After Auschwitz: A Love Story (15 page)

Things are bursting into bloom here and buds are everywhere. Even my recalcitrant olive is flourishing. I think about going for a walk but Hannah would be angry that I went without her. I wish she didn't worry so much. The back streets of Rome are like a village, particularly in this neighborhood. But they are not. Maybe they just seem that way. I imagine going to the fruit and vegetable store. I can almost see it from our front door. I don't think I'd get lost. I'd go in and feel the melons, go next door and buy some
prosciutto.
But no, she'd be angry. Instead I start thinking about Primo in Auschwitz. It comes into my mind without being asked. At the same time I see a seagull catch an air current and soar by me, coming down on the chimney and looking around with its red eye. Strange things bubble up in my memory, like the old men Primo describes, going to the toilet and having no paper to wipe themselves. How they suffered from the humiliation. Old men like me now.

It was all about dirt. The old men were “dirty Jews.” Their shit ran down their scrawny legs like brown water. Everything was made as humiliating as possible, the dirty rags they—I almost said we—were forced to wear, the clogs with broken soles, the shaving of hair to destroy the lice. All to humiliate them, disgusting Jews in their second childhood, weak as babies, dropping dead from exhaustion during roll call. Hannah suffered those things too. My Hannah, and she was just a child, but she never wanted to kill herself, though of course the thought of it must have crossed her mind.

One of her friends there ran into the electric fence. Another tried to escape and was hung in front of all of them. Actually, she—I think her name was Ella—defied the hangman by putting her own head in the noose and stepping off the platform. Robbing them of a victory. How different from the poet who put her head in an oven after turning on the gas, with her children in the next room—or my mother in her bed. I want so much to understand, but the suicides still make
me sick. Worse than sick; furious, in a rage. Anne Sexton, for instance. Didn't she go out to the car in which she planned to gas herself with nothing on but a luxurious fur coat? Such a coat might have saved a prisoner's life. Her daughter had to cope with that display every day of her life. I can't manage, I can't do it, can't forgive.

The sun rose so gradually this morning I was almost afraid it wasn't going to come up. It was dark when I got up, with the moon hanging in a corner of the sky, still quite bright.
La lune ne garde aucune rancune.

One thing that is good about geriatric sex is its delicious slowness. It would be good to die that way, like going to sleep after. But I'm afraid I won't be so lucky. That's why people make suicide pacts, I suppose, to be sure—like coming together. It's not the dying that frightens me so much. It's the thought of…of what? In the night I saw shadows in our room and heard something gnawing and skittering inside the wall. It frightened me to the point of wanting to scream. Instead I called Hannah. I felt as though some Eldritch horror was positively coming to get me.

Just before morning is the worst time for my hallucinations—as Hannah calls them. Her doctor told her they're common in cases of dementia. Sometimes I see a shadowy figure approaching the bed. I try to remember that it's probably Hannah getting up to go to the bathroom, but I can't shake off the fear that it's a murderer. If you want to know how it feels, think of Tony Perkins in
Psycho,
approaching the shower. Or the Mother with the knife. How strange for that to come to mind. Little bits of it surface slowly. At first I only remembered that Tony was living with his old mother. Then I recalled with a sick feeling in my stomach, that he had become his mother, that she inhabited half of his mind! My romantic vision of a suicide pact turned into murder. Tony, insanely jealous of his mother's lover, had poisoned them both. No, that was not at all the double suicide I was thinking about but still,
two dead—mother and lover.

Am I jealous of the lovers Hannah might have after I die? Yes, I'm afraid I am. I hate to think of her bringing them here where we started out as young lovers. Maybe I should talk to her about it. Tell her that of course I'll leave her the apartment with the stipulation that she won't bring any future husband or lovers here. Would she honor that? I doubt it. And who am I to ask her anything like that after my years with Claudia?

