Deviation

by Luce d'Eramo

  It even made me angry, as though the feeling of being overburdened that I’d seemed to sense in my life came from this bodily exertion. Where does a miner, or a farmer who has hoed the land all day, find the energy to think about fundamental problems? I say this solely from where I was, confined by society to my injury.

  That was what I did not want to admit. I had so hated those people who equated me to my wheelchair that I had erased them from my consciousness. I had brutally exposed the spectacle of my paralysis in Mainz, in Homburg, and in the asylum in Munich, the better to ignore it later. But it wasn’t like that. The physical servitude had continued even after the repatriation, greater than before, because I returned, with my legs now imprisoned, to the place from which I had twice fled.

  That enslavement had cost me immeasurable time: no need to look far, merely the hours I’d spent standing with cardboard tubes around my knees. All that concentration so I would be seen as a normal person and not a poor unfortunate (as disabled individuals were commonly viewed). I studied myself with a Nazi eye.

  I had to avoid giving the impression that I dragged my legs at all costs, jerkily lifting one hip at a time, as did the other paralyzed patients I’d seen standing in physiotherapy gyms. Their hands gripping the parallel bars as leverage, they twisted their torso to the side and flung out a rigid leg that fell heavily forward, bringing the pelvis with it so forcefully that only by abruptly counterthrusting their chest backward could they keep their balance.

  To try to move more naturally, I got the idea of taking very small steps. I rotated my hips slightly with a continuous motion that, accompanying the leg, would not appear stiff but merely languid.

  Even now I recall those walks as a form of madness. I went up and down the house getting in the way with my walker, in constant fear that someone would accidentally bump me. The slightest jolt for which I was not prepared caused me to lose my balance, and I then had to recalculate the walker’s distance from my body and a millimetric dose of hip sway to regain my equilibrium. If I was alone, I even lifted myself on my arms to move more quickly, besides helping myself along with my torso. Hold it! I stopped myself: your biceps will get too big and you’ll look misshapen. And I continued walking in little steps.

  Not a week or two went by before my fever rose again, with the usual excruciating pain. Like a guard relieved of sentry duty, I went back to going around in my wheelchair. But as soon as I recovered, the orthopedists began hammering at me to give up the wheelchair and resume ambulation, as they called that walking on passive legs: “Try again, you can do it. It’s only a question of will.” Until in ’57 in the Riviera, after yet another relapse—after twelve years of alternating these marathons with long bouts of fever due to abscesses that each time required surgical removal of bone fragments expelled from the shattered ischia—I said to hell with this Sisyphean labor and stopped listening to anyone anymore. Of course, mine was a special case because the collapse of the wall in Mainz had crushed the bones of my pelvis. However, I have always considered that obstinacy a comedy worthy of the emperor Vespasian, who wanted to die on his feet—this obstinacy, that is, on the part of modern doctors to make paralyzed people “ambulatory” with the aid of crutches or canes that keep their hands occupied. So that they can’t help but achieve that motoric fiction. Still, however long a person may stand while under society’s scrutiny, she can’t live her life that way.

  In fact, I have always had an incomparably greater autonomy in my wheelchair. For one thing, I wasn’t forced to think about my body every moment when I was in it, and I did everything much more nimbly: I simply had to check the stability of my little chair to make sure it wouldn’t spin away as I leaped out and, with one hop, slipped into the bathtub or jumped behind the wheel of the car or sank into a seat at the movies. Not only that. Even from an aesthetic point of view, it seemed to me that once people got past the first awkwardness, they paid less attention to it. Once they found out I couldn’t walk, it was an established fact that wasn’t mentioned again. In the long run, my body and with it my physical situation went unnoticed. To the degree that even I myself forgot it; waking up in the morning, I would sometimes get out of bed lost in thought and find myself on the floor. I’d burst out laughing and clamber back up—easily if I was alone, terribly awkward if anyone were watching me, my limbs suddenly stiff as granite.

  For years, the most repulsive thing for me was others’ pity, in the form of admiration for my so-called courage. So great was the social humiliation of my condition—I’ll skip the hundreds of anecdotes—that for an infinite time I felt paralyzed only in people’s awareness. A detail that recurred regularly in my dreams is proof of it. There, I was still uninjured, but wherever I walked or ran, I dragged an empty wheelchair along behind me, sitting in it as soon as I spotted an acquaintance, my legs immediately immobilized.

  It’s been several years since this sequence reappeared. Now in my dreams I walk freely even if there are people around, and no one pays any attention. Not only that, but sometimes I’m naturally paralyzed, in a new dream that occasionally alternates with my nocturnal walks, and repeats periodically and almost identically.

  In this dream, one or two loved ones are pushing me in a wheelchair along rocky paths, in a rugged landscape that is always the same. The closest faces of those moving forward with us—columns of people extending back to the horizon—change. Everyone is going in the same direction and I bump along on the rocks, but the effort of those pushing me doesn’t make me feel like a burden.

  Subsequently I no longer wake up lost in thought in the morning to find myself on the floor.

