Hitler Made Me a Jew (9 page)

I opened the door, and he gave me a big bouquet. Then my parents came into the anteroom, and I saw the actor's face drop. Only then did I realize he had expected me to be living alone. He didn't think I was that young, and I realized he was old—much too old for me. We had dinner, and he was very polite, but I could tell he was anxious for dinner to end. When he said he had to rush home, I offered to walk him to the subway. We didn't talk on the way, and he hardly said good-bye. I never heard from him again but I didn't regret it because for a moment I had had something to dream about.

When I went to Washington Square College I lived an hour away, too far to go home between my classes. I spent most of my time in the cafeteria on the ground floor, facing the park. Everybody gathered at the table of their special interests, even non bona fide students. I gravitated to the Communist table.

It must have been the friendliest table or perhaps it was instinctive. The people there were always busy organizing fundraisers and dances. They asked me to be an usher at the Fair Employment Rally in Madison Square Garden. This rally was to fight discrimination for jobs because of race. Mayor LaGuardia hugged me at the end of the program, because I had done a good job. They sent me places where I sang French songs for money under the name of Yvonne. I had an intuition about not using my own name and shortly after we had the McCarthy years.

I met Philip in the cafeteria at school. Angelo, a classmate, introduced us. Philip had been staring at me for a long time. Many boys looked at me, and I was used to it. It didn't go to my head because inside I felt alone, and I didn't have many dates. I had noticed Philip. Lanky with dark brown eyes, he looked like a poet. He was also Jewish looking, like Janine's boyfriend, and I liked that. When we first met I didn't know that Philip had seen me sing for the French Club. Later he told me that he had assumed I was a famous singer because I ran out as soon as I was finished singing. He presumed my chauffeur had picked me up in a limousine. The truth was that I could sing in front of a big audience, but I was shy with people. After my singing I couldn't hang around and socialize. Philip told Angelo he would like to meet me. Angelo had proudly said, “I know her. I'll introduce you.” “How do you know her?” “She is in my classes.” “She's a student?” “Yes.”

When Angelo brought Philip to my table and said, “I want you to meet Philip,” I stood up to shake hands, Philip towered over me, and we both felt awkward. Would it be possible, I wondered, to go out with someone as tall as that? I liked him, and, best of all, he liked me. Before that, I usually didn't like the boys who liked me. This was the first time I liked someone as much as I had liked Jean-Marie. He asked me to go to a restaurant with him and his friends. Philip was an art student, and I knew at that dinner that we would become serious. He had a warm smile and regular, white teeth. How extraordinary I thought to meet a person and know he will become your husband.

Or did I know? I knew that I liked him. I went home that first night, filled with expectations. We met every day after that, and we didn't stop talking. We talked about ourselves, the past, the present and the future. It was pure joy to tell one's weaknesses and shortcomings. It was confession and liberation. We went to Tompkins Square to be alone. There were too many friends around Washington Square. Philip told me about his landlady, who was a blind French woman with vision. Her name was Madame Goutte (in French it means drop). He loved to say
pamplemousse
and he was proud to know that
pamplemousse
was grapefruit in French. I thought it was charming of him. It was good not to rush the kissing. We waited a few days and let being in love carry us. Philip was a war veteran, an ex-Marine, a man, not a boy. I knew that eventually I would have to decide my next move. Then Philip asked me to spend a weekend with him. I thought I would die of fright. This was it. I felt almost nauseated, which is a sign of the importance of the offer. But I didn't jump into Philip's bed until I had made my own decision. Then I spent a long evening at his house; my parents wouldn't have agreed to have me sleep away.

It was a ceremonial event: “The First Time.” Philip's roommate had promised to be away. Philip knew how to prepare company dinner with candles and wine served in long-stemmed glasses. His apartment was in a two-family house in Queens. It was my first visit in Queens. We kissed and kissed, and it all happened naturally with no obstacles. I looked in the mirror, and I couldn't see any sign that someone could tell. Philip lived an hour away, and he took me home and had to return to his house at two in the morning. He kept up this commuting for a year, swearing to keep our relationship private.

In those days to have sex outside of marriage was a sin and I hated the way the boys talked of the girls who had done “it” with them. They called them tramps and once they knew you were not a virgin they called you and pressured you to sleep with them. I didn't want to tell anyone not even my good friends. Later our friends wondered what was really “going on” with Philip and me, but they never knew for sure.

