by Deirdre Bair
Steinberg and Buzzi talked about and sometimes reworked some of the material that became the book Reflections and Shadows whenever they were together, and Steinberg volunteered information for it whenever they were not, mostly in letters but sometimes in telephone conversations. For any number of reasons, but mostly because of Steinberg’s unwillingness to present himself so openly, the book that was begun in the 1970s was left hanging in 1994 after he “thought it over once more.” When he read what was to be the final text of conversations that had happened twenty years before, his initial response was “with pleasure, with surprise,” but when he cast his editorial eye on them, he did not think they withstood the test of time. He had no desire to reread any of it, and he doubted that others would want to read it even a first time. He decided that it was too much “a document of that era” and revealed a “primitive side” that made him uncomfortable. Reluctantly, Aldo withdrew it.
Reflections and Shadows was not published until 2001, after Steinberg’s death and then only in Italy. In 2002 it appeared in an English translation, a charming little collection of vignettes in writing and drawing. When Aldo Buzzi edited it, he explained that his beloved friend had withheld it because he was “a man full of doubts” who might have felt that “as a writer he was not up to his own level as an artist, an artist who used to say that he was a writer who drew instead of writing.”
STEINBERG WAS MORE AMAZED THAN CELEBRATORY when he wrote across a clean sheet of paper, “June 28, 1994: Today I’m 80!” Working on Reflections and Shadows, coupled with his increasing concern about Sigrid, made him aware that time was passing and he had not done all that he should to prepare his estate for his eventual demise. She was in one of her hyper periods, on medications she liked because they kept her from being depressed. She chastised Saul for being fearful rather than grateful and for making a deal with her to “keep quiet or go talk to the cat or my chickens.”
Steinberg had always been careful to provide for himself so that he could provide for others. He bought life insurance the first year he came to America and increased it periodically after that. He set up a financial portfolio at the same time and followed what was sage conservative advice from his tax accountant and investment adviser. He kept a sharp eye on his galleries and publishers and had a keen knowledge of what his own art was worth, and he had his significant holdings appraised by professionals. He also had his collection of the works of other artists appraised; most of them skyrocketed in value, like his $400 Magritte that became worth millions. When everything was added up, he had full knowledge of his impressive total worth. And as litigious as he was, he never boasted but always let his close friends know how pleased he was the few times that his lawyers allowed him to take legal action against the misuse of his intellectual property, for he won his case every time, and these settlements also added to his estate. He was always careful about updating his will, and after he and Hedda completed their “financial divorce” (as she called it), he was legally free to disperse funds and grant bequests to whomever he wanted. He had always planned to leave the major part of his estate to Sigrid and to make her his executor, because she was so much younger and likely to survive him. But now, with her deepening depression and her wildly fluctuating behavior during her manic periods, he thought he should consider other ways to protect his estate and still ensure her well-being.
He was also thinking about what to do with his massive archives. He had engaged professional photographers off and on throughout his career to take photographs of his works and then had the eight-by-ten-inch photos encased separately in plastic sheets before filing them chronologically. On his own initiative, he thought of contacting the Smithsonian Institution to ask if it would like to house his papers, but he had not yet done so when John Hollander wrote to ask if he would consider leaving them to Yale. Hollander explained that the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library would be the repository and everything would be readily accessible to scholars and other interested readers and viewers. Steinberg had enjoyed his affiliation with Morse College and was proud of his honorary degree from Yale, but he did not make a decision until 1995, when he gave everything to Yale, “mostly because not having children or a loyal family, I wouldn’t want the intimate details, etc.” He explained his decision by telling the story of something he had witnessed many years before as he was walking down Bleecker Street. He saw “a flock of letters, postcards, papers,” that had blown out of a trash can and were floating all over the sidewalk and the street. Like other pedestrians, he picked some up and read them, becoming engrossed when he saw that they were in Italian, poignant letters written by the families of Italian immigrants. He watched as other passersby picked them up “and then—goodbye, back to the sidewalk!” It was a deeply disturbing episode, and it left a lasting impression on him.
