The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Author:Chaim Potok
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307575524
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1990-08-24T22:00:00+00:00

Following the directions given me by the hotel concierge, I took the Balard line to the Concorde station, changed for a Château de Vincennes train, and got off at Bastille. I climbed up the stone stairs of the Bastille station and emerged into a boulevard of torn pavement, towering construction cranes, and thundering jackhammers. Crowds of pedestrians clogged the sidewalks; cars and buses jammed the streets. A reeking fog of diesel and gasoline fumes lay upon the boulevard. The air was heavy with impending rain. I looked around for street signs, crossed the boulevard, walked a block, and was lost.

A smartly dressed middle-aged woman, cradling a tiny poodle in her arms, came toward me. I asked her if she knew where the Picasso Museum was. Her eyes, heavily lined and blue-shaded with makeup, stared past my head as if I were not there. She inclined her head slightly and murmured something to the poodle, caressing it with her free hand, and I smelled her perfume as she hurried past me.

I stepped into a café. The chairs were on the tables, and a man was sweeping the floor. Two waiters stood against a wall, smoking and talking. I asked one of them if he knew where the Picasso Museum was. He pursed his lips and looked at the other waiter, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Outside on the street, a thin, dark-haired, olive-skinned man standing behind piles of newspapers and magazines in a small kiosk directed me in Arabic-accented French to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. Weaving cautiously through the traffic, I crossed a wide street. On the boulevard I went past a jackhammer crew that was shredding a sidewalk. The noise struck me like blows to the head. A light rain began to fall.

The street was lined with old cafés and inelegant shops. I went into an optician’s store. Behind the counter stood a middle-aged man. He wore a white smock and had thick black hair and wide, kindly eyes. I asked him if he knew the location of the Picasso Museum.

He looked surprised. “Is there truly a Picasso Museum here?”

“Yes.”

“But I have never heard of it. I am so very sorry.”

I went back out onto the boulevard.

On a corner under the awning of a café stood a gendarme. “The third street to your left,” he said. “And then you go straight straight straight to the museum. You will see it.”

I walked quickly in the light rain, hugging the windows of shops and the awnings of cafés, counted what I thought were three streets, and turned into a narrow cobblestone street called Rue des Minimes. After two blocks it led into a wider, perpendicular street named Rue de Turenne and vanished.

I stood in the rain looking up and down the Rue de Turenne. It was deserted.

I was lost in Paris.

I thought to give it up and return to the hotel. But I wanted to see the Spaniard’s collection. More than three hundred paintings and sculptures, thirty sketchbooks, eighty-odd ceramics, sixteen hundred prints, fifteen hundred drawings.

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