Herbert Gold
SELFISH LIKE ME
While I was thinking about writing this chronicle, it happened that
I spent a weekend at a quiet retreat in northern California. At the outdoor
swimming pool, which is fed by hot springs and situated with stringent beauty
atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the custom is nudity. It's almost a
rule. Nudity keeps the microbes down-no fermenting man-made materials in
the pool. It also serves well for overall sunning.
As I stripped off my clothes, I noticed a pensive woman looking out
over the sea. She was very attractive, she had no book by her side, she was
just concentrating on her thoughts. I swam, and then I found myself-perhaps
it was no accident-sitting on my towel near her. The nudity of strangers
provokes unspoken rules of discretion and sobriety. Privacy is respected.
Nevertheless, we began to talk.
She was a German psychoanalysis, visiting California to attend a
conference. When we introduced ourselves by name, she remembered the
German translation of my book,
Fathers.
She began to speak of her own
father, whom she lacked, whom she never knew. He committed suicide a
few months before she was born. It happened during the last days of the
war, he was a general, and she still didn't know why he killed himself.
"Perhaps it was because he saw Auschwitz, she said. I said nothing. "Perhaps
he had been given orders to fight on and he knew it was useless, just to do
more killing." I said nothing. "Perhaps he was afraid of the Russians."
I nodded. That could have been the case.
She burst out: "Maybe he was only sad that we lost the war?"
We sat in silence for awhile. I found her attractive and the situation
was peculiar. I didn't try to console her for this event, raw for her still, which
occurred more than forty years ago. I didn't ask if he was a Wehrmacht
general or in some other service, such as the S. S. I moved my towel to
cover my circumcised penis, and then thought, What a foolish expression of
embarrassment. Her nudity was without other gesture of meaning-it was
just what it was. And then I decided: But it would also be embarrassing and
obvious to remove the towel now that I'd covered myself.
Then I thought about what it must be like for a child to come into the
world with no father, no brother or sister, and to learn she is the last of a
Editor'. Note: Thi. euay was commillioned for
TIJtiwvm,: CcmllfrtlJurary Wn:un MoM 1M
Holocaust PmMf4l,
edited by David ROienberg, to be published in November 1989 by
Timea Books, a divi.ion of Random House.
