After Auschwitz: A Love Story (18 page)

It's odd, having lived with Hannah all these years, that I never saw Lanzmann's famous film,
Shoah.
But maybe I didn't need to. I lived with it. The last survivors, like Hannah, are dying out. What will happen then? What will happen in this new century? Will the memories get fainter and fainter as
they pass to the children of survivors and then to the grandchildren?

We know several children of survivors, some very neurotic, others less so. Most are struggling with anxiety and fear. Some project it forward onto their children. I look at the photo of the Asian women. One of them said that she was afraid she would be depressed but that she had found the audio commentary unexpectedly inspiring because of the way the prisoners helped each other. Primo Levi wouldn't have agreed. He said the prisoners had one aim—to preserve and consolidate their privileges vis-a-vis the weaker ones. Isn't this what is happening today in our country? The rich grind down the poor who are in turn indignant that the poorest among them may get something they don't deserve. Hypocrisy flourishes along with religion.

When my eyes tire, I listen to
Slumdog Millionaire,
the novel that was made into a film that won an Oscar. The author compares the slum dwellers, the garbage collectors, to the prisoners of the camps—they too try continually to consolidate their position vis-a-vis the poorest of the poor. She follows the life of one of them who arouses envy in his fellows, who in revenge accuse him of a crime he didn't commit, ruining him, perhaps sending him to jail for life.

Primo, though I didn't know him well, was an admirable man. He pointedly tells how when he found a pipe leaking water, he shared it with his best friend but not with a third because the water might not have been enough for three. The story is a beautiful mix of generosity and calculation of what was necessary to survive. Still, Primo, seeing his dehydrated third friend feverish, dragging himself along with caked dried lips, felt ashamed and questioned the morality of what he'd done. Eventually his friend discovered traces of water on the pipe. Afterward when they had both survived, their friendship was never the same. My own feeling is that for each who shared a last piece of bread, there were many who refused to
share, even if they themselves had enough. Human nature may be worse than we think.

I am depressed. If I weren't, I'd remember that there are plenty of examples in Primo's books of people who helped him at considerable risk, like the German who left him extra food every day at the fence where they were working. Or the illiterate man—I can't remember if he was a guard or a prisoner—who copied out Primo's letter to his mother and sent it. Hannah—saying I tend to remember the bad things and forget the good—would remind me of the guard in Auschwitz who let her lick his plate, always leaving some small scrap. She wasn't formally religious but for her, he was God!

Thinking about human nature, I am reminded of a rather sick game called Who Will Hide Me?” I don't remember exactly how it was played, but the question was which of a player's friends would betray him and which would hide him. I wondered what I would do. I was fairly sure I wouldn't inform on anyone, but to risk my neck to hide someone was another story. Right away I hear myself protesting that there is no hiding place either here or in Todi. The outbuildings have no cellars or attics. Then too there is my age—though you would think that being nearly finished would make me more willing to help. It embarrasses me that despite my years of conscious effort, I still often feel like a victim.

My mother, brought up in luxury, always portrayed herself as a victim struggling to stay alive, endlessly complaining that her own mother neglected her and moaning that if it rained and she wet her feet, she might die. But you don't drown in a rainstorm, even without an umbrella.

At this point I think I have to say that I'm distorting the facts. I said I found my mother unconscious. I think I remember feeling a lot of pain and then I remember feeling nothing, not even wanting to cry at her funeral. I was angry; very, very angry. So angry that I killed her off. That's right, she didn't really die when I was eight, she lived (the way Primo's mother
did) to cause me years of pain. She lived as you might expect someone who had been an inmate of the camps to live—in constant fear. As if she had suffered horribly. I amplified every danger just the way she did. Rain, minor illness, staying up too late—everything. And like her I tried to justify doing that. I kept wanting to compare myself to other victims: wasn't I in some way a survivor even though not physically harmed, starved, or beaten? Maybe if I had strap marks, bruises, scars people would—would what? Love me, pity me. Now I can almost laugh about it. I still have my regressive moments. Like Phillip Roth lying on his analyst's couch complaining, transformed into the breast he wants to suckle.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened but as I began to have some success with my films, I became less and less a wallower. Subtly I flipped into being the one who takes care. Hannah gave me a great opportunity to do that. Caring for her all those years, I was a real mensch, or I like to think I was.

