The Gift of Asher Lev

  I closed the boxes, put them back on the shelf, and went out of the storeroom. For a long moment I stood in the study, gazing at the Matisse and Cézanne and Renoir on the walls. I looked at my uncle’s recliner, saw the declivity shaped by his body, and imagined him sitting there, overweight and grinning, smoking his cigar and looking at his paintings. I locked the door to the storeroom, turned off the lights, closed and locked the door to the study, and went back downstairs.

  There was a small crowd in the living room, mostly women, seated in the front row of chairs and talking with my aunt, who was apparently well enough now to have returned to her low stool of mourning. Devorah was among the crowd, leaning forward into the penumbra of grief surrounding my aunt, and talking to her. I went through the living room and into the den to use the phone. The den was large, paneled, carpeted, lavishly furnished with leather sofas and chairs. A dark wood desk with a tall-backed leather chair stood near a wall. Tall, wide sliding glass doors opened onto the flagstone terrace and the rear lawn. Rain was falling heavily on the sodden earth and the black trees. I sat down in the leather chair and gazed outside. Then I picked up the phone on the desk and tapped in a number. A woman answered. I asked for Douglas Schaeffer and told her my name.

  He came on the line immediately. “Ash? How are you, dear boy? How’s the weather?”

  “It’s the same weather you’ve got in Manhattan.”

  “What do you mean? Where are you?”

  I told him.

  “What are you doing in Brooklyn, dear boy? Did someone die?”

  I told him.

  “The uncle who bought your drawing when you were six? I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you. Listen, Doug, can I see you Monday morning?”

  “The gallery is closed on Mondays, dear boy. Remember? Catherine and I are going out to Connecticut to her sister’s. Can you come on Tuesday? Very good. Tuesday, then. Terribly sorry about your uncle. Catherine says hello. She’s right here. What? No, his uncle. Condolences from Catherine, Ash. Goodbye.”

  I hung up the phone and sat back in the leather chair and looked out the glass doors at the rain. It fell bleakly through the dismal mist-laden air onto the drenched earth and into the grave of my Uncle Yitzchok. Cold and gray, it struck the wet stones of graves everywhere and seeped into the graves of Yudel Krinsky and Anna Schaeffer. It washed across graves old and new, oozing silently through the waterlogged earth and around the pebbles and stones and through the wood onto the lifeless flesh. Uncaring, merciless rain, lashing the living and the dead.

  There was a writing pad near the phone and a tall pen fixed point downward in a greenish block of veined marble. With the pen, I drew on the pad, in a single continuous line, a profile of my uncle. Then I drew my uncle full face, as he had been when I was a child: round, dark-bearded, full moist smiling lips, merry eyes. My uncle appeared beside the chair and looked at the drawing of his face. He picked up the drawing and put a coin on the desk. Now I own an early Lev. You will one day be another Picasso. Who is Picasso? He is the greatest artist in the world. What does he look like? He is short and bald and has dark burning eyes. How do I know such things? I read. Someone who is a watchmaker is not necessarily also an ignoramus. I was drawing a profile of Anna Schacffer: oval features rich with the wrinkles of age, short silver hair, her eyes mirrors of grace and accomplishment. You have Chagall’s pale face, Asher Lev. Do you suffer fainting spells? Are you really very religious? You believe your Rebbe is a gift given to your people by God to help you make your lives holy? Is that what you truly believe? Art is not for people who want to make the world holy. If you want to make the world holy, stay in Brooklyn. Very well, very well. You will study with Jacob Kahn. He will teach you, and I will sell your paintings. He will make you into another Picasso. “No,” I heard myself say loudly. “My name is Asher Lev.”

  Someone was calling me.

  “My name is Asher Lev,” I said again.

  “Hello, Asher Lev,” someone said. “How do you do? My name is Devorah Lev.”

  I opened my eyes, startled.

  Devorah was standing in front of the desk. “You fell asleep in the chair. Did you have a dream?”

