The Gift of Asher Lev (52 page)

The crowd milled about in a momentary pause. Then a silence fell upon the synagogue. I turned to where all were looking and saw that the Rebbe had left the enclosure. He wore a tallis over his white robe and a white skullcap, and he carried a miniature Torah scroll encased in white velvet. A large area was being cleared on the floor by a phalanx of dark-bearded men. Inside that area, a wide uneven circle, the Rebbe began a slow dance. He moved with infinite care, his head entirely concealed by the tallis, his feet making tiny steps back and forth and sideways: an uncanny mystical dance with the Torah and the Master of the Universe, while all watched in enraptured silence. Then he raised an arm, and the synagogue exploded into a Ladover chant, and feet stamped, and the Rebbe’s arm moved back and forth slowly over his head, the wrist arching, circling, the other arm holding firmly the small Torah. How could so old and frail a man dance like that? The floor vibrated to the thunderous stamping; the huge chandelier swayed. The Rebbe lowered his arm and there was immediate silence, and he danced very slowly across the floor in the silence and came to where my father stood, next to me, and reached out for him, and my father joined him, and they danced together gently, as if in slow motion, the Rebbe’s left arm now holding the Torah, his right arm upon my father’s shoulder. The crowd clapped its hands and beat the floor with its feet. I saw bearded faces nodding and eyes staring and mouths open, as if in some kind of anticipation, and then the Rebbe seemed to be leading my father toward the edge of the circle, toward where I stood, with Avrumel on my shoulders, and there they remained, slowly dancing in front of me and Avrumel, and I felt eyes upon me, the clapping and the stamping now deafening—and then the Rebbe raised his head very slightly and I could see his eyes in the shadows of the tallis, and I stood there looking at his eyes, deep burning white eyes in the white shadows of the tallis, and I saw my father looking at me and then at the Rebbe, and I felt all the eyes in the crowd looking at me and all the eyes of all the generations of Ladover looking at me and
the voice of the mythic ancestor I had not heard in years suddenly loud in my ears, uttering sounds that were not words, and I reached up and lifted Avrumel over my head and handed him to my father—and I felt the noise in the synagogue abruptly cease, waves of silence begin from those near me and spread beyond to the walls and the ceiling as my father and the Rebbe moved away from me in a slow dance, Avrumel in my father’s arms, clinging to my father with one arm and waving his paper flag with the other, the three of them dancing away from me and suddenly the noise returning to the synagogue in a deafening surge of sound and I thought the floor would crack and the walls give way—and I stood there listening to the sounds of an infinite hope and watching my Avrumel in the arms of my father, the two of them dancing with the Rebbe and the small white-garbed scroll of the Torah. I do not know how long that dance continued, because I backed slowly away from it and through the crowd and out of the synagogue and felt suddenly the cold night air icy on the tears on my face and a hand reached out from the crowd on the street and grasped mine and it was Jacob Kahn and we walked away from the crowd and beneath the trees of the torn-up parkway, and that is all I remember about that night, that is all I remember.

Afterward no one remarked on it. What was it, after all? Simply a dance. My father and the Rebbe doing a dance with the Torah. Every year for years now, my father and the Rebbe danced together with the Torah. What was so unusual about it that people should openly talk of it? The Rebbe was well, thank God, as was my father. And Avrumel? Well—it was a dance, that’s all. The three of them had danced a Simchas Torah dance with the Torah. What was Simchas Torah for, after all? That was what you did on Simchas Torah. You danced. Together.

I heard the phone ring and, a moment later, Avrumel’s voice saying, “Papa, it is for you.”

I went to the phone.

“Asher Lev?” The voice sounded indistinct, hollow.

“Yes. This is Asher Lev.”

“The artist?”

“Who is this? I can hardly hear you.”

“A friend.”

My heart leaped. “Max? This is an awful connection. Where are you calling from?”

“My name is not Max. I am not one of your goyishe friends. I have advice for you, Asher Lev. Go home.”

My heart froze.

“You have worn out your welcome here. Listen to my advice. Go back to your contaminated Saint-Paul.”

“Go to hell.”

“It is you who will go to hell, Asher Lev.”

“Why don’t you tell me your name?”

“This is the Angel of Death. I know who my customers are. You are going to hell. Do you hear me?” Anger was displacing caution. The voice was edging toward clarity. “Get yourself out of here before there is trouble.”

