“Asher Lev, artist and freak. Ask any Ladover. They’ll tell you: Asher Lev, artist and freak. Asher Lev, troubler. Stand back from Asher Lev.”
“Are you very tired, my husband? Do you want to go home?”
“Yes and yes.”
“The doctor called earlier and said that Rocheleh’s tests came back and confirmed what he told us. There is a new medication he wants her to try. She can go to the overnight camp if she wants.”
“But she doesn’t want.”
“She discovered today that some of her school friends are going to that camp.”
“I have to go to Paris, Dev.”
“There is no reason you cannot go to Paris, Asher.” Avrumel returned from school the next day and said that Rav Greenspan had come into his class and shown a movie about the day camp. The Rebbe appeared in the beginning of the movie, urging the children to go to the camp. There were pictures of the camp: colorful tents, rolling grounds, and grassy fields somewhere in Staten Island. Every morning at eight the campers traveled there by bus, and they returned by five in the afternoon. Pictures of boys playing games, hiking, swimming, and learning Torah. The swimming pool was very large. “Larger than Uncle Max’s,” Avrumel said. The Rebbe came on again at the end of the movie and gave a blessing to all the children who would attend the camp. Shimshon thought the camp looked nice, Avrumel said. I saw my parents glance at each other and exchange the faintest of smiles.
“The children have friends here,” Devorah told me later. “There is family here. There is community here.”
She was right.
Two days later, in the early afternoon, a truck pulled up in front of my Uncle Yitzchok’s house, and three men climbed out. I went with them to the front door. Aunt Leah opened the door and without a word stepped back and let us come inside. Her eyes cold and her face sullen with anger, she gave me the keys to the study and the attic Then she went off into the kitchen.
I watched as the men carefully removed my uncle’s entire art collection from the study, the master bedroom, and the attic, and put it all into the truck. They took the paintings, drawings, prints, gallery announcements, publications, files. They did not remove the micrographie drawings in the living room. I glanced into the dining room and saw that the painting I had once made of Uncle Yitzchok and his family was gone. The painting was not listed as part of his collection; apparently, Uncle Yitzchok had left it to his family. On the wall was a faint outline, the residue of its lengthy presence in that room.
The day before, I had bought two lovely silver mezuzahs in the Hebrew bookstore. When the study and attic were empty of art, I quickly affixed the mezuzahs to the doorposts, reciting the appropriate blessing.
The truck pulled away from the curb and turned down the street toward the parkway, heading for the lower Manhattan storage facility recommended by Douglas Schaeffer. I wanted to say goodbye to Aunt Leah, but when I called her name she did not respond. I went back to my parents’ house.
Max Lobe phoned from Saint-Paul. When were we returning home? What did I mean, I didn’t know? What was going on in Brooklyn? Everything was fine, the house was fine, the studio was fine, Saint-Paul was fine, only John Dorman wasn’t fine, he had been in the hospital again, this time with bronchitis and a kidney problem. He, Max, was thinking of going to Tokyo for the opening of his show. Yes, he had been invited. The Japanese were eager for him to come. Devorah got on the phone and talked to him. Then the children talked to him. Avrumel said he was probably going to stay in New York for the summer and go to a camp. Shimshon liked the idea, he said. He handed me the phone. “Uncle Max wants to talk to you again, Papa.” I took the phone.
“What is happening over there?” Max said.
“It’s very complicated. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“And when will that be, my friend?”
“I’ll call you in a day or so.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes.”
“Rocheleh is all right?”
“Yes.”
“John thinks you have all been kidnapped and are being—how do you say it?—brainwashed.”
“John is a writer of fiction.”
“I will tell him you said it. Goodbye, my friend.”
I hung up the phone and went back into the kitchen. They were all sitting around the table, finishing supper. I took my seat and resumed eating. “What is happening over there?” I heard Max say, and could see him saying it, his round face troubled, his bald head glistening.
“I have to know what we’re doing this summer,” I said.