  I looked at the pad and the pen. They lay untouched on the desk.

  “You kept saying, ‘My name is Asher Lev.’”

  I opened the pad. Bare paper stared back at me like the expanse of huge blank canvas in my studio in Saint-Paul.

  She came over to the chair and leaned over me and put her arms around the back of my head. I felt the warmth and softness of her, felt her lips upon the hair on the side of my face. “Do you want me to stay with you, my husband?”

  Where were the faces I had drawn? Surely I had drawn them. I had felt the pressure of the pen upon my fingertips, had seen the lines come to life. Where were the drawings of the faces?

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. But there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

  “They’re serving lunch, Asher.”

  I followed her out of the den and into the kitchen. Where were those drawings? I kept asking myself. Could I have dreamed those drawings?

  I sat at the table eating lunch and hearing nothing of what was being said around me.

  All that afternoon people came and went. The rain slackened, then stopped, but the mist remained in the azaleas and in the branches of the trees. Devorah said she was leaving to bring the children back from school.

  “Rocheleh wants to walk home by herself with her brother, starting tomorrow.”

  Independent Rocheleh. One afternoon she had disappeared from our home in Saint-Paul and walked by herself up the long road and through the entire village to the cemetery at the far end of the wall, and then all the way back—at the age of six.

  “Is it safe, Asher?”

  “How do I know? Ask my mother.”

  “She said children walk back and forth all the time during the day.”

  “Then I guess it’s safe.”

  The end to the rain increased the traffic into the house. My mother came through the crowd and was immediately given a seat next to my father. Cousin Yonkel sat on his stool, looking dry and crabby. Cousin Nahum was listening and making efforts at talk. My aunt and her two daughters looked weary and desolate. Dark-garbed men and kerchiefed women crowded the porch, the hallway, the dining room, the living room, the staircase. A low buzzing sound hung in the air, the hum of a hundred subdued conversations occurring simultaneously. I heard someone mention a recent talk given by the Rebbe on the radio and cable TV. Others were discussing the diamond business, the jewelry exchange in Manhattan, the market for Japanese cameras and computers, the night security patrols along the streets of the neighborhood, a fund-raising drive for the local Ladover yeshiva, a fire in the Ladover yeshiva in Jerusalem, local city politics, politics in Israel. I sat on my wooden chair with my eyes closed, lost in the murmurous flow of the talk all around me and wondering where my drawings were; I was certain I had made them. It had all been so real: the faces, the conversation; it had all felt so good, so exhilarating, as though at the morning of the world.

  I heard a distant shout. All around me startled faces looked about, debate faltered. I heard the shout repeated, the words indistinct. It was outside somewhere, on the street, then on the walk, then on the porch. A strange and tangible whispering began to move through the air, like the trembling breaths of a hundred simultaneous astonishments. There was a sudden stirring and a concurrent movement of chairs. Everyone around me rose, and I rose, too, and stood looking at the crowd that jammed the hallway and blocked the door to the house. Silence invaded the house, and stillness, as though sound and motion had suddenly abandoned the world. In the hallway the crowd began abruptly to part, in silence, with a barely audible shuffling of feet, and through the divided crowd walked two tall dark-bearded men in dark coats and hats. Behind them, walking slowly with majestic stateliness and supported on his left arm by a third tall dark-bearded man, came the Rebbe. Behind
the Rebbe walked a fourth man, very tall, his eyes glancing left and right. The Rebbe wore a dark coat and suit and an ordinary dark hat. His beard was stark white, his face pale. His eyes, gray and piercing, gazed out from the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. The tall men walked slowly through the crowd and passed close to where I stood, and I could smell the moisture of the still-damp air on their coats, see the wariness and determination on their faces and the fingers grasping gently but firmly the Rebbe’s left arm, see the Rebbe scanning faces as if searching for a face he knew. Then I felt his eyes upon my face. He stopped for the briefest of moments, his eyes upon my face, and he nodded, once, and moved on—and everyone in the room saw that nod. A quiver of subdued motion passed through those around me. I sensed the nod as a palpable movement across my face: a hand had brushed my cheek. Over the heads of those near the front of the room I saw my father, his face showing clearly his surprise at the appearance of the Rebbe. My Cousin Yonkel stood dry and rigid, his mouth open. Cousin Nahum looked ecstatic. Instantly an easy chair was placed beside my father. The Rebbe carefully sat down. All took their seats. The Afternoon Service began, led by Cousin Nahum.

