“Will there be paintings of nudes?”
“Yes.”
She was silent.
“Why, Mama?”
“Your father wants to see it. But he won’t go if there are nudes.”
We took our separate trains. She traveled to New York University, where she taught Russian affairs. I traveled to Brooklyn College, where I majored in sociology and studied Russian. I had decided to major in sociology. It was a safe subject and would not interfere with my painting.
She came into my room that night as I was reading an article in a French art magazine about a recent Picasso exhibition in Paris, and said, “Asher, may I interrupt you?”
I put down the magazine.
“Asher, your father asked me to talk to you.” She looked uncomfortable. “Do you know the Zalkowitz family?”
“No.”
“They live on President Street near your Uncle Yitzchok. Reb Zalkowitz is in the Diamond Exchange in Manhattan.”
I said nothing. She seemed very uncomfortable.
“They have a daughter,” she said.
I stared at her. Then I laughed, suddenly and loudly.
“Asher. Please.” She looked hurt. Pink spots appeared on her high cheeks. She turned and went from the room.
I stopped laughing. After a moment, I found myself trembling with dread.
My father said to me in the kitchen the next morning, “Reb Zalkowitz is a fine and generous man.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“Asher, isn’t it time?” He said it gently.
“No,” I said. “No.”
He was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Drink your juice, Asher. All the vitamins will go out of it.”
I sat in the living room with my mother one night in November. My father was at a staff meeting. It was raining outside. I could hear the rain thudding heavily against the window. My mother was at her table alongside the window, bent over a pile of student papers. She wore glasses now for her reading.
I saw her look up and gaze out the window. The blind had been drawn but the slats were partly open and we could see through them to the glitter of lights in the wet street below.
“In Paris when it used to rain, it was the worst time of the year,” she murmured. She looked at me and smiled. “I’ve waited at the windows of almost half the cities of the world for your father. I’m used to it now. What are you reading?”
I told her. She looked back out the window.
“He was a great writer,” she murmured. “Stalin killed him, too. And he wasn’t a Jew.” She looked at me again. “Where did you get the book?”
“One of my professors.”
She nodded. “Asher, when you were very young your father used to worry that you were retarded because you weren’t learning to read and write as quickly as others. I used to tell him you would learn well only those things that interested you. What is the other book you have there?”
“It’s about the Russian Constructivists. Russian artists.”
“Asher?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Asher, I don’t want to interfere in your work. But your father asked me to talk to you.”
I looked at her and waited.
“I’m embarrassed to ask you again, Asher.”
Still I waited.
“Asher, will you have paintings of nudes in your next exhibition?”
“I don’t know, Mama. The next exhibition is more than a year away.”
She was silent. Then she said, “I want you and your father to be friends, Asher. Please. That means a great deal to me.”
My father came into my room the following night and said, “I asked the Rebbe why he insisted that you study French and Russian. He said he thought it would be helpful to you.”
“It has been.”
“Yes? How?”
“There are good books about art in French and Russian.”
His face stiffened.
He said to me the next morning at breakfast, “Asher, were you planning to go anywhere special next summer?”
“I haven’t been planning anything yet for next summer.”
“Your mother and I thought you might spend a week or two with us in the Berkshires.”
“I think I’ll be painting all summer. I have the show in January.”
“The show,” he murmured, rubbing the side of his face. “The show.”
“Aryeh,” my mother said gently. “Please.”
He said to me one evening, in the course of a long conversation, “Asher, when a painter thinks of a painting is it the same thing as when a writer thinks of a book?”
“Yes, with some painters. They’re literary painters. I think that’s bad painting.”
“How do you paint, Asher?”
“I paint my feelings. I paint how I see and feel about the world. I express my feelings in shapes and colors and lines. But I paint a painting, not a story.”
“You paint your feelings?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes feelings are dangerous, Asher. Sometimes they are from the sitra achra.”
I looked at him.
“Sometimes feelings should be concealed and not let out in the open.”
“Some people can’t conceal their feelings, Papa.”
“Who?”
“Some people.”
“Such people can be dangerous, Asher.”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying to understand you, Asher. But it’s very difficult.”
I said to Jacob Kahn, “How do you explain a man who has a master’s degree in political science, has traveled through half the world, has lived in Europe for years, and doesn’t understand the first thing about painting?”
“Asher Lev, there are professors of art who do not understand the first thing about painting.”
“I’m talking about my father.”
“I know whom you are talking about. Why should your father understand painting? From a yeshiva education you expect a man to understand painting? From a yeshiva education you get a case of aesthetic blindness.”
“I have a yeshiva education.”
“Asher Lev, you took from your yeshiva only the things that didn’t interfere with your art. You are a freak. They could not give you a case of aesthetic blindness. They would have had to kill you to do that.”