  So then my paralysis had been a source of other people’s power, for many years. That’s the truth, never mind the physical impediment. The latter had been relative, some training initially, then as much attention as the legs’ passivity required, or little more. Exercise is good for anyone; what’s more, it’s also enjoyable, tones a person up, and is relaxing. Where did that memory of physical drudgery come from, which I’d thought was an illumination? Maybe it was because I was exhausted at the time. It was dawn following one of those nights when I was afraid to sleep for fear my memory would take advantage of it to reshuffle the past on me again. Keeping my mind at bay must have left me in such a state of fatigue that I saw everything in terms of effort, and it didn’t seem like I was giving in to an explanation that complied so well to my need for rest after nights of insomnia. At least I was able to sleep for a few hours (it was the end of August).

  There had been effort, yes; not the physical kind, however, which—I repeat—could be adapted, but enormous moral effort, precisely because I didn’t want to be subservient to my body when in fact everything around me tended to lock me into my disability.

  In the wake of this truth, my memories now flowed along without obstructing or contradicting one another. They were even too vivid (they disturbed me a little), so much so that I was tempted to tone them down. I certainly didn’t need to go searching for revealing episodes: there were any number of choices to pick from.

  Especially during the first months of my definitive return to Italy after the war, I’d had to struggle not to lend weight to my humiliations. The fact that I’ve never been able to think back to that period without an even greater reluctance (if possible) than I experienced in recalling the Lagers confirms it. Each time my mind shrank from the moment when I was dropped off the train of Russian veterans, on a stretcher, in Merano, on December 4 of ’45; when I was left there, under the roof of the station platform, to claim my luggage, and found all the goods that I had scraped together by selling good moods in Homburg suddenly gone. Perhaps the recollection of the autonomy of actions and decisions that, even in the direst misery, I’d had in the camps made me feel the limitations of my present situation even more, a regret that tightened my throat. Perhaps this too contributed to the repression of that past, to the painful beginning (I remember it now).

  VIII

  In January ’46 I’d been h
ospitalized in Bologna. It doesn’t matter if your legs are immobilized, I told myself, your conscience fortunately is not. I was determined to play a part in the country’s social rehabilitation. I would live a normal life.

  I turned to every possible agency, alliances of former internees, partisans’ associations, Resistance committees, political parties, Catholic institutions.

  I groomed and dressed with care and, sitting nice and straight in my wheelchair, visited every local headquarters, pushed by hand by a friend who was an orderly, a bony, taciturn young man with red hair and a freckled face, in whom I confided.

  At first the people who sat across the desk in those offices received me warmly, their expressions moved (so young and so destroyed, their eyes said); as I proffered my skills in exchange for some minimal subsidy as I had done in Mainz, they exchanged moist glances, shaking their heads: “Such fortitude!” they said, nodding, their voices cracking. “We’ll keep you in mind, you can be sure of it, and as soon as an opportunity arises, we’ll call you,” and they said goodbye with the broadest charitable smiles.

  But later, when weeks had passed and I went back, the tearful, concerned tones were gone, and only weary faces confronted me: “We told you we would call you,” the overburdened voices grunted.

  “You know, Vincenzo,” I finally said to my orderly friend as I lay huddled in bed in the ward, “it was my mistake. I behaved like a supplicant.”

  “Don’t be discouraged.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “On my next day off, we’ll try again.”

  I’d been wrong to keep silent about the most critical topics. Of course, it would be better to reveal them in good time, in a reflective, well-thought-out way. But it was my last card and it was worth playing. I prepared a little speech that was persuasive and concise, and when I thought I’d worded it properly, Vincenzo and I went at it again.

  We drove into the city on my friend’s motorcycle. I sat in the sidecar, behind which a contraption carrying my wheelchair was attached.

  When I was led into the office I’d targeted, I said more or less:

  “I can provide useful information, mine is a special case, I voluntarily went to the Lagers as a Fascist, there is a whole sequence of steps in my mental progression that can be helpful, I can be your social guinea pig.” But I noticed that my listeners stiffened, their eyes avoided mine, their voices became inquisitorial.

  I would tell my story, and each time there would be the same suspicious questions, the same incredulous perplexity. Then the verdict: “You ruined your life chasing after empty words.”

  “But only because I took that rhetoric seriously,” I pleaded ingratiatingly. “I doubted the rumors about the Lagers and wanted to substantiate them by going there myself. And so I learned from everything I went through.”

  “And you feel fortunate?” my interrogator of the moment asked.

  “In a way, yes,” I said, with a modest smile.

  “You’re not kicking yourself for it?” he said, astounded.

  “No,” I said, I too taken aback.

  “Don’t you bitterly regret it?” he said, as his gaze slid over my body in the wheelchair.

  “No,” I said, with the start of contempt in my eyes. Never mind, I thought, the important thing is to get what I came for. And, modifying my expression, I said: “Even a mistake can teach one to…”

  “Certainly, we don’t doubt that … but you must also understand that … this is a delicate time, the Nazi-Fascist atrocities are too recent, and having served as a volunteer is no small matter, these are things that must be weighed, examined, there’s a special purge commission for this purpose … You yourself know that if anything can be done, priority is given to valid deportees.”

