My Name Is Asher Lev (10 page)

My mother said to me the next morning over breakfast, “Asher, if you want to continue going to Reb Yudel Krinsky’s store, you will have to remember to return at a reasonable time.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And if it snows when you leave school, please come straight home.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She looked at me soberly. “I lost my temper last night.”

I was quiet.

“You frightened me, Asher. But I should not have lost my temper.”

“I apologize for what I did, Mama.”

“Yes. You frightened me. I’m trying very hard to get used to it, Asher. I’m really trying.” She looked at me through the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I wish I hadn’t lost my temper. I told myself that the next time it happened I wouldn’t be frightened. But I was a failure.” She put a napkin to her eyes. Then she said softly, “Drink your juice, my Asher. I’ll walk with you to your school.”

Later, we came out of the apartment house and walked along the snow-filled parkway and stopped at the path that led to the entrance doors of the school.

She kissed my forehead and said, “Have a good day in school, Asher. I hope you get a fine mark on your arithmetic test.”

“Thank you, Mama.” The test had been postponed from
last week to today. But I had forgotten again to study for it. “Will Papa’s plane be able to land today?”

“If the Ribbono Shel Olom wants it to land, it will land.”

She turned and started along the parkway. I watched her walk up the street carrying her books.

I failed the arithmetic test.

    During supper on the first Monday in March, the phone rang and my father went to answer it. When he returned, he said in a choked voice, quoting in Hebrew, “‘When your enemy falls, do not rejoice,’” and he told us that Stalin had had a stroke, was paralyzed and unconscious, and was dying.

The following Wednesday, the story was in the newspapers. The official announcement had come out of Russia Tuesday midnight, Eastern Standard Time. I never asked my father how he had learned of Stalin’s illness more than a day before the official announcement. He would not have told me.

On my way home from school Thursday afternoon, I saw a car pull up in front of our headquarters building. Six men came out of the car. I recognized one of them; he was in his twenties and he had worked two offices down from my father when my father had been on the first floor of the building. The others looked to be in their fifties or sixties, men with gray beards, dark coats, and dark hats. They went up the steps of the building and disappeared inside.

My father did not come home that night. The next morning, my mother and I heard over the radio that Stalin had died the previous afternoon at 1:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

My mother turned off the radio as the announcer started a commercial. We sat in silence. The refrigerator hummed softly.

“‘So perish the enemies of God,’” my mother quoted softly in Hebrew.

I told my mother about the men I had seen come out of the car the day before.

“Who were they, Mama?”

“Ask your father,” she said quietly.

I asked my father later that day. “Ladover from Europe,” he said.

Early the next morning, my father went to the mikveh. He returned to the apartment, his hair wet; his sidecurls, which he had not tucked behind his ears, were dripping.

“You will catch pneumonia one day,” my mother said, bringing a bath towel into the kitchen. “Please dry yourself.”

“Simcha is out,” my father said to her. “He’s in London.”

My mother paled. “When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Thank God,” my mother said. “Thank God.”

“Who is Simcha?” I asked.

“A Jew,” my father said. “From Kiev.”

I did not ask anything else.

My father went out of the kitchen to put on his tallis, which he always wore under his coat as we walked to the synagogue. On our way to the synagogue, he asked, “Do you know where Vienna is, Asher?”

I did not even know what Vienna was.

“Vienna is the capital city of Austria.”

I did not know where Austria was.

“Geography you don’t know. Chumash and Rashi you don’t know. Mishnayes you don’t know. Sometimes I wonder whose son you are, Asher.”

“We didn’t study Austria, Papa. I don’t think we studied Austria.”

“And arithmetic you don’t know.”

“I don’t like arithmetic.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed you don’t like arithmetic.”

The morning service began a few minutes after we entered the synagogue. I saw my father at the table near the front of the synagogue, his head covered by his tallis. The tables were crowded. With very few exceptions, every adult inside that synagogue had experienced the tyranny of Stalin. People prayed loudly, fervently, swaying back and forth on the benches. There was a momentary pause when the service reached Borchu. Everyone stood, waiting. The narrow door in the corner to the right of the Ark opened slowly and the Rebbe stepped out. His head and face were covered by his tallis. The Rebbe stood near his chair and faced the Ark.

The old man who was leading the service chanted in a loud quavering voice, “Borchu es Adonoi hamevoroch.”

The congregation responded almost in a shout, “Boruch Adonoi hamevoroch leolom voed.”

The old man repeated, “Boruch Adonoi hamevoroch leolom voed.”

