War and Remembrance (32 page)

“Yes, she’s Jewish.”

“Mmmmm!” The sidewise look and a pull at the beard expressed concurrence with a naughty erotic taste. “I gave her your letter. Here’s an answer.”

“Thank you, Jean. How are the other journalists doing?”

“Desperately bored. Drunk all day. In that respect I could envy them. I’m going to report now to your minister. They’ll probably come out in March or April, the way the negotiation is going.”

Slote locked his door, ripped open the letter, and read the yellow sheets at the window.

Dear old Slote:

Well, what a marvelous surprise! Your nice Dr. Hesse is having a cup of tea out in the lemon house with Aaron while I hammer this off.

First of all, I’m fine and so is Louis. It’s crazy, how comfortable we are here. But I feel sick to the heart whenever I think of the
Izmir.
We almost sailed on that boat, Leslie! A German diplomat who knew Aaron got us off and drove us to Rome. I still don’t know what his motives were, but he rescued us from terrible danger, possibly from death. The BBC didn’t make much of the story, but apparently the
Izmir
just vanished after the Turks forced it to leave Istanbul. What in God’s name became of it? Do you know? The news here is so
scanty! I still have nightmares about it. What a world! I saved my baby, and I suppose I should be thankful, but I keep thinking about those people.

We found the house in good shape. Took off the dust covers, put sheets on the beds, lit the fire and there we were! Maria and Tomaso are going on with their work in exactly the old way. The weather is chilly, but lovely once the morning mists lift. Only the internees down at the Excelsior Hotel remind us of the war. They come up here for lunch, one or two at a time. The police are nice about that. Correspondents, wives, a singer, a couple of clergymen — an odd lot, bored to death, mostly staying ossified on Tuscan wine, and full of cranky little complaints, but perfectly okay.

Oh Lord, I can’t
begin
to tell you how glad I am to have your letter! When Dr. Hesse left the room just now, I cried. It’s been so goddamned lonesome here! And you’re in Bern — so close, and working on our release! I still haven’t caught my breath.

Well, one thing at a time. I’d better jump to what’s most on my mind.

Slote, Aaron is playing with the notion of staying on here, war or no war.

Between the archbishop and the chief of police, both old friends of his, he’s being treated like royalty in exile. It’s eerily like peacetime, for us. Last Sunday he was even allowed to go and have lunch with Bernard Berenson in his mansion outside Florence — you know, that old American art critic. Well, Berenson told Aaron that he has no intention of leaving. He’s too old to move, Italy is his home, etc., etc., and he’ll stay and take what comes. Berenson’s a Jew too — of sorts, like Aaron. Aaron came back with this bee in his bonnet. If Berenson can do it, why can’t he? As for me, I’m free to go home, of course.

GRRRR!

Bernard Berenson, I have pointed out, has important, powerful connections. He has authenticated paintings for billionaires, lords, national museums, kings. He may well be under Mussolini’s protection. None of this applies to Aaron in the least. He grudgingly admits that. But he says he too is old. His home too is Italy. His rheumatism is worse (that is true). A long rail trip and an Atlantic crossing could knot him all up, maybe disable him. He’s started what he considers his most important book, “the last panel,” about Martin Luther and the Reformation. The book does begin well, and I must say it’s kept us both occupied.

But what he apparently can’t picture
is
his plight once the rest of us leave. His isolation will be frightful. If he becomes ill, he’ll be in the hands of hostile strangers.
He’s in enemy country!
That’s the brute fact he won’t face. He says Mussolini’s declaration of war on America was a comedy to keep the Germans quiet. He has an answer for everything.

He squirrels and gloats over one sweaty little ace in the hole, Leslie. During some futile little romance in his early twenties, Aaron was once converted to Catholicism. Did you know that? He dropped it fast but he’s never de-converted, if there is such a thing. A friend of his in the Vatican obtained copies of the American documents and gave them to him. Aaron now regards these scruffy photographs as his shield and buckler. It’s a curse that he ever obtained them!

