The Gift of Asher Lev (42 page)

“You wrote the novel in seven months?”

“Before I was married. Lived in a small room in the Bronx with a regiment of cockroaches and bedbugs. Near the zoo. Wrote day and night. How was Paris, Lev?”

“It was fine. How can Paris not be fine?”

“Have to get back there one of these days. Miss the old whore. Haven’t been since your show.”

“My show,” I said.

There was a lengthy silence. I turned away from the pool and looked out across the dark valley.

John poured Scotch into his glass. “When do you go back to Brooklyn?”

“Thursday.”

“You told me Sunday,” Max said.

“I’ve taken care of everything I needed to do. There’s no point to hanging around. I’d rather be with Devorah and Avrumel for Shabbos.”

“Where is Rocheleh?” Max asked.

I told him.

“It is all right for her to be in an overnight camp?”

“Rocheleh knows how to take care of herself.”

“Avrumel in day camp playing baseball,” John said. “Would like to see him swinging a bat.”

“Devorah says he’s pretty good.”

“Not surprised,” John said. “Great kid, Avrumel.”

There was another silence. John drank from his glass. His hand raising the glass to his lips trembled slightly. A motorbike went along the road, its staccato noises shattering for a moment the still night.

“New York hot as hell in the summer,” John said. “Used to sleep on the fire escape. Air like a furnace. Asphalt would melt.”

“We used to go away summers,” I said. “My parents have a little place in Massachusetts.”

“My, my,” John said. “You hear that, Max? A place in the country. Didn’t know you were a capitalist, Lev.”

“A capitalist yet,” I said in Yiddish.

“Not only didn’t we have a place in the country, Lev, we didn’t even have the idea of a place in the country.”

“It’s a bungalow, John. A small cottage. In the middle of a lot of other bungalows. A Hasidic bungalow colony.”

“Asher Lev, capitalist,” John said, drinking from his glass. “Knew there was something about you I didn’t like. Cannot figure out how you snagged such a decent woman like your missus.”

“Blame Max,” I said. “Max introduced us.”

“It was one of the few smart things I have done,” Max said, smiling.

“Maybe she took pity on me because I was in such bad shape. I had just finished the crucifixion paintings.”

“We ain’t going to talk about those paintings,” John said. “Not tonight.”

“I hope not, John.”

“Because, tell you the truth, never told you this before, I don’t much care for them. Jews shouldn’t paint crucifixions.”

I said nothing.

“Goddamn cliché is what it is. Bad taste if you’re a Jew. Too much Jewish blood spilled on account of that crucifixion. Jews should leave it alone.”

“What should I have used?”

“Don’t know. Your problem, Lev. But crucifixion definitely a cliché. Also upsets too many people. Got to know your limits.”

“John, I clearly heard you say we would not discuss those crucifixions,” Max said.

“You heard right,” John said. “End of discussion.”

“Are there any limits to what you would write?” I asked.

“Never write a novel about the life of Jesus. Not my business. What the hell do you know about crucifixions, Lev? Got no right to steal other people’s experience. Becomes phony if you use it. Takes genius to absorb other people’s experience and use it right.”

“I didn’t know how else to depict torment, John.”

“Easy way out, steal someone else’s experience.” He poured more Scotch into his glass and drank.

“That was not the easy way out, John. The easy way out would have been not to paint it at all.”

“Goddamn easy way out is how I see it,” John said.

“The discussion that is not supposed to be going on is going on a long time,” Max said.

“Right,” John said. “My fault. Absolute end of discussion. Feeling a little tired anyway. Come on, I’ll walk back with you, Lev. Won’t hold your past against you. Good night, Max.”

“Good night, John. Asher, are you really leaving on Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow night I have a party in Nice with the mayor that I must attend. It is a political matter having to do with a new museum. But I will see you before you go.”

We left him sitting by the pool and went past the vegetable garden and the caretaker’s cottage and out the back gate. A car sped by, heading up the road toward the village. We crossed the road. The road lamps bathed us in amber light. We came up to John’s gate.

