After Auschwitz: A Love Story by Brenda Webster Page A

went under the third arch into a narrow street. I tiptoed past the sleepers. Then the scene changed and I recognized the landscape with its vine-covered hills. I was in a green field near our tower—part of an old palazzo outside of Todi. I knew if I got there I’d be safe. Our family had owned it for generations. It had protected the peasants from marauders in the Middle Ages. We even have a heraldic device, a lion
couchant
with crossed spears. I moved towards it but was immediately lost in tall grass. A woman’s voice suggested I turn left, but I was too afraid. Grass was everywhere, mounded into shapes like freshly dug graves. There was no clear trail. An animal appeared, a bobcat, lean and sinuous. I threw it some bread to keep it away, but instead it came towards me, its eyes glinting red. I woke, heart pumping.
    I fell back to sleep almost at once, but no sooner was I asleep than I had another dream. In this one, I was being slowly pushed towards a well. I tottered on the stone edge. Terrified, I awoke and called out for Hannah. “Hannah, Hannah,” I said in a strangled voice, “I fell into a well. I was covered in mud. In my eyes, in my mouth, everywhere.” She took me in her arms and comforted me, shushing me like a child, rocking me against her breasts. “It was just a dream,” she said with a hint of severity. She hates it when I talk about a dream as if it were real. She doesn’t understand how real it is for me, wandering like Alice, changing my size and shape. Powerless.
    Our bed is just a platform set under the eves in our
attico,
where the one sleeping on the inside will bang his head if he get up too quickly. The ceiling there is that low. I can’tremember the right word for the protrusion with a window at one end. Starts with a
g
I think—
goal, ghost, growl, ground.
Ah yes,
gable.
I’m not much of a carpenter but this bed was one of my most successful achievements. Since we both read a lot before going to sleep, I screwed two small lamps onto the gable’s sides.
    When we were first married, we used to sit there, cozy as birds in a nest. And since our backs were to the window, I put a mirror on the frame so we could see a reflection of the view behind us. The window holds a splendid view of the
Gianiculo.
The dark green forests marching up the hills, the ancient walls, and the papal palace at the top. After I moved back to our beloved apartment in Rome, when my prostate weakened and I had to get up several times in the night to pee, we turned the bed sideways with me on the outside with a clear route to the hall and the bathroom. But now—whether it’s been weeks or months I’m not sure—since I walk in my sleep, Hannah moved me to the inside where she will notice if I try to move.
    I used to find our maid Erminia staring at the mirror suspiciously. I’m sure she thought it was there for nefarious purposes—to reflect the tangle of our naked bodies when we made love. Alas, I can’t do that much anymore. Now at most she holds it and squeezes gently. Is it an act of charity, I wonder? If I try to enter, it goes soft. But still, it is sweet.
    â€œGo to sleep now,” she repeats.
    â€œI’ll try.” I say, but I know I won’t be able to. My nightmare images merge with hers. I think of the way she lived at Auschwitz and how even when she was dropping with fatigue she had to be aware of what was going on around her—some-one being suffocated in her bed for her rations, or her boots. Alert to the approach of danger, I can’t imagine what she went through though for years. I’ve tried to, tried to depict parts of her experience in my films. But I always stopped before the gates to Auschwitz—there is a region that shouldn’t betouched. It would invite participation in the Nazi crimes—sadomasochism, even pornography—inviting us to peer with the guard through the small window into the