style="font-size:15px;"> “Welcome to the Galuth Museum!” The pale skin of my greeter’s wrinkled face—wrinkled, you could tell, more from worry and torment than from age—was overshadowed by the orange and purple streaks of his acrylic sweater. The few words he’d spoken were enough for me to hear a strong Russian accent, which matched the syntax of the notecard. This was the right man, Goldov. He stepped aside so I could enter.
The interior walls had been knocked out so that the bottom floor was one wide-open space. White paint had been applied directly to the bricks, and the shape of each one could be made out. There were no windows, and the electric track lights were not quite adequate to properly illuminate the framed pictures that circled the room at eye level. A wooden bench in the middle of the room reminded me of the ornamental stone benches sometimes found at grave sites. In fact, the whole room felt more like a tomb or shrine than an art gallery.
Goldov drew my attention to a plexiglass box mounted next to the door, marked “Museum Donations.” Next to that box was a smaller, tin box that said “Tzedakah”—charity, or righteous act—in Hebrew, and “Glupsk Yeshiva Fund” in English. I put a five-dollar bill in the “Museum Donations” box, to get off on the right foot.
We started our tour to the right of the donation boxes, with an old black-and-white snapshot that had been blown up beyond recognition and set behind plexiglass.
“This, here,” Goldov said, “is the only known photograph of R. Galuth.” I squinted. It was a picture of a slim young man, wearing a suit and hat. “Very little is known of the life of Galuth, one of the most illustrious painters of the 1930s.” He seemed to be reciting a memorized script. “We know that he arrived in New York City in the mid-1920s, from Ukraine by way of Paris. He apparently returned to Europe in 1937. Nothing more was heard from him. Presumably, like so many great artists, he was killed by the Nazis.
“His home, for the earlier part of the period he spent in America, was this very house, though he later became a fixture in bohemian Greenwich Village. Very few of his paintings have survived, but almost all of the ones that have are collected in this museum. On occasion, another Galuth painting surfaces, in which case we do our best to acquire it. So our collection continues to be growing. We have been very lucky that an anonymous benefactor subsidizes our work.
“Over here, we have one such painting.” I followed my guide down the wall. “Some consider it Galuth’s masterpiece. It depicts an unfortunate but true-to-life incident, in which goons were hired by the Sea Beach Railway to eject fare evaders. They murdered innocent passengers by throwing them from an elevated portion of the line.”
“It’s a very beautiful painting,” I said. It was a New York street scene, a whole world in one intersection. The old elevated tracks slashed across a purple evening sky. Cruel faces peered from the open windows of the stalled, rust-colored train car. A young woman, tangled in her long green skirt and half-unraveled braid, hovered in the air. She had an angelic quality, and you hoped that she was ascending, but the force of gravity in the painting was too strong to ignore.
The individuals in the gathered crowd—each one a full portrait—looked upward, unable to save her. Their long backs stretched up from the bottom of the canvas, and as a viewer I became one of them, fighting to push myself forward through the crowd, to get a better view of the girl in that last moment before she died. A boy in knickers picked a man’s overcoat pocket, but the personal victory did not exempt him from his share of the collective pain.
“Yes,” Goldov agreed. “Very beautiful. If you notice, even the expression on the face of this goon, this murderer, is masterful. If you will look at his eyes . . .” I looked into the man’s eyes. Truthfully, they reminded me of Alojzy’s. That wasn’t so far-fetched, that the goons were men like Alojzy and his friends. Rough men who did as they pleased. Would Alojzy throw an innocent person from a train? I had been entranced by the picture, but was now jolted back to my purpose.
“Listen,” I interrupted. “Thank you for showing me this, but I didn’t come down here to see the museum. I actually came for something else. You see, Mr. Goldov . . .” He tightened up at the mention of his name. I saw his hands become fists at his side. I smiled, to show him that I came in good faith. “My name is Izzy—Izzy Edel.” I stuck out my hand, but he did not reach to shake it. I took it back. “My mother received a letter from you. About my father. Alojzy Edel.”
“You? A slim thing like you? You, coming into my museum in your fancy shirt and your yarmulke, are the son of Ally Edel? Is that not a thing!” I didn’t think my shirt was particularly fancy, but it was true that button-down oxfords weren’t Alojzy’s style. And though my path was taking a different turn, I still wore the kippah out of habit.
“Well, now,” I said to Goldov, “I’ve lived a different life than he’s led . . .” Alojzy never had time for hallucinations or revelations. He was a practical man who spent every day fighting and hustling, a man who’d already been through everything and achieved perfect doubt.
“This I can believe,” Goldov said. We stared at each other. “You know, Ally stole from me eight thousand dollars, once. Restitution has not yet been made.” I had been half expecting something like this, considering the tone of Goldov’s note. “I thought your family might want to tie up loose ends.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said. “But I’m afraid that’s not a debt I myself will be able to make up to you. In fact, I’m sure if you added up all the child support he still owes for my sister and me . . .” This was a popular refrain of my mother’s. The man waved away my comments with his right hand, then waved me up the stairs with his left.
“Come. Let’s talk.”
There were far more canvases upstairs than in the gallery. They were stacked all around, leaning together in both orderly and not so orderly piles. One mostly blank canvas rested on an easel by the window. Empty paint tubes littered every surface, and brushes stood upright in jars of turpentine. This was Goldov’s studio. In the corner was a small bed with a metal frame.
“Govarish po Rusky?” he asked hopefully as he turned on his electric teakettle, which sat on the windowsill next to a hotplate and a small radio, all three of which were connected to the same rat’s nest of an electrical outlet. “I assume not. I always chatted with your father v’Rusky. He spoke it quite well, for a Pole.”
“Da,” I said. “Govaroo chut chut.” I’d only started studying Russian because my college didn’t offer Polish, and my three and a half semesters’ worth were totally insufficient for the conversation I wanted to have. When Goldov spoke next, to offer me a seat, he did so in English.
“These are your paintings?” I asked him, feeling that I had to say something about them. Abstract expressionist in style, almost to the point of parody, they surrounded us. The disordered thoughts of a frustrated man congealed into acrylic globs. I surmised that the materials were chosen because the old man could not afford oil paints in the quantities he desired. The paintings might not have appeared so terrible to me if the Galuth painting weren’t still haunting my mind, creating an unfavorable comparison.
“Yes, yes. My life’s work. You know, in Soviet Union, all I ever wanted was to be free to be an artist. I was dismissed from the academy in Leningrad for ‘abstractions indicative of a bourgeois nature.’ And I always knew . . . if I would make it to the West, my creativity would flower. Such a scene I would make. I come here, I learn: they let you do whatever you want, because it’s nobody that will care.” It seemed like he wanted me to feel sorry for him.
The timer on the kettle buzzed. Goldov stood up and placed tea bags in two glasses, which he then filled with water.
“Would
