My Name Is Asher Lev (22 page)

“Come in, Asher Lev,” he said. “Come in. Anna, the prodigy is here.” I felt his fingers grasp my arm. He took my coat and hat and tossed them somewhere. He pushed the door shut with a swift movement of his leg. “Welcome, Asher Lev,” he said, smiling down at me. “It is good to see you here. Anna, where are
you? Ah, here. Anna, this is my Asher Lev. Asher Lev, this is my Anna Schaeffer.”

A woman had materialized suddenly from behind an enormous canvas. She was of medium height, matronly, with an oval face, sharp blue eyes, and short silvery hair. She wore a dark-blue wool dress and a long necklace of white beads. She offered me her hand. I hesitated. Jacob Kahn moved adroitly toward her, took the offered hand in his left hand, lifted my hand in his right hand, and joined our two hands together. I felt the woman’s palm and fingers against my skin. Her flesh was warm and dry.

“To the future,” Jacob Kahn said solemnly. “To the beginning of good things. We are assembled to celebrate our glory, if I may paraphrase Apollinaire. Anna, it is not polite to stare.”

She was staring at my skullcap. I saw her eyes on the skullcap, then I saw them move slowly across my head and face to my sidecurls. They remained fixed on my sidecurls.

“Anna,” Jacob Kahn said softly. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and flicked ashes onto the bare wooden floor.

“You did not tell me,” the woman said to him, her eyes still on my sidecurls. “You are a tricky old man.”

“Are you upset with me that I did not tell you?”

“Yes, I am upset. You are tricky and nasty.” She did not sound upset.

“He is a prodigy, Anna. A prodigy in payos.”

“Payos?” She was still staring at me.

“The hair you are gaping at. The earlocks.”

“Payos,” she said. “Payos. And a skullcap. And dark clothes. And a prodigy.” She looked at Jacob Kahn. “You are a mean, tricky, and nasty old man. You are not being nice to an old woman, Jacob Kahn.”

“On the contrary, my Anna. I am being very nice. I am being enormously nice. It is against my nature not to be nice.
I introduce the boy to you without advance preparation. All the disadvantages are his. All the advantages are yours. Could I be nicer?”

“Yes,” she said. “You could bring me a drink.” Then she turned to him and said something in French. He laughed, stepped carefully between two huge canvases, and disappeared.

She turned back to me slowly and smiled. “Come over here with me, Asher Lev. Let us stand where there is more light.”

I followed behind her, treading carefully between the sculptures and easels and canvases and worktables that were the heavy traffic of that room. We stood near a wall of windows. The sky, filled with clouds that gave off gray light, seemed to border upon the windows. Beyond low rooftops and trees and a strip of highway, I could see the dark waters of the Hudson and the New Jersey shoreline.

“Let me look at you in the light,” she said. I saw her blue eyes moving across me. “You have Chagall’s pale face. Do you suffer fainting spells?”

“No.”

“I asked Jacob which of the three he thought you might become.”

“The three?”

“Modigliani, Soutine, and Pascin. Pascin’s name was originally Pincas. Have you heard of those three? They were Jews.”

“I’ve seen some of their paintings.”

“They were dedicated people. You have not been beaten for drawing, have you?”

“No.”

“Soutine was severely beaten when he was young. When he was your age, I believe. You are thirteen? Yes. He was quite severely beaten. Orthodox Jews do not care much for painting, I understand. You are what is called a Hasid?”

I nodded.

“Your parents do not mind your drawing and painting?”

I was quiet.

She smiled faintly. “May I ask you what your father does?”

I told her. She seemed surprised.

“How very interesting,” she murmured. “Why aren’t you and your mother with your father in Europe?”

I told her that, too, briefly.

She looked at me intently. Then she looked out the window, her eyes narrow in the gray light. A barge moved slowly across the dark surface of the water.

“Are you very religious?” she asked quietly, still looking out the window.

“I’m an observant Jew.”

“What does that mean, specifically?”

I did not know what to say.

She looked at me. “Do you believe in a special way? Do you behave in a special way?”

“I believe in God and the Torah He gave to the Jewish people. I pray three times a day. I eat only kosher food. I observe Shabbos—the Sabbath—and festivals and holy days. We don’t travel or work on the Sabbath and festivals and holy days. I believe the Rebbe is a gift to us by God to help lead us in our lives. I believe—”

“The Rebbe?” she said.