  The Rebbe sat very still in his chair, praying. The sounds of the brief service filled the living room and seemed to echo on the porch outside. Those on the porch were praying, too. The Rebbe stood for the Silent Devotion and the Kedushoh and the final prayer. The Mourner’s Kaddish was recited. A Psalm was said, and the Kaddish was repeated. Cousin Nahum returned to his stool.

  Everyone sat in silence, waiting, eyes upon the Rebbe.

  The Rebbe turned to my father and nodded briefly. Someone brought my father a tractate of the Talmud. He opened the huge volume and began to teach a passage of Mishnah from the tractate Sanhedrin.

  “‘All Israel have a portion in the world to come,’ “my father intoned. “‘For it is written, “Thy people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified.” But the following have no portion therein.

  All eyes were turned upon my father. He spoke in a softly melodious tone, the traditional resonances for the teaching of a Talmudic text. I sensed the focused attention of the crowd and, at the same time, became gradually aware of a subtle dwindling in the light of the room, as though a vaguely discernible blurring shadow had settled across the chandelier in the center of the ceiling. The shadow slid slowly along the ceiling to the corner behind my father’s stool. There it settled, gathering its edges into itself, becoming the thinnest of clouds. I saw the cloud gather depth and color and take on form, and it was my Uncle Yitzchok, and he stepped from the cloud and came toward me.

  “‘… He who maintains that resurrection is not a biblical doctrine,’ “my father went on. “‘And he who maintains that the Torah was not divinely revealed; and an epikoros.’”

  My uncle moved slowly and effortlessly through the crowd and into the hallway and up the stairs. I heard my father continue reading from the Mishnah.

  My uncle moved soundlessly through the second-floor hallway and through the door into his study. He turned on the lights and sat in the recliner.

  “‘Three kings and four commoners have no portion in the world to come,’ “my father said.

  My uncle sat in the recliner, gazing at the paintings on the walls. On his white-bearded features was a look of awe; he seemed in the presence of mysteries of creation he knew he could never fathom. Surely the Master of the Universe was at the heart of this mystery! But what if not? What if at its core was the befouling sediment of the pagan, the menacing allure of centaurs and satyrs, garlanded and gamboling naiads and dryads, or, worse yet, the stark demoniacal world of the sitra achra, the Other Side, the Destroyer? Clearly such works did not emanate from the world of Torah. All the more fascinating, then, their allure! All the more blissful the gazing upon them, the slaking of one’s thirst with their colors and forms! One could think of them at one moment as creations of the Master of the Universe, and at another moment as monstrous birthings from the realm of darkness. Two sides of the same coin? Yes. Dancing and flickering lights and shadows. Is that why there are no mezuzahs on those doorposts, Uncle Yitzchok? Because you’re in rooms that are weighty with the possibilities of reverence and corruption simultaneously? How calmly he sits in his recliner, my Uncle Yitzchok. How he drinks in the paintings. God is everywhere, even in a Renoir. Or is He?

  My uncle rises from the recliner and turns off the lights. The paintings vanish. I am in the living room. The Evening Service is at an end. I hear the final Mourner’s Kaddish being recited by Cousin Nahum and Cousin Yonkel.

  Inside the living room everyone was seated. Those in the hallway strained forward, watching. My aunt and her two daughters slipped silently into the room and sat down on their stools.