You see, he’s read up on the Nuremberg laws. I’m not sure of the details,
but it seems that a conversion before 1933, when Hitler came to power, makes a material difference for German Jews, or maybe it’s for half-Jews. Anyhow, Aaron says he can handle the Italians; and as for the Germans, why, between his precious conversion documents and his position as an American journalist, he refuses to worry. In short, he has only a few years to live, the one thing he cares about is his work, and he works best here.

I beg you to get word to Aaron to drop this notion. Possibly he’ll listen to you. I have no effect on him any more. He’s apologetic toward me, and in every way tries to mollify me. He’s made me the heir of all his property and copyrights. Aaron’s a prudent man, and quite wealthy. But I remain furious at him, and terribly concerned.

I really don’t know why I should be so upset about Aaron. It’s his life. I came to work for him simply to be nearer you, in those simple lost days when my only worry was a messed-up romance. (God, how young I was!) I hardly knew him then. Now my destiny’s bound up with his. My father’s gone. My mother’s a million miles away in body and spirit, playing canasta and going to Hadassah meetings in Miami Beach while the world explodes. Next to Louis, my uncle seems almost the only family I have. Byron himself is a disembodied idea, an aureate memory, compared with Aaron. I know even you much better than I do my baby’s father.

Omigosh, I hear the voices of Aaron and your Swiss friend, and I have to end this —

Old Slote, my dear, you can’t imagine how GOOD it makes me feel, just knowing you’re close by. You were a fool not to marry me in Paris, when I proposed. How I loved you! Oh, if one only understood sooner that things happen
once
and then roll away into the past, leaving one marked and changed forever, and — well, this hasty maundering is to no avail. Think of something to do about Aaron, my dear, please!

I’m a lot thinner again in the enclosed, and at least I’m smiling. Isn’t Louis cute?

Love,

N

Slote sat at his desk and stared at the snapshot, comparing Selma Ascher in his mind to this young woman in a plain housedress, holding a pretty baby on her arm. How Selma faded! Something was wrong with him, he thought. When one lost a girl, it ought to be like having a tooth out; brief sharp pain, then a rapid healing of the hole. Every man went through it. But Natalie Jastrow, utterly gone, preoccupied him yet like a teasing mistress. The very look of the letter gave him a poignant bittersweet sensation; ah, the passionate outpourings he had received on just such yellow sheets, in this Remington typeface with the crooked
y!
Gone, all gone, that fiery love, that once-in-a-lifetime golden chance!

Though it might be a couple of weeks before a letter could even start back to her through the diplomatic channel, he stopped work and wrote a three-page reply. Pouring out words to Natalie Henry was in itself a real if
frustrating pleasure. Then he wrote a short letter to Jastrow, cautioning him against the plan to remain in Italy. He tore up a draft referring to “new documents” about the danger to Jews that he had come upon. He did not want to scare Natalie uselessly. The minister’s reproof about security before authentication troubled him, too.

But what would be authentication?

S
TEPPING
from an ice-cold shower in a shivery glow, Natalie towelled herself fast and hard at the tall antique mirror framed in pink-and-gilt curlicued wood; turning here and there, feeling thankful for the flat belly she saw. Louis’s passage into the world had left, after all, only a few fading purple stretch marks. Even her breasts were not too bad, not too bad. Meager wartime rations helped! She might be twenty.

Her nakedness struck memory sparks of the Lisbon honeymoon. Sometimes she could hardly remember how Byron looked, except in the few old snapshots she still had. At this moment she could picture his mouth curling in the old beguiling grin, feel the thick red-brown hair in her fingers, feel the touch of his hard hands. What a dry death-in-life this was, what a waste of love, of young years! She bent one knee in the female pose common to the Venus de Milo and Rabinovitz’s girlie pictures. This fleeting thought of Rabinovitz sobered her. “Vain old bag,” she said aloud, wondering how to dress for the unusual dinner guest. The telephone rang. She pulled the damp towel around her and answered it.

“Hello, Mrs. Henry. Dr. Beck here. I’ve finished my meeting at the bank, so I can still get to Florence for the seven o’clock train to Rome. May I take a cup of tea first with you and Professor Jastrow?”

“Tea? But we’re expecting you for dinner.”

“You’re very kind, but dinner guests in wartime are a trouble. Now tea —”

“Dr. Beck, we’ve got veal.”

