Januay 3, 2021
Back From the Dead
Claire is livid.
I can’t say I really can blame her.
You see, the Angel of Death dropped by to return the album he had borrowed - The Band’s Music from Big Pink. We were about to sit down to dinner so I invited him to join us.
I was now in the kitchen ostensibly to help Claire with the salad, but the salad, in a teak bowl we had bought at Pottery Barn, was already made and sitting, in plain view, on the dining room table. So I was just in the kitchen to get yelled at, albeit in a moderately pitched whisper.
“Why did you invite him?” she hissed.
“It seemed like the polite thing to do. I mean, he could see we were about to eat.”
“Who drops by at 6:30?”
“Maybe he is a European Angel of Death,” I replied. “They don’t eat until 9:00.”
“Well what am I going to feed him?”
“Your lasagna and the salad. Plus I got a baguette.”
“He eats lasagna?”
“Of course he eats lasagna.”
I had no idea if the Angel of Death ate lasagna.
“It’s a meat lasagna,” she said. “Will that be ok?”
“I don’t know, let me ask.”
I popped my head out of the kitchen. The Angel of Death had made himself comfortable on the leather couch. Looked like he remembered where I kept the Laphroig.
“Meat lasagna and Caesar salad ok?” I asked. “Claire didn’t know we would be having company.”
The Angel of Death stood up. “Hey, I really don’t mean to impose...”
But I cut him off and directed him to sit back down.
“No, no. It is no imposition. We have plenty. I just wasn’t sure if you ate meat.”
“Is it lean? I’m trying to watch my weight.”
As it happened, it was lean. I had done the grocery shopping myself. I wasn’t bringing home any medium chopped ground to Claire. I had learned my lesson. I was about to tell the Angel of Death but he interrupted me and said “Meat lasagna? What are you, cooking a calf in its mother’s milk?”
My heart skipped a beat - he had invoked the ancient Jewish prohibition of mixing milk with meat. I sputtered out a few words in my defence but he cut me off. “I’m just fucking with you dude,” he said smiling.
Claire brought out the lasagna and I cut up the baguette. The Angel of Death tucked his napkin into his shirt.
“Don’t want to get tomato sauce on my CK shirt,” he said. The Angel of Death was a little more dressed up today. Black dress pants and a black silk, I guessed Calvin Klein, shirt. If not for the gold Rolex on his wrist he would have looked a little like a waiter at Cafe Romana.
Claire cut him off a big piece. It barely made a dent in the amount of lasagna in the platter. Claire was a freezer. She always cooked for eight.
The Angel of Death took note of the size of the platter. “That’s a lot of lasagna for the three of us,” he said. “Are you up for a fourth for dinner?”
I looked at Claire. She gave me a look which said she was not up for a fourth for dinner. It was a look which said she was not up for a third for dinner. Actually, she gave me a look which said, right now, she was not altogether sure she was up for a second for dinner. But I was intrigued. Also, we had a lot of lasagna.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked the Angel of Death as I uncorked a bottle of Barolo I had been saving for a special occasion. I couldn’t imagine anything more special than this. Plus, my past experience with the Angel of Death reminded me that things went a lot better if we were both a little drunk.
“Pick any person, living or dead. Sorry, my bad. Not living. I don’t have that level clearance. Just dead. And I will arrange for that person to join us for dinner.”
So here’s the thing. We have all played this game. It is a staple of blind dates and dinner parties. It is such a common game that it has almost become cliché. And here is what happens. Most people will say who they think the other people in the game want to hear, in order to impress, rather than say who they would really like to have dinner with. It’s human nature. Then you get a lot of defensive people saying things like “Yeah, well I think Sir Isaac Newton would be fucking interesting.” Or, say if people have been drinking “I think it was implied I meant Carnal Knowledge Candice Bergen and not Murphy Brown Candice Bergen.” That kind of thing.
Here’s the other thing. If you ever get into a situation where the Angel of Death offers to bring back someone from the dead to join you for dinner, you might want to take a few minutes to think about it. Unless the Angel of Death has said, ok you have ten seconds to decide. But that has not been my experience with the Angel of Death. He has always been pretty chill. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, in fact I should probably have led with it, if you are currently in some sort of relationship, the type of relationship where maintaining the convivial nature of your partner is important, nay essential, then you had better consult with him or her before blurting out a name. Because, as it turned out, lesson learned, once you blurt out a name there are no take backs.
I had played this game before with Claire. More than once. And I knew her answer. It was the answer she gave every time.
“My Nana.”
Now when Claire says “My Nana,” her by the way 94-year-old grandmother who lived a full life and who had died peacefully in her sleep, everyone else in the room, including me, says “Awwwwww.” To reiterate. Including me. Lewberg, on the other hand said, both times, “No, seriously.”
But I didn’t consult with her. That’s on me. That’s my bad. If I had even thought about it for three seconds I would have remembered. But I didn’t. I just said the first name which came to my head.
Which was -
Italo Svevo.
Wait what?
What the fuck!!!!!