But I fell down. I was a schmuck, I made life difficult for the one person I loved most. I didn't make Claudia happy either. But when Hannah had her heart attack, I thought of it as a second chance to be caring. I asked her to let me come back home. She did, she let me. She was afraid of having another attack. I went with her everywhere, and I think she liked it. Then, ironically, I began to have trouble with my memory.

Now instead of my caring for Hannah she is caring for me. She does it with kindness but also wry humor and sometimes a glint of something else—a sense of her own power. Like anyone else she can get tired and cross.

My journey home started when I was visiting Hannah at the apartment after her heart attack, when she told me she was afraid of going too far from home and the nearby hospital. She told me that her doctor wanted her to have one of those devices where all you have to do is press a button and you get help.

“But what if I can't press it? What if I pass out?” she wondered.

“Maybe you should have someone here with you,” I ventured.

“I couldn't stand to have some stranger wandering around while I'm working. There aren't any doors to close. It was hard enough for me when you were with me,” she paused. “But then you had your own writing to keep you busy and you used to work outside on the terrace when the weather was good.”

“I could do it again,” I said. “I still like the terrace. If I'm not working, I could feed the gulls, water the plants. You might think of me as an extra pair of hands.”

“Don't be silly, it would make you frightfully nervous to be looking out for me all the time, noticing if I looked pale in the morning, freezing like a pointer dog if I put my hand to my chest, if I cough. Scolding me when I forget my pills. If you felt suffocated before—that was what you said, wasn't it? Suffocated? You must have been with Claudia already. I sensed something. I thought that if I cosseted you enough, pampered you, you'd turn back to me. But you only felt more constrained.”

That's exactly how it had been. She made a quiet nest for me, gave me everything she could.

“I'd promise not to fuss,” I said. “I'd just be there when you need me.” She smiled with her mouth but her eyes were doubtful.

“You really want to come back,” she asked, “for me?”

“For both of us, if you could forgive me. Do you think you could?”

Then a few days later she visited me. “Do you still want to come back?” she asked me. “I thought it wouldn't be right to take advantage of a moment of weakness.”

For answer I kissed her.

It's probably understandable that I tried to minimize the importance of my time with Claudia. I hated to admit to myself that Hannah probably guessed I was having an affair
long before I moved out. During that time she was more afraid than ever of being alone. I travelled a lot but I always called her and wrote to her even when it was only a short trip.

Dearest Hannle hannah panna my love, I miss you, kiss you. The endearments multiplied as I tried to tug free.

After, I moved out, you can imagine how painful that was. It was spring when I left and she insisted on keeping my winter clothes, my wool trousers, my heavier jackets, in a closet.

“Maybe you'll be back by winter,” she said. “We'll be together again.”

Later she confessed that she would go into that closet regularly to smell and caress my things. She kept other things too: ornaments and mementos from our trips. I didn't want her to feel any more bereft than she had to. I didn't want the apartment—formerly ours—to seem empty. She kept the paintings and most of the books. I would come in sometimes and see her dusting them with a big feather duster. And I left her almost all the Limoges plates, and pots from the little kitchen. I kept only what was absolutely necessary. (Claudia was less restrained and had taken with her a generous half of her menage with the dentist.)

Hannah's sister and niece, Leah and Sarah, came to visit during the early months of our separation. Leah was horrified to find that we weren't living together. Like a child with estranged parents, she kept trying to draw me back into the family circle. She was sure Hannah had done something to “lose” me. Hannah hadn't told her about our parting, guessing that her sister wouldn't understand.

I didn't want Hannah to be embarrassed or harassed and I visited, took them out to dinner, acted normally insofar as I could and kept deflecting Leah's questions.

