become the tiny, empathetic voice whispering in Ted's ear, her counsel a mirror image of her father's: watch; listen; say nothing you might regret tomorrow; smile -- even when you don't feel like smiling.

Ted spent almost every moment standing beside Sam Gold; Katharine listened to Deborah Tarkov Eisenstadt, who happened to speak flawless English -- as well as French, German, and the Germanic Yiddish of Ashkenazi Jews -- for it turned out that parts of her family had once prospered in cities such as Heidelberg and Copenhagen, before being forced into exile -- first to the Soviet Union and thence to Armenia. She came from a family of academics and physicians; Deborah was, at 35 years of age, already a trained cardio-thoracic surgeon. Katharine soon began to feel that of all the people she'd met so far in Israel, Deborah Eisenstadt was by far the most cultured she'd talked to. It wasn't long before Kat began to understand just how delightful Deborah truly was, and how truly blessed Anders must have felt when he first met her.

Yet Ted rarely listened to Kat when she spoke of all this, at least when Deborah's background was the chosen topic of conversation. Worse still, Ted was cool, almost distant and preoccupied around her, and it wasn't long before Anders began to notice.

Katharine, ever the empath, took this deterioration seriously, enough to talk to her own father about Ted. Sam began to watch the boy, trying to understand all the varieties of his antipathy, and the more he watched the more he began to see a complex deterioration of the relationship between father and son -- and this he simply did not understand.

Was it a basic failing within the boy? Could Ted simply not understand the emotional complexities of survivor's guilt? Did the boy, at root, simply have no frame of reference to understand the Jewish experience of the camps? Of the continuing diaspora? Were America's schools doing such a poor job of conveying the tortured landscape of Hate?

The ceremony was never meant to be a lavish affair but as Kat -- and Sam -- learned more about Deborah the scale of the post-nuptial celebration increased in both scale and social importance. Sam talked to people. Government ministers took note. Various important people's names were added to the guest list -- and all this happened over the span of a few days -- so that by the time of the actual ceremony the list had grown from less than thirty names to more than a hundred, and as his father's wedding seemed to grow in stature Ted's acceptance of Deborah seemed to grow. The event was remembered by all concerned as a happy, even a joyous affair.

Ted observed that Sam seemed to operate in Israel just as he did in Los Angeles. He was comfortable, and perhaps because Sam was as well connected in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as he was LA. Ted soon learned that Sam was well connected because he gave, and quite generously, to a number of important Israeli charities -- and to many Israeli politicians connected to those charities. Sam did so because he owned quite a lot of property in and around Tel Aviv, and he had purchased these properties with an eye to building residential projects. Yet he never talked about these investments. He never let on that it was his intent to immigrate to Israel as soon as he had cultivated an heir to handle his affairs in the States.

Yet what Sam Gold observed in Ted Sorensen filled his heart with foreboding. The boy had displayed all the killer instincts necessary to flourish in Hollywood; he had proven to be, in fact, a more than competent producer while Falling Water was in development. Yet there was something missing in the boy, something important, something...vital.

Ted lacked both humility and humanity. He didn't just want power, he appeared to crave it, and not just the power to create or to build, but power for power's sake. The boy was, in a word, dangerous.

Yet his daughter loved the boy, and she had apparently loved him enough to 'forget' to take her birth control pills. She loved him enough to want to have a baby with him, to put-off her studies for at least a year to have this baby with him -- so at some point he had to recognize that he'd raised Katharine inside a home that valued humility and compassion, so surely her choice would reflect those values.

+++++

The Gulfstream made an unscheduled stop on the way back to California.

The jet landed in West Berlin, itself an audacious act that required serious political muscle, and which meant that the jet was met by a sizable contingent of US Army troops. Sam led Ted and his daughter to the car indicated by a light colonel, and after leaving the airport their small convoy drove into the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, and thence to a small annex near the Plötzensee Prison complex. The colonel escorted the group to a small brick building not far from the main administrative center and led them inside. Almost instantly some unseen person turned on floodlights and the white painted walls seemed to come alive, as if they had a tale to tell and only lacked for iron-willed souls ready to stand and listen. And to remember.