Philip was surprised to discover that I was not as sophisticated as he had imagined. I was innocent and young. I was getting more committed to him, but he was getting cooler and cooler to me. There were signs like his announcing, “I am going to India,” with no suggestion of taking me along. Girls flirted with him at parties, and he let them. I thought he was enjoying it. I didn't like the hurt I felt. I didn't like liking him better than he liked me.

Chapter 14

Important Decisions 1949

I couldn't bear Philip's indifference. I felt mistreated. I sobbed and screamed under my pillow. I felt almost as bad as I had when I was in the Philadelphia room decorated with roses. In Philadelphia, I wanted to throw myself out the window at the sight of the waving American flag. As soon as the image of myself in that room flashed back, I knew I had to take a stand. I would break up with Philip. It meant I would suffer a while, but it would not be as bad as the misery I was feeling then. The moment I was able to think about taking a stand, I was relieved. The boil was pierced. In control again, I told Philip he had to commit himself. Tears rolled down his face. He surrendered. It hadn't dawned on me he might yield, and I felt a tinge of remorse to have trapped him so easily. For a second I considered giving him back his freedom, but I quickly suppressed it.

We were sweethearts again with a clear understanding. I was no longer a victim.

In the college cafeteria, Philip sat at the table where people with lofty ambitions assembled, like George Broadfield III, the most flamboyant and pompous black man there. When he met me, he asked Philip in my presence , “Why do you want to go out with a Russian peasant?” rolling eyes in disbelief. He was outrageous, but he was paying attention to me, and I figured his insults were compliments. The other young men at the table were pale and handsome in black turtleneck sweaters. They were also judgmental and clannish, the opposite of the easy-going people at the Communist table. It took me a while to feel comfortable with this intellectual group. Philip was one of them. He was attending the Hans Hoffman art classes in the Village as well as Washington Square College. He was already part of the real world outside. These handsome eccentric young men shocked me by the way they voiced their outlandish ideas fearlessly for everyone to hear.

George told me, once he remembered I was French, “I am going to France to stay with Aragon. Truman Capote arranged it, and he is giving me names of important people to call.” I was excited: I didn't know anyone who had returned to France in 1947. Also I couldn't believe that I was speaking to someone who knew Truman Capote. (Capote had just published a book.) I was enthralled, even if I knew it was against my values to be courting the famous just because they were famous.

George was homosexual so the rumor went, but I didn't know what that meant when I thought I knew everything. In those days, however, most people were not aware of homosexuality. This was talked about only if you were really ultra-sophisticated. A friend told me recently when we were reminiscing about our school days, “Once my cute cousin, who was then fifteen, came to visit me in the Commons at NYU. George Broadfield the III, who hardly ever talked to me, came over and started talking to him and fawning over him. Today, I would understand that he was flirting, but in those days what did I know? So I didn't pay attention, even though it seemed strange that George should care to talk to my baby cousin—who was he after all? Just a young boy? But then my aunt called and asked me, ‘Who is that person you introduced my son to? I hear your cousin went to a strange party in the Village with a friend of yours. He came home and told us that Leo Stein, the brother of Gertrude Stein, peed in the fireplace—what kind of story is that? Don't you introduce him to peculiar people any more.' I didn't even know that George had invited my cousin to a party at Leo Stein's.”

We had to admit that most of the time there was a grain of truth in what George said. It was just so hard to believe that he really had dealings with all the notorious people he said he knew.

Alfred Chester was as ugly as George was handsome. He stood out because he wore a wig. It was an unmentionable wig in spite of being so obvious. I was too embarrassed to ask anybody why Chester wore the wig and learned about it only later, much later. Chester was a writer. He talked about the characters he created and made them as alive as he was. I was very impressed and I had a premonition that he was going to be immortal.

I respected and admired artists. I transferred my love of the French Revolution to them. Now, in my mind, they were the ones who lived forever. Chester, I thought, didn't even know how great he was. He was so afflicted by his looks that he wasted his energy fighting phantoms, defending himself and compensating because of the way he looked. I knew because he spoke at length about his hurts and how people treated him. And yet, he was right, people did make fun of him because of his wig. Why did he need a red wig? He was a redhead, true, but his wig was cheap looking and flagrantly made with fake hair. Again, it is a fact that in those days wigs were rare on a young person. He had no hair and there was no way he could have gone without a wig then, people would have found it so bizarre. At the end of his life he wore no wig and he looked very fashionable.

I liked him lot, but I couldn't stand him at parties. It was disconcerting to hear him shout obscenities. Lenny Bruce was not yet known, so Chester was the first person I heard using profanities in public. I thought it was obnoxious, even if he was a great writer. Only later when we lived in France and Chester came to stay with us did I really get to know him and love him and his cursing. Anyway in France his swearing was inconsequential, no one could understand it in English.