Steinberg, who could not bear to reveal “the Saul of 1960” for a small book published in a foreign country and language and who had difficulty giving a basically honest answer to the rare interviewer who asked the occasional probing question, was nevertheless determined that when it came to revealing himself for posterity, he would be the one to decide what to do with his archives: he saved everything, and he left it all to Yale.
STEINBERG STOPPED READING THE New York Times because he found himself turning immediately to the obituaries, surprising himself by studying them with “curiosity … searching, strangely enough, for my own.” June was his birth month and always a reminder of age and infirmity, and the month when he went “like a sleepwalker” to a memorial for Ugo Stille that “stirred up all kinds of powerful emotions.” Next to Tino Nivola, Stille was the only friend with whom he thought he had had perfect communication. Thinking of friends who were gone, he went through his files until he found a snapshot of himself, Tino Nivola, and Bill de Kooning, posed in front of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais and taken in 1968 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. Now Tino was dead, and Bill had been in decline with Alzheimer’s for the past fifteen years. Steinberg felt sorrow that such a vital man was kept in the world only because of the constant ministrations of attendants, a “definition of immortality,” but at what a cost to the soul.
Other things that he thought of as fixed and long-lasting were shifting and changing. It was a “tragedy” when Muriel Murphy and William Gaddis separated, and a loss of epic proportion when Sandy Frazier moved his family back to Montana for the second time. Before Frazier left, he visited to say goodbye and assure Steinberg that he would be back. Steinberg’s only acknowledgment was to spread his hands in a gesture of despair.
He was constantly worried about Sigrid, and he took her to St. Bart’s again in February 1995 for what he hoped would be a repeat of the previous year’s happy vacation. After several days she suffered a breakdown so severe that she had to be sedated for the flight back to New York, where she was hospitalized in the care of Drs. Rosen and Wanner. Steinberg coped by invoking Jung’s interpretation of his own accident, pleased that he did not consider it a tragedy and could accept it as a “duty” and find “consolation … in doing normal things,” such as phoning the doctors from the plane to alert them that she was on the way to the hospital and instructing the taxi driver how to get there. Still, every time he was alone in the evening, trying to console himself and obliterate the memory by staring blindly at the television screen, he could not keep fury at bay. He exploded every time he thought about Sigrid, enraged over the solitude her condition caused for each of them and, for him, the adjunct sadness of old age.
Nivola, de Kooning, and Steinberg in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. (illustration credit 44.2)
By the end of the year he had an “absence of terror,” thanks to the newly prescribed Librium and the freedom from appointments with doctors and dentists, who had all taken off for holiday vacations in warmer climes. He was unusually quiet and solitary over the holidays, mostly because he lost his appetite and with it significant weight, which he could hardly afford to lose. Dr. Fisch had
put him on a health program, and once a week a personal trainer came to his apartment to put him through a regimen of yoga and weight training designed to build his strength and increase his appetite. When the new year, 1996, began, so too did his appointments with doctors, by now a routine round-robin that had him on the elevator from floor to floor, as many were in the same building. He started his appointments of 1996 with the dentist, after which he would go directly to Dr. Fisch. “This time,” he told Aldo, “I’m going there with fear.”
CHAPTER 45
WHAT’S THE POINT?
The tragic depression, the constant and inexplicable terror, have passed for the moment. Perhaps they will return.
During an examination in October 1995, Dr. Fisch told Saul Steinberg that he probably had thyroid cancer. It was an enormous shock, as two years before Dr. Fisch had noted that his neck glands were enlarged but “definitely not malignant.” Steinberg’s first indication that things had changed came during his stay at the Marbella clinic, where routine blood tests unexpectedly revealed the presence of tumorous activity. When he returned to New York, Dr. Fisch saw a significant physical change and ordered a CT scan of his chest and abdomen. A second CT scan confirmed the likelihood of “medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland,” and Dr. Fisch referred Steinberg to Dr. Jatin P. Shah, the chief of head and neck services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. Throughout early December, Dr. Shah scheduled tests that showed “extensive lymphadenopathy,” and when Dr. Fisch confirmed that the glands had been enlarged for five years or longer, Dr. Shah concluded that the recent changes suggested Steinberg might have lymphoma. He scheduled a neck node biopsy for December 19, and Steinberg initially agreed to it. But several days beforehand, he claimed he had the flu and postponed it. Dr. Shah noted on his medical records, “I have a feeling that his psychological make up did not permit him to go ahead with the biopsy.”
