The Gift of Asher Lev (18 page)

“It’s school time,” Devorah said to Rocheleh and Avrumel. “Breakfast is over.”

“I must go to Boston today,” my father said. “I will be back for supper.”

“Have a safe journey,” said my mother.

In the doorway to the house I asked Rocheleh, “Do you have the composition with you?”

“Of course.”

“Who will bring me home today?” Avrumel wanted to know. “Rocheleh will bring you home,” Devorah said. “Today, tomorrow, every day. Understood?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Rocheleh, do you understand?”

“Mama, I am not a child.”

We watched them go up the street together. “What are you doing today?” I asked Devorah.

“Writing. And you?”

“I’ll think of something.”

My parents left. Devorah was at the desk in our room. I went over to my uncle’s house. Aunt Leah was home. She gave me the keys to the study and the attic. I spent the morning with my uncle’s art collection.

I returned to my parents’ house for lunch and found Devorah in one of her writing trances. I put together something from the refrigerator for the two of us and brought her plate into our room and put it on the desk. She sat bareheaded, her wig off, her neck long and slender. By the light of the desk lamp I saw the tiny grooves in the corners of her mouth and the beginnings of the lines in her smooth pale cream-colored cheeks. She looked all her fifty years during those moments of writing; wore all the weight of her age and memory.

Later, I went back to my Aunt Leah’s house and was inside my
uncle’s study, lost in the paintings, when someone knocked on the door. It was Aunt Leah. There was a telephone call for me. They had called me at my parents’ house, and Devorah had told them I was here. There was a phone in the bedroom; I could take the call there.

The phone was on the mahogany night table between the two meticulously made twin beds. I sat down on one of the beds—my uncle’s? my aunt’s?—and picked up the receiver. There was an odd trembling in my hand.

“Hello,” I said.

“Reb Asher Lev?” It was a man’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Reb Asher, this is Rav Shlomo Greenspan. I am the principal of the yeshiva your children are now attending.”

“Sholom aleichem.”

“Aleichem sholom. Reb Asher, your daughter’s English teacher and I were wondering about something. We were wondering if you could come into the school tomorrow and perhaps give a little talk about art to your daughter’s class, and maybe answer some questions put to you by the children.”

I looked at the walls of my aunt’s and late uncle’s bedroom. An exquisite garden by Bonnard. A vase of flowers by Chagall. A street scene by Utrillo. An explosive Expressionist landscape by Soutine.

“Tomorrow?” I heard myself ask.

“In the morning. Ten o’clock.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Oh, yes. Very sure.” He had a cheerful, boisterous voice and spoke without an accent. “By the way, your daughter’s composition about your work—you know about the composition, yes?—it created a stir in the class. I was called in by the teacher. Maybe you should come a little before ten, so we can talk a few minutes.”

“All right. Is there anything in particular you want me to say or do?”

“We leave that up to you, Reb Asher. You are the artist.”

I hung up the phone and sat on the bed, looking at the paintings on the walls of my uncle’s bedroom. The Soutine was magnificent: there it was, one of the birthplaces of Abstract Expressionism. How
the Spaniard had disliked Bonnard! Once, entering a room with a Bonnard, he turned the painting to the wall. The Chagall flowers were lush; one could imagine their living scents. How still the Utrillo street was: heavy with melancholy and brooding. The silver mezuzah on the doorpost gleamed in the hall light. Why a mezuzah here and none on the doorposts to the study and the attic? Because he shared this room with his wife? Because there was no collection of monographs and drawings here and the paintings could be regarded as mere decorations? Another riddle. After a while, I went out of the bedroom and returned the keys to Aunt Leah and went home.

Rocheleh returned from school with Avrumel in tow and announced that she had read her composition to the class and some of the students were horrified. Many had not known about the paintings. They all knew about that man, the god of the goyim, the one that the goyim accused the Jews of having killed. How could Rocheleh’s father make paintings having to do with that man? Wasn’t Rocheleh’s father a Ladover Hasid, a loyal follower of the Rebbe? Didn’t the Rebbe speak to him in the synagogue just this past Shabbos in front of the entire congregation? Why would Rocheleh’s father do such a thing? And how could Rocheleh write about those paintings and talk about them in the same room where there was a picture of the Rebbe? The principal had to be called in to quiet the class.

