mentioning that.
“How’s your poem coming?” I said.
“I’m always working on poetry,” she said.
“I was thinking of the one you were going to write about your husband’s death.”
“It is still in the formative stage, but I know it will be free verse,” she said. “A long free-verse narrative of the soul’s journey through sorrow.”
“I look forward to reading it,” I said.
“My husband is so difficult to render artistically,” she said.
“I’ll bet he is,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
She fortified herself for the task by draining her second Pernod. I nodded again at the bartender. He brought her a fresh drink, and she nodded her thanks imperiously. I’d noticed that certain lushes get imperious after a couple of pops, trying to prove, I suppose, that they aren’t lushes.
“He was . . . He was a tapestry of pretense. Nothing about him was real. A . . . a pastiche of deceit.”
“You love him?” I said.
“I thought I did. What I loved was the mask, the costume of respectability he wore to cover himself.”
“I’m fascinated,” I said. “Tell me about that.”
She snorted, albeit imperiously.
“Prince wasn’t even his name,” she said.
“What was it?” I said.
“Prinz,” she said. “Ascher Prinz. He was Jewish.”
“Oy,” I said.
She paid no attention. I didn’t feel bad about that. I was pretty sure she paid no attention to anyone.
“He was ashamed of being Jewish,” she said. “He never spoke of it.”
“Do you know why?” I said.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “For me, all ethnicity is an enriching source of authenticity, without which one can hardly be a poet.”
“Did he want to be a poet?” I said.
She looked startled.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Did Ashton want to be a poet?” I said.
“God, no,” she said. “Why would you think that?”
“Just a random thought,” I said.
“There was no poetry in him,” she said.
“Was there something in him?”
“You mean artistically?” she said.
I could see that she was trying to nurse her current Pernod, and it was stressing her.
“Artistically, professionally, intellectually, romantically, whatever,” I said.
“I . . . I really can’t say.”
I nodded.
“When did his family come to this country?” I said.
“Ashton’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t really know that, either,” she said, and gestured to the bartender. “I do know that his father was in a concentration camp. So it would be after World War Two, I guess.”
“You know which camp?” I said.
The Pernod came. She drank some. I could almost see her tension loosen.
“Oh, I don’t know. He never talked about it, and they all sound the same to me, anyway.”
“You poets are so sensitive,” I said.
“What?”
“Just being frivolous,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
I could see that she was losing focus.
