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A Memoir
by Andre Aciman
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Uncle Claude had wisdom, smarts, and a rakish sense for subterfuge and double-dealing. He recovered some of the money via Interpol, but most of it had disappeared, or so Claude claimed. My father instructed us to show him our enduring gratitude, but never to trust him. Meanwhile, he had asked his uncle to give us a set sum every month.
From aboard the deck of our ship the fateful morning of our arrival in Italy, my mother and I looked out, hoping that Uncle Claude might pick us up in Naples. But I wasn't certain that the man I'd spotted from afar on the pier was indeed Claude. Our ship had not yet docked, and the sunlight was in my eyes. I could only make out scattered groups of people crowding the wharf, baggage porters, shipping and customs personnel, but also friends and relatives who must have traveled from all over Italy to welcome people they hadn't seen in years. All I could remember of Uncle Claude dated back to my earliest childhood when he sat me on his lap facing the steering wheel and allowed me to pretend I was driving his antiquated car, which everyone in the family had nicknamed the hearse-mobile and continued to call by that name long after his sudden flight from Egypt. I remembered his wavy black hair, his hat, his special sunglasses with dark cloth blinkers around each lens, and the clicking sounds he made with his teeth to mimic the tiny rotary crank that he kept turning left then right to open and shut the windshield while putting on a mystified expression meant to amuse children. I must have been scarcely three. I hadn't seen him since the day he'd driven my grandmother and me back from the beach to the usual daily lunch at the large apartment still run by his mother, my great-grandmother. His car with the sunken, flaky, ridged, old leather seats had intrigued me, as I had never seen, much less sat in, a car so thoroughly antiquated. I knew its nickname but was warned never to call it that in front of him.
Hearse-mobile stuck like a moniker meant to deride Uncle Claude's inveterate stinginess, a quality he shared with all his eight siblings, my grandmother and Aunt Elsa included. All preferred to consider their stinginess a form of acquired thrift wrought by years of hardship that went back generations but that everyone who knew the family, from my mother down to their youngest servant, called by its real name after extending a forearm at the end of which was a clenched fist signifying nothing short of avarice—sheer ugly, obstinate, incurable, entrenched, tightfisted avarice. That branch of the family gave nothing away and hoarded everything as a keepsake long after it had served its purpose, justifying their reluctance to part with it by using the oft-repeated French motto on ne sait jamais, one never knows, meaning one never knows when a throwaway might prove handy or when a discarded friend might turn out useful after all.
As for the ageless square-box car, it went down to the junkyard along with Claude's hat, his blinkered eyeglasses, and the tiny crank for the mobile windshield whose gears made raspy, clicking sounds. He would have waited to sell each to the highest bidder, but the Egyptian police were onto him for siphoning funds to Switzerland. A distant acquaintance tipped him off just in time. Uncle Claude narrowly escaped through the kitchen door and was never seen in Egypt again.
My mother looked out at the wharf once more and was now persuaded that the man we first spotted couldn't be Uncle Claude. "Too well dressed," she said. He'd never spend money on fine clothes. Instead, she spotted another man who looked, she thought, emphatically juif. But then she changed her mind about him too. Then a man standing far away on the dock seemed to recognize her and was eagerly waving at her. That didn't make sense to her, she said. "He never liked me, and I couldn't stand him." As it turned out, the man was waving at someone leaning against the railing next to us and was desperately screaming her name, "Rina, Rinaaaaa." "Not him," my mother finally said. "Besides," she added, "it would be unlike the old miser to come to meet us here. The cost of gas from Rome alone would prohibit it." Plus, we weren't important enough for him to undertake the drive. My mother, my brother, and I were, but for my father and Aunt Elsa, the last family members leaving Egypt, and he had repeatedly reminded us in his letters that he'd already made the trip to Naples countless times for his many relatives—in-laws, nephews, nieces, as well as siblings, including my grandmother. He couldn't be expected to show up on the wharf each and every time. As we concluded that he would not come to Naples for us, my mother reminded us that the people from the refugee service would be taking us to a transit camp after all. I was to translate for her, she added, turning to me with a minatory smirk whose meaning was not lost on me. All those private lessons with Italian tutors over the past few years in Egypt had better pay off now. "Focus on what they say, not what you think they're saying. And try not to let them know I'm deaf. They'll rob us." Then, realizing I was growing nervous, she added, "We've survived worse, we'll survive this too." Now that we were about to set foot in Europe, Egypt could sink in filth, for all she cared, and stay mired in its ziballah—the Arabic word we continued to use, meaning "garbage." Her only worry was my father, who had stayed behind in Egypt and was still vulnerable to the whims of the Egyptian police, who were known to be ruthless, especially with Jews.
Excerpted from Roman Year by Andre Aciman. Copyright © 2024 by Andre Aciman. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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