“You look as if you're at the dentist's and want to jump out of the chair as soon as you can,” Leah said.

The irony was unintended. I couldn't help smiling. Hannah's sister couldn't figure it out. I did my best, talked
about needing space for awhile, having an important project to finish. Would it have been better to stay away from them? Maybe.

I guess I was trying to show Hannah that living this way was an option. It was possible. She could enjoy her freedom and enjoy seeing me too. I celebrated holidays with her, brought her presents, took her out to dinner, called regularly to check on her. But she was so sensitive. If my tone was slightly preoccupied, if I weren't engaging with her completely, she felt tortured. But how about me? Do you think it was easy for me to see her distress? Now I had to accept that she wanted to give our script a happy ending, even if it arrived only in old age, two ancient people living together again, surrounded by flowers. And here we are.

But where did all that pain go? Back then I often felt how hard it was for her to accept my invitations graciously, though what she really wanted to do was scream at me, plead with me, dramatize her eternal love.

If, for instance, I asked her to out with me on New Year's and then told her I'd be away for Christmas—shorthand for being with Claudia—she would have to keep tight control and not complain or withdraw. I knew that, but I still wanted what I was doing to be out in the open. Was that so wrong? She would withdraw into a hard shell, like a tortoise. Conversation would slow and stop. Eventually I would take her back to what was now her place as if she were a tired child and put her to bed, where, she told me, she would lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling.

There was an article in the
International Herald Tribune
today on drugs that cloud your mind. I used to like to read several papers,
Figaro,
the
Corriere della Sera.
Now it is just the
Tribune
because it is short and easy to get through. I think this was the second time they published an article on fuzzy brains. Apparently if you take both a calcium channel breaker, which I do because of a single event of heart spasm, and a statin, the
combination can turn you into a zombie. The codeine cough syrup the doctor prescribed to keep me from moving around in my sleep can apparently have a similar effect. So which do I chose—a broken head or a fuzzy brain? You'd think it would be a cinch to decide—go for clearing the brain, I mean. But I'm afraid of seriously injuring myself if I throw myself out of bed. I could hit the radiator.

If I'm adding up the pros and cons, I should mention that I dropped my pill organizer on the floor in the bathroom and had trouble getting the pills back in the right order.

“You're just not concentrating,” Hannah says.

Then she is sorry at sounding harsh and offers to go out for a walk with me. We walk in the sunshine over to San Luigi dei Francesi and look at the marvelous Caravaggios, which perfectly fit my mood. Wasn't Christ the supreme altruist? As usual I puzzle over Saint Matthew being chosen by Christ standing ghost-like in the doorway of the room where the men are playing cards. Matthew points to his chest, incredulous at being the chosen one. After you look at it awhile it seems almost as if he is pointing to the man next to him, saying, no, not me, him. No, that's not Matthew; it's what I would do. Matthew grew into the job.

The illumination kept going off. Italians are stingy that way, often leaving it to someone else to put in a coin. Finally, a dapper little man with a goatee, after looking scornfully around him at the crowd pressing against the railing, dropped in a coin. And the lights blazed up. Hannah and I smiled at each other, holding little fingers, and for a moment felt like new lovers, still lovers after all this time.

When we got home I saw that I had misplaced my reading glasses. I had used them in the church to see the details close up. I was sure I had asked Hannah to put them back in her purse; she had been carrying them for me just so they wouldn't get lost. We lapsed into a chorus of recriminations. The mood is broken.

It seems as if every hour I do something which irritates Hannah. I keep track of the days and my plans on my BlackBerry—gift from Hannah, of course. I never was very good at keeping my plans straight and now I'm worse. I can't tell if it is age or a brain filled with plaque, the debris of a lifetime of thinking, gradually returning a man to his animal state, but without the easy pleasure or the knowledge of how to hunt and kill. Even balance and ease of gait, lost. See, I tell myself, I can think well enough. But would I notice if I couldn't?