“My father has a college education and a master’s in political science.”
“So? He has a master’s in political science. So? Asher Lev, I know your father. I have talked with him about art. He will appreciate a pretty calendar picture of Abraham and the angels or Rebecca at the well. But he would not want his son to dedicate his life to making such pictures. He certainly would not want his son to dedicate his life to making the kind of pictures his son is actually making. I personally am acquainted with two professors of history, one professor of Talmud, a mathematician, two professors of Bible, a politician, and the president of a great corporation who are afflicted with aesthetic blindness and feel the same way as your father. Why are you so surprised about your father? Please. I am tired of talking about your father. I would like you to keep your problems with your father out of my studio. You make a fog in the air with those problems. Now, you were explaining to me what you did in this painting. Tell me again about your concept of unity and shape.”
Between terms, I flew to Chicago with Jacob Kahn for a Matisse exhibition. My father came into my room the night I returned and said, “You didn’t tell me you would fly to Chicago today.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You didn’t think it mattered? A trip to Chicago doesn’t matter?”
“I’m not a child, Papa.”
“It has nothing to do with your being a child. I might have had a message for you to deliver.”
I stared at him.
“There are Ladover in Chicago. I might have wanted you to take something for me.”
I did not understand what he was saying.
“Asher, was it wor
th a trip to Chicago to see that man’s paintings?”
“Matisse is one of the greatest painters of the century, Papa.”
“It’s expensive to fly to Chicago to see paintings.”
“I have the money, Papa.”
“I know you have the money, Asher.”
“I’m spending it on things that are important to me.”
“It won’t hurt you to do something on your trips that is important to us. Next time you travel, please let me know.”
A week later, I told him about a trip I would be taking to Minneapolis for a Giacometti exhibit. He had never heard of Giacometti. He gave me an envelope containing a letter from the Rebbe. The plane landed in a snowstorm. A man walked quickly over to me as I came out of the jet passenger tunnel. He wore a dark-brown coat and a dark-brown hat and looked to be in his late twenties. He had a black beard and spoke unaccented English.
“Excuse me. Are you Asher Lev?”
“Yes.”
He told me his name. I handed him the envelope. He put it into an inside pocket. “I’d offer you a lift, but I’m not going into town.” He walked away quickly.
“Were there any problems?” my father asked when I returned.
“No.”
“Did he give you a message for me?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No. What was in the letter, Papa?”
“A message from the Rebbe.”
“What kind of a message?”
“The man you met is the head of our yeshiva in Minneapolis. His wife is ill. The Rebbe sent her a blessing. The Rebbe likes such things to be delivered personally.”
During the spring vacation, I traveled with Jacob Kahn to a Braque exhibition in Boston. We were met at the airport by a tall thin man with a dark beard and a dark suit and hat.
“Asher Lev?” He spoke with a New England accent.
“Yes.”
He told me his name. I gave him an envelope and he walked away.
Jacob Kahn smiled and shook his head. “Asher Lev, I wondered how long it would be.”
“The Rebbe believes in the personal touch.”
“It is part of his greatness. We have a clever Rebbe.”
“How is it he doesn’t have you delivering messages?”
“I never tell them my travel plans. You think I have nothing else to do but be part of the Rebbe’s private courier service? Come, let us go see Braque. I may have watched him do some of the paintings they are showing.”
My mother said to me early in May, “Where will you spend the summer, Asher?”
“In Provincetown.”
“Your father and I will be in the Berkshires.”
I was quiet.
“Can you spend some time with us this summer, Asher?”
“I need all my time for painting, Mama.”
“Two weeks, Asher.”
“Would Papa let me paint?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need every minute, Mama.”
“Your father is trying very hard to understand you, Asher. It would help if we could all be together this summer.”
I said nothing.
“Asher,” she said. “Asher. You have no idea what it’s like to be standing between you and your father.”
I spent the summer in Provincetown with Jacob and Tanya Kahn and returned with paintings and a tan and without my sidecurls. My father said nothing to me about the sidecurls. In a curious way, he seemed almost relieved. He himself wore sidecurls because his father had worn them. He had never made much of an issue about them with me. Now he seemed relieved by my tacit indication that the sidecurls were as far as I intended to go, for I had retained my beard and the ritual fringes beneath my shirt.
My mother said to me during one of our morning walks to the subway, “I’m ashamed to ask you again, Asher.”
“I don’t know yet, Mama.”
“Why do there have to be nudes? There are so many other great paintings you have.”
“They’re important to me as an artist.”
“I understand why others paint nudes. But I don’t understand why you must paint nudes and exhibit the paintings.”
“I paint and exhibit them for the same reason others paint and exhibit them.”
“You’ll hurt your father, Asher. He won’t come.”
I was quiet.
“I wish you wouldn’t do it, Asher.”
