Erica was now thirty four years. I was older than her eleven years, and married the year before. Literally stumbled into each other in the Butler Library at the University of What Lumbia. It happened in the October Saturday morning, when pre-ordered shelves of volumes have been almost completely deserted. I heard her steps, and then I felt her presence behind a row of books only a dim glow lit the lamp timer. I found the book, which was looking for, and went toward the elevator. In addition to the murmur of light bulbs have not heard anything. When I turned the corner, stumbled on Erica sitting on the floor next to a row of shelves. I managed to keep a balance, but dropped my glasses. She raised them and when I bent down to pick them up, she decided to get up and head hit me in the chin. When she looked at me, I saw the smile on her face. - A few such trials, and we come to something - regular gags of burlesque - she said.
Immediately I fell into raptures at the sight of this beautiful women. She had full lips and thick, dark hair cut in a page.
narrow skirt lifted up during our conflict, exposing her legs. When it obciągała, glanced at her thighs. Once led to the order, she looked at me and smiled again. During this second smile, I noticed that her lower lip trembled slightly for a moment. I came to the conclusion that it is a little sign of nervousness or embarrassment, meaning that it will not refuse my invitation. If it were not - I am absolutely convinced - again I It apologized and left. However, a slight trembling of lips, which immediately gave way, moreover, revealed a gentle nature and could be familiar with - as guessed - the heavily-guarded sensuality. I suggested we go for coffee. Coffee turned into lunch, dinner and lunch. And the next morning lying next to Erica Stein in my bed in the old apartment on Riverside Drive. She's still asleep. The sun shone on the incident from the window of her face and hair. Very gently touched the tip of her head. In this position, lasting for several minutes, looking at the face of the woman and dreamed that was with me.
In those days we talked with him for hours. It turned out that Eric came from the same world. Her parents were German Jews who emigrated from Berlin in 1933, with over ten years. My father was an eminent psychoanalyst, and his mother - a teacher of speech and the Juilliard School of Music. Both of them were already dead. Deaths in an interval of several months to a year before our meeting, which is when she died and my mother in 1973. I also was born in Berlin and lived there for the first five years. My memories of this city is fragmented, and some probably contain a large dose of fiction. They are remembered and images, and stories invented by me on the basis of the relationship her mother, who told me about the early years of my life. Erica was born in Manhattan's Upper West Side, where I turn, I landed after returning from London after spending three years in a rented flat in Hampstead. And this is what Eric has led me to move out of the West Side and to abandon a comfortable accommodation for lecturers at the University What Lumbia. Even before our wedding has announced that it wants to "immigrate" When I asked what you mean by that, she replied that it was time that the parents sold the apartment on Second West Eightieth and started the long journey by subway to the south of Manhattan. - Here, there is a smell of death - ruled. - Antiseptic, musty hospitals and Sacher cake. I gotta get out of here. - So both of Erica left the familiar areas of our childhood and we set foot on the territory of artists and bohemians. We used the money received in the fall after our parents and bought a large apartment on Greene Street, between Canal and Grand streets.
new territory with its empty streets after dark, low buildings and young tenants freed me from the old ties, but I never thought of them as constraints. My father died in 1947, with only forty-three years, but the mother survived him for many years. I was their only child, so they both lived under the reign of his spirit. Mother obsolete and what once more suffered from arthritis, but his father remained a young, talented, with a great career before him - a doctor, who could achieve what just wanted any. That "something" has become the mother of all. Over the next twenty-six years lived in the same apartment at the Eighty-fourth Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive, roztrząsając future lost father. When I started to teach at the university, students turned to me sometimes per "Doctor Hertzberg, "not" Mr. Professor, "and in such cases invariably think of my father. Moving to SoHo is not erased my past and did not lead to amnesia, but when I was turning the corner of the street or walked to the other side of the road, not butted up for immigrant memories of childhood and adolescence. Eric and I were the children of refugees from a world that no longer exists. For our parents, assimilated Jews of the middle class, Judaism was a religion practiced by their pradziadkówrPrzed to 1933 considered themselves "Jewish German" is a term no longer functions in any language.
