1996

Complains to Buzzi that his handwriting has become shaky and that his “hand trembles when the spoon takes too lengthy a voyage from soup to mouth.”

His frequent letters to Buzzi have become part daily diary, part voyages to the past—to his childhood and youth in Romania, his student years in Milan, and his military service in World War II.

May 24, tells Buzzi that he has received an invitation from the Romanian Academy, which had proposed awarding him a medal and erecting a statue in his honor.  “What to do?  Nothing.”  Written in Romanian, the invitation provokes a deeply emotional response to the language in which he had been “humiliated, beaten, cursed, and worse—for being Jewish, the only satisfaction those savages had.”

September 24, Sigrid Spaeth commits suicide.  Ian Frazier and Buzzi arrive in early October to be with ST; he doesn’t leave his New York apartment and discourages all other visitors.

At Spaeth’s request, her ashes are buried next to a twisted wild cherry tree on the Amagansett property.  ST asks that his ashes be buried there too.