Steinberg delayed until mid-February 1996, when the biopsy was finally performed and did confirm thyroid cancer, with the official diagnosis of “medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland with bilateral cervical and mediastinal lymph node metastasis.” His physicians agreed that he did not need immediate “active surgical intervention” but kept him under observation until he could get used to the diagnosis and decide what to do. Two weeks later, when a subsequent examination found no change in the original finding, Dr. Shah told Steinberg he had two treatment options: he could have surgery to remove the mass, or he could continue to live with it while keeping it under close observation. The medical report noted that the patient was still unable to make a decision and needed more time to think about his options. Dr. Shah concluded that taking more time was acceptable, because Steinberg was in “remarkably good health for an 81-year old man … a cartoonist still actively working” whose only prior surgery had been a childhood tonsillectomy.
Saul Steinberg in his early depression. (illustration credit 45.1)
Throughout December, as Steinberg’s doctors compiled his medical history, a portrait formed of a man in as much mental distress as physical. He was a “robust” eighty-one-year-old who had blood in his urine and took Librium for severe anxiety. He had not smoked a cigarette since 1972, but his recreational drug of choice was “grass, last used in June,” and he drank “more than seven” alcoholic beverages every week. He ticked “yes” to “feeling sad/depressed, anxious, hopeless, guilty, and suicidal,” and he also answered “yes” to “Have you ever planned or attempted suicide?” A subsequent, more in-depth examination concluded that he had “a severe depressive disorder for which he has been treated with Prozac and Zoloft.” Steinberg told the examiner that he stopped taking the drugs because he was unable to tolerate them, but the doctor concluded that he had not taken them long enough to gauge their effectiveness. The doctor next prescribed Lithium, which Steinberg took for a while but stopped when he decided that it too did little to relieve his depression.
Six months later, in August 1996, Dr. Fisch retired and Steinberg transferred his care to Dr. Jeffrey Tepler, an internist recommended by William Gaddis. Tepler’s diagnosis was far blunter than Fisch’s: “He has had suicidal ideation…He has had many other vegetative symptoms and has become quite nonproductive.” Dr. Tepler believed that thyroid cancer had been present for at least nine years, although no symptoms had manifested until recently. Because the tumor was indolent, Steinberg did not need surgery to remove it, but he did need hospitalization for “severe depression which has worsened over the past several months.” Dr. Tepler sent him to Silver Hill in New Canaan, Connecticut, a hospital specializing in psychiatric disorders and substance abuse. From August 20 to August 31, Steinberg was treated for depression, anxiety, and panic, with the drugs Effexor (25 mg) and Serzone (100 mg).
When his stay at Silver Hill ended, a limousine took him back to New York, where his absence had passed unnoticed, as if he had only been away as usual in Springs. Although most of his close friends were aware of how he had gradually withdrawn into a more private and quiet life during the past year, few recognized the depth of his depression and the degree of his impairment. They all ascribed the changes in his behavior to his worry about Sigrid and did not probe further. Muriel Murphy put it best when she said that he had such an “austerely private self” that she, like others, was reluctant even to ask how he was, and especially to ask “the very important question: how is Sigrid and even more important, where is she?”