“The Rebbe is the leader of our group.”

“Ah,” she murmured. “Yes. The man in Brooklyn Jacob goes to visit all these years. Yes. Go on.”

“I believe it is man’s task to make life holy. I believe—”

“Asher Lev,” she said softly, “Asher Lev.”

“Yes?”

“Asher Lev, you are entering the wrong world,” she said.

I was quiet.

“Asher Lev, this world will destroy you. Art is not for
people who want to make the world holy. You will be like a nun in a bro— in a—theater for burlesque. Do you understand me, Asher Lev? If you want to make the world holy, stay in Brooklyn.”

I did not respond. There was a long silence.

She stood peering gloomily out the window. “He does not take students, you know. He has never had students in America. He had students in Europe. When Hitler came, the students were not kind.” She was silent a moment. Then she looked at me. “You will not hurt him,” she said. “Many have hurt him. He is like a monk. There are so many things he does not understand.”

I did not know what to say. I shook my head.

She smiled. “I am a possessive woman. I worry about my painters and sculptors. Where are your drawings, Asher Lev? Jacob said you were bringing drawings.”

I handed her my sketchbooks. She placed them on one of the worktables near the wall of windows, opened one, and began slowly, very slowly, turning the pages. I watched her for a while. Her face was expressionless. She looked to be in her sixties, but I could not be certain. I wondered where Jacob Kahn was. I could not hear anyone else in the studio. I watched her slowly turning the pages of the sketchbook. Then I moved away from her. She did not seem to notice me. I began to walk about the room.

It was an enormous room. The walls were huge. High overhead was a large skylight set in a slanted roof. One of its windows was open. Gray light fell across bronze and stone and wood sculptures that stood scattered about the floor, and across huge canvases that leaned against the walls and smaller canvases set in easels. There were worktables everywhere, some cluttered with tubes of paint and various sizes of brushes and small rollers, others laden with chisels and mallets. There was dust and paint
on the floor and walls, on the worktables and easels; I thought I could even see flecks of paint on the ceiling overhead. I felt tiny, surrounded by the enormity of the room and the creations it contained.

I heard someone behind me and turned. It was Anna Schaeffer. I had the feeling she had been watching me for some time. I saw her looking at two huge bronze sculptures directly before me.

“I never weary of looking at those,” she said. “I plead with him every week to let me take them. There are museums that want them. But he parts with very little now. He says he wants in his old age to be surrounded by the work of his hands. Here are your sketchbooks. You are, bluntly put, magnificent. Ingres would have been proud. You have a sense of line that can only be a gift. Do your people believe drawing is a gift from God? Even though they despise drawing? No doubt they believe it is a gift of Satan. Yes? In any event, your drawings of
Guernica
are astonishing. You even remembered to put in the dripping of the paint. The others are drawings of your street, yes? They are quite exquisite. Who is this man whom you draw so often?”

“Yudel Krinsky.” I told her about him.

“And this woman?”

“My mother.”

“And this man?”

“My father.”

She looked closely at the drawing of my father. She nodded slowly to herself.

“And this?”

“Someone I dream about. An ancestor.”

“Asher Lev, are you really thirteen years old?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?” she murmured. “Why not? Goya was twelve. Picasso was nine. Why not? It could happen in Brooklyn to a
boy with payos.” She looked around. “Where is he? Jacob,” she called. “Jacob.”

He came out of the dimness behind tall sculptures set in a far corner of the studio. He carried a glass in his hand and was smoking a cigarette. He walked quickly toward us, smiling, and gave her the glass.

“You have become acquainted?” he said to the two of us.

“Yes,” Anna Schaeffer said soberly. “We have become acquainted.” She sipped from the glass and left a lipstick stain on its rim. “Whenever you tell me, Jacob. Anytime you feel he is ready.” She sipped again from her glass.

“It will be five years,” Jacob Kahn said to her. “Millions of people can draw. Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.”

“Or a laugh,” she said. “Picasso laughs, too.”

“Or a laugh,” he said.

Millions of people can draw. My Uncle Yitzchok had said that to me once. Millions of people can draw. When had he said that?

