by Deirdre Bair
Even though his doctors assured Steinberg that his cancer was very slow-growing and would probably not be the cause of his death, he was convinced that it would be his killer and that he would die very soon. On November 5, 1996, he made a will in which he named his lawyer, John Silberman, and his friend Prudence Crowther the executors of his estate. He also left significant financial bequests to fifteen people. Aldo Buzzi was to receive $150,000, and Ada Cassola Ongari was to receive an annuity that would pay her $12,000 a year for the rest of her life. His devoted housekeeper, Josefine Buttles, was to receive $25,000, and his two studio assistants, Anton van Dalen and Gordon Pulis, were each to receive $50,000. He left $50,000 each to Claire Nivola, Ian Frazier, William Gaddis, Norman and Cella Manea, Karen van Lengen, Mary Frank, Linda Asher, and Prudence Crowther. His cousin Henrietta’s son, Lawrence Danson, was also to receive $50,000. The remainder of Steinberg’s still considerable money and property (estimated at more than several million dollars for each) was to be divided between his sister Lica’s children, Dana and Stéphane Roman. He left nothing to Sigrid Spaeth, because she committed suicide on September 24, 1996.
NO ONE EXPECTED SIGRID TO TAKE HER LIFE, least of all Saul Steinberg, for her previous attempts had seemed more a cry for help than a sincere desire to succeed. Her most recent interactions with Steinberg had been unusually quiet, both being so preoccupied with their individual depressions that they never argued or fought, probably because they were both taking prescription drugs and seldom had a genuine conversation. The summer drifted sadly onward: “For an hour, in silence, Sigrid and I gaze at the landscape waiting for the fox. Then lentil soup with potatoes and frankfurters, eating like hermits.”
Steinberg kept a daily diary during the autumn of 1996, the first entry starting the day he returned from Silver Hill. Because of the way he phrased many entries, the document reads like something he wrote in one fell swoop after everything had happened, as if he were trying to digest and make sense of a seemingly senseless progression of events. On September 9, he wrote in Italian, “Il mio dilemma, non io raggionare”—his problem was the inability to think rationally—and therefore there was little he could do to control his own behavior or his responses to Sigrid’s.
He was still in the city on September 23, when he had his last conversation with her: “Last time call Sigrid Papoose.” The next day he wrote her name in large horizontal block letters and next to it wrote “Papoose” vertically. He was harkening back to the early years of their long relationship, when he had used the loving nickname he and she gave to each other, a name neither one had used in years except when they called the cat.
ON THE AFTERNOON OF SEPTEMBER 24, the sixty-year-old Sigrid Spaeth went up to the roof of her fourteen-story building at 375 Riverside Drive and jumped to the sidewalk below. The official death certificate listed the time she died as 4:15 p.m. and said that she died from multiple fractures and visceral lacerations, with blunt impact to her head, torso, and extremities. Her body was taken to the Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey, where it remained until it was cremated on October 1.
Sigrid left two letters in her apartment, one for her sister, Ursula “Uschi” Beard, and one for Saul Steinberg. She began Uschi’s letter in German, repeating the same sentence in English for Saul: “Please forgive me but I couldn’t go on.” In Uschi’s letter, she switched to English to tell her sister to take what she wanted of her things and to “give away or sell or destroy and throw away [all the rest], especially my work.” Her letter to Saul was more personal; she told him she could not go on living because “life was too painful. Only torture and agony. Please don’t blame yourself in the least. You did more than what was possible for me and I never thanked you enough. It is my DEFECT that forces me to do this, please remember only the good things and that I love you. Your Papoose Sigrid. Please bury my ashes in the woods.”