“I may have to, Mama.”
“Why will you have to?”
“I’m an artist, Mama.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I only understand that you’ll hurt your father.”
Jacob Kahn and Anna Schaeffer came over to my uncle’s house one evening to help me choose the paintings. They chose almost everything I had. I hesitated over the nudes.
“What is wrong?” Jacob Kahn said.
“Nothing.”
“Our artist has become shy, Anna.”
“Our artist cannot afford to be shy, Jacob. Our artist is an important figure in the art world. Our artist is an important investment. Our artist is being given a very big show. There are artists in this world twice his age who would cut off their painting arms for such a show. We will ignore our artist’s shyness and take the nudes. You understand we are taking them merely to exploit you, Asher Lev. It is only an accident that they happen to be magnificent paintings.”
I let them take the nudes.
The show was in January. It lasted three weeks. My parents did not come. When it was over, I stared at the walls and was sick with a new dread.
“My God, they’re swallowing up my world faster than I can paint it. They even took my fishermen.”
Jacob Kahn said nothing.
“What am I going to do?”
Anna Schaeffer said soberly, “Jacob, walk with him.”
“What am I going to do?” I had never felt such emptiness and horror and dread. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”
Jacob Kahn took me outside. We walked along Madison Avenue. It was a cold windy day. The streets were filled with old snow.
“Your parents did not come,” Jacob Kahn said.
“No.”
“That was the business with the nudes.”
“Yes.”
“Asher Lev, you have been too good a student.” He was silent a moment. The wind blew against his white hair and mustache and dark beret and against the raised collar of his coat. “But you were right to let Anna have the nudes. They are fine works. Even our friend of the Picassoid forms thought they were fine.”
I looked at him and was quiet.
“Our friend of the Picassoid forms now thinks you have surpassed your master. It is in the nature of critics to be fickle.”
I said nothing. The cold wind stung my eyes.
“There are distinct disadvantages to reaching eighty,” Jacob Kahn said, talking into the wind and not looking at me. “But it is better to reach it than not to reach it. I think I will try for ninety. That old Spaniard is going to make ninety. Why not this old Jew? But even if I make it I will probably be disappointed.” He was quiet. We walked together along the winter street. Then he stopped and turned to me. “You will have to find other worlds, Asher Lev. I told you once about the happy years. There will never again be such years. You understand now, you will always have to find new worlds or you will die as an artist. Here is your subway.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, Asher Lev.” He turned and walked away.
I called Tanya Kahn the next day. Jacob Kahn was ill, she said. No, she did not know how long it would last this time. I called her a few days later. He was still not well, she said.
Anna Schaeffer told me during a phone conversation the following day that Jacob Kahn had requested an exhibition of his paintings and sculptures for the fall and was working furiously in his studio.
“The master is jealous of the apprentice,” she said into the phone. “It is good for artists to be jealous. It is especially good for Anna Schaeffer.??
?
That Friday night, I sat with my parents at our dining-room table. We were between courses and had just finished singing one of the Shabbos zemiros. My father sat with his eyes closed. There was a long silence. My mother said quietly, “Will you have another exhibition soon, Asher?” She used the word “exhibition” because my father did not like the word “show.”
“Not for a while. Not for another two years, probably.”
“Why so long?”
“It isn’t long, Mama. I can’t keep grinding out paintings. I have to think of what I want to do next.”
My father opened his eyes. “Paint more naked women,” he said.
“Aryeh,” my mother said. “Please.”
I felt the blood in my face. My father tugged slowly at his beard.
“Asher, do you know what it’s like to have people I have worked with for years come over and ask me why my son paints naked women?” He spoke quietly and with pain in his voice.
“They aren’t naked women, Papa. They’re nudes.”
His dark eyes brooded. He rubbed the side of his face. “This isn’t Shabbos talk,” he said. “We shouldn’t be talking about these things at a Shabbos table.”
“I’ll bring in the dessert,” my mother said.
“There’s a difference between naked women and nudes, Papa.”
My father looked at me intently. He turned to my mother. “Rivkeh, did you know that there’s a difference between a naked woman and a nude?” Pink spots appeared on my mother’s high cheekbones. She did not reply. My father turned to me. “Asher, I’m a reasonably intelligent man. Tell me what the difference is between a naked woman and a nude.”
“A naked woman is a woman without clothes. A nude is an artist’s personal vision of a body without clothes.”
“Is such a personal vision important in your art?”
“That’s what art is, Papa. It’s a person’s private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.”
His dark eyes narrowed. My mother glanced at him, then looked at me.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand. But why do you have to have personal visions about naked women, Asher? I’ve seen your paintings. I don’t understand your style of painting, but at least I didn’t find them offensive. Why do you have to paint and display to the public things that are offensive?”
“They aren’t offensive to people who understand art.”