After Auschwitz: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

to interest the young wife. She has something sensual about her mouth that attracts me.
    â€œEvery morning,” I tell her, “I go to my bookcase and take out a book, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or, better still, one of the metaphysical poets—John Donne writing sonnets in his coffin—and read a couple of pages. Let it settle in my mind as a keynote for my day. These are all books I have read before, of course.”
    â€œOh,” she says politely, as if I am a new animal in the zoo—one of those bears with matted fur and bald patches. I must say I still have a full head of iron-gray hair, and I cover my old bones with a good suit from Armani, the one luxury I permit myself besides my daily tub of gelato.
    Elena is interested in the fact that I moved back in with Hannah after her heart attack. “It was time,” Hannah laughed. “After so many years apart. Now it’s a backward race to the finish line. Who will arrive first? I know it was hard for me to return to consciousness when I had my heart attack,” Hannah says, “I was in such a deep, still place. I lost the ability to talk for a week. But now I am glad.”
    Glad probably isn’t the right word. Part of the truth is that she is afraid to go too far from home now, always watching for the telltale symptoms.
    I am becoming obsessed with aging; I feast on others’ misfortunes—wanting I suppose to prepare myself for whatever comes next. I heard the news of another old friend’s illness, Lucian. I hadn’t seen him in years—since Hannah had quarreled with him over some gossip she had repeated about his family. Though Hannah and Lucian had once had a deepfriendship, both of them were too stubborn to make the first move to reconcile. I had a fantasy of making peace between them while there was still time. He had multiple infirmities, more serious than mine.
    Adolescence prepares our parents for our departure, disease—the more painful the better—readies us for death. Fine thought, but still I can’t imagine the world without my consciousness. I am furious at the idea of it going on without me. Horrified and furious! I can’t understand how some people can throw a farewell party, invite all their friends, and then retire to their room with a deadly cocktail or a gun.
    I wondered how Lucian was taking his decline and decided to visit him. I called a taxi and asked the driver to come up and help me down. I chose a time when Hannah had gone out to the market on Campo dei Fiori and was going to meet a friend for coffee before coming home. Sitting where she could look at the piles of glowing fruits and leafy vegetables, cheering herself with plenty.
    In the taxi, I recalled my last visit with Lucian—him telling Jewish jokes and laughing at them, playing up his Brooklyn roots while his wife Gabriella sat quietly, every inch an aristocrat, with the slight curl of an ironic smile. I had taken him for granted, I guess, thinking that he’d always be there so I didn’t have to hurry. But I realized in the taxi that he was probably the only one still alive of the filmmakers who left Hollywood for Mexico to escape McCarthy.
    He and my poet friend George were gone ten years, hiring themselves out as carpenters. When George came back to the States, he won a Pulitzer Prize. Lucian came to Rome—he couldn’t film anymore except under a pseudonym—and married Gabriella. He liked to tell how her shrink had said he was the best of her suitors. He was very handsome in a Jewish sort of way, dark wavy hair, full lips. I should have taken a tape-recorder and recorded him—last of the old Reds. Reds on the black list. Where did all that fire and passion go?
    I got such a shock when Lucian opened the door and stepped forward to embrace me. A wool watch cap on his head, his face grizzled. Well, he’s an old man and his head gets cold, but then I saw the open bathrobe with a bag of urine