Avrum was not crazy, or a fool.

He was in love with Amelita Galli-Curci.

And he taught me the joy of such love.

That is why we were friends, and it is what I have never been able to tell Carolyn.

And I think it is why, long ago, Avrum chose me to close out his life, to perform his kaddish.

Avrum knew about the photograph that I kept hidden. He knew who it was and why I had it.

I did not have to tell him. He knew.

CHAPTER

2
 

I ALWAYS GO INTO THE CATSKILLS WITH MELANCHOLY AND GLADness. I go slowly, following Highway 28 out of Kingston. I do not want to take the mountains in a gulp. I want to sip them, to hold the taste of seeing them again as I would hold the taste of a surprising, perfect wine. I like to say aloud the names of the towns and villages as I slip past them—Stony Hollow, Glenford, Ashokan, Boiceville, Phoenicia, Allaben, Shandaken, Big Indian. I think of the streams where men cast lines as light as spider’s silk over the waters and the whiplash of the lines’ curl before settling for the chase of the trout that glide in the cold spills of the Beaverkill and the Neversink, the Delaware and the Esopus. The names of the towns and villages, of the trout streams, are like poems to me.

I like the feeling of the mountains rising up from the valley of the highway and cupping me in their walls of hemlock and oak, of birches with white, peeling trunks, of rhododendron and laurel, of scrub bushes and wild grasses on the knolls. It is wondrous to see the trees. I have always wanted to stop on the roadside and take canvas and oils and to paint frantically, to find in the touch of a brushstroke what I see, and sense. But I think the trees cannot be painted. Their colors flow with the sun— pale and dark greens, scratches of white, red, and amber blossoms. Their colors flow and I think I can see them moving on the sunriver, their high faces lifted in exuberance and their muscular tree arms stretching like dancers of the ballet embracing the music of their dance.

I wondered if this would be the last time I would take the slow, melancholy drive into the Catskills, past the towns and villages and streams with names like poems. Since 1955, I had returned every few years to visit Avrum. At least, that is what I had told myself. I may have lied. Avrum was my friend and I loved him for that friendship, but perhaps I had used him as an excuse to make the drive that fills me with awe.