The colonel led them to the far wall and pointed to pockmarks in the brick -- with a brown leather riding-crop he wielded with precision. "Bullet holes," he said, the words a steely statement of fact. "In the early forties new prison guards were trained here, in this room." Next he pointed to five hooks suspended from a heavy timber beam that spanned the width of the room. "Routine political executions took place in the courtyard, usually by guillotine. Jews, on the other hand, came in for special treatment. The prisoner's hands were tied overhead and then they were suspended from these hooks. Guards used them for target practice, I understand to get new recruits used to killing unarmed human beings."

Katharine turned and ran into her father's arms; he sheltered her and took her back to their waiting car.

Ted stood there, as entranced as he was terrified.

"They've bricked-over all the other parts of the apparatus," the colonel continued. "They had meathooks suspended from the tracks you see up there, and the track -- we assume -- was chain-driven and ran in a large oval. Children were impaled on the hooks and their flailing bodies sent along the track. They were more challenging to hit, or so I assume."

"You're...not serious..." Ted whispered.

"Oh, similar set-ups were found in Poland. We think this facility was a 'proof-of-concept' operation; as I mentioned, the walls had already been bricked over by the time the Russians got here, but the very same arrangement, right down to the same hardware, was found in operational condition at both Auschwitz and Treblinka. Survivor's accounts, mainly of those carting the bodies off to crematories, fill in the blanks."

"This is monstrous. Simply monstrous."

"Is this your first camp?" the colonel asked, gently, knowingly.

"Yessir."

"I hate to say it, but this is nothing."

"Nothing? How can you say that?"

"Do your research, Mr. Sorensen."

"How can you stand it? To live here, surrounded by these monsters...?"

The colonel nodded, then he turned and looked Sorensen in the eye. "I've lived here for six years and I have yet to meet even one monster here. Not one, Mr. Sorensen. Hitler and his pals sold the German people real a bill of goods...he promised to 'Make Germany Great Again' and part of the mechanism of Hate they built to do that was focused on scapegoating the Jewish population. They were a prosperous people but more importantly there were a few prominent Jewish politicians during the Republic. Those Jews were accused..."

"The stab in the back. Yeah, I've heard that one -- but that still doesn't explain why you think these people aren't monsters."

"They're just people, Mr. Sorensen. People just like you and me. Many were broke and starving and Hitler came along and told them exactly what they wanted to hear. 'It's not your fault! It's the Jews! Follow me and together we will restore Germany.' It's the same formula would-be dictators trot out and use all the time. It goes back to Caligula and the Germanic tribes and, hell, I don't know, maybe it goes back to cold men huddled in caves, to when we first learned to kill one another. When we learned to Hate."

"You've seen more things like this? These things, I mean?" Ted asked, pointing at the track mounted on the ceiling.

"Me? Yessir, I have. Funny thing, though. The first time I saw stuff like this was over in Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, too." The colonel chuckled a little, then shook his head. "Truth is, it's everywhere, Mr. Sorensen. Every place you find desperate people my guess is you'll find Hate waiting in the wings, and when you find people blindly willing to follow Hate you'll find the same kind of thing."

Ted nodded his head slowly, then he held out his right hand. "Thank you, Colonel."

"You're welcome, sir. Now...we really need to get you back out to the airport...before the Russians throw a real first-class hissy-fit..."

Part II: The Broken Road

Chapter 11

Hollywood, California 7 July 1977

"Take Beverly, it'll be faster this time of day," Ted said to his driver. Kat's OB's office had just called; her contractions were getting closer so it was time for him to dash to the hospital. Cedars-Sinai wasn't even four miles away but in noonday traffic on a Thursday it could easily take a half hour -- or more -- and Ted was already nervous, even before he made it to the limo. His palms were sweating and his stomach was twisted up in hard little knots, every one of them on fire. "Could you turn up the air, Henry?"