She told us her grade. A for content, B for spelling.

Devorah said she would like to read the composition.

“The teacher kept it to show some of the other teachers,” Rocheleh said, and went off to her room.

Avrumel, clutching his Shimshon doll, let it be known that he, too, had had a busy day. He had listened to stories about one of the great rabbis of the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva, during the war against the Romans; about the Rebbe’s grandfather and his fight against the Russian Communists; about the Rebbe during the big war against the Germans. Then he had played and made pictures. He was tired, he said, and wanted to lie down for a while.

My mother returned home a few minutes later and announced
that she had had a long, wearying, and worthwhile day. Teaching; a meeting of the university senate; a tenure committee meeting; a graduate colloquium on
glasnost
with an academician from the University of Moscow who had confided to her that the immediate effects of the new policy upon the Jews would be significant but he did not think the policy would succeed in the long run because of the power of the Communist Party and the byzantine maneuvering of the entrenched Soviet bureaucracy. But he could be wrong, he said. There might be surprises. It was like Peter the Great dragging Russia into Western civilization.

My father came home from his office, where he had stopped on his return from Boston. Over a cup of coffee, he informed us that some people had called the Rebbe’s office during the day about a problem in the yeshiva that had to do with Asher Lev’s daughter. Because my father had been out of the city, the problem had been handled by one of the younger men in the office.

“‘A mistake once implanted cannot be eradicated,’ “my father quoted again, looking at me over the rim of his cup.

My mother, busy together with Devorah at the kitchen counter, asked me how my day had been. I said I had not done anything all day. Nothing.

“An artist,” my mother said.

In our room that night Devorah said to me from her bed, “Do you want to know what I did all day, Asher?”

“What did you do all day, my wife?”

“I was writing, and all of a sudden I remembered something I had forgotten for more than forty-five years.”

“What was that?”

“The time the Rebbe lived with my family in Paris before the Germans came. I was about four years old. One Shabbos at the table the Rebbe was singing zemiros, and suddenly he stopped and looked at me. For a long time, he just sat and looked at me. My mother thought he had become ill, but my father signaled her not to disturb him. I remember the Rebbe had black hair and a black beard and burning gray eyes. He looked at me as if he was seeing my beginning and my end. I thought his eyes would reach out and pull me into them. I began to be a little frightened, when suddenly he blinked a few times and continued to sing. I just remembered
it today while I was working on the book. How strange time and memory are. That’s what I did today.”

I told her about the telephone call from the school.

“What will you talk to them about?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Please do not do anything to embarrass Rocheleh.”

“I cannot understand why they want me there. A talk about art to eleven-year-old children in a Ladover yeshiva. This must be divine punishment for painting those crucifixions.”

“Go to sleep, Asher. You’ve had a difficult day.”

“A difficult day? I didn’t do a thing all day!”

“For you, my husband, that is the most difficult kind of day you can have.”

Mist clung to the trees, and the early-morning air was gray and cold. I walked with my father to the synagogue. The machines used for resurfacing the parkway lay like dormant mammoths in the mist. After the service I mentioned to my Cousin Yonkel that I liked the paintings in his parents’ bedroom, and he looked startled. I explained why I had been in that room.

“Did your father have paintings anywhere else?”

“My father’s paintings are no concern of yours.”

Sweet Cousin Yonkel.

I walked back with my father in a heavy rain. He had a cup of coffee and left immediately for his office. Devorah decided to walk with the children to school because of the rain. I sat alone at the kitchen table. My mother was at the sink, an apron over her dress.

“Have you thought what you will tell the children in the classroom?”

“I’ve thought, but I don’t know.”

“Do they ever ask you in Saint-Paul or Nice to talk to school-children?”

“Not to go to the schools. Sometimes children come to my studio and ask me about my work.”

“The schools organize that?”

“Yes.”

“You look disturbed, Asher. Are you sorry you stayed?”

“No.”