“To threaten a life is to commit a transgression.”

“Look who is talking about transgression! Your art is the greatest transgression of all! It desecrates the name of God! Leave us! Your presence contaminates us all!”

The line went dead.

I hung up the phone and stared at my trembling hands. Avrumel came out of his room. “Who was it, Papa?”

“A wrong number.”

Late that night, with Devorah asleep and the lights on, I made a drawing of the Angel of Death. I drew him with slitted black eyes and a long sunken face and a thin raging ugly mouth. I signed and dated it and put it into a manila envelope. The next afternoon, Friday, I walked over to the post office on Empire Boulevard and mailed the envelope to my Cousin Yonkel.

It is a disturbed Shabbos. Devorah and I talk together a long time in our room. I feel myself moving back and forth between resignation and rage. I can barely contain the anger. What kind of God creates such situations? He gives me a gift and a son, and forces me
to choose between them. If I speak these words, my voice will be loud. They will all hear me, my parents, the children. Devorah will be aghast. I would be hurting her, when it is Someone Else I really wish to hurt. I sit at the desk and she sits on her bed, and we talk quietly and make plans. Again and again she asks why I cannot work here. Again and again I tell her. Then we explain it to the children: I will be away for two months, then return for Chanukah; then about three months, and back for Passover; then four months, and the summer. We would see about the summer. We would plan things from now on step by step. My parents listen in silence.

On Sunday they all accompany me to the airport—in a new and spacious van driven by Baruch Levinson. In the terminal, Avrumel tells me he really does not want to stay here after all; he has talked it over again with Shimshon, and they want to come back with me to Saint-Paul. I tell him I will be back for Chanukah. Only two months. Rocheleh says two months is a long time and she will miss me, but she understands why I have to go back. “Papa has to work by himself,” she explains to Avrumel. “It is what Papa does.” My parents are silent. Devorah’s eyes are moist. “Travel in good health and return in good health,” she says to me. We do not embrace. We have said our goodbyes earlier, in our room in my parents’ home.

I walk alone in the crowd toward the security area and I turn and there they are, in the distance, looking at me. They wave and I wave back. My father holds Avrumel in his arms. Avrumel waves Shimshon at me and I wave back again and walk through the security zone and on toward the gate to the Airbus.

I call Max before I unpack. Then I call John. I go out to the terrace, feeling gritty and light-headed with lack of sleep. The morning is cool. There is a stark air of unreality to this Mediterranean world, its trees and gardens and sparkling sea, its green valleys and hills and mountainous outcroppings. Self-exiled to this Garden of Eden! I see Jameel working among the fruit trees. There are birds in the branches.

Max and John come over to the house, and we sit on the terrace.
They listen intently. I say nothing about my father and his future as the Rebbe of the Ladover Hasidim, nor about Avrumel as his heir. I simply ask them: How do you say no to aging grandparents who feel a need to have their grandchildren close to them for a year? Max is suspicious. John looks sullen. Do they hear in my voice the rage I am trying to conceal?

“You are sure those people have not—how do you say it?—washed your brain?” Max asks.

“Hate to say it, Lev,” John tells me. “Best part of your family stayed in Brooklyn.”

The truth will come to them slowly as the months go by. Pieces will fall into place. Like a riddle.

They take me to the café in Saint-Paul for breakfast. We continue talking. There are few tourists.

In the house alone, later, I unpack. The new Shimshon doll, which I brought back with me in my valise, I now put on Avrumel’s bed. The house is very quiet. I lie down on my bed and fall asleep and wake hours later bathed in sweat. I shower and make myself a cup of coffee and walk dazed in the warm noon air to my studio.

The scents and smells that lie thick in the air of the studio wake me fully. How I love these smells! I open the blinds and let in the sunlight. The huge empty umber-washed canvas gazes at me. I stand in the studio, looking at the canvas. After a while I take it down off the wall and roll it up and put it away. Then I tack onto the wall a huge length of white canvas. It glows in the sunlight that filters through the glass brick roof of the studio.

Douglas Schaeffer sends me the reviews of my show of new drawings, which is still running in New York. The critics write about “odd new forms,” “cluttered passages,” “horizons beyond the recognizable,” “multi-dimensionality,” and “subtle simultaneity.” One critic calls the work “bewildering, enigmatic, strangely moving.” Another calls it “a mélange of movements toward new horizons that unfortunately unravels before it gets far.”

