The Gift of Asher Lev (22 page)

The professor of classics, a handsome-looking woman in her fifties, asked me what I thought about the breakdown of the canons of aesthetic judgment in contemporary art now that Picasso was dead and modernism was over, and we talked about that for a while. Someone, I think it was the mathematician, mentioned having recently seen the film
Au Revoir les Enfants
and urged everyone to see it. I glanced at Devorah, who was sitting next to my mother; she stiffened perceptibly but remained quiet. I thought it curious that a follower of the Rebbe, in the course of a Shabbos-afternoon conversation, would recommend a film, even a film on the Holocaust. This was not the usual sort of Ladover Shabbos talk. They were interesting people. I could live with such people. Maybe I’ll surprise all of you, after all. I was a little drowsy—the warm air, the sun, the play of light through the now densely budded sycamore—and I drifted away from the conversation.

In the evening my father and I returned from the synagogue, and my father chanted the brief Havdalah Service. Avrumel held the braided candle; Rocheleh, the spice box. Shabbos was over.

In our room a few minutes later, Devorah said that she would like me to take her to see
Au Revoir les Enfants.

I said I didn’t think it was a good idea, and whom could we get to watch the children.

“I asked your parents. They will be happy to stay with the children.”

“You know what happens when you see movies like that, Dev.”

“I cannot let them dictate my life to me, Asher. If I let them do that, they remain the masters and I remain defeated. They dictated my life to me for two years. If you don’t want to go, I’ll go alone.”

We took the subway to the Manhattan theater where the film was playing. There was a long line on the street in front of the theater. The street was ablaze with neon lights and crowded with strollers and young people on dates. We waited in the line to get our tickets, then we waited inside the theater. There was a long line in front of the popcorn counter. Devorah looked pale and said nothing. We sat and watched the film.

The film is about Jewish boys who are brought to a Catholic
boarding school south of Paris near Fontainebleau during the Second World War. Their Jewishness is kept secret, and they try to blend in with the other students. But they are betrayed and, together with the priest who is the headmaster, are taken away by the Germans. The boys and the priest perish in the Holocaust.

I glanced repeatedly at Devorah in the course of the movie; her face looked white in the flickering lights reflecting off the huge screen.

She was very quiet during the subway ride home. The parkway and residential streets were dark and deserted, the trees like vaguely menacing sentinels. We let ourselves into the house. My parents and the children were asleep. I brewed up some coffee, and we sat in the kitchen.

“Memories,” she said, her eyes blinking nervously. “The things we think we’ve forgotten.”

“I wish we hadn’t seen it.”

“You protect me too much, Asher. Do you want me to hide from the world? I was hidden long enough.”

“You don’t have to keep punishing yourself because you survived and the others didn’t.”

“To remember is not a punishment, Asher. To remember is a victory against the sitra achra, against Hitler, may his name be erased. The film is a sanctification of the name of God. Why should I not participate in it?”

She sipped from her cup. She had removed her wig. Her long neck and cropped head and ashen features gave her the appearance of a concentration-camp victim. I stared at her and shuddered.

Later, in our room, Devorah lay in her bed with the lights on and her hand over her eyes.

“Dev, I wish you wouldn’t insist on seeing those kinds of movies.”

She turned away from me.

“Dev?”

“Leave me alone, Asher. Now I need to be left alone. Please do not turn off the lights.”

She fell asleep with all the lights in the room burning.

I woke in the middle of the night and felt her sliding into the bed beside me. She was trembling, and her skin was hot and dry. The lights were on. Her face was flushed, and her eyes looked frenzied. I held her to me and listened to her talk.

“I can’t remember the food we ate. I remember everything, but not the food. Isn’t that strange?”

“I don’t know, Dev. Is it?”

“I remember the smell of the cold air. Like stones. Like caves. Dear God, it was cold in that apartment!”

“Try to go back to sleep, Dev.”

