“I know,” I answered with a trace of fear. After all, he had been my teacher – and would probably be again.
“You’re killing yourself.”
“For now, it feels to me like I’m living just fine.”
“I wonder what your bones are saying.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re surely full of holes, thinned out. They won’t hold you.”
“What?”
“They’re saturated.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s what steroids do – to everyone. You’re no exception.”
“I know. But I don’t feel like I have a problem.”
“If you don’t want trouble, at least cut down to five milligrams every two days.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. But you’ll come to our clinic for tests,” he ended the conversation. “I won’t let this go!”
“I promise to be disciplined, commander,” she said with mock obedience. “From today, write me half the dose,” she turned to me in his presence.
When our eyes met, Lily nodded, and her look said:You’re right.
Two weeks later, we flew to America.
Chapter 47
Prophecies Fulfilled in America
After we decided to celebrate our honeymoon in America, we divided responsibilities. Lily would be in charge of the art, and I would handle everything “around it.” I checked lodging and rental cars, and Lily chose museums and galleries in New York and Washington. Before the trip, we merged our lists, packed a few clothes and personal items, took a sufficient supply of steroids for a full month, and took off.
America!!!
“On Monday, September 11, 1978, at twelve twenty-two, the TWA plane lifted off,” Lily wrote in our travel journal.
“I have to keep a journal,” she said before we left. “I need to share with all my friends the names of the galleries, museums, paintings, and artists I’ll encounter there.”
Less than twenty-four hours later, we were already walking into the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lily wrote in her journal: “I saw naïve paintings by Jonathan Borofsky … there’s a letter from Dalí about intuitive and naïve surrealism … Lucio Pozzi’s video calledDialogueis very dramatic…”
She studied every work that caught her eye with utmost care, changed vantage points – came closer, stepped back, and came closer again. In her imagination, she conversed with the paintings, and perhaps with the artists who created them.
After about two hours of ceaseless movement through the museum’s endless rooms, she said her legs wouldn’t carry her, but asked me to write down what she dictated.
“Maybe it’s jet lag, or accumulated fatigue – or excitement.” I tried to explain, noticing that her face was pale.
“Maybe. But I feel strange. I feel my legs won’t carry meanymore,” she said. Before I could find a chair or armchair or anything similar, she smiled. “It’s passed.” I begged her to rest a moment, but she was already moving toward Barnett Newman’sBroken Obelisk, then to a red sculpture calledAboveby Alexander Liberman … to Tony Smith’sCigarette… and to Gaston Lachaise’s floating figure…
When we entered the photography section, she dictated and I wrote: “At the entrance are two photographs assembled from parts of other photos. The overall figure is identical, but the components that make up each are different. These works shed light on the central problem of photography today: knowledge, what to photograph, the camera, distance from the subject…”
Every picture demanded a deep response from her. From every work she learned something. If she could, she would have stayed there for months, visiting a different room each day.