THE TWO WEEKS BETWEEN SIGRID’S SUICIDE and her cremation were devastating. As soon as Steinberg was notified, he called Hedda and asked her to inform a few close friends. The day after Sigrid’s death, he made his own calls, starting early in the morning with Ruth Nivola. He said nothing about Sigrid but asked if the cleaning woman they both used happened to be in her house, and if not, did Ruth know how to reach her? Ruth said she would try to find the woman’s number and would phone him back. She wondered why he was calling so early and with such a strange request, but she was trying to fulfill it when the phone rang again. It was Hedda, “her voice suffocated with tears,” asking Ruth if she knew. Understandably, Ruth asked, “Knew what?” Sobbing, Hedda reverted to the name by which she had first heard of the existence of Sigrid Spaeth and said, “Gigi killed herself.” Ruth wanted to rush across the road, but Hedda reminded her of Saul’s strict instructions that he “did not want to be intruded upon” and no one, not even either of them, could arrive without his permission. In a state of emotional paralysis, each remained where she was.
Meanwhile, Saul was making other phone calls: to Sandy Frazier in Montana; to Dana and Stéphane Roman, in Paris and Nice respectively; to Aldo in Milan; to Uschi Beard in Ohio; to Sigrid’s lawyer, Barry Kaplan, and his own, John Silberman, both in New York; and to Detective Brannigan of the local police precinct, who was in charge of the case. He also called the Riverside Memorial Chapel to arrange for the cremation and service, and he called two of Sigrid’s friends whom he did not know personally. Then he made a note to himself: “Tangible property—Hedda, Prudence. Leave to niece and nephew, leave house to niece and nephew.” After that, he was “bedridden five days.”
Although he told everyone who lived away from New York that they should not come, Sandy Frazier insisted that he had to be there, flew from Montana, and stayed with friends just in case Steinberg needed him. Steinberg remained alone in his apartment or took solitary walks that usually ended in Central Park, where he would use the pay phone in a men’s room to phone Frazier, who explained, “Sometimes he’d say ‘no, don’t come,’ sometimes he’d say ‘yes, come over.’ ” If they met, they always walked back to Steinberg’s apartment and sat at the big table in silence. “I can’t talk,” Steinberg told Frazier. “I can’t say anything.” But the telephone rang constantly with people who wanted to help, and Steinberg always answered it. Frazier remembered that he told his callers, “ ‘Don’t come over, —Sandy is here.’ It reassured them that he was okay because he had someone with him.”
Frazier was there when the funeral home telephoned to say that Sigrid’s ashes were ready. Steinberg found a double shopping bag and they took a taxi to the West Side and sat in the waiting room until the attendant came to present them with the urn. Steinberg put the urn into the shopping bag and all the way back to his apartment and afterward repeated “Poor Sigrid” over and over as he cried.
SIGRID’S WILL BROUGHT ANOTHER ROUND OF shocks when Steinberg learned that she had changed an earlier version in which he was her executor to appoint her sister, Ursula Beard, and lawyer, Barry Kaplan, to replace him. She left the personal property within her apartment to Uschi, but she left the apartment itself, the one Steinberg had bought and paid for, with an estimated value then hovering around half a million dollars or more, to her analyst, Dr. Armin Wanner. Her personal property included a sizable collection of Steinberg’s art as well as the works of others that he had given her, with an estimated value of $300,000. After her body was taken away, police sealed the apartment, and no one was allowed to enter until the executors applied for and received permission to remove all uninsured objects of value, starting with the art. Steinberg had to apply separately for permission to enter and remove the things he had given her, but by the time his permission was granted, Uschi Beard had followed Sigrid’s instructions and everything of value was gone.
SAUL WAS STILL REELING WHEN HE phoned Ruth Nivola for the second time, again with an “almost inaudible deep voice.” He told her he was “lost, in need of friends,” and Ruth urged him to let her cross the road to be with him. He said he would not
see or speak to anyone until he could manage to “detach [himself] from the house in which Sigrid’s spirit still dwells.” Ruth asked her son, Pietro, to phone him later, and when he did, he told his mother that he feared “Saul was preparing himself for death and was soon going to die.”
Although Saul was “practically catatonic with grief,” he managed to get himself into the city to await Aldo and Bianca’s arrival on October 5. Before he left Springs, he phoned Ruth and said “an amazing thing, something he had never said before in all the years I knew him. He said, ‘Anytime you need something, call me.’ ” In the city, he stayed alone in his apartment, phoning Hedda multiple times every day and seeing only Aldo and sometimes Bianca, who discreetly absented herself so her husband could take care of his friend. Josefine did the shopping and cleaning, but Aldo prepared many of their evening meals, cooking the simple pasta dishes of their university days to try to tempt Saul to eat, as he had no appetite and was losing an alarming amount of weight.
