642
PARTISAN REVIEW
when she quarrels with her husband. If you prick her, she bleeds; she asks
you politely not to do that again. She doesn't need to be deeply emotional or
profoundly intelligent for these events to occur. She is a person who seeks
style and comfort. For Charlotte, it's more comfortable not to be troubled and
to accept the drift of sentiment away from the once-delicious images of Paul
Newman in
Exodus.
The Charlottes go along on whatever trip happens to
be offered by fashion. There were now new scenarios.
I didn't mind playing tennis with the wife of a friend, no matter that her
spirit was not saintly. Mostly mine isn't, either.
How Charlotte puzzles me is that her decently callous, ordinarily selfish
life is what we can expect of human beings everywhere. She was ready to
find something appealing in the madness of denial because it supported her
average prosperous expectations in life. The Jews have brought around
enough trouble already-no offense meant, ofcourse.
She sailed on with bright good humor. "I realize this isn't the greatest
dinner conversation for you, being a loyal Jewish person and all, Herb, but
when you consider what a raw deal the Arabs are getting as a result of
faked photographs and exaggerations and blackmail, Herb...."
It happened that I had heard of a showing of the French
film,
Night
and
Fog,
a documentary of the concentration camps. We don't need to rehearse
this story now: the living skeletons staring at the camera or stacked like
cordwood, the dying, the trembling heaped bodies; the shovels and tractors
pushing flesh into manageable heaps; the captured German footage and still
photographs. I telephoned Charlotte and said, "We have a date."
"That's terrific" she said. "Just because I'm a married woman is no
reason I can't have a night out with an old friend."
We did it very formally, with no discussion of the movie beforehand. A
little supper, no wine, a cappuccino; I wanted to keep her alert. During the
film she was silent. When it was over, tears were running down her cheeks.
She hunched her shoulders, pulling her coat around her face as we hurried to
my automobile. I took her home directly. She was still crying.
A few months later, at a dinner sponsored by the English-speaking
Union, I happened to sit near Charlotte. The driftings of social life had
arranged things so that I had seen little of her. She looked at me and a light
of greeting came into her face. "You're just back from Israel, Herb! Tell me,
what's the real situation from the inside? I hear-well, I guess they're trying
to brainwash us... Say, have you heard about how all that propaganda
about the murdering ofJews during the war is just that-Zionist propaganda?
Now I don't blame individual loyal Jewish persons like yourself, but.... "
This time I was less cautious; no asparagus on my fork. "Charlotte!
Don't you remember that film we saw together?"