I wish I had a piercing searchlight that could see into her brain, the way those new machines do, and spy on her thoughts. I could pronounce the names of her boyfriends—she'd had plenty when I was with Claudia—girlfriends too for that matter, and see what parts lit up. But now? The one time I mentioned my painful thoughts, she laughed, reminding me that she'd had one heart attack and might very well have another. Didn't I ask her to take me back so I could care for her?

Elders is what they call us now,
anziani.
As in “respect your elders.” It seems instead of respect we are now the chosen targets for all sorts of crimes. Hannah came back from lunch with her friend Arianne with a particularly egregious example.

Arianne's grandson had called her on the phone late at night and saluted her with “grandma,” a word that makes her quiver with pleasure. She worships all her grandchildren. But she couldn't quite tell if it was Guido or Jacobo. When she asked if this was Guido, the boy said yes. Guido's's voice had been changing for several months so she attributed his slight hoarseness to that or possibly a cold.

They chatted for a few minutes. Arianne thought he might be fishing for a birthday present although she had already given him an anticipatory one, a guitar. Quite expensive too. They chatted for a few minutes—Oh, I already said that and it probably didn't matter that they chatted, except that when she asked about it, he was comfortable talking about the guitar and how he was enjoying the touring band.

Then out of the blue in a tiny voice he told her he'd had an accident. He'd been coming home from a party on the outskirts of Rome with some friends, and the driver had had too much to drink, so he took over. He had himself had two beers but he assured her he felt perfectly alert and what happened wasn't his fault. The car in front of them stopped short and he rear-ended it. Then the police arrived and gave him a breath test. He failed it by a fraction, but when they took him to the station and let him take it again, he passed.

“What? You're at the police station?”Arianne was aghast. “Did you call your parents?”

“They told me that I have only one call. So I thought…”

“Of course,” Arianne said, secretly thrilled that the boy would trust her to help him. “But I don't understand; why aren't they letting you go?”

“It's complicated, Grandma, the people in the Audi were foreigners. Their insurance will cover the damages, but the Hertz company insists on being paid back before they leave the country. The judge said he won't release me until they receive the money, and if I don't get it, they'll have to keep me overnight with the common prisoners.”

Arianne felt she was out of her depth, so she called her husband who asked to speak to someone at the station. Michelle, a well-spoken man who said he was the public defender got on the phone and patiently confirmed what the boy had said. The public defender said he was making every effort to keep the accident and the “impaired judgment” off Guido's record. He thought that the experience had already “taught him a lesson.” He concluded by asking who would be taking care of this; the money, $2,400, was needed immediately. Could they manage?

“Of course,” Arianne's husband said, and the public defender told them step-by-step how to wire money from a store
in centro.
In the center. He gave them the name, spelling it out carefully, “E as in Edgar, D as in Dan, G as in …” Then
the last name and the number. “Be sure not to mention what it is for,” the public defender said. “Don't mention the impairment, just say it is a loan to a friend.” He ended by leaving the number where he could be reached and promised to call back promptly. He promised that Guido would be released that afternoon.

Oh no, this is no good. I can't expect you to get excited about people you don't know. And besides, it is all a lie. It wasn't Arianne who answered the phone, it was me, though Hannah had told me to let the answering machine pick up. I answered the phone because I was bored and couldn't think of anything to write in my journal. The “boy” that called was pretending to be Hannah's nephew, Guido. He was visiting from Florence or was it America? From the moment I heard his voice, I was confused. It didn't sound like anyone I knew. But I often forget what people sound like now, and I wanted to manage this conversation really well to show Hannah I was still capable. So I chatted enthusiastically about Guido's music with him. When he told me about his accident, rear ending some tourists from Lebanon, I was first in shock and then lost in the flurry of detail. The main thing I gathered was that it wasn't his fault, that he was in jail, and that he needed money quickly.