“I want to go to camp day with Shimshon,” Avrumel said.
“Day camp,” Rocheleh said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
“The Rebbe said we will have a nice time in day camp.”
I looked at Devorah. Out of the corners of my eyes I saw my parents looking at their plates.
The telephone rang. Rocheleh went to answer it. We heard her talking on the phone. Then there was a brief silence. She returned to the kitchen.
“It is the office of the Rebbe,” she said in an awed voice.
My father put down his napkin and began to rise.
“It is for Papa,” Rocheleh said.
They all looked at me. My father slowly sat back down.
I went out of the kitchen to the phone.
“Hello,” I said.
“Asher Lev?”
“Yes.”
“Asher Lev, the Rebbe would like to speak with you.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Eleven o’clock.”
“All right.”
“If you have not been to the mikvah today, Asher Lev, I suggest you go before you see the Rebbe.”
He hung up. I put the receiver down and went back into the kitchen.
A warm wind blew through the dark street and moved through the branches of the trees. I walked in the shadows of fluttering young leaves. The street was deserted, most of its homes dark. The yellow lights of the streetlamps fell benignly upon tree trunks and branches and cars parked for the night. Somewhere overhead a jetliner whispered through the smoky black sky. I turned up the path to the Rebbe’s home. The two tall dark-bearded men on the porch nodded at me. One of them opened the door, and I stepped inside.
The house was silent. I entered the waiting room and was about to sit down when my father came out of the Rebbe’s office. He motioned me over to him. I saw his eyes darken with concern as I went slowly past him. He closed the door behind me.
The Rebbe sat behind the desk. He wore a dark caftan, a dark tie, and an ordinary dark hat that shaded his eyes. He beckoned to me, and as I moved toward him I saw him watching me, saw the eyes glittering within the shadows beneath the brim of the hat. He seemed wraithlike, spectral, a blurred and nebulous presence. His face was stark white: white as the sheets of drawing paper in my pad, white as the primed canvases that waited for me in my studio in Saint-Paul, white as Rocheleh’s face when she coughed and could not breathe. No face could be that white. It had to be a trick of the chandelier, or a failure of my tired eyes to register properly the refraction of the room’s light.
The Rebbe was talking to me, but I could not hear him. I looked at him for a long moment and still did not hear him. He raised his hand and motioned me into one of the chairs near the desk.
“… your family?” I heard him say. “All are well?”
I nodded.
“And little Avrumel? Avrumel is well?”
“Thank God.”
“And how are you, Asher?”
“I have problems. An artist’s problems.”
“Your work comes to you now with difficulty?”
“Yes.”
“Jacob Kahn, may he rest in peace, suffered from such problems. He told me once all artists endure such obstacles. Only those of lesser mind and heart are able to work all the time, he said. But it was not a consolation for him to know that.”
“Nor is it a consolation for me.”
“In a book I read
once on the greatest of your artists, it said that even he, Picasso, had periods when he was unable to paint. This is such a time for you, Asher?”
“Yes, Rebbe.”
“I am deeply sorry for your suffering. An artist who is unable to do his art is like a Hasid who has lost his Rebbe and like a Rebbe who, may God protect us, has lost the key to the gate through which he must pass to the Master of the Universe. But the Bratslaver Rebbe taught that obstacles are given us in order to make our desire even stronger. The more a thing is hidden from man, the more he desires it, and the greater the chance that he will one day discover it. I pray you will soon overcome your obstacles.”
“Thank you, Rebbe.”
“All have obstacles, Asher Lev. All. Even a Rebbe.” I sat very still and said nothing.
“They want more from me than I am able to give. I am, after all, only flesh and blood. I, too, had a beginning and will one day have an end.”
I felt a trembling move heavily through me like a sudden shaking of the earth.
“Your Picasso, he lived in disorder. An artist may choose disorder in order to create his own order. I understand that, Asher. But a Rebbe may not leave behind disorder. God created order. In order there is life. In disorder there is the possibility of death. I speak to you this way, Asher, because you are a man of understanding. I do not speak this way to all who come here. You understand?”
