After Auschwitz: A Love Story (6 page)

Hannah brings me tea. She has a large green shopping bag with her.

“You're going out,” I say accusingly.

“Just to the market. Don't worry.” She turns my arm so that my watch is visible. “Not more than an hour. Back by noon and then we'll go out.” She kisses the top of my head, caresses my hair. I have the impulse to tell her that I might not be here, wanting to frighten her, make her attend to me, watch me, cosset me. I can hear the lift going down, creaking like a freight train.

Late in the war, when I was in the Resistance with my remaining Jewish friends, we were always afraid of not coming back from a mission. I was lucky. Once, I was in the underground with Gabriella after her brother, Primo Levi, had been deported. She was carrying a huge green bag filled with antifascist leaflets. She used to walk all over Rome distributing them. They used her a lot because she didn't look Jewish. Unexpectedly the
Fascisti
closed the station and started to question people on the platform. One of them wanted to look
at what she had, but she said it was a present for her grandmother, and she was so much a lady, so dignified and proud … miraculously, he moved off. Back then, every moment of being alive was a victory.

Sounds of music from down on the street. Looking over the terrace wall I see a procession right beneath me with flags, people singing as they move along Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. There is a float with a woman and two lambs. Lambs—it must be the feast day of Sant'Agnese. On her birthday lambs are shorn and their wool made into the
pallia
the pope gives his archbishops. When I was small before my mother's death, the disaster that ended my childhood, I loved Sant'Agnese, the magnificent baroque church in Piazza Navona. I loved the intricate dance of its curves and the plunging horse plashing in Bernini's fountain in front.

My parents only went to church on special occasions like a baptism or a wedding, but at around the age of seven I became captivated by a book of saints' lives that I found in my father's library. I seem to remember it had a brief forward by Mussolini. By a strange coincidence, Mussolini had been my father's patient as an adolescent.
Il Duce
probably gave him the book as a gift. In a way, Mussolini was responsible for my going into film. My father took us to Switzerland after the Allies landed because he didn't want to be involved in Mussolini's Nazi Republic, and, to amuse ourselves, my brother and I attended a series of lectures by the great director Vittorio de Sico. That was the unofficial end of our medical studies though we stayed in the program for another two years to please our father.

How much of my life was dictated by a wish to please him! To make him proud I think I even entertained the idea of martyrdom for some heroic cause, like the saints in the little book.

Reading the leather bound Saints' lives, I learned that Saint Agnese was killed because she wouldn't marry the king's
son—or was it because she refused to pray to pagan gods? She was beheaded because when she was tied to a stake, the fire wouldn't burn. Though I had no clear idea then of what it meant to be a virgin, I found myself oddly excited at the thought of Agnese being dragged naked though the streets of Rome to dirty her in some mysterious way. But it was Saint Lucie, the one with her eyes on a plate, that particularly fascinated me. How did her Roman torturers get them out, I wondered. If they gouged them with a metal instrument, wouldn't they have splattered? She looked so serene in the picture, and had another pair of eyes still in her head.

At the height of my religious fervor, I begged my parents to let me try out for the boys' chorus, the
voci bianche.
I had quite a good voice … very pure and strong. It wasn't until I was grown and reading about the priests molesting boys that I remembered being fondled by a young priest after Mass. It had bewildered me at the time because I actually liked the priest and looked up to him for his piety. Afterwards
I
felt guilty. As if I had somehow encouraged him to touch me that way. I was afraid something was very wrong with me. I hesitate even now to write it down. Not even Hannah knows about it.

What image of myself do I want to leave? Does it matter? Does anyone really care? If I look myself up on Google, there are three pages of references. At least fifteen of my film posters are displayed. All those sexy films—you can still order them and see them. Sophia Loren, Monica Vitti, Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekbert—I even had an affair with her. A woman that had all of Italy panting. I'd like to suggest that it was the serious aspect of my films that made me so successful, but it is really the more salacious ones for which I'm best known.

