My Name Is Asher Lev (33 page)

She wrote me a few weeks later and told me that all the paintings had arrived safely. She had scheduled the show for February. Would I object if she called the two large paintings
Brooklyn Crucifixion I
and
Brooklyn Crucifixion II
? She needed titles for the catalogue. I wrote back saying the titles were appropriate.

The weeks passed. The leaves fell from the trees. The city turned cold and dark. I walked the streets. I returned to the
Bateau Lavoir. I visited galleries and museums. I spent hours with the girl and her family. I wandered about with a sense of dread and oncoming horror.

In the last week of January, I flew to New York and arrived at night in a snowstorm five days before the opening of my show.

     I had given my parents only vague information about my travel plans, for I had not wanted my mother to be concerned or to meet me at the airport. I took a cab to the house. Standing on the street in the snow, I looked up at our living-room window. It was dark.

I rode the elevator to the third floor and let myself into our apartment. I went through the apartment, turning on lights—the hallway, the living room, the kitchen, my parents’ bedroom, my own room. The beds were covered with spreads. The refrigerator hummed softly. The apartment was neat and clean and faintly resonant with its own silence.

I brought my bag into my room. I went out into the hallway and opened the closet. My father’s black leather bag always stood on the top shelf when he was not traveling. Now it was gone. I hung up my coat and put my fisherman’s cap on the shelf. There were empty wooden clothes hangers on the rod. I brushed against them. They made soft clicking sounds in the silence.

I came back into my room and stood near the doorway. The room looked very small now. A closet, my Uncle Yitzchok had once called it. The paint-it-yourself chair and desk and dresser seemed almost toys. I unpacked and put away my clothes. I wondered where my mother was. At a staff meeting with the Rebbe? Visiting friends? I stood at my window and looked out at the falling snow. It drifted thickly downward across the dark houses of the street. I saw the snow-covered garbage cans
in the back yard below. I stood at the window a long time, watching the snow. Then I turned and looked slowly around my room—the small chair and desk and dresser; the wooden bed, with its green-and-brown cotton spread; the wine-colored linoleum on the floor. The room had been painted since I had left it a year and a half ago. The holes made by tacks that had once held reproductions were now filled. The walls were smooth and white and bare. They glistened in the overhead light set in the same frosted-glass ceiling fixture that had always hung from the ceiling. Had I really lived so much of my life in this tiny room?

I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven-thirty. I remembered I had left the lights burning in my parents’ bedroom. I went along the hallway and past the kitchen and came into their room. The large double bed stood against the wall to my right, covered with its pale-blue woolen spread. My father’s dark-wood desk was against the wall to my left. It was cluttered with his papers and books and with old copies of
Time
and
Newsweek.
A few framed needleworks of flowers and birds hung from the white walls. On top of my mother’s dark-wood dresser were photographs of her sister Leah’s family. There were no photographs on my father’s dresser. The dark floral rug had been recently cleaned; it gave off a faint acrid odor. I smelled the odor of the rug. I looked at the bed and remembered the odor of my mother’s illness. I remembered her lying beneath the green quilt, looking shrunken and dead. Here are the birds and flowers, Mama. I made the world pretty, Mama. I’m making my mama well. I had once thought that there was power in a drawing, that the lines and shapes came through my hand from the Master of the Universe, that a drawing could better the world, make it pretty, make my mother happy, make her well. Aren’t you well now, Mama? I’ll make more birds and flowers for you, Mama. I had thought the power came in the night from the Master of the Universe through the angels that guarded me in my sleep.
May Michael be at my right hand; Gabriel at my left; before me, Uriel; behind me, Raphael. I looked at the double bed and thought I saw my father there, his red beard sticking over the top of the green quilt. I turned off the lights and came into the kitchen. I stared at the table. It was clean. I thought I saw it covered with books. But it was clean and bare. There was no milk in the refrigerator. I turned off the light and went through the hallway into the living room.