SIGRID WAS LEADING A LIFE THAT was both intimately connected to Steinberg’s and separate and detached. She made another journey to Mali in January 1996, despite Steinberg’s contention that there was too much political unrest there. He was doubly worried, not only about her safety but also about providing for her in case his thyroid cancer caused him to be incapacitated in some way. Before she left, he made arrangements with his financial consultant at Neuberger and Berman to transfer $300,000 into an account in both their names. He wanted the funds to be conservatively invested for maximum reliable income with minimum risk, and with all interest and dividends to be paid into Sigrid’s personal account each month. As this amount would vary, Steinberg stipulated that she could draw on the capital as needed or wanted by sending a written request to the adviser, who would contact him to secure his permission. Steinberg’s generosity gave her financial security, but the gesture did little to relieve the awkward tension between them.
Very few people knew that Sigrid had gone back to Africa, the assumption being that she was not seen with Saul because they were once again on the outs, or that she was in one of her bad periods, or, among the few who knew about Steinberg’s cancer, that she had run away because she couldn’t deal with his illness. In truth, she had planned the trip since late summer 1995, well before his diagnosis. She purchased her tickets and made her arrangements in early fall, and whether his illness had any bearing on her decision, she wanted to keep to her original travel schedule. When she returned at the end of February, Steinberg’s depression was so severe that she could not break through his silence and withdrawal. She did not realize how deeply incapacitated it made him and blamed his behavior on the usual hard time and silent treatment she believed he gave her when he was angry about something she said or did. She was determined not to let what she mistook for his stubbornness offend or discourage her, for being in Africa was always a boost for her state of mind.
“What’s the point?” she asked, wondering why the fact that she had come back safely did not cheer him up or at least make him “less gloomy.” He was too depressed to respond, so she demanded to know, “Why can’t you be proud of me for doing what I want to do well? I even started to speak the language and everybody in Gao is proud to be friends with me. They respect even admire and love me. I am sixty years old and their sister mother grandmother.”
Sigrid and Saul were at an unfortunate impasse, two people who cared for each other, desperately wanting connection but drifting along in a miasma of miscommunication and misinterpretation. No matter what they did or said, they found
themselves at cross purposes.
Putting money into an account for Sigrid to draw on no matter what happened to him was not enough to ease Steinberg’s mind about what would become of her if anything should happen to him. He fully intended for her to inherit the greater part of his estate, but he worried about her erratic behavior and what she might do after he died if there was nothing or no one to constrain her. He had been talking to his lawyer, John Silberman, about how to ensure that his money and property were dispensed as he wanted, but the immediate question was how best to secure Sigrid’s safety and well-being. Steinberg thought he needed to appoint some sort of trustee or guardian to watch over her.
His friendship with Prudence Crowther had strengthened during the past year, during which she had volunteered unwavering support and morale boosting. She accompanied him to a steady stream of medical appointments; saw that he got home safely, that his prescriptions were filled, and that he took them as directed; and, in conjunction with Josefine, made sure that his household was in order. In Hedda Sterne’s words, “Prudence became the brick that got him through the really bad years.” Steinberg thought Prudence would be the best person to help and advise Sigrid Spaeth, and he arranged for them to meet.
When he invited Prudence to visit them in Springs, he intimated but did not directly state that he wanted to give her an official role in overseeing his estate. She thought that Saul had hinted the same thing to Sigrid that he had hinted to her, that she would be “vaguely involved as an executor.” Prudence spent the weekend in a motel and one afternoon went to the house, where Sigrid was waiting to meet her. At the time, Sigrid was sixty and Prudence was forty-eight. Prudence felt that in his oblique way, Saul worked hard to make the meeting “as gentle as possible,” and after introductory pleasantries, he left the two women alone to get acquainted. Prudence thought the meeting must have been awkward for Sigrid, which was why she seemed at first “a bit noblesse oblige but gracious … working to impress upon me that she was also a person of imagination, not in a vain way, but out of uncertainty as to who I was and what I was doing there.” Sigrid said something witty about the squirrels outside, and although Prudence thought it might have been a set piece she had used before, she gave her credit for being imaginative: “I am guessing that she would have already been privy to Saul’s (mis)understanding of his medical circumstances, and therefore laboring under a terrible dread.”