Alvin Tofler was also in school with us. I didn't guess he was going to become the successful writer he would become. He, too, said he was a writer but he seemed to me too nice, too modest, with his soulful brown eyes and his constantly running nose, and he didn't talk about his characters. Besides he wasn't writing a novel, and he was funny and told jokes all the time.

While Philip and I were at NYU, we continued to go to Tompkins Square Park to escape our friends and keep our love a secret. Only old people and mothers and young children came to enjoy the sun there. We also often took the ferryboat to Staten Island, to hold hands, kiss and talk, watching the Hudson River and the shoreline of Jersey, and on the way back the skyline of New York. He gave me peanuts to eat from his hands and I tingled all over as I grazed his skin that smelled of turpentine. Sometimes we spent the entire afternoon going back and forth without getting off the ferry, and it only cost a nickel each time. We also walked in the Village, and I remember one day when it was snowing, and we didn't stop kissing. It was delicious to feel the snow falling on our faces. It would get wet and messy but we were too busy to care. We went into the doorways where it would be a little warmer and kissed and kissed, then went back into the cold and the snow—drunk with kisses.

I finished college in June of 1949. I didn't go to the prom, didn't get the yearbook. I was sorry later because now I wish I could look at it.

My parents agreed to let me study comparative literature at the Sorbonne. I was anxious to go back and see France for myself again. I had been away six important years. Philip had said he would join me as soon as he finished taking a few summer courses.

I was twenty and obnoxiously pleased with myself. I liked my long eyelashes, which I carefully brushed with Vaseline (I had been told it would make them grow). I liked my long straight hair, which had become fashionable. I had no weight problem, I could wear any clothes I liked. I didn't go shopping because I disliked trying clothes in the dressing rooms of crowded stores. So my mother brought me dresses from Klein's on Fourteenth Street. I kept the ones I liked, and she returned the ones I didn't. I didn't want to be anyone else but me. As miserable as I had been at fourteen, I was contented at twenty. And this was my happy self, returning to France.

Chapter 15

Paris: La Sorbonne, My First Child, Marriage: 1949-1953

My mother came with me to see me settle in France. We went over on an English ship. In 1949, plane fares were expensive, and people took boats to Europe. Those were the days when I would have been ashamed to go to a resort in the Catskills. It would have been tacky, just as I thought it was degrading to dance cheek-to-cheek. My silly self thought these were frivolous and stupid activities—good for only the Capitalists! But aboard a ship, there was nothing else to do but to be social. I loved it. I had to dress up and play games on deck, eat and drink, and I had to admit it was a good life even if it went against my politics. I was on the left and I was for the underdog. In any social situation, for example, on the ship, I always was aware of the servants around and couldn't ignore their humanity, nor could I ignore the shy people or those who were ill at ease. But I enjoyed the show off people, those who told jokes and made fools of themselves to entertain. I was like that myself—a performer.

I met many people who, like me, were going to study in France. Our favorite sport was sneaking from third-class to the first-class section. The third class had a third of the ship's space but it accommodated three-fourths of the passengers. I calculated the price of the tickets and discovered that third-class paid more that the second and first class combined. This information gave us the right, in my opinion to break into those prohibited classes.

It was interesting to see how people formed special cliques on the ship, and I liked to watch the different intrigues that developed during the five-day journey. I had a few illicit meetings myself on deck at night with a young Scottish officer. The crew was not supposed to fraternize with the passengers, but I was on deck looking at the stars one night, and he was there in his white uniform. It was so romantic and he taught me to sing a Scottish song about a gray mare—I was told later that it was an American song. I also had an episode with the son of Anglican minister. He said he loved me and was ready to marry me. He described the countryside where he lived and I thought it was so exotic. I imagined I could be a sort of Jane Eyre at the end of the novel, established and all. We wrote while I was in France and then, very fast, it was over, and we forgot one another.

After six years in America, France seemed quaint and Lilliputian. As if I, myself, had grown huge. My eyes had been changed. And then, little by little, the odors around me brought back emotions of the time when I was small: the scent of French coffee, of Gauloise cigarettes, of red wine, boiling milk, freshly baked bread and the smell of mustiness. There were also the noises I had forgotten: old houses with squeaky floors, street noises of people sweeping the side walks, screams of peddlers and the honking of buses, police car horns, church bells. All these odors and sounds were surfacing back again—I was home.

