After Auschwitz: A Love Story (4 page)

“Oh, for heaven's sake, stop,” she moaned, kissing my face. I had the weird thought that she wanted to bite me in the throat. That she was swinging from love to hate.

“But why Claudia?” she asked. “She's the sort of woman we used to make fun of. Not an idea in her head, just big boobs to redeem her. When you chose her for those body shots in your film we laughed about it together, and then….”

I was getting impatient and wanted to get back to sleep. But I knew she was suffering and I thought she had a right. Besides, though she seemed rational, I knew that when she was alone again, she'd fall apart and start castigating herself, certain that she had no chance of winning me back, that I was angry.

“I need you both,” I said wearily. “I don't want to loose either of you. You know that. Now go back and get some slee
p. If your friend wakes up and finds you gone, she'll worry.” She dropped her hands and pulled away peering at me in the moonlight like an angry ghost. “I'm not mad at you. It's just a lapse. Everyone has them once in a while …
ogni tanto puo succedere.
” I stressed the “once in awhile.”

After she left I thought about how it often happens that when we are most frantic about losing love, we do just the thing calculated to irritate or even drive away the loved one. Write the letter, send an envoy, call up on one pretext or another. Hannah was no different.

When she first found out about me and Claudia—which was just after we'd bought a vacation home on the beach at Forte de Marmi—she was driven mad by the idea that I took Claudia there and that I had stopped making love to her, Hannah, because Claudia provided better sex. She would sit on the sofa in provocative poses or I'd find her in bed in a tight corset or lacy underwear with a slit at the crotch.

“Why do you wear this silly thing?” I asked her annoyed that she was ruining the spontaneity I prized. And she started to cry. When I mentioned this to Claudia she rebuked me for humiliating Hannah. And of course Hannah was right, in a way. Claudia
did
give me another kind of sex. Sex that had no strings attached, that wasn't a declaration of eternal love or even of love that was going to last until next week. It was just a good fuck with an easy-going woman, whereas sex with Hannah involved recriminations, tears, and always a nagging sense of guilt that would make me review all the things I had done for her and how I would always love her.

“Why are you leaving me?” she asked over and over.

“I'm not leaving. I want to live in two houses that's all. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want you both. That's just how I am.”

This was the era of my power over Hannah. All her being was concentrated on bringing me home. Before, she had always
been loving; now she had a sort of desperation that made her eyes shine and her cheeks redden. I liked the way, when I called to tell her I wanted to see her, she dropped everything, even threw people out of the apartment. I hated myself for indulging myself this way but I was virtually addicted. I kept telling her to forget me though I knew she couldn't.

I am still fascinated by splits between kindness and hate, whether among Hannah's villagers, soft-spoken American Southerners, or myself. I used to try and talk to Claudia about this.

“Of course people are capable of both,” Claudia snorted, “why do you worry about such things. Don't be naïve. Aren't there enough things to worry about? Wait until you are kidnapped like Aldo Moro.”

Claudia was obsessed by his capture. Every night she was glued to the television while talking heads described the position the government should take. Should they negotiate with the
Brigate Rosse,
pay them what they asked, or should Moro himself urge them to stand firm and if necessary die a martyr? When he was assassinated she was horrified. I think she was convinced it was an elaborate game of chicken.

Now that I'm nearly ninety years old, I wake up in the late morning when the sun enters directly and I'm not sure where I am: in her old apartment or mine. For a moment after waking up, I'm not sure. But then I take ownership again of the terraces loaded with flowering plants, pots of geraniums, huge soft ferns, cacti, and the view over the city, the rooftops. I watch the gulls circling, crying out like children, or sometimes like cats in heat on a summer night. A gull has laid her eggs on the jutting roof just below us, protected by a raised drain.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asks from the terrace door, “I didn't know where you were.”

“Did you think I had vanished, flown away?” Jumping off the terrace does have its attractions, doing away with myself before I lose the ability to remember.

