loved his singing. One winter at the Bamboo Bar in Bangkok’s Oriental Hotel he sang regularly at popular request. It seemed all of young Bangkok wanted to hear this heir to Tony Bennett. Then there was a memorable session with the band at Brasilia airport, wonderful musicians who cheered him on as did a crowd of Brazilian parliamentarians, waiting for the weekend plane to take them home to Rio de Janeiro, far from Brasilia, their truly ugly jungle capital.
Leto never did wake me at concert time. With the aid of Valium I was sleeping too heavily, or so he said. Heavy sleep is my own natural response to the unbearable and yet, for most of this time, I had convinced myself that Howard was going to survive indefinitely due to the magic of radiation. But then “Denial,” as Bill Clinton once so neatly put it, “is not just another river in Egypt.”
During the days we talked of usual matters. Particularly, the presidential threats of war in the Middle East. Howard regretted that in all the years we had spent living outside the United States we had continued to pay, as law required, full income tax to a federal government plainly gone berserk. One of the last public occasions he had been able to attend was my speech at UCLA’s Royce Hall where I talked to a thousand people against the coming wars.
At these times, during such an illness, the mind keeps finding new reasons for hope—at least mine did and I think that his did, too; not long before the end he had a serious workout with a physical therapist who found him unexpectedly strong, physically and even more so mentally as he drove himself to rebuild his body.
Logistically, I had a difficult time being alone with him. There was always something Leto had to do—swinging him from armchair to bed and back again, changing the uncomfortable diapers he was obliged to wear. The hospital bed also had a railing around it and one could barely poke a hand through in order to hold his hand. Since we usually watched the evening news together I decided one night that he should stay in his armchair and I’d sit next to him and so we watched together, talking to the screen as much as to each other. When the news was off, he was silent. Leto was out of the room. “Don’t you want to talk?” I asked. There was a long silence, then he shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said, “there’s too much to say.”
The next morning Edward gave him his intravenous antibiotics. The coughing was still bad from an ominous bout with pneumonia but, as he noted triumphantly, “Green to beige.” I was too slow to get this. Exasperated, he said, “What I’ve been coughing up was green—poison—now it’s a beige color, almost healthy.” We celebrated “green to beige.” The next day the physiotherapist would be back and I vowed that I would not take Valium and so be able to listen to the midnight concert. Leto arrived with his supper which he put on a table in front of the armchair. I went downstairs to get a sandwich. A few minutes later Leto shouted, “Mr. Auster has stopped breathing!” I ran upstairs. He was still in the armchair, facing the window. He had eaten most of his dinner. In front of him was a tin of some vitamin concoction that he liked. Leto said, “He just drank that drink and took a deep breath and then he—stopped.” I sat in the chair opposite and did all the things that we have learned from movies to determine death. I passed a hand in front of his mouth and nose. Nothing stirred. Montaigne requires that I describe more how he looked—rather than how I felt. The eyes were open and very clear. I’d forgotten what a beautiful gray they were—illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive and he was watching me,
consciously
, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So
Leto never did wake me at concert time. With the aid of Valium I was sleeping too heavily, or so he said. Heavy sleep is my own natural response to the unbearable and yet, for most of this time, I had convinced myself that Howard was going to survive indefinitely due to the magic of radiation. But then “Denial,” as Bill Clinton once so neatly put it, “is not just another river in Egypt.”
During the days we talked of usual matters. Particularly, the presidential threats of war in the Middle East. Howard regretted that in all the years we had spent living outside the United States we had continued to pay, as law required, full income tax to a federal government plainly gone berserk. One of the last public occasions he had been able to attend was my speech at UCLA’s Royce Hall where I talked to a thousand people against the coming wars.
At these times, during such an illness, the mind keeps finding new reasons for hope—at least mine did and I think that his did, too; not long before the end he had a serious workout with a physical therapist who found him unexpectedly strong, physically and even more so mentally as he drove himself to rebuild his body.
Logistically, I had a difficult time being alone with him. There was always something Leto had to do—swinging him from armchair to bed and back again, changing the uncomfortable diapers he was obliged to wear. The hospital bed also had a railing around it and one could barely poke a hand through in order to hold his hand. Since we usually watched the evening news together I decided one night that he should stay in his armchair and I’d sit next to him and so we watched together, talking to the screen as much as to each other. When the news was off, he was silent. Leto was out of the room. “Don’t you want to talk?” I asked. There was a long silence, then he shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said, “there’s too much to say.”
The next morning Edward gave him his intravenous antibiotics. The coughing was still bad from an ominous bout with pneumonia but, as he noted triumphantly, “Green to beige.” I was too slow to get this. Exasperated, he said, “What I’ve been coughing up was green—poison—now it’s a beige color, almost healthy.” We celebrated “green to beige.” The next day the physiotherapist would be back and I vowed that I would not take Valium and so be able to listen to the midnight concert. Leto arrived with his supper which he put on a table in front of the armchair. I went downstairs to get a sandwich. A few minutes later Leto shouted, “Mr. Auster has stopped breathing!” I ran upstairs. He was still in the armchair, facing the window. He had eaten most of his dinner. In front of him was a tin of some vitamin concoction that he liked. Leto said, “He just drank that drink and took a deep breath and then he—stopped.” I sat in the chair opposite and did all the things that we have learned from movies to determine death. I passed a hand in front of his mouth and nose. Nothing stirred. Montaigne requires that I describe more how he looked—rather than how I felt. The eyes were open and very clear. I’d forgotten what a beautiful gray they were—illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive and he was watching me,
consciously
, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So
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