“How about a nightcap?” John asked.

I told him no, thanks; I was ready for bed.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“See you, Lev. Thanks for the American notebooks. Cannot stand these French notebooks. Lines and boxes make my eyes jump all over the place. Good night.”

I watched him go through the gate and up the path to his house.

Later, in my bedroom, getting out of my clothes, I glanced out
a window and saw him at the table in his kitchen, writing. I washed and got into bed and reread some more of the Rilke. I turned off the light and recited the Krias Shema and lay awake in the darkness. The sounds of an occasional car and motorbike drifted through the night. I heard odd noises inside the house, strange stirrings along the dark hallways. I lay in bed a long time, trying to fall asleep.

The bells woke me. I dressed and prayed the Morning Service and walked to the village for the newspapers. The air was winy and still cool in the early-morning sun. There were only two people in the terrace of the café. One was a local carpenter whose wife had died during the past winter and who often ate breakfast here before beginning his day’s work. The other was John Dorman.

He was sitting at a table, bent over one of the American spiral notebooks I had brought him, and writing. His long thin frame described an arc of sorts over the notebook and seemed to be embracing it. His left hand held the pen; his right arm was curled around the top of the notebook; his green eyeshade hovered over the pages; his eyes tracked myopically the journey of the words. I stood near the entrance to the terrace, watching him. He wrote steadily, pausing occasionally to sip from a cup of coffee, which a waiter kept refilling.

I did not want to disturb him and took a distant table. I ate my breakfast and read the papers. The Paris train crash toll now at fifty-six. The South African army killed three hundred Cuban and Angolan troops. Ethiopian warplanes killed more than five hundred Tigrean rebels. The presidential campaign in the United States.
Glasnost
attacked by the Soviet Communist Party. Movie stars, directors, rock stars, jazz musicians visiting the Côte d’Azur. More Arab disturbances in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Secretary of State Shultz expected to visit Israel. Where was my father? Probably visiting Ladover Hasidim all over Israel. Meeting with politicians. Vote for the Rebbe’s party and you will receive the blessings of the Rebbe. My father and then Avrumel. A matter of time. Give them Avrumel. I saw Avrumel sitting in the green chair
in my studio, clutching his Shimshon doll, watching me paint. It isn’t that I can’t paint any more, Avrumel; I could paint all day and all night. It’s that I don’t want to continue painting in the same way over and over again like a computer. But why do I have to keep pushing against the boundaries? Why the eyes always to the future? I could paint this way the rest of my life and sell everything. Only a few really care about frontiers, about the future. Why bother with it? Why?

“Why what?” someone said. I glanced up, startled, and saw John Dorman standing at the table, tall and thin and red-faced, looking down. “You’re talking to yourself, Lev. Sure sign of the beginning of the end. Why didn’t you join me?”

I told him I hadn’t wanted to disturb his writing.

“Appreciate that. Join you? Did three good pages.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“All coffeed up for the morning. So much coffee, the hands are shaking. See? You going back up soon, or you going to sit and read about the cheerful planet we inhabit?”

I finished my coffee and paid the bill. We walked together out of the village. The sun slanted sharply from the east onto the road, bright and hot. A tourist bus went by. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. We stood at John’s front gate.

“Have something to give you later,” John said. “Bring it over.”

I watched him go up the path to his house, tall, ungainly, slightly stooped.

I wandered about the house for a while, moving from room to room. In the living room I stopped to look at the picture of the Rebbe that hung amid the many paintings on the wall. I spent the rest of the morning in the studio, looking through drawings and gazing from time to time at the huge waiting canvas. Any of the drawings would have made a fine painting. But I wouldn’t do it. What had John Dorman once told me during one of his drinking bouts? He had quoted a toast by Sean O’Casey. “May the best of the past be the worst of the future.” Keep everything always off balance. No boundaries. No repetition. The opposite of what the Rebbe wants. The Rebbe seeks fixed boundaries, perfect balance, eternal repetition. Asher Lev caught between the two. Like the
paper between the press and the carborundum. Crush it and texture it. Put colors on the texturing and make a work of art. But Asher Lev is not a sheet of paper.