A week later the eggs hatch and three fluffy balls of gray tumble over each other, trying to walk on the curved roof tiles. I can watch for hours, feeling the warmth of the late spring sun on my back. The parents take turns flying off, spreading powerful white wings and returning with food that they regurgitate for the little ones, who signal their hunger by pecking at their parents' bills.

I'm as fascinated as if I were watching some earth-shattering event: the pope at Easter on the Vatican balcony addressing the crowds. I stare as a small snake emerges from the parent's craw and is swallowed by the least vigorous of the chicks. He can't quite get it all down and one of his siblings grabs the end and swallows it until only the tip is showing. The game continues until finally the stronger one succeeds in getting it all in.

I fell some months ago and broke my hip. There were complications and I found myself condemned to my bed for two months of hell. Who could have ever imagined that reading would take so much effort? Our attic apartment was packed full of books. In the little room that opens onto the first terrace, they run from floor to ceiling—all the English classics, Dickens, Scott; the French, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Rimbaud, Becket, Sartre. My eyes stop at Sartre's
Nausea
—that would describe pretty well the sick state of my soul. In past days, which I can now hardly remember, I would dip into it just to show myself my basic healthiness.

Hannah says our early married life was too calm for me to tolerate—like a peaceful lake. There is some truth in that, particularly when I was young, but she doesn't seem to realize how much of myself I had to submerge and leash. She had experienced the worst human beings can do to each other.
How could I subject her to petty squabbles? I feel now as if I am coming undone, part by part. My eyes tire after a few minutes and if I leave a book for a few days, I don't remember who the characters are.

Hannah cares for me exquisitely these days but I sometimes hear her on the phone with her friends, speaking in a funereal voice.

“Yes, it is so complicated now. My husband isn't well, poor thing. He broke his hip you know. I can't leave him alone.”

Sometimes she can still be playful as a kitten. My old friend Ernesto came over for lunch with his new wife, Elena, and Hannah cooked her mother's pancakes—something between a latke and a quiche. What impressed me was how she sang in the kitchen and how strong she looked, carrying the heavy bowl of soup and then afterwards digging out the gelato in big chunks, ignoring their insistence that they couldn't eat another bite, not pulling away from me when I put my arm around her and patted her thigh.

After three glasses of white wine I don't feel eighty-eight. I see the young wife studying me. She knows our story from books that each of us has written, films we've made, gossip in the news, and she looks as if she is trying to figure out what attractions this old coot has, could have had. I stare into her eyes, mine still a penetrating green, or at least after the wine I think so…windows of the soul. I slap Hannah's thigh again. Elena asks about my film,
Journey into Madness.
I tell her I saw the girl's journal introduced by a French psychoanalyst and immediately felt drawn to it for a film. This analyst had saved the girl and sent her to school to study medicine. When the analyst died, the girl killed herself. She needed a lot of love.

“I was a laureate in medicine myself,” I tell the young wife. “Then came film and poetry. I didn't want to give up making films, but when I turned eighty no one wanted to give
me a job anymore. It was too risky. No insurance company would insure the film. What if I died halfway through? No, just like that I was finished.” I pause, hearing the self-pity in my voice. “Well, life goes on. We can fight aging to the best of our powers … as Dylan Thomas said: ‘Do
not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light.'”

I can't stop trying to interest the young wife. She has something sensual about her mouth that attracts me.

“Every morning,” I tell her, “I go to my bookcase and take out a book, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or, better still, one of the metaphysical poets—John Donne writing sonnets in his coffin—and read a couple of pages. Let it settle in my mind as a keynote for my day. These are all books I have read before, of course.”

“Oh,” she says politely, as if I am a new animal in the zoo—one of those bears with matted fur and bald patches. I must say I still have a full head of iron-gray hair, and I cover my old bones with a good suit from Armani, the one luxury I permit myself besides my daily tub of gelato.