Condolence letters poured in, and despite the writers’ intentions to bring comfort, they only increased his pain. The letters fell into several general categories: Arthur Danto wrote that he hardly knew Sigrid but that whenever they spoke on the telephone she was so kind that it was like speaking to an old friend; Ben Sonnenberg said the relationship that endured for more than twenty-five years could not possibly have ended without great grief. Peter and Maria Matthiessen thought they were easing Steinberg’s “remorse” (his word, not theirs) when they said they were long aware of what a tenuous hold Sigrid had on life, but instead of providing comfort, their letter provoked a tearful outburst of self-recrimination, as did many others. Ruth Nivola sent a note via Aldo saying that she respected Saul’s wish not to see or hear from any of his friends, but she was “across the road” whenever he needed her. And Uschi Beard’s letter was the most painful of all, because she enclosed with it a copy of Sigrid’s earlier, outdated will, the one in which she wrote that she was leaving “everything to Saul Steinberg, who gave it all to me.” Uschi’s attached note said, “I feel for you … she must have been very desperate to do it to you. She must have been desperate.”
SAUL, ALDO, AND BIANCA WENT TO Springs on October 16, in preparation for the private ceremonial burying of Sigrid’s ashes the next day. That afternoon Saul called his niece, Dana, in Cachan to assure her that he would be all right, and then he allowed Aldo and Bianca to persuade him to cross the road and eat lunch and dinner in Ruth’s warm and welcoming kitchen. When they arrived for lunch, Ruth was “frightened by the mood of all three, so dark and impenetrable.” They were so silent that she wondered if “all three had forgotten to use language” and conceivably had not exchanged one word on the long drive out from the city. Her way of offsetting the mood was to surround them with the foods they loved, from prosciutto and mortadella to her homemade cake. Ruth had to originate what little conversation there was, eliciting an occasional pleasantry from one of the Buzzis while Saul said “absolutely nothing.” Afterward, Aldo literally had to guide Saul across the road to his house while Bianca stayed with Ruth. At dinnertime he led Saul back to Ruth’s kitchen, where she served them roast chicken and loaded the table with everything from potatoes and salad to the luncheon leftovers. “A table with food can heal, and eventually Saul joined the conversation,” she wrote in her diary. He talked about Italian food, “which he used as a shield for real emotions, but he did warm up and he did talk some more.”
The weather was glorious for the entire week, and on the brilliant, crisp, and sunny October 17, Sigrid Spaeth’s ashes were buried exactly where she wanted to lie. On July 16, 1994, she had taken a sheet of pink paper, written her wishes, and attached the paper to a little sapling she had planted three days earlier. It was not addressed to anyone, but it gave full instructions for her burial. Steinberg detached the note, put it away, and when the time came, honored it: “This is the place where I would like my ashes to be buried, under the little (or if I am lucky—by then big) tree I planted on July 13. Over a dead catbird. Among the catbirds and chipmunks and moles, etc., not far from where Papoose’s soul is waiting in his tree. I know that when I die and go to heaven, Papoose will be waiting there and perhaps Papa and Mama and all those I loved.”
She signed it, “Sigrid. Facing east toward Papoose and Africa.”
Afterward, Aldo and Bianca had to help Saul into the car for the return drive to the city. Except for an occasional remark about the traffic, they were all silent. Aldo and Bianca were uneasy when they returned to Milan on the twenty-third, hopeful that Saul would soon be able to accept that he was powerless to have done anything to stop Sigrid from killing herself. It was reassuring to know that Hedda was on the phone with him several times each day, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. Afterward, Saul seemed to come briefly out of the haze that otherwise enveloped him, but it never lasted for long.
On November 7, with the assistance of Prudence, whom he had asked to help him find an analyst, Saul had his first and only appointment with one. By November 24 he felt strong enough to write his first letter to Aldo since Sigrid’s death. They had talked on the phone, but Saul worked hard in his letter to assure Aldo that “the tragic depression, the constant and inexplicable terror, have passed for the moment.” Then he added, “Perhaps they will return.”
