After Auschwitz: A Love Story by Brenda Webster Read Free Book Online Page B

the idea of martyrdom for some heroic cause, like the saints in the little book.
    Reading the leather bound Saints’ lives, I learned that Saint Agnese was killed because she wouldn’t marry the king’sson—or was it because she refused to pray to pagan gods? She was beheaded because when she was tied to a stake, the fire wouldn’t burn. Though I had no clear idea then of what it meant to be a virgin, I found myself oddly excited at the thought of Agnese being dragged naked though the streets of Rome to dirty her in some mysterious way. But it was Saint Lucie, the one with her eyes on a plate, that particularly fascinated me. How did her Roman torturers get them out, I wondered. If they gouged them with a metal instrument, wouldn’t they have splattered? She looked so serene in the picture, and had another pair of eyes still in her head.
    At the height of my religious fervor, I begged my parents to let me try out for the boys’ chorus, the
voci bianche.
I had quite a good voice … very pure and strong. It wasn’t until I was grown and reading about the priests molesting boys that I remembered being fondled by a young priest after Mass. It had bewildered me at the time because I actually liked the priest and looked up to him for his piety. Afterwards
I
felt guilty. As if I had somehow encouraged him to touch me that way. I was afraid something was very wrong with me. I hesitate even now to write it down. Not even Hannah knows about it.
    What image of myself do I want to leave? Does it matter? Does anyone really care? If I look myself up on Google, there are three pages of references. At least fifteen of my film posters are displayed. All those sexy films—you can still order them and see them. Sophia Loren, Monica Vitti, Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekbert—I even had an affair with her. A woman that had all of Italy panting. I’d like to suggest that it was the serious aspect of my films that made me so successful, but it is really the more salacious ones for which I’m best known.
    I remember the film where Vittorio Gassman comes to terms with being blind. How I wish I’d directed that one. You can’t get much more serious than that.
    I close my eyes and pretend I’m blind. I touch the edge of my desk, feel the smooth wood, white ash, to lighten mymoods. The blotter is soft, no hint of its color. I infuse it with a deep blue. Then my hand moves to the cup where I keep my collection of pens and pencils, saved from years of travel. The Hotel Waldhaus pen has a particularly chunky body and there is the cushioned pen I got for my arthritis, but the others are indistinguishable.
    I move my hand to my Luxo lamp. Perched like a small inquiring animal, its light is unavailable to me now. I think the first thing I would get if I lost my sight is voice recognition software. They say it isn’t difficult, though the computer must be trained to recognize where words stop and start. You must be very patient and patience is not something I’m good at.
    After a half hour of not being able to see, I stop. For a few minutes I actually feel blessed to still have my sight. I look out my window, gulping in the visual splendor of Borromini’s bell tower in the distance. I should do that every morning instead of drinking coffee, which gives me stomach pains and makes my heart race.
    For a moment I forget what day it is. It feels like Monday. The day housewives used to wash their clothes. But when I look at the calendar, I see that the days are marked off until Thursday, so it isn’t Monday at all. It’s Friday. It just occurred to me that when I talked about pretending to be blind, I should have put it in the past tense because how could I have written it down with my eyes shut? I am finding dates and tenses and calendars difficult. I even worried that I had gotten the dates wrong in my page about finding the book of saints’ lives. When did Mussolini come to power