WHAT’S THE POINT?

The tragic depression, the constant and inexplicable terror, have passed for the moment. Perhaps they will return. During an examination in October 1995, Dr. Fisch told Saul Steinberg that he probably had thyroid cancer. It was an enormous shock, as two years before Dr. Fisch had noted that his neck glands were enlarged but “definitely not malignant.” Steinberg’s first indication that things had changed came during his stay at the Marbella clinic, where routine blood tests unexpectedly revealed the presence of tumorous activity. When he returned to New York, Dr. Fisch saw a significant physical change and ordered a CT scan of his chest and abdomen. A second CT scan confirmed the likelihood of “medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland,” and Dr. Fisch referred Steinberg to Dr. Jatin P. Shah, the chief of head and neck services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. Throughout early December, Dr. Shah scheduled tests that showed “extensive lymphadenopathy,” and when Dr. Fisch confirmed that the glands had been enlarged for five years or longer, Dr. Shah concluded that the recent changes suggested Steinberg might have lymphoma. He scheduled a neck node biopsy for December 19, and Steinberg initially agreed to it. But several days beforehand, he claimed he had the flu and postponed it. Dr. Shah noted on his medical records, “I have a feeling that his psychological make up did not permit him to go ahead with the biopsy.”

Steinberg delayed until mid-February 1996, when the biopsy was finally performed and did confirm thyroid cancer, with the official diagnosis of “medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland with bilateral cervical and mediastinal lymph node metastasis.” His physicians agreed that he did not need immediate “active surgical intervention” but kept him under observation until he could get used to the diagnosis and decide what to do. Two weeks later, when a subsequent examination found no change in the original finding, Dr. Shah told Steinberg he had two treatment options: he could have surgery to remove the mass, or he could continue to live with it while keeping it under close observation. The medical report noted that the patient was still unable to make a decision and needed more time to think about his options. Dr. Shah concluded that taking more time was acceptable, because Steinberg was in “remarkably good health for an 81-year old man … a cartoonist still actively working” whose only prior surgery had been a childhood tonsillectomy.

Saul Steinberg in his early depression. (illustration credit 45.1)

Throughout December, as Steinberg’s doctors compiled his medical history, a portrait formed of a man in as much mental distress as physical. He was a “robust” eighty-one-year-old who had blood in his urine and took Librium for severe anxiety. He had not smoked a cigarette since 1972, but his recreational drug of choice was “grass, last used in June,” and he drank “more than seven” alcoholic beverages every week. He ticked “yes” to “feeling sad/depressed, anxious, hopeless, guilty, and suicidal,” and he also answered “yes” to “Have you ever planned or attempted suicide?” A subsequent, more in-depth examination concluded that he had “a severe depressive disorder for which he has been treated with Prozac and Zoloft.” Steinberg told the examiner that he stopped taking the drugs because he was unable to tolerate them, but the doctor concluded that he had not taken them long enough to gauge their effectiveness. The doctor next prescribed Lithium, which Steinberg took for a while but stopped when he decided that it too did little to relieve his depression.

Six months later, in August 1996, Dr. Fisch retired and Steinberg transferred his care to Dr. Jeffrey Tepler, an internist recommended by William Gaddis. Tepler’s diagnosis was far blunter than Fisch’s: “He has had suicidal ideation…He has had many other vegetative symptoms and has become quite nonproductive.” Dr. Tepler believed that thyroid cancer had been present for at least nine years, although no symptoms had manifested until recently. Because the tumor was indolent, Steinberg did not need surgery to remove it, but he did need hospitalization for “severe depression which has worsened over the past several months.” Dr. Tepler sent him to Silver Hill in New Canaan, Connecticut, a hospital specializing in psychiatric disorders and substance abuse. From August 20 to August 31, Steinberg was treated for depression, anxiety, and panic, with the drugs Effexor (25 mg) and Serzone (100 mg).

When his stay at Silver Hill ended, a limousine took him back to New York, where his absence had passed unnoticed, as if he had only been away as usual in Springs. Although most of his close friends were aware of how he had gradually withdrawn into a more private and quiet life during the past year, few recognized the depth of his depression and the degree of his impairment. They all ascribed the changes in his behavior to his worry about Sigrid and did not probe further. Muriel Murphy put it best when she said that he had such an “austerely private self” that she, like others, was reluctant even to ask how he was, and especially to ask “the very important question: how is Sigrid and even more important, where is she?”