Jacob Kahn turned to me and held out his hand, indicating the sketchbooks. I gave them to him and he went through them quickly, then returned them to me. He looked at me in silence. He seemed sad.

“Listen to me, Asher Lev. You can become a portrait painter. You can paint calendars for matzo companies. You can paint Rosh Hashonoh greeting cards. What do you need this for?”

I did not say anything. Anna Schaeffer sipped quietly from her drink, her eyes fixed upon Jacob Kahn.

“Do you understand what this is?” Jacob Kahn asked me, his strong voice rising. “Do you begin to understand what you are going to be doing to yourself? You understand now what Picasso did, yes? Even Picasso, the pagan, had to do this. At times, there is no other way. Do you understand me, Asher Lev?
This is not a toy. This is not a child scrawling on a wall. This is a tradition; it is a religion, Asher Lev. You are entering a religion called painting. It has its fanatics and its rebels. And I will force you to master it. Do you hear me? No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it. Do you understand me, Asher Lev?”

I nodded slowly.

“Asher Lev, it is a tradition of goyim and pagans. Its values are goyisch and pagan. Its concepts are goyisch and pagan. Its way of life is goyisch and pagan. In the entire history of European art, there has not been a single religious Jew who was a great painter. Think carefully of what you are doing before you make your decision. I say this not only for the Rebbe but for myself as well. I do not want to spend time with you, Asher Lev, and then have you tell me you made a mistake. Do you understand?”

“Jacob,” the woman said softly. “You are frightening the boy.”

“It is my intention to frighten him out of his wits. I want him to go back to Brooklyn and remain a nice Jewish boy. What does he need this for, Anna?”

“What did you need it for, Jacob?”

“I know what I went through,” he said.

“Excuse us a moment, Asher,” the woman said to me. She took Jacob Kahn’s arm. They moved off toward the windows. I stood alone amidst the sculptures and canvases. I could hear them talking softly, but I could not make out the words. I stood there surrounded by lines and shapes in metal and stone: tall poignant sculptures of mothers and children; exquisite female heads; delicately turning torsos of men and women; black stone fists jutting like sudden screams from unpolished stone bases; entwined
lovers; huge birds as in a fantasist’s dream; beasts from a private mythology; and shapes without representational form, exquisitely molded liquid motion in polished bronze. None of the canvases contained representational forms. They shimmered and vibrated with subtle harmonies and sudden complementaries textured with sand and plaster and, in one huge canvas, with small slivers of blue glass embedded in an impasto of swirling orange. They were powerful paintings of color and texture—his subject was color and texture—and I felt their sensuousness move against me, and I was uncomfortable and a little afraid. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes, and there was the flood of color again, a surge of sensuous power, raw, elemental, as when lengthy darkness is abruptly replaced by a sudden pouring in of sunlight. I had seen his canvases in the museum; they had not affected me this way. None of them had had this quality of raw sensuousness.

An easel stood a few feet away to my left. There was a painting on it, similar to but smaller in size than the others. I looked at it closely and saw it was dry. I removed it and put it against the edge of an untouched canvas. A row of small white stretched canvases stood against a wall. I picked up a canvas and put it on the easel. There were tubes of oil colors on the adjoining table, along with brushes and turpentine. I painted hands and a face onto the canvas. I worked swiftly, doing the mouth and eyes and mustache and hair, then moving colors through the space behind the head. Set back from the head I painted an easel with a canvas and a face on the canvas. I made the face pale and the earlocks red. I omitted painting pupils into the eyes. The eyes stared blankly from the canvas within the canvas. I put the brushes on the table and stepped back, and moved heavily into Jacob Kahn. I felt his powerful hands on my shoulders, holding me so I would not fall. I felt him holding me, almost in an embrace. Then he released me.

He was looking at the canvas.

“Anna has scolded me severely for my bluntness,” he said quietly, looking at the canvas. “It is in my nature to be blunt.” He put his large hands into the pockets of his dungarees and stood very straight, still looking at the canvas. “I do not know what to say to you, Asher Lev. I am moved by your trust. But you see better at thirteen than I did at eighteen. When you are eighteen, perhaps you will see better than I did at twenty-five.”