“There was no soap. We all had body lice. And scurvy. You see the things I remember. But I can’t remember what we ate. I know we never had meat and almost never had bread. I remember the man who would bring us our food. I’ve told you this before, haven’t I, my husband?”

“Yes. But tell me again.”

“He was bald and had a cleft palate and sometimes he wore his pants unbuttoned in front. Eight months he brought us food, and one day he didn’t come. We ate nothing. I told you this.”

“Yes.”

“Then an old woman came. ‘I am from the resistance,’ she said. ‘Armand has been arrested. I will bring your food from now on.’ She had a face like wrinkled paper. A pale-blue shawl. A ragged coat. White hair. She smelled like someone who did not bathe. Twice a week she brought us our food. But I can’t remember what we ate. Why is that?”

“I don’t know, Dev.”

“I remember Max’s father once gave the woman money to buy two kilos of butter on the black market. She had to walk a long distance. She returned with the butter wrapped in newspaper. We stood around watching Max’s father undo the wrapping. And when the newspapers were all off, we saw it wasn’t butter but an old shoe. Someone had substituted the shoe for the butter right under the old woman’s nose. The old woman was furious and said she would go back the next day to the one who had sold her the butter, but Max’s father said not to do it, he didn’t want to start trouble, he didn’t want anyone asking her who she was and was she buying all that butter for herself or for someone else. Max’s
father was nervous all the time. I remember that, my husband. Very clearly. A little man with a skullcap and a goatee standing in a dark corner and talking to himself. That used to frighten me, seeing Max’s father like that, in a dark corner, talking to himself.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know. Whenever he did that, he would talk in a language I couldn’t understand. After a while Max’s mother would go over to him and take him into their bedroom. She would tell me children’s stories from books she remembered by heart. I told you this. She had been a librarian in the children’s section of the library in their arrondissement. Stories about a bull that refused to fight, and an elephant that could fly, and a little girl and her brother lost in a forest. Many stories. She would tell them to me again and again. You see how I remember all these details, but I can’t remember what we ate.”

“We’ll ask Max when we see him.”

“You know what I especially remember? Max always needed colors. He was preparing a portfolio for after the war so he could show it when he went looking for a job. He kept asking his father for money for colors. His father said he didn’t have enough money for food, how could he keep giving him money for colors? Max said his father didn’t care about him, didn’t want him to be an artist. Once there was a terrible quarrel. It was after the business with the black-market butter and the shoe. I was so frightened. I was sure the neighbors would hear and call the police. Max didn’t get the colors. You see all the things I am able to remember, Asher. But I can’t remember what we ate. He is like a big brother to me, my Max. I am so tired, but I’m afraid to fall asleep. I was that way in the apartment. Always afraid to sleep. I thought the police would come and take away Max and his parents while I slept, and I would wake up and find myself all alone in the apartment.”

“Shall I tell you one of your children’s stories?”

She laughed softly. “You are so good to me, my Asher. I am sorry for all the misery I cause you.”

“Oh, Dev, don’t say that. I love you.”

“What did you see in this wreck of a woman when Max brought me into your studio that day?”

“You mean what did I like about that beautiful young woman Max brought to interview me?”

“Yes. What?”

“That she was smart and looked ten years younger than her age.”

“Thank you.”

“That she seemed a good person.”

“Thank you again.”

“That she came from a Ladover family and, amazingly, knew about art.”

“Max was a good teacher.”

“That she looked at one of my drawings hanging on the wall and said it was an important work but she didn’t like it.”

“It is an important work, and I still do not like it.”

“That she let me draw her face after the interview.”

“That was a good drawing, and I did like it.”

“And I was able to see her as my wife and the mother of our children.”

“I would have been the mother of many more if there had not been the miscarriages.”

“That is God’s will, my wife.”

“Is it? Is it? Why couldn’t it have been God’s will for at least one person in my family to survive? I would have someone of my own blood to talk to about what happened.”

I held her. She was trembling.