CHAPTER 46
NATURE’S CHARITABLE AMNESIA
I often surprise myself by awaiting [Sigrid’s] return, and if I survive, the summer will be difficult without flowers, bouquets, even minuscule ones in the old ink bottles, and the silent strolls in the woods, when she would point out the flowers visible only to the eye of a small child.
Steinberg spent Thanksgiving Day, the only holiday he truly enjoyed, all alone in Springs, avoiding the “rich, noisy invitations” he was offered. He thought of years past, when he would take his own wine to spare himself “the local Beaujolais” at the houses of friends—James and Charlotte Brooks, Muriel Murphy, Jean Stafford—“almost all of them gone” now. He was content to be alone in his warm house and, thanks to his medications, was in one of his better moods on the dreary November day when the postman delivered a dead leaf sent without an envelope but with stamps affixed directly to it, as well as the address in Sigrid’s hand, mailed from Key West the last time they were there.
Sigrid had risen from her depression long enough to indulge in Steinberg’s little game of sending amusing objects through the mail without envelopes, just to see if they would be delivered. He once sent a dollar bill to himself, writing the address and affixing stamps directly onto the money, but that time the postman spoiled his fun by putting it into a glassine envelope. Now, several months after Sigrid’s death, he was confronted by her leaf, which provoked one of his recurring bouts of “profound sadness, and then, luckily, they pass, nature’s charitable amnesia.”
He had had two rough months since Sigrid died. Often she came to him in dreams that left him lying awake and yearning for interpretation. By spending his days puzzling over them he became ensnared in morbid depression, forcing himself briefly out of it by accepting dinner invitations. His friends were delighted to see him but discomfited by his unusual silence; he was so afraid that he might break down in mid-monologue if he assumed his usual role of commanding raconteur that he thought it “prudent” to listen rather than talk. “But where, then,” he asked himself, “is the enjoyment?” He could not help but think of Sigrid, whose behavior he now praised as “honorable” as she refused to participate in what she had called social contracts requiring three hours of good behavior.
He was generally careful about which invitations he accepted and did not venture outside his comfort zone. Mary Frank was aware of his “tremendous fear of dirt and the smells of sickness” and invited him only for quiet suppers with herself, her husband, Leo Treitler, and occasionally another guest whom Steinberg knew and trusted, often their mutual friend Mimi Gross. Before Steinberg accepted Frank’s first invitation after Sigrid’s death, he warned her that
he was depressed and had been on antidepressants for quite a long time and that none of his various medications seemed to be working. At a loss for how to comfort him, she said she admired his “tremendous will” and hoped that yoga and meditation would help. Later she did not remember whether he replied, only that he was exceptionally quiet when they were together.
He liked Jean Stein’s dinner parties, where she always had a table of eight or ten interesting conversationalists and seated him next to her husband, Dr. Torsten Wiesel, a good friend who offered soothing medical counsel through casual and informal conversation. Steinberg also liked the small dinners Barbara Epstein gave, often for visiting European writers who brought the latest cultural news about many of his favorite places and friends. He met the exiled Romanian writer Norman Manea there, and in the beginning was “not thrilled to meet another Romanian.” As the other guests vied to ask Manea about the political situation for Romanian writers, a quiet but also “sardonic and taciturn” Steinberg interrupted his reply with abrupt new questions: “How can anyone be a Romanian writer? Is there such a thing as Romanian literature?” These shut down conversation as all shocked eyes turned to Manea to await his answer. Perhaps because he did not know of Steinberg’s reputation for acidly demolishing dinner companions, Manea became one of the few who survived and even surmounted the barbs Steinberg routinely tossed when he wanted center stage. He shot back with “When did you leave Romania?” When Steinberg confessed it was a good sixty years before, Manea expounded at length on Romanian intellectuals who had gone on to make international reputations, among them Steinberg’s friends Eugène Ionesco and Emile Cioran. “Maybe, maybe,” Steinberg answered grudgingly, admitting that he was “not up to date on Romania.”