Inventing Memory (17 page)

After Sim's promises, I scarcely believed him. But I took down the information anyway.

NOTEBOOK

In New York

1 April 1952

Amazing how hard it is to sleep in New York after Lenox. I lie awake all night hearing garbage trucks and wondering if I was mad to sell the house. I get up and look out, trying to see if the garbage men are really segregating our garbage for the FBI, as Papa believes, but I can't see well enough to satisfy myself one way or the other. When the phone rings and nobody seems to be on the other end, I am not thinking so much of Ethan as of the FBI. I suppose I could also come under suspicion for aiding refugees, for being my mother's daughter, for associating with people who associated with people who were said to be anti-American.

Uncle Lee and Aunt Sylvia think the United States may be preparing detention camps for "disloyal" people. I tell them they're paranoid. They tell me I'm a babe in the woods.

"It could happen here," says Uncle Lee. "You bet your boots."

"And they won't execute the Rosenbergs either," I say. "You'll see."

"
You'll
see," says Uncle Lee. "All we need is hyperinflation like in Germany in the twenties, and there'll be Nazis under every bed."

"Under every bed?" asks Sally with a child's earnest literalness.

"What a
punim!
" says Uncle Lee, pinching her cheeks in a way she hates. She cries.

Here we all are, threading our way through history as over a bloody canyon filled with bones. Funny I never felt this way before I had a child.

NOTEBOOK

10 April 1952

Papa and Mama are temporarily back after another groveling visit to

Washington. They tell me stories I can hardly credit. Supposedly, there is a psychiatrist in Hollywood—with the archetypal priestly name of Levi—who is rumored to sell his patients' dreams to the FBI. A former Communist now turned anti-Communist, he's known for being good with writer's block, divorces, and the like—and writers flock to him. Also actors. Sooner or later, his patients all testify as friendly witnesses so as not to have what he calls "career death wish."

Papa says, "Trust no one." He is determined to change the name of the gallery to the White Gallery.

"To mine opinion, anti-Semitism is here again in the guise of antiCommunism," he says. "In Washington the political insiders all say: 'Scratch a Jew and find a Communist.' The reason the Jews in the picture business are falling all over each other to be stool pigeons is that they remember what Hitler did to the Berlin picture business—threw out the Jews and took the studios over for propaganda. These
ganaiven
want to be more anti-Communist than thou to save their necks. If I hear of you going to another one of those damned 'Save the Rosenbergs' rallies, I'll insist you're not my daughter!"

He says that with a straight face, having forgotten that Sim Coppley ever existed! What's Sim Coppley? Merely a dead
goy
. Papa has won!

What a world!

7

Salome

DAYS OF
HOPE, SEX, AND THE
LITERARY
LIFE

1952 and After

An hour in the garden of Eden is good too.

—YIDDISH PROVERB

NOTEBOOK

1952

Met a man. The most interesting man since Val or Aaron. He's a composer, worships Mozart and Whitman and Blake, practices Zen Buddhism, has taught me to meditate, taken me to something called a "zendo," and has a view of the world that at last makes sense. We are here, he says, only to train our souls for the next journey—a kind of spiritual practice. We cannot judge this world or its experiences because we are in training for a spiritual marathon.

We met at a party in Greenwich Village full of writers—Anaïs Nin with her face powdered white (lusting after beautiful Gore Vidal), puffy Tennessee Williams (lusting after beautiful Gore Vidal), drunk and puffy Dylan Thomas groping girls and reciting his amazing poetry, publishers wishing they were poets, poets wishing they were publishers—the usual New York madness of drunkenness passing for the literary life.

He is blond, cool, tall, a Greek god. When he plays the piano, I get so excited I'm afraid I'll wet the sofa. He caresses the keys, sings to himself as he plays—and to me. His name is Marco Alberti. His mother's family were Venetian Jews who moved to Trieste in the period when Joyce lived there—between the wars. They knew Joyce, Svevo, that literary lot. They came to Canada next, then to America. Like me, he is a rootless polyglot—Jewish mother, Catholic father whose family may have been Jewish way back. He feels like the other half of my soul.

He had read
Territory
and was moved by it.

"The crux of the human problem is consciousness," he said. "Shall we go to escape these drunks?"

I vigorously nodded my head yes. We went to the White Horse and talked all night—one of those talks that go on and on because you know it's too soon to go to bed but you can't part. At four in the morning, he took me home. The birds were making a racket in the garden behind the house, and Sally was sleeping in Mama and Papa's room. We ached for each other, but could not, would not, succumb so soon. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was in a house that was being built and there were workmen all around. Marco and I found an alcove and dragged a battered old door across it for privacy. Dream details! Then we threw a sleeping bag on the floor and began to make love. His face was tender, and his cock was so long and hard it had no trouble reaching the inside of my imagination. I realized how many moons it's been since I was touched that way. And then I awoke, missing him.

