The Gift of Asher Lev

by Chaim Potok

  “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.

  As I was leaving the customs area, two men in dark suits approached me and flashed badges. One asked was I carrying more than five thousand dollars in cash. I said no. The other said would I show them what was in the pockets of my jacket. There was nothing in the pockets of my jacket except two drawing pads, some pens, and my wallet with my passport, my credit cards, and one hundred dollars. They looked briefly at the drawings and returned the pads. They were very polite and seemed vaguely disappointed. They told me to go on, and I went through the exit doors, carrying the bag, the attaché case, and the Shimshon doll.

  A dense but orderly mass of people stood outside the doors. I began to move through the crowd. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked into the blue eyes of a tall blond-bearded young man. He had on a dark suit, a tieless white shirt, open at the collar, and a dark hat.

  “Asher Lev?”

  I nodded.

  “Sholom aleichem. My name is Baruch Levinson.”

  “Aleichem sholom, Baruch Levinson.”

  “The Rebbe’s office asked me to pick you up. It’s an honor for me. Come.”

  He took the large bag. I followed him through the crowd and out the door into blazing sunlight and steaming air. Holding the Shimshon doll, I waited for him on the crowded traffic island. Children went by and looked at me with the doll in my hands. I put the doll on top of the valise but was afraid someone might snatch it, and after a minute or two I picked it up and held it. Baruch Levinson pulled up in an old two-door car, and we loaded the bags and drove out of the airport.

  “How was your flight?”

  “Fine.”

  He slipped expertly into the dense and rushing traffic of the Van Wyck Expressway.

  “Where were you, if I may ask?” I told him.

  “Is Paris as nice as everyone says?”

  “It’s an unusual city.”

  “I’d love to go there. But who has the money? A wife, five kids. It eats up everything. Were you gone long?”

  “About ten days. You’re not from Brooklyn.”

  “You can tell from the accent? I try to hide it, but it comes out. I grew up in Chicago. We just moved here to be close to the Rebbe and so I could study in the yeshiva.”

  “You saw the Rebbe recently?”

  “The Rebbe is in the country.”

  “What do you mean, the country?”

  “The mountains. In the yeshiva we heard the Rebbe’s doctor said he shouldn’t stay in the city because of the heat. Everyone is predicting this will be a terrible summer.”

  The traffic moved smoothly along the Belt Parkway past the exits to the beaches. There was no air-conditioning in the car, and the windows were wide open. Hot, moist air blew stiffly into my nostrils the smells of baking asphalt and gasoline fumes. We slid beneath the massive, rising girders of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Avrumel is in the Ladover day camp on the other side of this bridge, somewhere on Staten Island. Baruch Levinson turned off the parkway at the Prospect Park exit.

  “What is the doll you’re carrying, if I may ask?”

  “It belongs to my son. He forgot it.”

  “You bought it in France?”

  “It was a gift. You can get them in Crown Heights.”

  “It’s cute. I think I’ll get one for my son.”

  He turned into the street skirting Prospect Park. Traffic was heavy. Heat shimmer rose from the car engine when we stopped for lights. People sat on stoops in undershirts or stripped to the waist and moved slowly in the heat.

  “There was an article in yesterday’s Times about you and your uncle’s art collection.”

  I said nothing.

  Baruch Levinson drove past the library and turned into Brooklyn Parkway.

  “I read some articles about you once. I took a course in modern art where I went to college, the University of Chicago. You know, Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning, Newman, Avery, Gottlieb, Motherwell, all those guys. I still remember the names. Good course. Some women, too. And some contemporary artists, you know, people working today. We did a couple of your paintings and some prints, talked about them in class, slides and stuff, you know.”

  “Which paintings?”

  “Which paintings? Let me see if I remember. Yeah, the crucifixion ones and The Sacrifice of Isaac. I like your stuff. I hope you don’t mind me talking like this. If it’s, you know, embarrassing, I’ll shut up.”

  “You majored in fine art?”

  “Yeah. I thought I’d be a painter, you know? Then I met this Ladover guy in Chicago, and he turned me on to Ladover ideas and things, and here I am, born again, you might say, a ba’al teshuva, back to my roots. I really like your work. So did the professor teaching the course.”

  “Thank you.”

  Brooklyn Parkway was still torn up. Long stretches of the road had been stripped of asphalt, leaving a washboard surface. Here and there the innards of the broad street lay exposed: sewage pipes, telephone cable, electrical lines, raw red clayey earth. Huge construction equipment obstructed traffic. Road barriers funneled traffic through temporary cattle-chute lanes. We drove past the Ladover yeshiva. There was the usual small crowd in front of the synagogue, peop
le milling about, coming and going. The car turned into the street where my parents lived and stopped in front of the house. There was my Uncle Yitzchok’s house, its blinds drawn.

  Baruch Levinson unloaded the bags. I said I would bring them in myself. He shook my hand. “An honor to help you, Mr. Lev.” He drove off.

  I started up the path to the house. The air was hot. I was halfway up the path when the front door opened and Devorah came rushing out. She wore a yellow summer dress, an apron, and a pale-orange kerchief, and she looked as if she had lived in this house all her life.

  “You look lovely, my wife. Brooklyn agrees with you.”

  “It feels good to be here, Asher.”

  “Max and John and Tanya send you their love and want me to bring you all home.”

  Devorah stands near the sliding glass door of our room, watching me unpack. She seems to have put on a little weight, there is high color on her face, her eyes are bright, the gray irises sparkling—or is it a trick of the afternoon light? She is telling me what has happened during my time away. Avrumel loves the day camp, though he gets into fights now and then with one of the boys in his group. Rocheleh telephoned the other day to say that she had been given the part of Moses’ sister in a play about the early life of Moses. My mother was busy on her book and right now was at a meeting with the Rebbe’s staff. Yes, the Rebbe would be away all summer. Doctor’s orders. He was up at the Ladover community in the mountains.

  “How do you call it? In Massa … ?”

  “Massachusetts.”

  “Yes. And how are you, Asher? How was your trip?”

  I tell her about the trip: the visit to the Picasso Museum; working with Max on the carborundum print; Lucien’s widow; the Shabbos in the yeshiva; the few days back home in Saint-Paul.

  “When is my father returning from Israel?” I ask.

  “We don’t know. Mama will be back soon from her meeting. Maybe she’ll bring news.”

  Mama. She says it in the most natural way. I cannot recall her using that word before in connection with my mother. She said “your mother” whenever she talked to me about her, and avoided calling her anything when she spoke directly to her. I was away ten days. Now, Mama.