In Paris, we stayed with my mother's friend, Jeannette, and her husband Philibert. They had a sprawling apartment in a building with a concierge who lived in a cage-like room and had to be awakened at night every time a tenant rang the front door bell. She had the only key. The concierges were important spies for the police in France, and it was best to be on their good side. This was a well-known fact. Some concierges collaborated with the Germans while others protected the Jews who were hiding in their houses. Jeannette's apartment, in the Montparnasse section where we lived also, had been renovated in the late thirties with all the modern comforts of that period.

Montparnasse is the neighborhood of painters and sculptors. Matisse, the painter I loved, lived a few doors away. Several other famous painters had art schools in the same area where young American artists studied on the GI bill. Many of them ate in a small restaurant called Wadja. The more well-known cafes were La Coupole, Le Dome and the American Select. I preferred going to the cafes of the Boulevard St. Michel in the student quarters, before Philip arrived in Paris and changed my life.

Jeannette gave me a room with my own bathroom and told me I could stay as long as I wanted. I was within walking distance from the Sorbonne, and I could take different routes to get there: through the Luxembourg Gardens, a well ordered garden of the royalty, or along smallish streets. I never was bored walking in the streets of Paris.

The hostilities were over, but Paris still showed the strains of war. Electricity was often cut off, day and night. A general strike could stop all transportation at any moment. And yet, at the same time, there was elation and romance in the air. The abnormal has a way of sharpening the senses. I felt lucky to be in France at that moment. The voices of writers were bursting forth to express everything that had been suppressed by the German occupation.

I was beginning to feel like an outsider—an American. Yet I was also sensitive to what I imagined people thought of me. It must have been the feelings you get when you go back to your close family after a long separation—after you thought they couldn't bother you anymore—that you were all grown and free from their judgmental gaze—and then realize you are for them your young former self forever. I recalled that in America, once I had settled with my mother, I felt free and didn't care what people thought. The truth is I didn't even know what people thought. But in France, I was aware of every nuance of criticism leveled at me. People had a battered look, too; there was also the guilt of those who had collaborated with the enemy.

At Jeannette's I had privacy. She was seldom home because she was in the middle of getting a divorce. Both she and her husband were doing it amicably and seemed to remain good friends. Jeannette had lived with us in the Cité Nouvelle before she married Philibert, who was wealthy. His father owned the Cake Beraud factory that produced the raisin teacakes that the English liked to serve at teatime. But the cakes Beraud were much better than the best teacakes I had had in England. As far as I am concerned, they have never been surpassed. Jeannette and Philibert were chic. They radiated ease and magnificence. When I was small I loved being around them. They smelled good and brought fancy things to eat when they came to visit. The Cité gave them a special wedding party after their official marriage. I was not allowed to stay up for it, but I watched everything through the banisters. It was a country wedding literally a la Madame Bovary. Everyone dressed up as a country character: the pharmacist, the doctor, the notary, and so forth. The grownups had a lot of fun studying their parts for weeks in advance. I thought it was not fair that I was not allowed to be a part of it.

Because of her lavish lifestyle and her generosity, Jeannette was a pleasure to live with. She had many friends and treated us all to fancy restaurants and nightclubs. She bought a lot of clothes and gave me all the ones she discarded. She bought Utrillos as if they were prints, she was also considering buying a Picasso. Those were the days when these paintings were affordable. She had worked in the family factory of her husband, and some people said she had saved the business because she was a good businesswoman. When she got divorced, she wanted independence and began to look for a new career. For a while she sold a brand new machine called a magnetophone, which was actually a tape recorder. It seemed then a miracle machine. Later she thought she wanted to be a writer. (Each time she had a new career she had to get the accoutrements necessary for the new job and always the best—the best fountain pen, the best business clothes.)

What I liked best was when she became seriously involved in wearing make-up. Now that peace had come women wanted frivolous preoccupations again. The department stores began to offer free make-up lessons that would help to sell special creams for the face, the eyes and neck. Jeannette bought each new product. She bought perfumes too. I had forgotten how much I liked perfume. Americans didn't know good perfumes—and they didn't even know the difference between cologne and perfume. I was happy to find the favorite perfumes of that period, Chanel #5 and Arpege.

Meanwhile I was meeting people I had not seen in six years. “How you have grown,” they would say, or “Look at your American clothes!” I had to explain, “They are French designs by Dior, and it is called the ‘new look'.” People in Paris had not even heard of it. What an irony, I thought, that these ankle length skirts had not yet reached the streets of Paris, the city where they had been created. The American designers had jumped two years ahead, and copied and manufactured the new look, and flooded the New York market. France was still wearing the short length old clothes of the war years. Yet Philip had said I looked as if I were walking on my knees when I wore these clothes for the first time.

