The Gift of Asher Lev (7 page)

“I told you your mother would know,” my father said to me.

“He prefers the old, but he will settle for the new,” my mother said. “You have lovely children, Asher.”

“Devorah is the one to tell that to. She’s with them day and night.”

“I have told her. I must get back to the examination papers. The way young people write English these days. It is absolutely a scandal. It is as if English is a foreign language. Do you want to hear some examples of American writing? ‘Intents and purposes’ someone writes as ‘intensive purposes.’ ‘Fallen by the wayside’ is ‘fallen by the waste side.’ ‘Next-door neighbor’ is ‘next-store neighbor.’ ‘Dog-eat-dog world’ is ‘doggy-dog world.’ Can you believe that? It is a mystery to me where they learn to write like that.”

“Your mother wants to retire so she can travel with me and spend time visiting with you,” my father said.

“And finishing my book. I must finish that book.” She was writing on the Politburo and the changes in the processes of succession in the Soviet Union. Some years ago, the University of Nice had asked me to do a mural for its library building, and one day, while passing through the catalogue room, I had looked for my mother’s name: “Lev, Rebekah.” Three of her books and one volume of her published papers were in the library, in French. She taught Russian history and political theory in the Russian Studies Department of New York University.

I watched as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Short, slight, delicately boned, a fragile look that belied her tenacity and strength. The soft lights and pastel colors of the kitchen. The hypnotic hum of the refrigerator renewing its energy. My mother sipping from her cup and nodding with satisfaction. “I teach only one class tomorrow. We will get the Shimshon doll for Avrumel tomorrow. Now I’m going back to those papers, so I won’t wake up at four in the morning, worrying about them.”

She took the coffee cup with her out of the kitchen. I heard her receding footsteps.

“Mama looks good,” I said.

“She is well, thank God. She looks forward to retiring.”

“Will you retire, too?”

“I? Of course not. The work of the Master of the Universe is never over.”

“Artists don’t retire, either. They just fade away.”

My father smiled sadly and sipped from his cup. “Paris was that bad?”

“Paris was a disaster.”

“I am truly sorry, Asher.”

“The thing is, I’m not sure I know what to do now. That’s the thing. I don’t know where I’m going.”

He did not respond.

“It’s nice to be able to retire. Comforting.”

“You think so?” he said.

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “Endings are never nice.”

I wandered alone through the hallways of the house. Mezuzahs on the doorposts. Rocheleh was asleep, breathing tranquilly, covered to her chin with a light blanket. I hoped her pillow was all right. Avrumel lay snoring slightly and looking forlorn even in sleep, his blanket a shambles. Where was the drawing I had made on the Airbus? No doubt crumpled somewhere amid the chaos of his blanket. Devorah and my mother were talking together quietly in my mother’s study. I went to our room and got out of my clothes.

In the bathroom I brushed my teeth and washed and saw on the full-length mirror the faint outline of the awkward drawing I had made of myself the day before. The vanishing vapor had left a residue on the glass: the mark of my finger in the fog.

Devorah was in the room when I came back. Her head was uncovered.

“Your mother and I had a lovely talk.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s a pity all these years have gone by and we never got to know each other.”

“It wasn’t my doing.”

“No one is blaming you, Asher.”

“Of course everyone blames me, Dev. Haven’t you heard? I’m
not in control of my mind or my will. Listen, I’m tired. It’s four o’clock in the morning Saint-Paul time.”

“They say you should adjust your body clock immediately to your new time zone and not pay attention to where you came from.”

“I intend to pay careful attention to where we came from.”

“You are in one of your moods, my husband.”

“My father wanted to know what happened in Paris. My mother is talking about retiring. I’m ready to go home tomorrow.”

“Do you really want to?”

“I want to, yes, but we won’t.”

“Your mother suggested we put Rocheleh into the Ladover yeshiva for the time that we’re here.” I looked at her. “How can we do that?”

“She’ll be in the same grade she attends in the yeshiva in Nice.”

“What does Rocheleh say?”

“She is willing to try.”

“Are you sure it’s all right?”

“What can be wrong with it, Asher?”

“And Avrumel? What will you do with Avrumel?”

“He can go into the kindergarten. Your mother says the yeshiva has a very fine kindergarten.”