I will see him again tomorrow—and I am terrified and elated. Not hungry, sleepless, agitated—all the symptoms of that sometimes fatal disease called love.

The last thing I want is to make some man the center of my life again. What's the point of it? It has to lead to trouble. And yet without that spark, everything is flat, stale, unprofitable.

Why is there no one I can talk to about all this? I look at the marriages of my intimates—of Theda, say, Sylvia, even Mama—and they all seem to have made such dull compromises. I want my life
not
to be dull, to continually expand into new territory. Is that compatible with marriage? With love? So much of my education seems to have come from the men in my life. I have used them to learn: from Val about how to bring writing to life, life to writing; from Ethan about being independent, a deer slayer and amazon; from Aaron about the heroism of survival, of witnessing. What am I meant to learn from Marco?

NOTEBOOK

Lenox

12 April 1952

Never got to see Marco that day because Aaron—as if he knew I was falling in love—made a suicide attempt, opened his veins in the tub like an ancient Greek philosopher. When I came to see him in the hospital, he was pleased with himself.

"Those of us who survived were exceptions," he said. "We were not meant to. The point of the Nazi machinery was death. Those of us who lasted were the ones most capable of numbness, not heroism."

He had dropped the lawsuit, he said, and wanted me back—as if it were that simple! I was to forget it ever happened and to bring back his daughter. He needed her, he said. He seemed diminished, dried out, as if the blood he lost had desiccated him. He had absolutely no idea of the consequences of his actions. The whole world is supposed to make up to him for the Nazis' destruction of his soul. But how can we? Don't we have our own souls to consider?

"I was wrong," he said, "to deny you the right to your vision of the destruction of the Jews. I was jealous." Now he says it! Now that his lawsuit has done its damage!

I look into his eyes and see that he is still not well. I feel blackmailed by his madness.

"Let's see how you feel after a while," I say. "Let's not rush things."

Back in Lenox, I'm reminded of how strange
goyim
are! All the years I lived here—Ethan's eccentricity, the townspeople with their
goykopf
ways. Such a relief, after all, to be back in New York, with the dirt, the garbage, the artists, the Jews.

"Under the rug" is the philosophy of New England. Have a beef? Bury it like a bone! Frozen ground, frozen hearts.

Went to visit Sim in the Coppley pie. Sat staring at his stone: SIMPSON COXX COPPLEY, 1878-1933.

Thought about his years, his passion for the Jews—what did we represent to him?—his intuitive understanding that hybrids were the heartiest stock, yet his need to go back to a woman who had betrayed him. Poor weak wandering Sim—meeting Mama on the boat, having tried to flee his roots, and yet being called inexorably back. Is that
all
of us?

And was his philo-Semitism just the obverse of Lucretia's anti-Semitism? And the years he lived through: the gaslight era to the Great Depression, the end of his world of table manners, archery, gentlemanly shooting, and the ladylike suppression of sexual desire—except among the "foreigners."

And here he is, flowering into a weeping cherry—the one I planted at his grave nearly twenty years ago. Can it be twenty? No—nineteen years. In nineteen years, even a weeping cherry grows tall. If I dug here, would I find his skull, like Yorick's? And what would I find in it? Worms?

The riotous blooming cemetery moves me: the blasts of spring rising out of the thawing dead.

What is death like? I wonder, looking at the dappled clouds, the rosy setting sun. Everyone—Hindu, Buddhist, Christian (who knows what the
Jews
believe?)—agrees it is the loss of selfhood. Only, without selfhood, what can one observe, or feel? Is individuality necessary to perception? One with the universal consciousness, can you still observe the beauties of clouds and gardens? Of nature? Or is there no
you
to observe? How perplexing it all is.

Where is Sim? I never knew him at all till he was dying, and then he dropped out of my life like a stone into a deep well.

If only I could write about my family and Sim's family and how these two branches came together: old Wasp, new Jew—or is it vice versa? But as long as Mama is alive, how can I? And do I really know her story anyway? And would she ever tell me? She still believes her mother's credo: "If speech is worth one kopeck, silence is worth two." Nana must be doing well up there in the universal consciousness. With Sim.

Bless them both. Or at least, since neither blessings nor curses can touch them now, bless their memories. May they intercede for me with whoever it is that guides my life. I hope somebody's watching!

NOTEBOOK

17 April 1952

Visiting Aaron in the hospital yesterday, I met another visitor of his—a fellow named Robin Robinowitz, who waggishly introduced himself to me as "a forger."

I was not sure I was hearing him correctly, so I inquired again.

He said: "Some painters paint people, some landscapes; I paint works of art."

Robin is in his thirties, studied art in Italy, speaks fluent Italian, and is very mysterious about what works of art he paints.

"Oh, sometimes I am given assignments. I copy a work and then the owner keeps the original under lock and key." He is sharp-featured, dark, small, very flirtatious.