SIGRID WAS LEADING A LIFE THAT was both intimately connected to Steinberg’s and separate and detached. She made another journey to Mali in January 1996, despite Steinberg’s contention that there was too much political unrest there. He was doubly worried, not only about her safety but also about providing for her in case his thyroid cancer caused him to be incapacitated in some way. Before she left, he made arrangements with his financial consultant at Neuberger and Berman to transfer $300,000 into an account in both their names. He wanted the funds to be conservatively invested for maximum reliable income with minimum risk, and with all interest and dividends to be paid into Sigrid’s personal account each month. As this amount would vary, Steinberg stipulated that she could draw on the capital as needed or wanted by sending a written request to the adviser, who would contact him to secure his permission. Steinberg’s generosity gave her financial security, but the gesture did little to relieve the awkward tension between them.

Very few people knew that Sigrid had gone back to Africa, the assumption being that she was not seen with Saul because they were once again on the outs, or that she was in one of her bad periods, or, among the few who knew about Steinberg’s cancer, that she had run away because she couldn’t deal with his illness. In truth, she had planned the trip since late summer 1995, well before his diagnosis. She purchased her tickets and made her arrangements in early fall, and whether his illness had any bearing on her decision, she wanted to keep to her original travel schedule. When she returned at the end of February, Steinberg’s depression was so severe that she could not break through his silence and withdrawal. She did not realize how deeply incapacitated it made him and blamed his behavior on the usual hard time and silent treatment she believed he gave her when he was angry about something she said or did. She was determined not to let what she mistook for his stubbornness offend or discourage her, for being in Africa was always a boost for her state of mind.

“What’s the point?” she asked, wondering why the fact that she had come back safely did not cheer him up or at least make him “less gloomy.” He was too depressed to respond, so she demanded to know, “Why can’t you be proud of me for doing what I want to do well? I even started to speak the language and everybody in Gao is proud to be friends with me. They respect even admire and love me. I am sixty years old and their sister mother grandmother.”

Sigrid and Saul were at an unfortunate impasse, two people who cared for each other, desperately wanting connection but drifting along in a miasma of miscommunication and misinterpretation. No matter what they did or said, they found themselves at cross purposes.

Putting money into an account for Sigrid to draw on no matter what happened to him was not enough to ease Steinberg’s mind about what would become of her if anything should happen to him. He fully intended for her to inherit the greater part of his estate, but he worried about her erratic behavior and what she might do after he died if there was nothing or no one to constrain her. He had been talking to his lawyer, John Silberman, about how to ensure that his money and property were dispensed as he wanted, but the immediate question was how best to secure Sigrid’s safety and well-being. Steinberg thought he needed to appoint some sort of trustee or guardian to watch over her.

His friendship with Prudence Crowther had strengthened during the past year, during which she had volunteered unwavering support and morale boosting. She accompanied him to a steady stream of medical appointments; saw that he got home safely, that his prescriptions were filled, and that he took them as directed; and, in conjunction with Josefine, made sure that his household was in order. In Hedda Sterne’s words, “Prudence became the brick that got him through the really bad years.” Steinberg thought Prudence would be the best person to help and advise Sigrid Spaeth, and he arranged for them to meet.

When he invited Prudence to visit them in Springs, he intimated but did not directly state that he wanted to give her an official role in overseeing his estate. She thought that Saul had hinted the same thing to Sigrid that he had hinted to her, that she would be “vaguely involved as an executor.” Prudence spent the weekend in a motel and one afternoon went to the house, where Sigrid was waiting to meet her. At the time, Sigrid was sixty and Prudence was forty-eight. Prudence felt that in his oblique way, Saul worked hard to make the meeting “as gentle as possible,” and after introductory pleasantries, he left the two women alone to get acquainted. Prudence thought the meeting must have been awkward for Sigrid, which was why she seemed at first “a bit noblesse oblige but gracious … working to impress upon me that she was also a person of imagination, not in a vain way, but out of uncertainty as to who I was and what I was doing there.” Sigrid said something witty about the squirrels outside, and although Prudence thought it might have been a set piece she had used before, she gave her credit for being imaginative: “I am guessing that she would have already been privy to Saul’s (mis)understanding of his medical circumstances, and therefore laboring under a terrible dread.”