A while later, I walked in the hot sunlight to the home of Jacob Kahn and stood before the grave and the lone cypress and quietly recited a chapter of Psalms. The housekeeper greeted me and let me into the house, and I spent some time with Tanya. She regretted having missed me when I had come over earlier in the week. Why had I been away so long? Yes, she had received my letter; still she could not understand why we had stayed on in Brooklyn. There were still some legal problems involved in settling the Kahn estate. Yes, even after so many years. Entanglements with cold-hearted bureaucrats. But the minister of culture had assured her all would be well in the end, and there was a strong likelihood of a Jacob Kahn museum in Paris. “You look pale and you have lost weight. Go and bring back your family, Asher. I miss your wife and your children. You are not nearly so pleasant to talk to as they are. You have your head too much in your work. Like Jacob Kahn.”

I was eating a makeshift late lunch on the terrace, when the front-gate bell sounded and I went to see who was there and it was Max. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag. I opened the gate and let him in.

“Isn’t it kind of early for your party, Max?”

“The party is actually cocktails and a dinner. I go to pick up a lady friend. This is for Devorah and the children. Little gifts.”

I took the shopping bag.

“Have a good trip, my friend. I will sec you after all the holidays, yes? Do not let those people in Brooklyn ruin you. Bring back your family.”

He stood for a moment, awkward and uncertain, the afternoon sun in his eyes. He reached up and embraced me and kissed both my cheeks above the hairline. I felt his lips wet and warm on my face. Then he turned and walked quickly back across the road.

Toward evening John came over carrying something inside a small plastic bag. He fished inside the bag and removed a soft-cover book:
Letters to His Son Lucien
by Camille Pissarro. “This is
for you. Damn good stuff. Have a safe trip back. Best to the missus and the kids.”

We shook hands. I watched him walk slowly back up the road toward his house.

I slept little that night. In the early morning I closed down the house. Claudine and Jameel would care for it, as they had before. Personal mail would be forwarded to my parents’ home by Max. The rest would pile up in the post office, to be picked up when we returned. I stood in the living room, looking at the picture of the Rebbe.

The taxi was outside the front gate. I buzzed the gate open, and the taxi came up to the house. I brought my bag and attaché case outside. The driver put them into the trunk. I was locking the front door of the house when I remembered Avrumel’s Shimshon doll. I went upstairs and found it on Avrumel’s bed. There was no room for it in my already overstuffed valise and attaché case, so I carried it in the taxi and through departure and onto the Airbus. People kept looking at me. The Airbus was crowded. I did not put the doll into the overhead bin, because I was afraid I would forget it. I held it on my lap.

I flew through the day, reading
Letters to His Son Lucien
by Camille Pissarro.

7

The water gives way to land and small Long Island towns and roads swarming with traffic. A sulfurous stench invades the cabin. Refineries somewhere. The Airbus lands on time.

At passport control, the officer in the glass cage looked at me and at the Shimshon doll, checked his big book, and returned my passport. The baggage area was crowded and noisy: a maelstrom of tourists. I waited at the carousel for my one bag. All the baggage carts were taken. I carried my bag and attaché case and the Shimshon doll to a customs counter. The customs officer looked at me and at the doll and asked me to open my bag and attaché case. The bag open, I felt embarrassed by the sight of my exposed clothes, as if I were on view in a public toilet. What were the pads for? Drawings? Was I an artist? He was a smooth-shaven, pink-faced man with a barrel chest and small gray eyes and black hair combed back flat and parted on the right. There was about him the look of lighthearted efficiency that let you know he had all the time in the world in which to find out if you were trying to get away with something. He told me to close the bags and asked for the doll. I watched him inspect the doll, squeeze it, shake it, turn it upside down. He called over another inspector, and they stood talking quietly, their backs to me. The people in the long line behind me waited silently. Finally he handed me the doll and waved me on.