Summary

Aryeh sends his family a letter, assuring them that he is safe and asking Rivkeh to consider spending the summer in Europe with him. When summer arrives, she leaves and Asher moves in with his Uncle Yitzchok. Asher spends three days a week all during the hot summer, painting with Jacob Kahn at his apartment; both stripped to the waist. Asher learns that there are two kinds of painters: those who paint the world as a flower, and those who paint it as geometry.

They take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Asher sees paintings of Christ’s crucifixion for the first time. He is disturbed by what he sees, but Kahn tells him, “We will see more crucifixions and more resurrections and more nativities and more Greek and Roman gods and more scenes of war and love – because that is the...