  “But if I hadn’t told you, you would never have known.”

  “Possibly.”

  So as not to pay the price, I backpedaled. “There’s always the fact that a woman’s point of view is different from that of a man.” By now I was stammering. “A female survivor opens a…”

  “Go on,” the voice cracked, “don’t worry, the matter will remain between us, we won’t use it against you.” Staring sadly at my legs on the footrests of the wheelchair, he added, “You’ve already paid too high a price, don’t give it another thought, go back to the hospital in peace.”

  “Poor little thing, what a fate!” I heard him sigh as my friend the orderly pushed me away.

  “On the other hand,” someone replied, “she asked for it.”

  When I applied for a pension: “Omit your volunteer service,” an official who had been moved to pity by my story advised me. “It will be easier for you to acquire invalid status if you’re classified as a deportee. Say you were rounded up in Verona and describe the circumstances in detail. As it is, it’ll take three or four years before you obtain your pension. If you add to that the problem of your volunteering … In general, take my word for it, don’t talk about it.”

  “Be patient,” everyone told me, the same old story told to those who are suffering, “little by little you will resign yourself.” Some added, “You are really fortunate that your disability has been established. Once you get your pension, you can decide to do as you see fit. You’re so young, good heavens, what’s a few years of waiting? The procedures are lengthy, it’s true, but in the meantime you’re cared for, with all expenses paid, what more can you ask for? Think of those who are worse off than you.” (All my life I’ve run into this humanitarian consolation, which holds that seeing others’ misfortunes alleviates your own.)

  In my gloomy state of melancholy, the delays and red tape with which the paperwork was completed seemed calculated to me, as had the aimless wanderings of the Nazi convoys, whose deportees, crammed into cattle wagons, would be completely depleted by the time they were unloaded at a destination. I was aware that likening the two was paradoxical: in hospitals one was kept warm, fed, given food and water, treated and looked after like a child. But I was afraid that, if I adapted to years of hospitalization, I would inevitably acquire the mind-set of an aid recipient and, when I was finally able to arrange a proper life, that I wouldn’t be able to do anything but live off the income from my disability, at most brightening my existence with meaningless diversions, hobbies and so on, to save face.

  And so, once again as in Dachau, I had to act quickly if I didn’t want the prison of my body to incarcerate my mind as well.

  In effect to prove to myself, as well as to others, that I was not branded by my injury, I made it a point of honor to always appear cheerful, strong, serene, “non doma” (not crushed), unfazed by my misfortune even when the pain was killing me or when I felt consumed by humiliation. To avoid being pitied, I began feigning an imaginary freedom.

  Was it any wonder that I’d lost my connection and couldn’t remember my real Germany? And so for years I acted out the defensive fairy tale of mind over matter …

  All this, however, became apparent later on. For me, at age twenty, ignoring any obstacles was really the only way not to find myself in the role that I feared most, that of the prodigal son who has returned to the fold defeated, an invalid.

  *

  There’s one last thing that I must also add. In the summer of ’46, I was truly overwhelmed with my woes. I was so thirsty for peace and I had so much tension to work through that concentrating on personal relationships suddenly seemed like the most desirable form of relief. Now that I had fallen in love with a young man in whose eyes I didn’t see myself as an invalid, I thought it unnecessary to keep trying to convince others. I went along with it only to silence them, to get rid of them—brusquely, it’s true, but also with no particular rancor.

  I remember one specific situation, still in Bologna, in ’46. In early September, news of my upcoming wedding (the date was set for the ninth) had spread. A crowd of visitors started parading past my bed, all day long, not just doctors and other patients in that big orthopedic hospital—soldiers in plaster casts, some wearing neck braces, some on crutches—but peopl
e from outside as well. I felt like a monkey in a zoo and I was somewhat amused to note the incredible circumlocutions they used to express their concern about one thing: my presumed inability coeundi et generandi (regarding coitus and procreation). Amid congratulations, acclaim for the sainted man (my future husband), the hope that by some miracle I would become pregnant (God is truly great), reflections on platonic love—which is worth even more than carnal love if you can be satisfied with it—they did their very best; absolutely certain that they were pleasing me, they passed the word around for everyone to come and say a kind word.

  But the charade began to irritate me, and I sent around my neurological certificate, which indicated that my body showed no contraindications to either normal sexual relations or normal pregnancy.

  And then they say that Nazism is over, I laughed to myself, handing my biological guarantees to my eager visitors. They looked at one another, offended, and stopped coming.

  It seemed incredible to me, to be marrying a young man, a war survivor like me (he from Russia), a student like me (he studying law), who was offering me a simple, ordinary union between two people who loved each other reciprocally. One who gave me his love and support with no pretentions, no grandiose words, but plainly, with natural authority, a paterfamilias on whom I could finally rely.