What the hell—I went back to his studio at Windy Perch, another grand dilapidated "cottage" like the one I sold, and (witnessed by a gallery of jewel-like "Vermeers") slept with him. It was rapturous. Can't decide whether I really like him or whether I'm avoiding what I feel for Marco. Now I am thoroughly confused. Was that the
point?

NOTEBOOK

9 May 1952

A woman with a four-year-old daughter who is having affairs with two men simultaneously does not have an easy life.

But exciting. If the FBI is following me, they're getting their money's worth!

Luckily, Mama and Papa are in California, I have persuaded Hannah from Stockbridge to live here and help me with Sally—and Robin only arrives once a week by train. He stays with an artist friend in the Village, but we go to the Hotel Chelsea for the whole afternoon, then have dinner there at the Spanish restaurant. He is a much better lover than Marco—who, it turns out, is cool and Zen and forever going to some zendo in California to "sit," but Marco has my heart. Together, they add up to quite some man!

My fantasy life has
never
been this rich. Perhaps it was the sense of the fragility of life I got when I saw Aaron with his poor bandaged wrists (going on about the Nazis, the camps, the death machine), but I have never felt so sexy. It is the two men, of course—and my utter lack of guilt about it. Even in Paris, when everyone crowed about free love, I would occasionally be clutched with guilt. But now I feel
everything
is my due. Is it because I am "of a certain age," as the French say, and I realize I don't have forever?

[Salome would have been forty in 1952. From what follows, it appears to be
a very erotic age for women. Ed.]

LETTER FROM SALOME LEVITSKY TO

AARON WALLINSKY, CHESTNUT LODGE,

STOCKBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, MAY 1952

Dear Aaron,

I hope you are feeling more yourself. I was so happy to see you in
Stockbridge and I hope that next time I can bring Sally with me.

I beg you to trust Dr. B. and the other people at the Lodge to shepherd
you back to good health. I know it does not always seem so to you, but
they have your best interests at heart. Dr. B. is really concerned with
you—and not just as a professional. I thinks he believes you have a
contribution to make to this world—and so do I.

Darling, do you have a Beethoven or Mozart somewhere back in your
family tree? A
klezmer
at least? Sally's whole face lights up when she
hears music, and she runs to the Victrola (or hi-fi, as they call it now)
and starts conducting imaginary musicians. Lately I have been listening
to this radio "disc jockey" called Alan Freed, who plays a kind of Negro
rhythm and blues that he calls "rock 'n' roll"—with the pun intended.
Sally claps along with the music and dances and twirls. Nobody in my
family ever had this talent—how about yours? Sally did splendidly at
her Ethical Culture interview. They love her. How could they not? I
know you would rather have her in Lenox, but at least for now, I think
she will be happy at Ethical, which is progressive and artistic and
everything you would want for her. Papa has already promised to pay
the tuition, which is horrendous—almost $750 a year when you include
everything!

Be well, my darling,

Salome

LETTER FROM SALOME LEVITSKY TO

ROBIN ROBINOWITZ, WINDY PERCH,

LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS, MAY 1952

Darling Vermeer,

You left me glowing from within like your Flemish ladies, glints of
light in my eyes like your laughing girl. I love our meetings at the
Chelsea, using up the "day rate," and our early suppers at El Quijote,
getting sick on paella.

You asked me to save all my fantasies for you, and here is
one—though I refuse to tell you whether it is fantasy or real. You will
have to guess, my little forger with the oh-so-clever devil's paintbrush.

I am entering another brownstone on Fifty-sixth Street. In the small
paneled foyer between the inner and outer doors, a Moroccan or Moorish
pierced-brass lantern dangles from a tarnished brass chain. Inside it is
a bluish bulb that casts little blue moons and suns on the tall ceiling and
narrow walls of this hallway. I open the inner door—which is lacquered
blue—and walk up the narrow main stair of the brownstone.

Suddenly I find that I am walking behind a half-naked woman in
high heels. Her high heels are carved of gilded wood, and when I look
closely I see that they are carved in the shape of upside-down erect penises. This is strange, I think, but I follow her, fascinated.

The balls form the base of the heel—where it nestles into the black
silk of the pumps, so that the weight of the woman's body rests en pointe,
as it were, on the stiff glans. I follow these cock-heels, these shoes, this
voluptuous naked ass (clothed only in a black velvet garter belt and blackand-gold stockings), up up up the stairs.

I smell burning sugar, vanilla, tuberose, and jasmine. It seems to
come from between her legs. There is a thrumming of bass strings and
the sound of steel brushes over a drum skin. At the top of the stairs, a
Negro drummer is hitting his snare drum with the wrong side of his
sticks. He is naked except for an African shaman's mask, which chills
my blood—as it is meant to do. As I walk by, he pushes the mask back
on his woolly head, and I suddenly see he has your face.