  The Rebbe rose. Immediately, everyone in the living room, except the mourners, stood.

  The Rebbe walked the few steps to my aunt and cousins.

  “May God comfort you together with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” His voice was soft, tremulous. “He was a good soul, a good man. I loved him as one loves a brother. I give you my blessing for strength in this time of darkness. Soon, soon the redemption will come, and there will be an end to our exile and suffering. Soon….”

  He turned away and, together with his tall dark-bearded retinue, went slowly through the living room and the hallway and then through the front door and out of the house.

  A silence followed. People stood about or moved slowly, as though fearful a sudden flurry of sound or action would tear apart the fabric of sanctity brought to my uncle’s home by the Rebbe.

  The house slowly emptied.

  Later, we sat around the dining-room table. Devorah came in with the children. “Did anything special happen in school?” I asked Rocheleh. I always asked her that when I saw her after a school day.

  Nothing special had happened to her, Rocheleh reported.

  I turned to Avrumel.

  “Ça va, Papa,” said Avrumel. It came out “Tha va.”

  “Nothing special to report?”

  “My teacher asked me if my papa is Asher Lev.”

  “Oh? And you said?”

  “I said of course my papa is Asher Lev.”

  “And your teacher said?”

  “My teacher said nothing.”

  I looked at Devorah. She shrugged. My father glanced at my mother. I thought I heard him sigh.

  “What does the child say?” Aunt Leah asked.

  I translated.

  “Even in kindergarten they talk about Asher Lev,” said Cousin Yonkel in his best sour manner.

  “What an honor to Yitzchok, of blessed memory, that the Rebbe came,” my mother said, in an effort to change the direction of the conversation.

  “Better my husband should be alive,” my aunt said, “than the Rebbe coming to console me because he is dead.”

  “The Rebbe almost never goes out,” my father said. “I am astonished that he was here.”

  “Better my husband here than a thousand such astonishments,” said my aunt.

  In the kitchen in my parents’ home later that night, I said to my mother, over a cup of coffee, “Have you and Papa seen Uncle Yitzchok’s art collection?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yonkel said they’d sell it the first chance they get.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Yonkel would probably burn it if it wasn’t worth all that money. Someone put a lot of thought into that collection. What a shame it will be to break it up.”

  “It’s theirs to do with as they wish.”

  “Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and Uncle Yitzchok. What a pretty picture!”

  “You should get some sleep, Asher. You look very tired.”

  My father had returned home from Uncle Yitzchok’s house exhausted and had gone to bed. Devorah was putting Avrumel to sleep. Rocheleh was in her room, reading her French Alice in Wonderland.

  “Devorah tells m
e she is trying to persuade you to stay on for another week or two,” my mother said.

  I said nothing.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I’m in the middle of a lot of things.”

  “We should have come more often to see you in Paris and Saint-Paul. We were both always so busy, your father and I. And the travel is so expensive. It was very difficult, especially for your father.”

  “Difficult when he wasn’t there, or difficult when he was?”

  She smiled sadly. “Both were difficult, Asher.”

  Difficult. They had visited us twice in Paris, and once my father had come alone. And they had been with us once in Saint-Paul, and each had also come alone. They had sat in our apartment in Paris on the Rue des Rosiers and looked at our walls. The walls were crowded with paintings and posters and prints. They sat there looking around the apartment and seeing a strange world of color and form: oddly shaped sculptures in corners and on book-shelves; modernist and occasionally grotesque figures and designs on the walls. Outlandish mobiles hung from the ceiling and turned slowly in invisible currents of air. My father sat and fidgeted and stared and combed his beard with his fingers. What nightmarish congruence of fateful events could have made possible the issuance of such a son from such a father? Had he thought evil thoughts while lying with his wife? Had the moment of conception somehow been invaded by a corrupting spirit from the Other Side? Another riddle! He sat and stared at the walls and shook his head, and fled as soon as he could.