“Isn’t it strange that I can’t remember what we ate? Two years of eating in that sealed apartment, and I can’t remember a single meal. Asher, I am not sorry we saw the movie. It’s a fine movie. Even though sometimes, sitting in a dark theater, I suddenly remember the dark apartment. If it’s all God’s will, my husband, there must be a plan. Don’t you think there must be a plan?”

“Who knows? Maybe there’s a plan.”

“When I found out what happened to my father, I didn’t think I wanted to live. When Max’s mother told me my mother was also gone, I
knew
I didn’t want to live. Living with Max’s parents, going to the high school and then the Sorbonne, and then writing for the magazine—all that time, I didn’t really want to live. When I met you I began to think there might be a plan. A person has to have
a reason for living, and the best reason is another person. Together they can make a plan for their lives. What if we’re carrying out a plan God has made? Do you understand me, my husband?”

I held her and felt her trembling and after a while she fell into an uneasy sleep. Lying awake and listening to her breathing, I tried to imagine her two years in that apartment and could not. From beyond the terrace door I thought I heard the sounds of mocking laughter and feet shuffling toward the tangled darkness of the sycamore.

In the synagogue two mornings later, Cousin Yonkel looked more dour than usual. From time to time I caught him glancing at me and thought I saw on his sallow features a burning rage odd even for him. I went over to him after the service and asked how things were, and he muttered something about “trouble with those disgusting idolatrous abominations” and stalked off. Cousin Nahum, looking embarrassed, murmured, “Good morning, Asher,” and hurried away.

The parkway had little traffic. There were tiny leaves on the trees, fragile against the blue sky. On the way back to the house with my father, we stopped to pick up the Sunday
Times.
The front page was full of the raucous maneuverings of the American presidential campaign. France would soon be going through a national election. The powerful French right-wing nationalist party frightened Max with its racist rhetoric. Everywhere, disturbances in the ground of being. And here, among the Ladover of Brooklyn, in the heart of the Ladover world, the Rebbe was eighty-nine years old—and no one talked openly of succession, not a mention of it, not a word. Without a doubt the redemption would come first. But what if … ? Not a word.

Walking back to the house, my father told me he needed to be in Paris at the end of June on a mission for the Rebbe, and how nice it would be if we could go over together. I said the end of June was weeks away and we would probably be returning to Saint-Paul around the beginning of next week. He said, without looking at me, “All of you?”

“Of course.”

“As you wish, Asher.”

Later that morning, on her way out of the house to the university, my mother knocked on the door to the guest room, where I was sitting at the desk, staring blankly at my drawing pad. She stood in the doorway, looking lovely in a dark-blue suit and a creamy white blouse, an attaché case in her hand. My father had gone to his office, and Devorah was out somewhere, shopping.

“Can I interrupt you for a moment, my son?”

I told her she wasn’t interrupting; I wasn’t really doing anything.

“Your father tells me you are thinking of leaving soon.”

“Devorah said she would talk to you about it.”

“Doesn’t it make sense for the children to finish the school term here? It is only a few more weeks.”

“Devorah and I have to get back. We’ve got our work.”

“I don’t understand, Asher. You cannot do your work here? Devorah says she writes very well here. Do you need a studio? Can’t you talk with Douglas Schaeffer about studio space in Manhattan? Or, if you wish, we can easily rent something for you in the neighborhood that you can use as a studio.” She came into the room. Her face was flushed, and her brown eyes shone strangely; there were touches of high color on the planes of her cheekbones. “Perhaps the children can go to our summer camp,” she said.

I stared at her.

“Do you have a summer camp for the children in Saint-Paul?”

“No.”

“What do the children do all summer?”

“There are things to do. They swim in Max’s pool.”

“The children would love our summer camp. Think about it, Asher. Talk to Devorah.”

She went up the hallway. I heard the front door close. I sat at the desk, staring at the empty page of the pad.

Devorah came home a while later, laden with packages. I followed her into the kitchen. She said my mother’s suggestion was something to consider seriously. First we would talk to the children, she said. If they liked the idea, then we would decide one way or the other.

“Can Rocheleh go to summer camp?”