I quickly made friends and had a busy social life. I was in awe that the students at the Sorbonne organized student unions and societies that seemed to me more sophisticated than those we had had at NYU. In France, the students were experienced activists. I have been told many times that the students in France were pro Palestinian. When I was in France in 1950 they might have been pro Algerians but not yet pro Palestinians.

I thought at that period, I wanted to be a nightclub singer, but I had no idea about how I should go about doing it. I was officially registered to study comparative literature, and since I was fluent in English, it made my studies easy. I had minor problems with French, which puzzled the professors because they thought I was French. I said strange names like Zeus with an American accent. There are many things I didn't know how to pronounce in French any longer, which made everybody laugh and me shrink with discomfort. On the other hand, the Americans were discussing Freud very freely, which was not yet part of the popular thinking in France. When I said things like “guilt complex ” “paranoia ” “Oedipus complex,” they didn't know what I was talking about.

Anyway, I felt confused and it was hard to tell people I wanted to sing. I didn't really know what I was going to sing in France. In America, I was successful singing simple French songs, which I couldn't very well sing in French nightclubs.

My love life was also at a standstill. Philip had promised to be true to me, but now that he was, I didn't know if I wanted to be tied down. I was having a new life, and everything seemed muddled. The son of the minister whom I had met on the boat was writing to me, inviting me to meet his family. It was tempting to think about visiting an Abbey on the moors. It reminded me of the nineteenth century novels I loved. I was also seeing my old boyfriend, Jean-Marie, who had been in the war in Indochina. He was no longer the same. He had lost his bloom. He smoked too much. I felt deceitful because I didn't know how to tell him about Philip. I enjoyed his company and his very French point of view. There were other new men interested in me as well. I could have had my pick, but I felt as if I were in limbo.

Finally Philip arrived. He was excited to be in Paris and more passionate than ever. It annoyed me. He told me, “I feel free here—more like myself than in New York.” He, too, was surprised at the small size of everything; he thought everything was amusing especially “these little cars,” he would say. The freer he was, the more repressed and uncomfortable I became. I was self-conscious by his display of affection, which was not usual with him. In France, people kissed openly everywhere. That was the French way, but I didn't like it when Philip did it. I was all mixed up; I didn't know who I was or what I wanted. Meanwhile we made love all the time. I didn't use my diaphragm because it never fit properly. I had been told when I had gone, for the first time, to get it adjusted, that I was not built for a diaphragm and it would be difficult for me to use one. I accepted the situation too readily I suppose. I kept the diaphragm and didn't use it.

It is disconcerting for me now to think of myself as I was then—as if I had been several different people with different desires and too much to choose from. I didn't know what to focus on—what was important for me.

When my period was late I didn't believe that it could have happened to me. Philip kept on being his cheerful self, loving France, his classes (he was enrolled in the doctoral program at the Institute of Art and Archeology), speaking French, and I was feeling disenchanted with myself. I couldn't sleep. I could hardly eat. I couldn't concentrate. I wanted to be with Philip, and when I was with him I couldn't stand it. At night particularly I had anxiety attacks. Philip lived in a furnished room two flights up on the Boulevard Raspail, a few blocks from my room on Boulevard Montparnasse. At three in the morning with a coat over my nightgown, I would rush out and throw pebbles at his window to have him let me in. I slept only if I was near him. What if I was pregnant? Philip didn't worry. He could sleep. But I felt the anxiety I had felt when I saw my mother disappear from my horizon when I was on the boat going to America. I knew this was another turning point. I had to take a stand, and I wondered if I were going to regret my choice again.

When my father came to Paris to visit me, he thought I looked poorly. He didn't like the bluish circles under my eyes, and he took me to a colleague of Dr. Carton. The doctor was pleasant, he asked about my student life, what I ate, and what exercises I did. He said that I was anemic and told me to take showers—baths were too tiring (one didn't take baths in those days of electric shortages when water was heated with electricity). He also told me to nap in the afternoon and to eat bland foods. “There is nothing wrong with her,” he told my father. “Go home and don't worry.” My father went back to New York reassured.

There was nothing wrong with me, why was I feeling so rotten? Was I pregnant? I had a rabbit test, a modern procedure. It took an eternity to get the results. The test was positive. I went out of my mind. I couldn't understand what had happened to me. I was too young to have a baby—I saw myself recoiling into a nonentity. My future, my fame, everything was crumbling. I was feeling nauseated. Abortions were illegal in France. I didn't know where to turn.