I remember the film where Vittorio Gassman comes to terms with being blind. How I wish I'd directed that one. You can't get much more serious than that.

I close my eyes and pretend I'm blind. I touch the edge of my desk, feel the smooth wood, white ash, to lighten my
moods. The blotter is soft, no hint of its color. I infuse it with a deep blue. Then my hand moves to the cup where I keep my collection of pens and pencils, saved from years of travel. The Hotel Waldhaus pen has a particularly chunky body and there is the cushioned pen I got for my arthritis, but the others are indistinguishable.

I move my hand to my Luxo lamp. Perched like a small inquiring animal, its light is unavailable to me now. I think the first thing I would get if I lost my sight is voice recognition software. They say it isn't difficult, though the computer must be trained to recognize where words stop and start. You must be very patient and patience is not something I'm good at.

After a half hour of not being able to see, I stop. For a few minutes I actually feel blessed to still have my sight. I look out my window, gulping in the visual splendor of Borromini's bell tower in the distance. I should do that every morning instead of drinking coffee, which gives me stomach pains and makes my heart race.

For a moment I forget what day it is. It feels like Monday. The day housewives used to wash their clothes. But when I look at the calendar, I see that the days are marked off until Thursday, so it isn't Monday at all. It's Friday. It just occurred to me that when I talked about pretending to be blind, I should have put it in the past tense because how could I have written it down with my eyes shut? I am finding dates and tenses and calendars difficult. I even worried that I had gotten the dates wrong in my page about finding the book of saints' lives. When did Mussolini come to power exactly? I don't know anymore and I used to be so good at dates.

“Renzo,” Hannah taps me on the shoulder and I look up hoping she has come to kiss me, to encourage me to face my day. “Do you remember that the
studentessa
with the big eyes is coming to interview you today?”

“I don't have any students anymore.”

“I know, I know, I was just joking but she certainly acts
like one. You know who I mean—Ernesto's young wife, Elena. She has a project to do a video interview.”

“Oh yes,” I say but really I don't remember saying the young wife could come.

“On aging,” Hannah adds kindly. “You should change your shirt. Wear the blue pinstripe. It brings out the color of your eyes.” She goes to the closet and brings me the shirt and a fresh pair of khakis. Then leaves me to change. As though on cue, the doorbell rings just as I am zipping my pants.

“I'll get it,” Hannah calls. You go into the
salòtto.”

I wish she wouldn't tell me everything. I can still decide the best spot to be interviewed. I'm not that far gone. Not a child either. But she gets pleasure out of always being the one who knows.

It turns out that the interview is to be about what is beautiful in aging. How did I ever agree to this? Probably just because I like looking at a pretty woman, especially when she is looking back at me.

Elena is wearing a pink shirt that clings to her breasts. They are not big but sweetly shaped. I sigh and take up the paper she gives me. Instead of questions, there is just a repeated phrase: aging is beautiful because …

“Age isn't beautiful, it's horrendous,” I say.

“Please,” she pleads, looking at me with her big eyes. Her legs are as lovely as her breasts. Tanned, shapely.

“Age is beautiful,” I go on, pleased with the idea of twisting the phrase to mean its opposite, “because you look at a girl and she doesn't see you.

“Age is beautiful because you don't remember the words of a song.

“Age is beautiful because you can't tie your shoes.

“Age is beautiful because you fall and break a leg. Here I look at her and smile. My smile is still good, I think. It underlines the wry humor in my responses.

“Age is beautiful because you talk and are not understood.

“Age is beautiful because you fix a telephone and it doesn't ring.” Just as I say that the phone does ring and the young wife laughs. I wish I could think of a project that would have her visiting more often. It is Lucian calling me. I tell him to call back and look back at the paper.

“Age is beautiful because you piss your pants.” No. That was too much. Over the line. She grimaces, no longer amused.

“Basta,”
I say. “Enough. Let's have some tea.” Hannah, acting the part of secretary, had brought in the teapot. Reaching for it, I drop my cane. The young wife lunges towards it obviously afraid I'll crash, but I beat her to it.