“Yes, Rebbe.”
“Then listen to me. There is an ordered future for us. This I know with certainty, for I see it in visions and dreams. The number three is our future, and the third will save us. I ask you to consider this, my Asher. The third will save us. Few here understand you. Most despise you and your work. They see the surface and do not understand what lies beneath. But they will one day understand that three is our future, and the third will save us. One day soon I must give a sign, and only the third will be our future, our orderliness, our permanence, our anchor, our certainty in this world of chaos that surrounds us. We are the world’s permanence, my Asher, its gravity. Without us all would fly off into space, God forbid. Do you understand me? I see it in your eyes, Asher Lev. Yes. Perhaps you begin to understand. Then listen to me. Let your family remain here for the summer. Your children’s teachers tell me that they are happy here. Can it hurt them to remain here awhile longer with their grandparents? And I am told your Devorah is also happy here. You are already here longer than you planned. Perhaps there is a greater plan that keeps you here. Consider that with care. I give you my blessing, Asher Lev, son of Rav Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev.”
He raised his right hand in a faint waving gesture. I rose unsteadily and went from the room.
My father was not in his office. The two tall dark-bearded men looked at me closely as I emerged from the house: I had just been with the Rebbe; surely some of his sanctity clung to me. I walked quickly home beneath trees strangely still in the raven night.
The weeks began to go by with a patterned regularity. On the holiday of Lag Bo’Omer, which celebrates the end of a terrible plague that struck the students of Rabbi Akiva in the Land of Israel during the Roman occupation, I went with Devorah to Prospect Park and watched Avrumel’s team roundly defeat all opponents in a variety of sports. Little Avrumel, his face sweaty with excitement, his red hair and freckles making him stand out on the field even amid a tangle of bodies, was the hero of his team. “Freckles,” I heard some call him in English. “The Red One,” others referred to him in Yiddish.
Some days later, Devorah and I and my parents went to the school and saw Rocheleh perform in a play about the prophetess Devorah. Pale-faced, garbed in a flowing saffron robe, and without her too-large glasses, she spoke her lines in a clear, high, penetrating voice, and dominated the stage and the auditorium. “Who is that?” I heard someone behind me ask during the lengthy applause at the end. “She is the daughter of Asher Lev,” was the answer. “Asher Lev, the painter?” “Yes.” “I don’t believe it. Such a lovely child from such a wicked man.” I saw Devorah’s face stiffen, but she did not turn around.
The festival of Shavuos came and went. The air was warm and fragrant with flowers. The Rebbe was present in the synagogue both days of the festival, and spoke on the first day about the Revelation on Mount Sinai and the Torah as our permanent heritage and the importance of continuity, and I had the impression as he spoke that he was looking at me, but I could not be certain.
I walked around a lot and made many drawings, but I showed the drawings to no one, not even to Devorah. There were more calls from the lawyers, and much talk about the Internal Revenue Service and their appraisers, and complete silence from my cousins, who no longer spoke to me and shunned me when they saw me on the street or in the synagogue.
The summer drew near. Devorah was buying clothes for the children. Their closets and dressers filled with clothes, and it began to look as though they had lived in this house all their young lives. She and my mother were together often. With my mother’s help, Devorah bought herself dresses and two lovely wigs, both in chestnut brown, the original color of her hair, one a short, softly waved coif, the other a brush cut. Often I saw her on the terrace, deep in conversation with my father and mother. She seemed finally to be filling the space left when her parents were torn away from her that July day in Paris.
One morning I took the subway to Manhattan and walked in sun and shade to the tall building that housed Douglas Schaeffer’s gallery. He greeted me warmly. I told him I would be leaving for Europe soon and gave him three drawing pads for safekeeping.
“The printer should have the bon à tirer of that print,” he said. “You remember you asked me about that?”
I remembered, and thanked him.