When we first met, Eric was a professor in the Faculty of English Studies Rutgers University, and I've been for twelve years taught art history at What lumbii. I had a doctorate from Harvard, and she lumbii Co., what explain why, in that Saturday morning, sitting in the library of his old alma mater - was there a permanent badge awarded to graduates. Previously I have been in love, but almost every time he came the onset of fatigue and boredom. Erica has never let me not boring. Sometimes irritated me and wpędzała in despair, but in her company never fell into boredom. Her remark about the picture painted by Bill was typical for her: a straight, hitting the point, insightful. I've never treated my wife's patronizing.
Next to the house at number 89 at the Bowery passed many times without stopping even once, would even look at the facade. In podniszczonym four-story building of brick between Hester Street and Canal Street once housed some wholesalers, but when I decided to visit Willia-to Wechsler, the modest glory years are long gone. Storefronts were killed on the ground floor with plywood, and a heavy metal door at street level, and holes were bent, as if someone was attacking them constantly hammer. At only a step to spread the bearded man with a bottle hidden in a paper bag. Swore against me when I asked to be moved, and the careless movement than it sturlał than it slipped from the stage.
My first impressions of the new people I met often overshadowed by the latest knowledge with them, but if Bill at least one aspect of the early second burned into my memory for the entire period of our friendship. Bill had a spell - the mysterious force of attraction that is able to seduce a foreign place. When I stood in the doorway of his studio, he was almost as sloppy as a drunk at the door. He had a two-day stubble. His thick black hair stuck out on the top and sides of the head and the clothes are equally bore traces of paint, what and plain dirt. However, it was sufficient that he looked at me, and I immediately felt an invisible magnet effect. As for a white male had a very dark complexion, and intensely green eyes betrayed an admixture of Asiatic blood. He firmly outlined, square jaw and chin equally exceptional. Wide in bars, marked by powerful arms. His height does not exceed ninety meters, and yet it seemed to tower over me, though I was less of him just five or six inches. Much later I came to the conclusion that it was almost magical spell t what to do with the eyes. When you look at me, his eyes penetrated me without a hint of embarrassment, but also sensed his inner focusing on something else. And although his interest in my person seemed to be authentic, I felt nothing from me does not want. Bill unfolded around him an aura of complete autonomy, which was almost overpowering.
- I rented this place because of the light - he said when we went into the studio on the third floor. The three tall windows at the end of brilliance lit up were the afternoon sun. The building apparently falling over the shallow foundations, so the rear of the studio were at a slightly lower level than the entrance to it. I noticed that the floor is hard and wrinkled. Gave the impression of wind disturbed the lake's surface. At the higher end of the workshop was sparsely furnished - a stool, a table made from old doors based on two goats, stereo, surrounded by a lot of tapes and video tapes thrown into the white plastic containers with openwork. By the wall paintings have become crowded rows. The whole room smelled strongly paint, turpentine and rot.
all utensils necessary for the life of the host has accumulated in the lower part of the studio. Table was based on an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub. Besides there were a wide bed, adjacent to the rail of the sink, and an iron stove was pressed into the space between shelves clogs enormous mass of books. Books also lay in piles on the floor near the stove and a chair, on which - as one might think - no one sat for years. Mess in the residential part of the workshop revealed the poverty of not only Bill, but his indifference to the list of life what daily. With time, the owner of the farm became a wealthy man, but that does not change his approach to things. Bill remained strangely unrelated to the places where he lived, and did not care about their device.
Even that day I felt its asceticism, almost violent need for simplicity and an unwillingness to any compromise. My experience showed, and his way of expression, and physical characteristics. Bill was a quiet, gentle tone, and he controlled his movements, however, emanated from it any clear delimitation in intensity to fill the entire space around them. Unlike other people with strong personalities do not behave boisterously, he had no manners, arrogant, do not try to force anyone to charm. And yet, when I stood beside him and looked at his paintings, I felt like a dwarf who had just made a giant. As a result of such a reaction to my comments about his art became more thoughtful and deeper. I fought in this way due to my space.
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