I panicked. What would Hannah do? For a moment it crossed my mind that he was too young to drive, but then I forgot it. If he was calling like this he must have gotten a license since we saw him last. To be honest, I hadn't paid much attention to him when he came over for tea one day with his mother to visit with Hannah. I tried to keep my attention focused on Guido's problem. It all hinged on money which is one of the things I find hardest now. Was it twenty-four euros he needed or twenty-four hundred? By now the man who called himself a public defender had gotten on the phone and gone over the whole story. It was the bigger sum—a mistake would have been unfortunate. The point seemed to be that Guido needed it
right away or else his failure in some test, a breath test I think, would be on his record forever and ever. Where would I get the money? I was searching for my key with the idea of going to the bank with Hannah's bank card—she'd taken mine away—and explaining the whole thing and persuading them I needed to use her card, that it was an emergency. I was waiting for the elevator outside our front door when Hannah came back.

““What are you doing?” she asked me, then she answered herself. “Were you coming to look for me again? I told you I'd be home in an hour and its only forty-five minutes. Come, let's go inside and have some tea.”

I babbled out my story, tripping over my tongue, feeling completely mortified.

“Oh Bubbi, can't you see it's a scam? And what a cruel one.” I hung my head. “Didn't you remember that he's only fifteen, that he has no license?”

“I almost did … but then …” I felt as if I were about to cry. Was this the same man who had directed movies and given lectures to students?

“Never mind, then.” Hannah said kindly. “It was such an inventive scam that I'm sure a lot of people would have been taken in.”

“If I were still twenty I would have known. At eighty-eight the mind doesn't function in the same way.” I waved away my age with an elegant flick of my wrist. I wished she'd stop looking at me so pityingly. We went inside and she made me a cup of chamomile tea.

“If I were still twenty,” I repeated, “I would have been more alert. It was the word ‘uncle' that did me in.”

“Of course it would. Family—what is more important?” she paused and I saw the faraway look she has when she is thinking about her novels and trying out a scene or a bit of dialogue. And it
was
amazing how inventive this scam was. It was like something that might happen in a novel. Full of intense emotional drama.

A little later, I was reclining in my chair under a throw when Hannah handed me the paper. “Don't brood, Renzo. It's bad for digestion. Nothing happened after all; we're lucky. But in the future …” I could hear her pausing. She had wanted to urge me to remember something, but she wasn't sure I could. “I'll write down some questions you could ask. If anything like this happens again. Above all, don't lead with information. Let them tell you.” She kissed my head and took the tea things into the kitchen.

I spread the paper on my lap and studied the photo of a big ship lying on its side. Actually it may have been a picture of something else, but I'm sure it was something that could start a novel. In the case of the ship, the press made it into a theatrical with the cowardly play boy resembling Berlusconi and the upright sailor like our head of state, Monti, who told the fleeing captain to get the hell back on the ship. We love struggles between good and evil. It must be something genetic, taken in somehow with mother's milk. Look at the Americans now, ankle deep in moral mud with their ridiculous candidates bellowing and roaring their love of Jesus while committing every possible sin. I love the recent story in which the newspapers excuse a former senator's affair because, after all, he asked his wife for permission to have an open marriage.

Wait a minute—didn't I once try to get Hannah to do that with me? Put her on a starvation diet with just enough to keep her alive. Is it possible the Muslims have the right idea? Every wife has to have equal time and attention. I'd like to interview some of those wives! Even young and strong I doubt I could have done it, and I don't mean just the sex.

Still, if it were customary to have several wives I could have moved Claudia right in without Hannah's being able to make much of a fuss. Once in Paris, I was attending a conference on film, memory, and history and went to a panel discussion of
Guests of the Sheik
by Elizabeth Furnea. At that time I was rather taken with doing a film about harem life. I loved the
idea of all those women lounging by baths, like the odalisques in the paintings of Ingres, who was attracted to the sensuality of all that lovely flesh. Furnea found that, contrary to our Western prejudice, many of the women enjoyed their harem life, particularly the opportunity to gossip and go on outings together. Raising their children together apparently relieved much of the isolation of family life in the West. And of course the sheik took care of them when they were sick or grew old.