He began looking through the pads. I asked him if certain of his artists who lived in Paris would be at home for the summer; I would like to see them when I got there. He seemed not to have heard me. I repeated the question. He glanced up from the pads, annoyed, and said, “Please, dear boy. Please.” It was as if the drawings were no longer mine and I was now an intruder. I went out of the office.
Standing before the elevator, I heard the gallery door open and close behind me, and I turned and there was Douglas Schaeffer.
“We will show them in the fall,” he said.
I said I wanted to think about it.
“Dear boy, you can think about it all you wish, but we will show them in the fall. Give my best wishes to Max.” He went back into the gallery.
A week later, I said goodbye to my parents and Devorah and kissed Rocheleh and Avrumel. Devorah, accustomed to my comings and goings, seemed to be treating this as merely another of my journeys from our home in Saint-Paul. “Your papa will be back in two weeks,” she said to the children. “Wish him a safe journey.” My father took my hand in his firm grip and reminded me again that he would be in Paris on Thursday and we would spend Shabbos together at the Ladover yeshiva. “Travel in good health,” he said. My mother embraced me and kissed me. “Have a safe journey, my son,” she murmured, her face warm against mine.
I climbed into the taxi. They all stood in the doorway, waving at me. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the street was quiet. The taxi turned into Brooklyn Parkway, and after a while we were riding through a neighborhood of broken streets and shattered buildings and then along the Interborough Parkway, past the exit to the cemetery where my Uncle Yitzchok lay buried and onto the Grand Central Parkway to the airport.
The airport was crowded with tourists. There were lines everywhere. The plane left two hours late.
I spent much of the trip rereading Rilke’s letters on Cézanne, and drawing. I read Cézanne’s words about his life in the little town of Aix: “Ça va mal…. C’est effrayante la vie!” And I read this:
… artistic perception had to overcome itself to the point of realizing that even something horrible, something that seems no more than disgusting, is, and shares the truth of its being with everything else that exists. Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is
he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.
And Cézanne, in the last letter he wrote, laments his poor health, and adds: “Je continue donc mes études.”
To his last days, he continued learning. I fell asleep reading the book.
BOOK TWO
3
The airliner descended through rough air and dense clouds and landed on a wet runway in a gray and gritty dawn. At a newsstand inside the terminal I saw the headline in Le Figaro: AIRBUS: L’ACCIDENT INEXPLIQUE. An Airbus had gone down during an air show in France: three dead, about fifty hurt. Inexpliqué.
A taxi took me through nearly empty early-morning streets. I saw shopkeepers sweeping down the sidewalks. Traffic was light all the way to the hotel. A weary receptionist registered me; a sleepy bellhop took me up in the elevator.
My Paris is resonant with private memories: the roundup and the sealed apartment; painting the crucifixion canvases; marrying Devorah, the wedding small and simple, with Max and my parents and some friends; Rocheleh born; Lucien Lacamp climbing the stairs to our Rue des Rosiers apartment; Jacob Kahn suddenly here from New York; my show last winter and Paris at its worst: arrogant and dismissive, pouncing. They had been right to scorn. Too much art, too little heart. The Paris of Asher Lev.
I lay down on the bed for a few minutes of rest, and when I woke it was noon and there was sunlight. I washed and unpacked and made some phone calls. Waiting for one of the calls to go through, I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. I slept again and woke hours later, with the sun now a huge motionless orange-red disk in the cloud-studded western sky and the lingering twilight embracing the city like a tender lover.
I sit for a time on the narrow ornamented balcony of my hotel room and gaze across gabled rooftops and tall chimney pots at the stationary sun. A summer twilight seems never-ending here, like a suspension of duration; darkness glides across the sky with the silken slowness of an infinitely languid tide. I sit with the drawing pad on my lap, looking at air dove-gray with fumes from the interminable traffic below and the early-evening streets crowded with tourists and the vast spread of the city beneath the slowly paling sky. Abruptly I am on the street in front of the hotel, with no memory of how I got there, and I set out along the Rue de Beaune to the river.