“I guess it’s okay. You’ll have time to work on the book.”

“There are also other things I can do. I want to get to know your parents.”

She went to the bathroom. I lay on my bed in the silence of the room. Off-white stippled walls, a French-style bureau, a beige carpet, two soft chairs, twin beds. The Rebbe gazed at me from the wall above the rolltop desk. That picture, too, was about twenty years old.

Devorah returned and climbed into her bed. The mattress barely moved beneath her weight.

“Will you want the lamp on, Dev? My father gave me a night light we can use.”

“Leave the lamp on for tonight, Asher.”

She lay with her hands behind her head, slender, small-boned, her elbows pointing outward, her thin white wrists jutting from
the frilly sleeves of her pink cotton nightgown. Her short brown hair, streaked with wisps of gray and always concealed beneath a wig or a kerchief when she left our room, grew in tiny curls upon her head. She looked over at me. Her gray eyes were blurred and moist.

“I am wondering what John is doing.”

“Drinking, no doubt. Maybe writing. Missing you, that’s for sure.”

“Poor John. Let’s not forget that we promised to get him some American writing pads.”

“It’s on my list. American writing pads for the ex-Communist John Dorman.”

“You
are
in a mood, my husband.”

“Devorah.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stay on longer than the week of mourning?”

“We should think about it, Asher. Can it hurt to stay on a week or two longer? Grandparents have a right to enjoy their grand-children. Now I am very tired. How is it I am not yet asleep? Good night, my husband.”

“I have to be in Paris next week with Max.”

“That’s one of the reasons God gave us the telephone, Asher. Appointments can be postponed. Max will understand. I am already asleep, Asher. I am talking to you in my sleep.”

She recited softly to herself the Krias Shema, then turned on her side, her face to me. Almost immediately, she was asleep.

I lay wide awake in the bright light cast by the lamp on the night table between our beds. From the hallway outside the closed door came the sounds of shuffling feet and a low, soft whistle. I shivered and closed my eyes and lay still in the light. The Bak print entered my eyes: the keys in the rock-strewn landscape, the luminous keyhole in the sky; and the Moreh print: the bearded old man on the wheeled crucifix-shaped stake hovering over a grim and water-scourged vista. The look of loathing on my Cousin Yonkel’s face, as if I were decaying vermin forbidden to the touch. Aunt Leah weeps. Will I get a chance to see the children? The Rebbe beckons to me from the oil painting on the wall between the drawings of
Aaron in the wilderness and Isaac bound to the altar. I fall asleep with the Rebbe still beckoning to me, the light of the lamp full in my eyes.

A cement walk divided the front lawn of my parents’ home. Rows of rhododendrons separated the lawn from the sidewalk and the two adjoining properties.

The house had been purchased for them by my uncle about ten years after I had left the neighborhood to live in Europe. When my mother wrote me about the purchase, I imagined hearing my Uncle Yitzchok saying, “You can’t live in this tiny apartment any more! How does it look? The right arm of the Rebbe, and you live this way? People come in to see you, and they see
this?
The Master of the Universe has been good to me. Why shouldn’t I be good to my brother and sister-in-law?”

To the right of my parents’ home stood the three-story home of my aunt and uncle. Three houses down from my uncle’s home, on a rise beyond a gently sloping lawn and a juniper hedge, stood the large red-brick home of the Rebbe.

Every morning that week my father and I rose early and walked together to my uncle’s house. About fifty feet of sidewalk separated the cement walks that led to the porches of the two homes.

On the first morning after the funeral we came out the front door into a gray and chilly dawn. Mist clung to the bare branches of the trees. I felt the cold air sting my face, and I shivered. Once I had played with my mother in snow, running with her through drifts, our galoshes kicking soft sprays into the frigid air. She would toss snowballs at the trees, her arms making the awkward motions of a little girl. I had loved the snow and made many drawings of my mother in it. Now the mild cold of an April morning seemed unendurable to me.