Henry Carmichael smiled and nodded as he turned the Lincoln onto Melrose. He could do this drive in his sleep, and probably had more than once over the last twenty-one years, but even so he had to take care -- if only because Ted Sorensen already had a nasty reputation around the studio. You didn't cross him, you didn't make him angry, and you sure didn't contradict anything he said -- not if you wanted to keep your job. Funny, too, because the kid was still just that: a kid. He'd just graduated from the film school at 'SC but already the word around the back lots was that this kid was some kind of wunderkind, brilliant -- but ruthless -- and let's not mention he'd married the boss's daughter last month. And now here he was, in a city full of power players the kid was already feeding at the top of the food chain. Better still, the kid was shaking up the old, established pecking order; firing people left and right, pissing-off has-been actors who'd been at Paramount for decades, getting rid of the deadwood while clearing the way ahead for fresh talent.

Henry already liked Ted, even felt loyal to him. He liked driving him around the city, just like he'd enjoyed driving the Old Man around. Still, the fact of the matter was simple enough: Henry was still working for Sam Gold. He was still filing written reports on everything the kid said and did while being driven around town. Henry's ultimate loyalty was, after all, reserved for The Boss. And it'd been earned, too. Sam Gold was a Mensch...with a capital M, the best of the best.

Henry took Melrose to Fairfax to Beverly and made it to the hospital in less than ten minutes, impressing even Ted, but even before he could get around and open the kid's door, Ted was out and sprinting for the entry.

The Old Man had done pretty much the same thing when Katharine came into the world, but that's what Henry liked about working for the studio. LA was constantly reinventing itself, spreading out into the valleys that branched out like vines from Hollywood, the real beating heart of the city, yet the studios were already bastions of tradition. Whole ecosystems had grown up and flourished around each of the major studios, but Paramount was the grandfather of them all -- and in a way Hollywood was Hollywood because of Paramount. And not just Hollywood...Beverly Hills, too. Then BelAir and Brentwood, and even the far-flung Palisades, everything because of Paramount. And along with the other studios, out of the orange groves and lemon trees -- out of all that nothingness -- new traditions sprang up -- almost overnight. Traditions that developed into networks as intricately powerful as anything ever seen in ancient Rome, all in the span of a single lifetime. The world had never seen anything quite like it, and everyone everywhere was still trying to comes to terms with what exactly Hollywood really meant.

Yet one thing was certain. Hollywood was power. Sheer, unadulterated power.

And it looked like the ruthless new kid was moving in to take over.

+++++

Debra Sorensen came into the world at seven minutes past seven in the evening, and from that moment on she became the center of Theodore Sorensen's waking existence. In a way, she became his salvation -- for a while.

And from the beginning of her time here there was something strange about the little girl.

She never cried. When people came to see her in the hospital the baby would look at her visitors and an unexpected calm would come over them. When Katharine first held her daughter she felt a peace fall over her that she had never experienced before.

Ted held her and at once grew terrified, almost rigid with fear, yet the longer he held her the more irresistible her gaze became -- and the more at ease he became.

When Sam Gold held her close the little girl reached up and touched the side of his face and he cried for hours after, while Debra's nurses all said they'd never seen anything like these reactions before. Strangers heard stories about the new little baby girl and would go to the window in the maternity ward and seek out her eyes, and everyone reported feeling the same kind of never-before-experienced calm, and after one psychiatrist heard about the phenomenon she went to see for herself; perhaps this physician described Debra's effect on people best when she related that something like an existential peace came to her when she looked at the little girl, and into her eyes.

Debra had brown hair and the gentlest brown eyes, and the bridge of her nose was intensely freckled -- something no one could account for. Her birth weight was seven pounds - seven ounces, a simple fact no one seemed to find in the least extraordinary, given her birth date, anyway.

Father, mother, and daughter left the hospital for their new house at the end of Collingwood Place in the hills above Hollywood; the house a boxy monstrosity designed by an architect with a dedicated passion for glass rectangles, concrete, and black steel. There were three swimming pools in the back yard, though there was not a blade of grass in sight. The house seemed to cling to the side of a canyon and, at times and when the light was just so, appeared ready to fly away at a moments notice, and perhaps that's what attracted Ted to the house the first time he saw it. The view from the tiered back patios was stupendous, and on smog-free days the little girl could sit in her room and see Catalina Island and all the way out to the Malibu Hills. She lived the first seven years of her life in this little glass and steel airey, perched up there on the side of the canyon -- and perhaps she too was ready to fly away at a moments notice. And while Katharine didn't particularly like or dislike the house, it was the last place she would ever call home.