Goldengirl

Serafin nodded. ‘I recognised the surname, you see. I had spent so long looking for it in those lists in Santa Barbara that it leaped out of the page at me. Next morning I went to the Los Angeles Times building, looked up the file, and got the whole story. It gave Trudi’s address and age and the year of her arrival in California, and there couldn’t be any doubt that this was Gretchen’s daughter. I visited the apartment Trudi had occupied, and spoke to the young married woman living next door, who had formed a friendship with her. From her, I learned about the death of Gretchen, the affair in Rome and the way Trudi had brought up her child, giving up her job with TWA until the little girl was old enough to attend a day nursery. It was a story that moved me deeply, and I felt I couldn’t leave it there. I asked for the name of the children’s home where the child was being cared for, and next afternoon I drove out there with my wife. It was a place called Tamarisk Lodge, just north of Ventura.

‘The matron-in-charge listened to us sympathetically and agreed to let us see the child with others in the playroom. That, gentlemen, was when I first saw Goldengirl, three years old, tragically orphaned, standing alone, half hidden behind a curtain, hugging a grimy rag doll dressed in the costume of a Bavarian peasant girl.

‘In reply to my inquiries, the matron told us that the child appeared to be adjusting as well as you could expect in such a case. It seemed likely that she would soon be adopted. In fact, a couple had practically arranged an adoption that had just fallen through on account of some drinking misdemeanor of the husband’s that had come to light. The adoption authorities are very careful about such things. Well, after a few minutes the matron picked up the child and brought her over to us. You may imagine the interest with which I looked at her, this representative of the generation succeeding the ones I had studied for my thesis. Moreover, nobody — not even my wife — knew, as I did, each link in the remarkable chain of circumstances that had contributed to that little girl’s genetic profile. Let me make it unequivocally clear that I am opposed to the idea of selective procreation. That is not my notion of eugenics, gentlemen. But when events had contrived to produce a child whose lineal origins were as distinguished as Goldengirl’s, I would have been a poor physiologist if I had not taken an interest in her.

‘I could see at once that she had inherited an excellent physique. I would have put her skeletal age — the indicator of physiological maturity in children most commonly used — at four or five months beyond her chronological age, and that, in a child of under four years, is a significant discrepancy. Her muscularity, too, was well-developed. It crossed my mind that the members of the SS who arranged Gretchen’s weekend in Bavaria all those years before would have looked with approval at this young recipient of the precious Aryan genes.

‘Before we got home that night, my wife said she knew the directions my thoughts were taking, though I had given no hint of them to her. She, for her part, had been charmed by the little girl and shed some private tears for her. We were childless ourselves and I was in my mid-forties, but we talked over the idea of adoption. She was quite prepared to give up her medical career, so I knew that this was no whim on her part. The more we discussed it, the more obvious it seemed. In the morning I went to the authorities and got the papers to fill in. Adoption isn’t easy to arrange, particularly if you have set your hearts on a certain child, but my wife was very well known locally as a doctor, and I think what the Bakersfield people said must have carried some weight with the adoption agency in Los Angeles. Early in 1965, the formalities were completed, and Trudi’s child became ours.’

Dr. Serafin looked keenly at his listeners, as if gauging their reaction to this development in his narrative.

One, at least, hoped his private thoughts were not written too plainly on his face. It seemed to Dryden that Serafin had acquired the child primarily as an extension of his researches. He might be misjudging the man, but everything he had said so far about his adopted daughter sounded more clinical than paternal.

Four

‘You will have noticed that I have not mentioned the child’s name yet,’ said Serafin, looking steadily at Dryden. ‘I shall explain why. It was an unusual one for a girl: Dean.’ He spelled it. ‘To tell you the truth, neither my wife nor I particularly liked it. Whatever Trudi’s reason was for choosing it — wasn’t there a Hollywood cult hero of that name young people of the fifties revered? — we accepted that it would have been psychologically damaging to change it when the child became ours. But after a year, before she started her formal education, we embellished it a little by calling her Goldine, which she liked.’