“Veal! Amazing.”

“The archbishop sent it over for Aaron’s birthday. We saved it for you. Do come.”

“I’m flattered. And hungry! Ha ha! The morning train’s faster, anyway. Veal! I accept.”

The black and white cathedral in slant sunset light, rising out of Siena’s old walls and ascending red roofs, made a fine view through the tall windows of Jastrow’s sitting room. But Italy was full of fine views and virtually empty of Scotch whiskey. The bottle of Haig and Haig which Natalie brought in with glasses, soda, and ice really impressed Dr. Beck. Jastrow explained that
Bernard Berenson had given him the whiskey “out of sheer gratitude at hearing another American voice.” She also briefly fetched in the baby. Dr. Beck cooed at Louis, his glasses misting, his face glowing. “Ach, how I miss my kiddies,” he said.

The Scotch put Jastrow in his vein of jocose persiflage. The philosopher George Santayana had also lunched with him and Berenson, and Jastrow satirized the foibles of both men at table, such as Santayana’s drinking a whole bottle of wine, and Berenson’s hogging the conversation and admiring the play of his own shapely little hands. He was waspishly amusing about all this. Dr. Beck roared with laughter, and Natalie yielded up a few giggles.

She found herself warming a bit to the visitor. She never could truly like or trust him, but his admiration of her baby pleased her, and they owed him their present safety. His square face topped with thick lank blond hair was not unhandsome, and he even had a clumsy humor of his own. She asked him when he had last eaten veal. “I’m not sure, Mrs. Henry,” he said. “I was served veal two weeks ago in Rome, but I think that particular calf had been well broken to the saddle.”

The dinner was a decided success. Happy to be cooking veal again, the housekeeper had made superb scallopini in Marsala. The archbishop had also sent champagne for Aaron’s birthday, and they quaffed both bottles. Natalie drank more than she wanted to, mainly so that Aaron would not get her share of the wine. In his isolation, and perhaps in a suppressed state of nerves, he was becoming a toper, and when he had had too much his mood could turn unstable, and his tongue could loosen. At the end of the meal, as they ate raspberry tarts and ice cream, an exquisite aroma drifted in.

“My dear professor,
coffee?”
said Beck.

Jastrow smiled, dancing his fingertips together. “The Swiss charge d’affaires brings Berenson little gifts. My generous friend shared half a pound with me.”

“One begins to understand,” said Beck, “why Berenson has decided not to leave.”

“Ah, creature comforts aren’t everything, Werner. There are shortages at I Tatti. The place
is
in shocking disrepair. B.B. has spells of depression about it. But he says it’s his only home now. As he puts it, he’ll ‘ride out the storm at anchor.’ “ With an arch and not exactly sober smile he added, “B.B. thinks it will all end well, meaning that your side will lose. Of course, he’s an expert on Italian paintings, not warfare.”

“Dr. Freud might call that wishful thinking,” Beck replied, pursing his lips. “In view of what’s happening in Singapore, and Burma, and the Atlantic, and North Africa. However, whichever side wins, such a prominent person needn’t worry.”

“A prominent Jew?” It was a measure of Natalie’s unbending that she could say this without edginess.

“Mrs. Henry, victory softens harsh wartime policies.” Beck’s tone was calm. “That’s my profound personal hope.”

The housekeeper proudly bore in the coffee service. They watched the steaming brew fill the cups, as though a magician were pouring it from an empty pot.

“Ah,” Beck exclaimed over his first sip. “Worth the trip to Siena.”

“Of course Santayana has no problem, he’s neither Jew nor American,” Jastrow mused aloud, sipping his coffee. “He’s a strange personality, Werner, a true exotic. A fixture at Harvard for twenty years, writing and speaking exquisite English, yet he has retained Spanish nationality. He explained why, but I couldn’t follow. Either he or I had had too much wine. He’s Gentile to the bone, a bit of a Spanish grandee, and not too fond of the Hebrews himself. One could hear that in his subtle digs at Berenson’s opulent surroundings. Santayana holes up in a little cell in a Roman convent, writing his memoirs. He says that a scholar living in one small room near a major library is as close to happiness as a man can come on earth.”