Even though his doctors assured Steinberg that his cancer was very slow-growing and would probably not be the cause of his death, he was convinced that it would be his killer and that he would die very soon. On November 5, 1996, he made a will in which he named his lawyer, John Silberman, and his friend Prudence Crowther the executors of his estate. He also left significant financial bequests to fifteen people. Aldo Buzzi was to receive $150,000, and Ada Cassola Ongari was to receive an annuity that would pay her $12,000 a year for the rest of her life. His devoted housekeeper, Josefine Buttles, was to receive $25,000, and his two studio assistants, Anton van Dalen and Gordon Pulis, were each to receive $50,000. He left $50,000 each to Claire Nivola, Ian Frazier, William Gaddis, Norman and Cella Manea, Karen van Lengen, Mary Frank, Linda Asher, and Prudence Crowther. His cousin Henrietta’s son, Lawrence Danson, was also to receive $50,000. The remainder of Steinberg’s still considerable money and property (estimated at more than several million dollars for each) was to be divided between his sister Lica’s children, Dana and Stéphane Roman. He left nothing to Sigrid Spaeth, because she committed suicide on September 24, 1996.

NO ONE EXPECTED SIGRID TO TAKE HER LIFE, least of all Saul Steinberg, for her previous attempts had seemed more a cry for help than a sincere desire to succeed. Her most recent interactions with Steinberg had been unusually quiet, both being so preoccupied with their individual depressions that they never argued or fought, probably because they were both taking prescription drugs and seldom had a genuine conversation. The summer drifted sadly onward: “For an hour, in silence, Sigrid and I gaze at the landscape waiting for the fox. Then lentil soup with potatoes and frankfurters, eating like hermits.”

Steinberg kept a daily diary during the autumn of 1996, the first entry starting the day he returned from Silver Hill. Because of the way he phrased many entries, the document reads like something he wrote in one fell swoop after everything had happened, as if he were trying to digest and make sense of a seemingly senseless progression of events. On September 9, he wrote in Italian, “Il mio dilemma, non io raggionare”—his problem was the inability to think rationally—and therefore there was little he could do to control his own behavior or his responses to Sigrid’s.

He was still in the city on September 23, when he had his last conversation with her: “Last time call Sigrid Papoose.” The next day he wrote her name in large horizontal block letters and next to it wrote “Papoose” vertically. He was harkening back to the early years of their long relationship, when he had used the loving nickname he and she gave to each other, a name neither one had used in years except when they called the cat.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF SEPTEMBER 24, the sixty-year-old Sigrid Spaeth went up to the roof of her fourteen-story building at 375 Riverside Drive and jumped to the sidewalk below. The official death certificate listed the time she died as 4:15 p.m. and said that she died from multiple fractures and visceral lacerations, with blunt impact to her head, torso, and extremities. Her body was taken to the Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey, where it remained until it was cremated on October 1.

Sigrid left two letters in her apartment, one for her sister, Ursula “Uschi” Beard, and one for Saul Steinberg. She began Uschi’s letter in German, repeating the same sentence in English for Saul: “Please forgive me but I couldn’t go on.” In Uschi’s letter, she switched to English to tell her sister to take what she wanted of her things and to “give away or sell or destroy and throw away [all the rest], especially my work.” Her letter to Saul was more personal; she told him she could not go on living because “life was too painful. Only torture and agony. Please don’t blame yourself in the least. You did more than what was possible for me and I never thanked you enough. It is my DEFECT that forces me to do this, please remember only the good things and that I love you. Your Papoose Sigrid. Please bury my ashes in the woods.”