Sorry, nobody in the story said that. I’m just guessing your reaction.
Italo Svevo, nee Aron Ettore Schmitz, was an Italian novelist, playwright, and business man, who was born in the town of Trieste in 1861 when Trieste, which is now a city in Italy, was part of the Austrian Empire. He died in 1928 at the age, I am doing the math in my head, of 67.
It is the 67-year-old Svevo who was now sitting at the dining room table. His close-cropped hair was grey but his bushy moustache was the original black. Unless, of course, there was Grecian Formula in heaven. He had a hat but it was resting on his lap. He looked pretty good for 67. He didn’t look like he was going to die that year. So, if any if you are taking notes, it turns out that if the Angel of Death offers to bring someone back from the dead, you get the dead person at the age of their death. Choose wisely my friends.
Svevo was a friend and contemporary of James Joyce and it is that friendship which helped launch his career. His novel, Zeno’s Conscience, is now considered to be a masterpiece of Italian literature.
His nom de plume was very much Italian but the name given at his circumcision (you see what I did there) was, like mine but with slightly and I think inconsequentially different spelling, Aron. For twenty years, much like my own grandfather Aaron, he worked as a bank clerk while writing and submitting stories.
He was an early practitioner of modernism. He was meta before meta was called meta. That alone would have been enough to draw me to him. But there was a third piece of the puzzle which makes Italo Svevo a compelling and unequalled literary hero. After he got married, Italo, or Aron Ettore as he was then called, earned his living, like me, as a paint salesman.
A paint salesman!
He sold industrial coatings.
Ok, if you look it up it turns out he and his father-in-law were partners in the business.
But c’mon. Let’s not quibble. The time is not for hair splitting.
He was a paint salesman!
Which was all well and good and would have been a perfectly reasonable, if a little sentimental, explanation for my rash and unusual choice if not for the fact that, before that very morning, I had never heard of Italo Svevo.
“Are you fucking kidding me now!!!”
That bit is part of the story. That was Claire.
See, Jules had sent me an email that morning with notes on a new story I had written and kindly and generously, finding a tiny bit of similarity in our approach, suggested I look Svevo up. He thought I would really like him. So I did. And then I downloaded his novel on my Kindle, and mentioned to Claire over lunch of tuna and cucumber on a toasted bagel that I had just discovered my new favorite writer. And, “get this” I had crowed, he had been a paint salesman!
Italo Svevo.
So I guess he was on my mind.
Which is why I blurted out his name.
“You knew I wanted my Nana,” Claire said very, very softly and then, without even acknowledging Italo, I mean it wasn't his fault I didn’t pick her Nana, stormed out of the dining room and into the bedroom.
Italo Svevo was fluent in both Italian and German.
He did not, it turned out, speak English.
I speak English, French, and a little Hebrew.
Fun fact. The Angel of Death only speaks English. Maybe something to know for all those parents enrolling their kids in Introductory Mandarin. He only speaks English. Although when he is drunk, very drunk, he speaks a smattering of Yiddish.
So I didn’t get to speak to my new literary hero Italo Svevo. He didn’t seem to mind. He was pretty happy to drink my Barolo and then, a few bottles later, my scotch.
I turned on my iPad and showed him the eBook version of his book. He couldn’t read it of course but was pleased with the author picture. On closer inspection, we discovered he was now wearing the same hat.
I can’t imagine what it would feel like to come back from 1928 and land in a Toronto condo in 2020 but the best word I can find to describe his reaction is nonplussed. I wish I knew how to say that in Italian. It is unlikely anyone would ever blurt out my name in an Angel of Death bring back a person from the dead in order to have dinner game - maybe an ex-girlfriend who wanted to tell me how terrible a boyfriend I was one more time - but it seems unlikely I would be so cool about it.
Claire came out of the bedroom and served us all her famous pecan pie. Italo Svevo said it was “bellissimo.” Which made Claire giggle. Although, to be fair, she had drunk a couple of glasses of wine by then.
The Angel of Death suggested we put on some music and Claire got up to choose a record. She played the piano beautifully, had gone to a conservatory for eight years, and had an extensive collection of classical records. I thought she would pick Puccini or Verdi but then I heard the opening bars of BB King’s How Blue Can You Get from the legendary 1964 Live at the Regal recording. It made me remember there was more to like about Claire than her lasagna and pecan pie.
Then the four of us, Claire, the Angel of Death, Italo Svevo and I, sat, ate pie, drank scotch, and listened to BB King.
That’s it.
I have no kicker for this story.
No twist ending.
No poignant moment.
Claire’s Nana did not show up for tea.
Nobody borrowed any record albums on their way out.
The Angel of Death did not, in a moment of drunken recklessness make James Joyce suddenly appear so he could reacquaint himself with his old friend and offer, since Italian was one of the languages he was fluent in, to translate any questions I might have of Italo Svevo.
And I definitely did not then harangue James Joyce for an hour about run on sentences in Ulysses.
I didn’t.
As if.
But c’mon dude, throw in a comma once in a while.
The end.