For the remainder of the afternoon, she was incredibly contented. I watched my young girlfriend as she bustled about—young, fertile, confident, warm, supple, lithe, brimming and optimistic.

January 2, 2006

So it happened. I survived. A big chunk of still respiring, still pulsing organism. Surgeon said it went very well. The graft will last ten years, blah-blah-blah. Oh really? And what happens then? Hey doc, what happens after ten years, huh? Twenty? thirty? Oh right, I die anyway. Too bad.

The pain is not overwhelming. The stitches itch and there’s some swelling, but I’m not in agony. Generally I’m mired in a diffuse torpor, something like a hangover, but lacking the bite of alcohol poisoning. I’m on anticoagulents and tranquilizers but under it all, I know my heart has been punctured like a bald tire and my soul doesn’t like it one bit. No matter, it’s done.

Leon sent flowers. The publicity person called to let me know my airline tickets for the book tour had been canceled. I will have a lot of time on my hands. I think of old Aunt Sadie and her letters. I have no letters. I have nothing. I spent the afternoon lying around listening to the Renaissance choral music of a guy named Guido, a singer at the papal court in Avignon. Wonder what his last hours were like.

January 5, 2006

Still in the city. I wander the apartment with nothing to do. Can’t even masturbate or enjoy a low-tar cigarette. Against doctor’s orders, I unwrap the wound. It is garish, black and red, fierce like a revolutionary poster. It speaks to me and tells me that “it” is much stronger than I am. That “it” can kill me at any time. This scar has the authority of being the visible manifestation of a much greater scar, one I honestly can’t comprehend.

I picked up If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. I’d read his Auschwitz journal before but for some reason, I relished every terrible detail anew, couldn’t put it down. And yet it was probably the worst thing I could be reading right now. I am completely engaged with my core self and what was this book saying but that there is no core self? When he arrived at the camp, Levi asked a guard why he couldn’t slake his thirst with a small piece of ice. The guard brutally answered, “Warum? Hier ist kein warum.” (“Here there is no ‘why’!”)

Levi’s reasoning was simple: Take away a man’s every possession and you take his memories. Steal his clothing and shoes, shave off his hair and you take his dignity. Take away his hope and you take away his desire. When all that is gone, there is no man left. What is a man but memories and desire and hope? I wonder what Emily Dickinson would say to Levi if they were to meet?