THE TWO WEEKS BETWEEN SIGRID’S SUICIDE and her cremation were devastating. As soon as Steinberg was notified, he called Hedda and asked her to inform a few close friends. The day after Sigrid’s death, he made his own calls, starting early in the morning with Ruth Nivola. He said nothing about Sigrid but asked if the cleaning woman they both used happened to be in her house, and if not, did Ruth know how to reach her? Ruth said she would try to find the woman’s number and would phone him back. She wondered why he was calling so early and with such a strange request, but she was trying to fulfill it when the phone rang again. It was Hedda, “her voice suffocated with tears,” asking Ruth if she knew. Understandably, Ruth asked, “Knew what?” Sobbing, Hedda reverted to the name by which she had first heard of the existence of Sigrid Spaeth and said, “Gigi killed herself.” Ruth wanted to rush across the road, but Hedda reminded her of Saul’s strict instructions that he “did not want to be intruded upon” and no one, not even either of them, could arrive without his permission. In a state of emotional paralysis, each remained where she was.

Meanwhile, Saul was making other phone calls: to Sandy Frazier in Montana; to Dana and Stéphane Roman, in Paris and Nice respectively; to Aldo in Milan; to Uschi Beard in Ohio; to Sigrid’s lawyer, Barry Kaplan, and his own, John Silberman, both in New York; and to Detective Brannigan of the local police precinct, who was in charge of the case. He also called the Riverside Memorial Chapel to arrange for the cremation and service, and he called two of Sigrid’s friends whom he did not know personally. Then he made a note to himself: “Tangible property—Hedda, Prudence. Leave to niece and nephew, leave house to niece and nephew.” After that, he was “bedridden five days.”

Although he told everyone who lived away from New York that they should not come, Sandy Frazier insisted that he had to be there, flew from Montana, and stayed with friends just in case Steinberg needed him. Steinberg remained alone in his apartment or took solitary walks that usually ended in Central Park, where he would use the pay phone in a men’s room to phone Frazier, who explained, “Sometimes he’d say ‘no, don’t come,’ sometimes he’d say ‘yes, come over.’ ” If they met, they always walked back to Steinberg’s apartment and sat at the big table in silence. “I can’t talk,” Steinberg told Frazier. “I can’t say anything.” But the telephone rang constantly with people who wanted to help, and Steinberg always answered it. Frazier remembered that he told his callers, “ ‘Don’t come over, —Sandy is here.’ It reassured them that he was okay because he had someone with him.”

Frazier was there when the funeral home telephoned to say that Sigrid’s ashes were ready. Steinberg found a double shopping bag and they took a taxi to the West Side and sat in the waiting room until the attendant came to present them with the urn. Steinberg put the urn into the shopping bag and all the way back to his apartment and afterward repeated “Poor Sigrid” over and over as he cried.

SIGRID’S WILL BROUGHT ANOTHER ROUND OF shocks when Steinberg learned that she had changed an earlier version in which he was her executor to appoint her sister, Ursula Beard, and lawyer, Barry Kaplan, to replace him. She left the personal property within her apartment to Uschi, but she left the apartment itself, the one Steinberg had bought and paid for, with an estimated value then hovering around half a million dollars or more, to her analyst, Dr. Armin Wanner. Her personal property included a sizable collection of Steinberg’s art as well as the works of others that he had given her, with an estimated value of $300,000. After her body was taken away, police sealed the apartment, and no one was allowed to enter until the executors applied for and received permission to remove all uninsured objects of value, starting with the art. Steinberg had to apply separately for permission to enter and remove the things he had given her, but by the time his permission was granted, Uschi Beard had followed Sigrid’s instructions and everything of value was gone.

SAUL WAS STILL REELING WHEN HE phoned Ruth Nivola for the second time, again with an “almost inaudible deep voice.” He told her he was “lost, in need of friends,” and Ruth urged him to let her cross the road to be with him. He said he would not see or speak to anyone until he could manage to “detach [himself] from the house in which Sigrid’s spirit still dwells.” Ruth asked her son, Pietro, to phone him later, and when he did, he told his mother that he feared “Saul was preparing himself for death and was soon going to die.”

Although Saul was “practically catatonic with grief,” he managed to get himself into the city to await Aldo and Bianca’s arrival on October 5. Before he left Springs, he phoned Ruth and said “an amazing thing, something he had never said before in all the years I knew him. He said, ‘Anytime you need something, call me.’ ” In the city, he stayed alone in his apartment, phoning Hedda multiple times every day and seeing only Aldo and sometimes Bianca, who discreetly absented herself so her husband could take care of his friend. Josefine did the shopping and cleaning, but Aldo prepared many of their evening meals, cooking the simple pasta dishes of their university days to try to tempt Saul to eat, as he had no appetite and was losing an alarming amount of weight.