Elena is interested in the fact that I moved back in with Hannah after her heart attack. “It was time,” Hannah laughed. “After so many years apart. Now it's a backward race to the finish line. Who will arrive first? I know it was hard for me to return to consciousness when I had my heart attack,” Hannah says, “I was in such a deep, still place. I lost the ability to talk for a week. But now I am glad.”

Glad probably isn't the right word. Part of the truth is that she is afraid to go too far from home now, always watching for the telltale symptoms.

I am becoming obsessed with aging; I feast on others' misfortunes—wanting I suppose to prepare myself for whatever comes next. I heard the news of another old friend's illness, Lucian. I hadn't seen him in years—since Hannah had quarreled with him over some gossip she had repeated about his family. Though Hannah and Lucian had once had a deep
friendship, both of them were too stubborn to make the first move to reconcile. I had a fantasy of making peace between them while there was still time. He had multiple infirmities, more serious than mine.

Adolescence prepares our parents for our departure, disease—the more painful the better—readies us for death. Fine thought, but still I can't imagine the world without my consciousness. I am furious at the idea of it going on without me. Horrified and furious! I can't understand how some people can throw a farewell party, invite all their friends, and then retire to their room with a deadly cocktail or a gun.

I wondered how Lucian was taking his decline and decided to visit him. I called a taxi and asked the driver to come up and help me down. I chose a time when Hannah had gone out to the market on Campo dei Fiori and was going to meet a friend for coffee before coming home. Sitting where she could look at the piles of glowing fruits and leafy vegetables, cheering herself with plenty.

In the taxi, I recalled my last visit with Lucian—him telling Jewish jokes and laughing at them, playing up his Brooklyn roots while his wife Gabriella sat quietly, every inch an aristocrat, with the slight curl of an ironic smile. I had taken him for granted, I guess, thinking that he'd always be there so I didn't have to hurry. But I realized in the taxi that he was probably the only one still alive of the filmmakers who left Hollywood for Mexico to escape McCarthy.

He and my poet friend George were gone ten years, hiring themselves out as carpenters. When George came back to the States, he won a Pulitzer Prize. Lucian came to Rome—he couldn't film anymore except under a pseudonym—and married Gabriella. He liked to tell how her shrink had said he was the best of her suitors. He was very handsome in a Jewish sort of way, dark wavy hair, full lips. I should have taken a tape-recorder and recorded him—last of the old Reds. Reds on the black list. Where did all that fire and passion go?

I got such a shock when Lucian opened the door and stepped forward to embrace me. A wool watch cap on his head, his face grizzled. Well, he's an old man and his head gets cold, but then I saw the open bathrobe with a bag of urine dangling between his legs and a white slice of diaper. We talk. He insists on pushing his walker down the hall to the kitchen and bringing a glass of wine.

“Let me do that,” I beg him, walking behind him. Wondering whether I could hold him if he falls. He condescends to let me bring in a bowl of olives and some napkins. Gabriella is depressed and he's not sure she'll join us. But she does and she is wearing a beautiful Chinese robe. Holding her elegant head high, arms outstretched to greet me. I've brought her a catalogue of the Pre-Raphaelite show.

Lucian's doorbell rings and to my surprise it's Ernesto and Elena. Gabriella looks at the pictures while Lucian monologues about his life to the young wife. I'm jealous—I thought she was just interested in Hannah and me. Is she going to be promiscuous then, collecting old codgers for some project of hers—Communists in the Forties? Reds on the blacklist? Lucian is wearing a hearing aid and can only hear me from the left side. Gabriella tries to comment occasionally on the paintings but he ignores her. She shrugs.

“He can't hear me anymore,” she says with a note of desperation. No wonder she spends much of her time in bed.

Back home the gulls are circling, giving their sunset calls. I love the inexorable progress, the same year in, year out, from the blue-green elegant eggs kept warm by mother and father in turn, to the newly hatched chicks stumbling when they try to walk on their big black feet; later, the adolescents unfolding their wings for practice, not yet aware of their power. And then one day they take off on a favorable current.

But what I'm really jealous of is that they have no foreknowledge of death.