There was my mother’s desk against the wall near the window. There were the bookcases near the desk. There was the window covered with the Venetian blind. There was my mother standing at the window, gazing out at the street. There was my mother on top of the window, her hands bound to the bottom of the raised blind, her legs bound to the middle strip of wood that divided the window into its two tall rectangles. There was my father; there was—

I turned off the lights and went through the hallway to my room. I sat on my bed and felt the coldness inside myself and the pounding of the blood in my head. I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. After a moment, I got off the bed and went to the phone stand in the hallway. I looked up a number and dialed. The ringing went on a long time before it was answered.

“Yes? Yes?” His voice was sleepy and annoyed.

“Rav Dorochoff?”

“Yes? Who is this?” He spoke in Yiddish.

“Asher Lev.”

There was silence.

“Rav Dorochoff?”

“Asher Lev,” he said, no longer sleepy. “You surprised me. From where are you calling?”

“The apartment.”

“You are home?”

“Yes. I am sorry to disturb you so late at night. Where are my parents?”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes. Your parents did not tell me you were coming home today.”

“They did not know.”

“Your parents are at the University of Chicago.”

I was quiet.

“Asher?”

“Yes.”

“There is a conference on religion and campus problems. Your parents are participating. They are returning tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Asher Lev, welcome back.” He said it warmly. “The Rebbe will be pleased to learn that you have returned.”

I hung up the phone and stood in the hallway staring at the white walls. Then I went into my room and got into pajamas. I looked at the section of wall near my pillow where I had once unknowingly drawn my mythic ancestor. The drawing was painted over, gone. I turned off the lights and lay in bed. The bed felt small and uncomfortable. Let me lie down in peace and let me rise up again in peace. Let not my thoughts trouble me, nor evil dreams, nor evil fancies, but let my rest be perfect before Thee.

I did not sleep well. Once I woke in the night and thought I heard my mother singing a Yiddish melody in a strange soft voice.

I came out of the apartment house very early the following morning. The air was gray and cold. The street lights were still on. The snow had stopped falling during the night. Sections of the parkway were solidly drifted over. I walked carefully in paths made by others who had gone before me. The parkway was silent, ghostly, a bleak landscape of buried cars and dark houses and weary snow-laden trees.

I walked to the synagogue and took part in the early service. After the service, some men came over to me and greeted me warmly. Welcome, Asher Lev. Welcome. How was I? Where had I been? How was it in Europe? You look thin. Have you lost weight? Welcome, Asher Lev. Welcome.

I heard someone call my name. I turned and saw Rav Yosef Cutler, the mashpia. He was a little stooped now, and his long dark beard had begun to gray. He shook my hand. His hand was white and dry. Welcome, welcome. He coughed. His voice rasped. How was I feeling? When had I returned? He kept shaking my hand. He looked really happy to see me.

I handed him a sealed white envelope from his son Avraham in Paris.

“How is my son?” he asked eagerly. He coughed again. “A cold,” he said. “A bad cold.”

“He is well.”

“I have not seen him in a very long time. We hope that for Pesach he will come to America to be with us and the Rebbe. He was helpful to you?”

I thought of Avraham Cutler helping me up five flights of stairs laden with art materials. “Yes.”

“I am glad.”

I thought, Some of those materials are in the crucifixions.

“You will stay for a while?” the mashpia asked.

“Yes.”

He coughed again. He waited a moment, breathing deeply, then said, “Perhaps you will come to the office and we will talk. I would like to know what is happening to my Asherel.”

He bundled himself into his long dark coat and went out into the street, his shoulders a little bowed. I watched him go out the doors of the synagogue. He had grown old so quickly.

I put on my galoshes and coat and fisherman’s cap and left the synagogue. I bought milk and rolls and eggs in a grocery
store. Snowplows were moving through the parkway now, cutting wide lanes for the morning traffic. I went back to the apartment and made myself breakfast. I washed and dried the dishes and put them away. I went into the living room and looked out the window at the parkway. The street was struggling into life, slowly shaking off its entombing snow.

The phone rang. I went quickly into the hallway and picked up the receiver.

“Mr. Asher Lev?” the operator said. “Long distance calling.”

“Yes, my name is Asher Lev.”

“One moment. Go ahead, please.”

“Asher?” It was my mother. Her voice was faintly tremulous.

“Mama?” I felt my heart pounding.

“Asher, you’re home. We thought you were coming Thursday. Rav Dorochoff called us this morning. How are you, Asher?”