Condolence letters poured in, and despite the writers’ intentions to bring comfort, they only increased his pain. The letters fell into several general categories: Arthur Danto wrote that he hardly knew Sigrid but that whenever they spoke on the telephone she was so kind that it was like speaking to an old friend; Ben Sonnenberg said the relationship that endured for more than twenty-five years could not possibly have ended without great grief. Peter and Maria Matthiessen thought they were easing Steinberg’s “remorse” (his word, not theirs) when they said they were long aware of what a tenuous hold Sigrid had on life, but instead of providing comfort, their letter provoked a tearful outburst of self-recrimination, as did many others. Ruth Nivola sent a note via Aldo saying that she respected Saul’s wish not to see or hear from any of his friends, but she was “across the road” whenever he needed her. And Uschi Beard’s letter was the most painful of all, because she enclosed with it a copy of Sigrid’s earlier, outdated will, the one in which she wrote that she was leaving “everything to Saul Steinberg, who gave it all to me.” Uschi’s attached note said, “I feel for you … she must have been very desperate to do it to you. She must have been desperate.”

SAUL, ALDO, AND BIANCA WENT TO Springs on October 16, in preparation for the private ceremonial burying of Sigrid’s ashes the next day. That afternoon Saul called his niece, Dana, in Cachan to assure her that he would be all right, and then he allowed Aldo and Bianca to persuade him to cross the road and eat lunch and dinner in Ruth’s warm and welcoming kitchen. When they arrived for lunch, Ruth was “frightened by the mood of all three, so dark and impenetrable.” They were so silent that she wondered if “all three had forgotten to use language” and conceivably had not exchanged one word on the long drive out from the city. Her way of offsetting the mood was to surround them with the foods they loved, from prosciutto and mortadella to her homemade cake. Ruth had to originate what little conversation there was, eliciting an occasional pleasantry from one of the Buzzis while Saul said “absolutely nothing.” Afterward, Aldo literally had to guide Saul across the road to his house while Bianca stayed with Ruth. At dinnertime he led Saul back to Ruth’s kitchen, where she served them roast chicken and loaded the table with everything from potatoes and salad to the luncheon leftovers. “A table with food can heal, and eventually Saul joined the conversation,” she wrote in her diary. He talked about Italian food, “which he used as a shield for real emotions, but he did warm up and he did talk some more.”

The weather was glorious for the entire week, and on the brilliant, crisp, and sunny October 17, Sigrid Spaeth’s ashes were buried exactly where she wanted to lie. On July 16, 1994, she had taken a sheet of pink paper, written her wishes, and attached the paper to a little sapling she had planted three days earlier. It was not addressed to anyone, but it gave full instructions for her burial. Steinberg detached the note, put it away, and when the time came, honored it: “This is the place where I would like my ashes to be buried, under the little (or if I am lucky—by then big) tree I planted on July 13. Over a dead catbird. Among the catbirds and chipmunks and moles, etc., not far from where Papoose’s soul is waiting in his tree. I know that when I die and go to heaven, Papoose will be waiting there and perhaps Papa and Mama and all those I loved.”

She signed it, “Sigrid. Facing east toward Papoose and Africa.”

Afterward, Aldo and Bianca had to help Saul into the car for the return drive to the city. Except for an occasional remark about the traffic, they were all silent. Aldo and Bianca were uneasy when they returned to Milan on the twenty-third, hopeful that Saul would soon be able to accept that he was powerless to have done anything to stop Sigrid from killing herself. It was reassuring to know that Hedda was on the phone with him several times each day, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. Afterward, Saul seemed to come briefly out of the haze that otherwise enveloped him, but it never lasted for long.

On November 7, with the assistance of Prudence, whom he had asked to help him find an analyst, Saul had his first and only appointment with one. By November 24 he felt strong enough to write his first letter to Aldo since Sigrid’s death. They had talked on the phone, but Saul worked hard in his letter to assure Aldo that “the tragic depression, the constant and inexplicable terror, have passed for the moment.” Then he added, “Perhaps they will return.”

CHAPTER 46

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