“It is giving your father and me much pleasure, your staying. The children are beautiful. It is so good to have time together. Do you notice how well your father gets on with Avrumel?”

“That part is nice.”

“Are you bothered that you cannot paint? Do you need something built for you here? I can have a carpenter come in.”

“I don’t think I can paint now.”

“You used to paint all the time in the apartment. It didn’t matter that there was no space. There is so much space in this house.”

I heard the front door open and close. Devorah came into the kitchen.

“It’s pouring. Your son discovered that he enjoys parting the Red Sea. He didn’t miss a single puddle between here and the yeshiva.”

We sat around the table, drinking coffee and talking. After a while, my mother left for the university. Devorah’s face took on a tired, drawn look.

“Are you all right, Dev?”

“Bad dreams. Sealed apartments.”

“Can I get you something?”

“A new childhood, perhaps.”

“Not even the Rebbe can make such a miracle.”

“What are you going to tell the children in Rocheleh’s class?”

“I have no idea.”

“Poor Asher. Self-doubt even in the face of eleven-year-old children.”

“What I don’t understand is why they’re even letting me in the front door.”

I left the house shortly after nine-thirty. The trees were wet and dark, and there were rain puddles on the sidewalks and along the curbs. Rain dripped from the branches and drummed on the umbrella. The stores along Kingston Avenue were deserted. In the all-night dairy cafeteria I saw young men in dark suits and dark hats sitting at tables, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking. I stepped into a stationery store and from its bearded, skull-capped proprietor bought a box of soft chalks of various colors. I looked around the store as the owner counted out the change.
Yudel Krinsky had once owned a store like this, a few blocks from here. A Russian Jew somehow saved by my father and brought to Brooklyn. My first drawing pencils, charcoal sticks, drawing pads, fixative, oil colors, canvases—bought from him. How I had loved that man! Dead now. In the ground not far from my Uncle Yitzchok, and the rain seeping slowly into his bones. Magnified and sanctified is the name of God. Along the parkway people walked leaning forward into the rain. Cars maneuvered tortuously through the roadway construction. The wet spring morning wore the dismal look of a dying winter afternoon.

The wide four-story Ladover yeshiva stood to the right of the Ladover headquarters building, facing the parkway. Rain fell heavily upon its windows and red-brick façade. I went quickly along the cement walk to the front double doors.

The entrance hall was large, its floor tiles a dark-brown brick design, its walls pale green and bare, save for the large framed color picture of the Rebbe on the wall opposite the doors. To the right of the hall was a door with a plaque on it that read
MAIN OFFICE
. I went inside.

The walls were covered with announcements, schedules, calendars in Hebrew and English, and a picture of the Rebbe. A stout woman with gray hair and half-moon glasses sat behind the reception desk. She looked up from her typewriter and her eyes drifted over my raincoat—one of my father’s old coats, two sizes too large for me—and my bearded face and fisherman’s cap.

“Can I help you?”

“My name is Asher Lev.”

She stood up. “Rav Greenspan is expecting you.” Standing, she picked up her phone and pushed a button. “Mr. Lev is here.” She put down the phone and came around the desk. “Please,” she said. I followed her to a door marked
OFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL
. At the door, she said in a low voice, “I love your work, Mr. Lev. I saw your last show in the Schaeffer gallery. Was it three years ago? The painting of the women dancing, the one that was so—uh—controversial. I loved it. I bought one of your prints. The waiter in the café in Paris. I love it.”

“Are you and your husband collectors?”

“I collect a little. My husband, of blessed memory, has gone to
the Truc World. He was a great follower of the Rebbe. But all he knew was diamonds. I do this”—she indicated the office—”to keep busy. Are you staying long? You must go back and make more pictures.” She opened the door for me, and I stepped into Rav Greenspan’s office. She closed the door quietly behind me.

A tall, barrel-chested, dark-bearded man stood behind a desk, listening to the telephone in his large hand. He kept moving back and forth behind his desk. He saw me and, reaching across the desk, took my hand in a powerful grip, put the mouthpiece against his chest, and said, “Sholom aleichem,” in a resonating voice.