About thirty men were in the living room of my late uncle’s house, some sitting quietly in their prayer shawls and tefillin, others still winding the straps around their arms and foreheads. Everyone wore the early-morning look of recent sleep and fresh beginnings. I took a chair in the back row, wrapped myself in my tallis, and quickly put on my tefillin. Someone slid into the chair
next to mine: the same ninety-two-year-old man who had sat there the day before. His large tallis was yellow with age; the uncommonly wide straps and oversize boxes of his tefillin were shiny black. He gave me a faint nod and turned his attention to the Book of Psalms in his hands.

The younger of my uncle’s two sons, Cousin Nahum, a short, round, balding man in his forties, led the service in a thin, unmelodious voice. I was quickly caught up in the words, lost awareness of where I was. The images in the morning blessings moved before me. Opens the eyes of the blind; clothes the naked; sets the earth firmly in the waters. The binding of Isaac. The Psalms. The Song at the Sea. The Unity of God. And entering now the breadth and length and depth of the river, stepping into the first flow above-ground, the trickle of water, exploring it to its expansion at its underground source. And the head filled with images but the hand mysteriously inert. I stare at my right hand: the skin coarsened by pigments and chemicals; the fingers thin, bony; the nails broken, chewed; the hand of a longshoreman. Once the fingers would twitch of themselves, initiate the motions of art as if they were creatures of their own, separately attached to the images within my eyes. But not any longer. The hand lies dormant.

The service came to an end. I began to remove my tefillin. My aunt and her two daughters entered from the hallway, where they had sat throughout the service, and now returned to their stools in front of the oil painting of the Rebbe. Cousin Nahum and Cousin Yonkel finished removing their tefillin and prayer shawls. People came over to them, spoke the words of consolation, and hurriedly left. It was a weekday, and most of the men had work to go to and a living to make.

Next to me, the old man finished folding his prayer shawl and said, “Good morning, Asher Lev.”

“Good morning.”

“You pray like a true Ladover.”

“Why not? I am a Ladover.”

“I must say to you I never imagined that a man who paints the kind of pictures you do would pray in such a way. It is a perplexity to me.”

“Why?”

“The Torah forbids such pictures.”

“Where is it written?”

“In the Ten Commandments.”

“The Ten Commandments forbid the worshipping of pictures, not the making of them.”

“Asher Lev, they forbid the worshipping
and
the making. How can pictures such as yours
not
be forbidden?”

“Not all understand the Second Commandment in that way.”

“It is the way the Ladover understand it. Tell me, are you truly a Ladover Hasid? What a father is, is one thing. A son does not always follow a father.”

“I consider myself a Ladover Hasid.”

“Then how does a Ladover Hasid paint such pictures? I do not understand.”

“In this matter, I disagree with the Ladover.”

“It is not a small matter. The whole world knows of Asher Lev and what he paints.”

“With all respect, it is not a clear issue. The Code of Law forbids full-face pictures.” I cited the passage. “And yet look there at the painting of the Rebbe.”

His aged eyes flew open. He seemed horrified. “You compare a picture of the Rebbe to the pictures you make? God forbid!”

“I did not mean to upset you.”

“Such a thing to say! A shame, a scandal!”

He clutched his tallis and tefillin bags to himself as if he feared a touch from me would pollute them. He shook his head and muttered as he went past me. I watched him go over to the mourners, speak to them briefly, and hurry out of the room. He walked fairly briskly for a ninety-two-year-old man, urged on no doubt by his need to distance himself from the demons in Asher Lev.

The wooden folding chairs stood in disarray, and I went quickly through the room, setting them in their orderly rows. The room was now empty of visitors. My father and my uncle’s family went into the kitchen. I was alone in the living room with the oil painting of the Rebbe, and I went over to it. Smooth and slick. But he had caught the eyes and the mouth. The eyes followed you, the mouth smiled its benevolence upon the viewer, speaking a silent blessing. Three will save us, I heard the mouth say distinctly in the
silence of the living room. The third is our future. I looked quickly around. I was alone in the room.

My aunt was calling me. I joined my father and my uncle’s family in the sunlit breakfast room. The picture window looked out on the terrace and the back lawn. Two large-leaved potted plants sat on the sill amid an array of charity boxes. Set in a wall was a bookcase filled with cookbooks and paperbacks. One of the paperbacks was a collection of essays by a contemporary New York art critic. I knew it contained a chapter on me and my work. I wondered who in this house was reading art criticism.