The drawings that remain unpurchased after the show closes are acquired by Douglas for his personal collection and for the gallery.
Two of the drawings I retain for my own collection; a third I remind Douglas to send to Paris, to the widow of Lucien Lacamp.

One afternoon I sit on the terrace, looking through the catalogue of the New York show, and am able to glimpse for the first time the matrix underlying this new work of my hands. There are possibilities in this flood of forms. How strange to have worked for so long and not to have seen them before now; how strange to be seeing them only dimly even now. A turn here, a rearrangement there. A subtle use of multiple station points; a fusing of section views with perspective views. Yes. Something moves in the shadows beyond the terrace, and I raise my eyes and see the Spaniard. He stands looking at me, his face calm, his head slowly nodding. “Begin from nothing,” he says. The fires of hearths and forges burn in his eyes.

Douglas calls me. What should we do with my late uncle’s art collection? he asks. I tell him to let it sit in storage. I will pay for the insurance and storage fees. For how long? he asks. For a long time, I tell him. Maybe fifteen, twenty years. “My son will know what to do with it,” I tell him.

It is early November. Max is in Paris. The print he made during the summer, using the carborundum process I taught him, has sold out, and he is now making another, using the same process. Afterward he will go to Canada and Japan. The China trip is off for the present.

John roams about his property or sits on his terrace, writing. On occasion he comes over to the house and we talk. There is almost always the smell of alcohol on his breath. Sometimes I help him walk back home.

I eat breakfast in the café in Saint-Paul and often skip lunch. Claudine prepares supper. I spend the days in my studio, and Shabbos in Nice with a journalist for the
Nice Matin
and his family. He is a Ladover and a specialist in jazz. The weather is cold. It is surprising how cold it can get here. The mistral is often
bitter, and sometimes I hear shutters banging as it blows. There is mist and the start of the winter rains. The tourists are gone.

Devorah and Rocheleh and Avrumel. I see them everywhere, especially Avrumel. Beings of imagined presence. I have a recurrent vision: Avrumel sitting in the green armchair in my studio, hugging Shimshon and watching me paint.

Avrumel is watching me paint Avrumel as he will one day be. He will be grown and wear a dark suit, a white shirt, a dark tie, and a dark hat. His beard will be red. He will sit in a room gazing at the paintings in my Uncle Yitzchok’s collection. I paint each of those paintings as they were once painted by the painters themselves: Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Bonnard, Soutine, Chagall, and the others. Avrumel will know what to do with those paintings. A Rebbe must know many things. Why not also how to value art? I will teach him.

I walk to the grave of Jacob Kahn. Standing on the knoll in a chill north wind, I recite chapters from the Book of Psalms. Tanya is not well. She sleeps a great deal. It is difficult for her to talk.

My father stops off at Nice in mid-November on his way back from Israel. He is exultant over the results of the elections in both Israel and the United States. He is deeply but indirectly involved in negotiations to form the new coalition government in Israel. Devorah and the children are well. He spends the night and flies back to the United States on the Airbus. He sleeps in Avrumel’s bed.

Devorah writes me regularly. The Rebbe is not well. God give him strength, God give us all strength. My parents are fine. Rocheleh’s medication was recently changed by the doctor; she is a young woman now. Devorah has agreed to write a series of articles on famous Jewish women for the Ladover weekly newspaper. She has also begun a book for religious Jewish children on how to live with
asthma and other lung illnesses. It will include, she tells me, a special message from the Rebbe.

Weeks of longing and solitude: twin muses of creation. How the work now flows, whitish forms against backgrounds of eerily tinted blacks and reds: strange images in sealed rooms. My brushes push and pull densely textured oils across the surface of the vast canvas. I use palette knives. I use my fingers. Sweeping motions and the sense of being taken over by the Other as the hand does its work—moves and circles and thrusts and lays on paint and gouges for texturing and then no memory at all but the smells of the paints and the sweat on my face and chest and in my armpits, drenching sweat, and the need to urinate but no time for it and the hand going on, possessed entirely now by the Other. Did the Rebbe know that I wanted, needed, to be alone now; that I would choose not only for the needs of the Ladover but also for needs of my own? Did he count on that, on the helpless self-centeredness of the artist’s soul, as he danced with my father and the Torah scroll in front of me and Avrumel that day? Another riddle.