Gillian Rose - Loves Work (New York Review Books Classics)

L O V E ' S W O R K

Gillian Rose studied philosophy at the Universities ofOxford, Columbia and Berlin. She was Professor at theUniversity of Warwick where she worked in modernEuropean philosophy, social and political thought, andtheology. Her books includeDialectic of Nihilism, TheBroken Middle, Judaism and ModernityandHegel.Shedied in December 1995.

The Broken Middle

Judaism and Modernity

Hegel

Love's Work

Gillian Rose

LOVE'S WORK

Published by Vintage 1997

2 4 6 8 1 0 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright Gillian Rose 1995

The right of Gillian Rose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1995

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Papers used by Random House UK Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustain-able forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox &C Wyman, Reading, Berkshire Keep your mind in hell, and despair not STARETZ SILOUAN 1866-1938

I

My first meeting with Edna was inauspicious.

It was May 1991. I had just arrived in New York for the first time in five years, and had been met in at Newark Airport in New Jersey by Jim. Unsure of what to expect, I first walked up at the barrier to the wrong man - to someone who looked like a carica-ture of Jim as I remembered him in good health: well over six foot tall, a mane of blue-black hair, thickset, welcoming. Suddenly aware of my wilful mistake, I stopped just short of an inept embrace. I stood my ground and then I saw him. His posture was as crumpled as the clothes he'd obviously slept in, his hair had turned gingerish and it rose from his head in wild clumps with bald patches in between.

This uneven growth dominated his manners, too, as I realised after one minute in the taxi heading towards Manhattan, which loomed in archetypal and mocking splendour ahead of us. My formerly laconic and witty friend had become loquacious, needy, addressing with urgent familiarity everyone we

Love's Work

chanced to have dealings with over the next few days - taxi-drivers, bell-boys, waiters. And when he wasn't holding forth to those nearest to him, he issued a continuous, low, moaning sound, a piteous cradling for the inner, wounded being that, strangely, had surrendered to the publicity of the city streets. On Broadway, from Columbia University, where Jim's apartment was located on inth Street, down to the Lincoln Center, where I went early morning swimming, I soon learnt to recognise multitudes like him: the old men in their forties, shrivelled, drained, mumbling across the intersec-tions, icons of AIDS, amidst the bodiful vibrancy of those striding to and from work and subways and stores.

By the time we reached Edna's apartment on West End Avenue, I was assailed by even more apprehensions. I felt uncomfortable meeting the two people who were offering me accommodation for the first time in the company of this unkempt and erratic being - my beloved friend - to visit whom was, I then thought, the whole purpose of my trip.

I needn't have worried, for each successive en-counter proved as bizarre in its own way as the first.

Gary, Edna's employer, was waiting in the foyer of 365 West End Avenue. I had been told that he was a Love's Work

private scholar, a man of means and intellect, metic-ulous and courteous. So he was: but I had not been told that he was afflicted with a long-term wasting disease that left him with uneven gait and hands locked in a rictus-like claw. Gary was utterly un-fazed by Jim's doleful appearance and low-pitched litany, for he was only too eager to communicate the essentials concerning Edna in the short space of time we would have between leaving the lobby and reaching her fifth-floor apartment via the elevator. I knew that Edna was Gary's secretary and was expecting a dapper, matronly woman, perhaps in her fifties. Edna, Gary hurriedly explained, was ninety-three years old. She had recently contracted cancer of the face; and, as a result of a prosthetic jaw, had had to relearn to speak. When I then handed Gary the litre of Laphroaig purchased at Duty Free, he exclaimed, 'Please God, you're not bearing whisky as a gift for Edna!' In her eighties, Edna had secretly started drinking a bottle of Calvados every day, until she had had to be hospitalised, detoxified, and warned that her octogenarian life was at risk from her newly acquired habit. Thus we were ushered into Edna's presence and, increasingly confused, I met my Intelligent Angel for the first time.

Edna took Jim on, greeting and welcoming us

Love's Work

both as her immediate 'Darlings', in a rasping but emphatic voice. She settled us into her huge high-backed armchairs, a legacy, she explained, of the outsize men in her family. In this family, it turns out, there are no surviving men, just Edna, her sixty-eight-year-old, retired, mathematician daughter and her two granddaughters. Edna was diminutive amongst the heavy and ornate furniture; her tiny, wrinkled, round face dominated by a false nose, which lacked any cosmetic alleviation whatsoever.

Smooth and artificially flesh-coloured, with thick spectacles perched on top, this proboscis could have come from a Christmas cracker. In the early mornings, when I emerged from my room on my way to swim, Edna would have already been installed in her reading chair for an hour or two. She would call out to me to enquire whether I would mind if she were not to put on her nose. By then, not only did I not notice the nose, but, if anything, I found the neat, oblong, black hole in her face even more appealing.

Edna goes out to work for Gary seven days a week, taking the bus uptown, but often walking the thirty or so blocks back downtown. She acts as Gary's hands, word-processing his scholarship and correspondence; he in turn acts as the guardian of her much less infirmities, lending support to her arm

Love's Work

as they climb the stairs to the restaurant on Broadway and 112th Street where they take lunch daily.

Meeting this third, extraordinarily afflicted person within the first hour of arriving in New York trans-formed the difficulties of the first two meetings.

Edna and Jim were soon exchanging stories from New York music life. 'I've taken part in New York music life since 1904,' mused Edna. She would have been seven years old then. And I watched, not for the last time, the delight that flew between the fading forty-seven-year-old and the one full of ninety-three years.

Later, when I found myself alone with Edna, there were certain things which she was determined to make clear: 'My marriage was not happy. My husband was disappointed with me.' 'Although, when he died,' she added, without a hint of triumph or rancour, 'I was the only person permitted to attend him. The nurses in the hospital had to assure him that they were "Edna".' And for good measure, she also insisted that she did not eat vegetables. Nor, as she showed me around the apartment and we entered her bedroom, had she painted the room pink as long as her husband was alive: 'I don't want you to think that I made a man sleep in a pink room.'