Manfred,a lonely old Jewish man living in London,feels himself closing life in common with the century.But he welcomes the pain which racks him:he cherishes it like an old friend.Manfred's pain,like his past,is an amazing thing, a rage he nurtures against the dying of the night.
As a young soldier,he fought a war for the British in Italy and North Africa; he married a beautiful Jewish girl which survived Birkenau; they had a son; but in the long shadow of the war, Manfred begins to destroy the things he loves most...
And now,haunted by guilt and solitude, he revives the sweetnes of his life in monthly meetings with his wife Emma, a ritual as strange as it is moving, as terrible as it is filled with the hope of a lifetime.
"Once, Manfred had loved his life ardently.He had loved it like a young husband.There had been many radiant sections.Some of his memories (and as Manfred withered away, he found his memories increasingly fleshed and substantial ) were opalescent,euphoric things.Emma had filled his life with whole new categories of regret and loss but she had once made him strong as well as weak.Each slow volume of his diaries was pugnacious and scrutably content. Much, much had been good.
But much had been bad.Much had been impotent and bewildering, harm done and harm suffered.The war had burnt him.It had consumed a necessary,pristine part of him.Leaving his wife made him ashes.Without her,his life became a spectacle of waste.For more than twenty years they had met once a month on a cold park bench.Their son,Martin,had grown into a man he could not love. Manfred felt like spent fuel.He did not much want death but he greatly wanted rid of life. It didn't seem much to want to die."
Manfred's life at the present is blended with flashbacks of his past,which combine in order to give a complete picture of his entire life.
The images from the war are striking and the character seems marked by them.
And then comes his passion for Emma ,something close to an obsession, so strong and energical that it cannot survive in a pure form,and therefore transforms ...
His violence towards Emma-his constant ager towards her ( and himself ) ,his beating her is in fact the more awful as it is pointless.
It is after this discovery one starts thinking he deserves his faith.
He doesn't love his son mainly because he is jealous of him-because Emma loves him.He is so selfish that he hates the idea of a grandson and takes the news very badly from his son and daughter-in-law.
As his wife tells him the story of her life - the atrocities of war - he begins to feel more Jewish than ever and he becomes interested in what happened to his kind during the war.
After the separation, his love for Emma becomes something different:
"Her absence strenghtened his love.So much without her,he could love her with no good reason and that was the only kind of love worth loving."
"He wept for himself.He wept for Emma.Love surged in him,flooding his damaged heart.No world could be big enough or good enough to house her.He felt that he was concluding his love for her.He was extending love to its furthest deepest region.He could love her no more than he loved her now."
Author's note: "Emma still lives.When I am in the city I see her where I can,when I can.My heart fills at the sight of her,with an ache and a joy that is slow to leave me.Emma is old now.She is free of much of her ancient grief.Though old,she has changed little and her beauty still startles,still arrests.Without her,my city,my world would be less.With her there is joy but there is much sadness,With her there is Profit and Loss.There is Wait and See.There is my pain.There is Manfred's Pain."