“Don't worry, my dear. I've got it,” I say, retrieving it awkwardly.

My head feels heavy, as though it is determined to pull me down, while my thighs are signaling distress at having to hold me back. Poor me. Trying to ignore my pains, I suggest to the young wife that she add some photos of me as a young man. I tell her where to look for the photo album on the high shelf near the door. I've shown enough bravado for one day. She mounts the little step-stool gracefully and pulls it down. The photos are black and white, slipped into black corners. I motion to her to sit beside me on the white couch and together we turn the pages.

“You were so handsome,” she says.

“Were?” I tease, and she blushes. God, I was a lion … baring my teeth in a seductive smile. Thick dark hair. Sex seemed to radiate from my skin. She feels it too and my transformation bewilders her. I am like a desiccated insect, its color faded. Now it is all mental. Games for a failing man. Loose on the page is a recent photo that has slipped its moorings. I can see exactly how the bottom of my face has sunk and become gaunt, bones jutting out where there used to be plump glossy skin. I sigh.

“I've tired you,” she says guiltily, putting her papers together.

After Hannah shows her out, I start thinking of couples I know where one is old and the other young, like Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren. Power and Beauty living together and I no longer have either. She stayed with him her whole life and was with him when he died. Thinking about death depresses me and I go back to bed and sit there reading a magazine. Articles with pictures are easier for me when I feel this way. I pause at a picture of a beautiful little girl of around five, with cascades of ringlets. The caption is, “Was she killed by her mother?” How could anyone hurt this angelic being? Apparently, the mother's boyfriend didn't want her around. He felt she interfered with his plans and wishes. I always used to say that some people oughtn't to have children.

It's a cliché that having children is a blessing. Often when a couple is on the verge of separating, they'll have one “to bring them close again.” But actually it is a huge strain, like driving an eighteen-wheeler over a bridge that hasn't been upgraded in years.

I never felt up to it. Playing with my nephews for a couple of hours was delightful but really all I could manage. I'm not boasting. It makes me sad that I felt so incapable.

After the war many of my friends went into analysis. It was a fad among intellectuals. Both Gabriella and Lucian were analyzed. They ended up getting married. Gabriella's shrink pronounced after meeting Lucian that he was the best of her suitors. I fantasized that it could help me find the perfect mate. Instead, my analyst seemed to be reading from a script, speaking with reverence of the Oedipus complex as the key that unlocked every neurosis including the one that stood in the way of my progress.

It's not that my relationship with my mother couldn't bear looking into—I was a manipulative, histrionic child and from early on I could wheedle almost anything out of her. It was the analyst's attitude that upset me. So knowing, so superior, as though he were a god, not a human being with ordinary
flaws. Belief in Freud was at its peak. And if I ever objected to one of his interpretations, he would insist I was resisting.

“Don't you see zat?” He spoke Italian with a strong German accent, particularly clear on his consonants. “This it is part of ze transference onto me of feelings that you had towards your vather?”

I should have left. The truth is I had no transference to my analyst, not even a liking for him. If I'd liked him I might have accepted more of his interpretation. As it was, my image of myself suffered and I came away with a negative view of myself.

The analyst perceived right away that under my charm and warmth I was a somewhat selfish narcissist. I erase the word
narcissist
and leave the qualified
somewhat selfish-Narcissist
seems too harsh. His judgment of me still hurts. True, I didn't want a child to take a woman's attention away from me. But thousands of men probably feel the same way.

And by the time I found Hannah, wasn't she herself my mother-child in one? She, too, wanted total possession. She couldn't share me anymore than I could have shared her. She was damaged more grievously than most, a child who had suffered the unspeakable cruelty of the camps. But that only made it more challenging to save and nurture her. Every time I thought of something new to bring her, I felt as excited as I did when I was shooting a film or writing a poem and something snapped into place. And I loved the image of myself I saw in her eyes: liberator, magician of the possible.