“I’m fine, Mama.”

“Why didn’t you tell us when you were coming? Are you all right? Did you have breakfast?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“It’s good to hear your voice, Asher. Wait. Your father wants to talk to you.”

There was a momentary pause.

“Asher?” His voice was deep and strong.

“Yes, Papa.”

“Welcome, welcome, Asher. I apologize for the confusion. We thought you wrote and said you would be home right before the exhibition. I apologize, Asher. Are you well?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“We’re flying back late this afternoon. Has the snow stopped in New York?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see you, God willing, in the evening. It’s good to talk to you, Asher. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Papa.”

“Goodbye, Asher,” my mother said into the phone.

“Goodbye, Mama.”

I hung up the phone. I stared at the phone. I stood there and stared at the phone. Then I found myself trembling. I leaned against the wall and could not stop trembling. I put on my galoshes and coat and cap and went out of the apartment into the cold snow-filled street.

It was a little after nine in the morning. The parkway was choked now with slow-moving struggling rush-hour traffic. There was a cold wind. It blew the powdery surface of the snow against the houses and cars. I felt the snow on my face and in my eyes. I walked, and thought of my parents. I felt the wind through my coat. My beard was encrusted with snow. Where was I? What corner was this? I had come to a corner that looked familiar despite the hills of snow that had changed its appearance. The street sign was covered with snow. I turned up the street. Solitary figures walked the street along a narrow path cut into tall drifts. I saw a man with a shovel. He wore a dark coat and galoshes and a cap with earmuffs. He pushed the shovel through the snow, bent, lifted, threw snow into the street, and pushed the shovel again. I came up to him. He did not see me. His wide eyes were wet with cold and exertion. His beaked nose was red. His gray beard was stiff with frozen snow.

“Sholom aleichem, Reb Yudel Krinsky,” I said.

He stopped and turned slightly and peered at me. He stood very still for a moment, peering at me intently. Then his mouth fell open and his eyes blinked and he let the shovel fall to the snow.

“Asher Lev,” he said in his hoarse voice. “Asher Lev.” He
shook my hand. He embraced me. I felt his cold wet face and his frozen beard against my cheek.

“Welcome, Asher Lev. Welcome, welcome. You were away so long. How long was it? Come inside the store where it is warm. It is good to see you again. Come, come inside. What a surprise. On such a bitter cold day to find Asher Lev.”

The store had not changed. It was warm and smelled of clean paper and new pencils. The metal stand with the oil colors was still there near the door. I looked around slowly. It was like returning to a warm dry sheltering cave.

He made us some coffee and we talked. He had a daughter now. Yes, the Master of the Universe had been good to him. And they were expecting another child soon. Perhaps a boy this time. He seemed more tired than I had ever remembered him being before. His voice was very hoarse and his eyes blinked wearily. Do we really all grow old so quickly? There is so little time.

Later, I came outside with him and took the shovel from his hands and cleared the snow from the sidewalk in front of the store. He thanked me.

“The bones are growing old,” he said into the wind. “I am surprised the bones are still with me after the years in Siberia. Today is a little like Siberia. It is good to see you again, Asher Lev. You have made my day happy.”

He went back into the store. I walked up the street toward the parkway and went past a large store window. I looked inside and found myself staring directly at my uncle, who was standing behind a counter staring back at me. His round fleshy face took on a look of enormous astonishment. I saw him start around the counter toward the door.

He had grown fat. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt and dark tie. His gray hair was covered with a small dark skullcap. He smelled vaguely of cigars. He embraced me and could
not stop telling me how glad he was to see I was back. There were two salesmen in the store. They watched us and smiled warmly. What a shame my parents were not yet back from Chicago, my uncle said. Where was I eating tonight? Had I made any more good paintings? Did I think he should see the exhibition? When was the opening? Sunday? Were there any paintings of naked women? He would go if there were no paintings of naked women. There were no naked women, I said. What could I tell him? To stay away? He would want to know why. Because you will see crucifixions, Uncle Yitzchok. You will see strange crucifixions painted by a Ladover Hasid who prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom and loves his parents and the Rebbe. There were no naked women this time, I said.