The Rebbe turned and sat down in his chair. His movements were very slow. The tallis completely covered his head and face. The congregants took their seats. The service continued. A tremulous crescendo of sound began to fill the synagogue. Men swayed fervently back and forth. Arms gesticulated toward the ceiling and walls. I prayed loudly, swaying, caught up in the intensity of feeling that had taken possession of the service.

The Rebbe sat in his chair, praying. He sat very still, robed in his tallis. He held a prayer book in both hands. He held the prayer book rigidly and turned the pages with slow and deliberate movements of his right hand. He sat like that, very still, praying. His quiet presence began to move out toward the congregants and dominate the large synagogue. Slowly the outward intensity of the service began to diminish. The wild
swaying ceased. The loud cries and gesticulations disappeared. A hushed thick tangible concentration of controlled fervor rose from the congregation. I was no longer swaying; I was concentrating on the words of the prayers. The words moved and danced in front of me. I felt the words inside me. “From Egypt you redeemed us, O Lord our God,” I prayed, “and from the house of slavery you ransomed us.” The words were alive. I felt them alive and moving inside me.

The Rebbe left after the Musaf Kedushoh. A few minutes later, the service ended. I came outside and saw Yudel Krinsky.

“A good Shabbos to you, Asher Lev,” he said. He still wore the kaskett. “I have not seen you all week.”

“I’ll come to see you Monday,” I said.

He seemed sad. “The dead do not return to life because a tyrant dies. The Ribbono Shel Olom was late. Stalin should have died thirty years ago.” He walked slowly away.

We sat at the Shabbos meal a long time that day. My father sang the zemiros slowly, his eyes closed, his body swaying faintly. My mother and I sang with him. From time to time, he stopped and sat in silence, his hand over his mouth. I saw him give me an occasional glance. After the meal, he left the house and went to the synagogue.

I saw a picture in the
Times
the following day of Stalin lying in his coffin. Behind the coffin were mounds of flowers. I could not take my eyes off the picture. This was the man who had killed tens of millions of people. Now he lay in his mustache and uniform in front of a mountain of flowers, dead, as dead as the millions he had slain, as dead as Yudel Krinsky’s wife and children. I could not stop staring at the picture of Stalin dead in his coffin.

I went over to Yudel Krinsky’s store that Monday and helped him wait on some customers. We were alone for a few minutes between customers and he said to me, glancing around
quickly, “The others who follow him will be just like him. There are many Stalins in Russia.”

I helped him stack packages of paper. I was beginning to understand the differences between grades of paper. Often now I could tell the weight and quality of a piece of paper by holding it in my hands.

My mother said to me that night, “No, Asher. I don’t think there can be another Stalin now in Russia.”

“Reb Yudel Krinsky said there are many Stalins in Russia.”

“Yes, your Reb Yudel Krinsky is right, Asher. Russia is full of Stalins. But the time of Stalin in Russia is over for now.”

“Mama, does it make a difference for Jews that Stalin is dead?”

“Yes, Asher. I think it makes a difference.”

The following Shabbos afternoon, my father went to the synagogue to hear the Rebbe’s talk. My mother asked me to come into the living room. She wanted to talk to me, she said. We sat on the sofa. I looked out the window at the winter trees.

“Asher, do you know where Vienna is?” my mother said softly. “We may move to Vienna.”

I stared at her and could not respond.

“Your father asked me to tell you. There’s certain work he has to do now, and he can only do it if we live in Vienna.”

“What work?” I heard myself ask.

She was silent a moment. Then she said, “It has to do with the Jews in Russia.”

“Papa has been doing that here for years.”

“This is different work, Asher.”

“I don’t want to go to Vienna, Mama.”

“The Rebbe has told your father that he may ask us to go.”

“Why now? Why all of a sudden now?”

“Because Stalin is dead, Asher. Things can be done now that no one could have done before.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“We’ll go if your father is asked to go.”

“No,” I said.

“Asher, please.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Asher,” my mother said softly. She leaned forward. “Asher.” I felt her hands brush across my face in a caress. “My Asher, my baby, I don’t know what else to tell you. We’ll go if the Rebbe tells us to go. We must help your father. If the Rebbe tells us to go, we’ll go.”

Later, I lay on my bed in my room and covered my eyes with my hands. I felt tired. I thought of Yudel Krinsky. I saw his bulging eyes glancing nervously around. Stalin should have died thirty years ago, Yudel Krinsky had said. Yes, I thought. Yes, yes, thirty years ago. Not now. Not last week. Thirty years ago or ten years from now. But not last week. I hated him for dying last week.

My father returned home very late that night. The next morning, he flew to Chicago.

    I was ill that week. I lay in bed with a sore throat and a fever. By Wednesday, the sore throat was gone but the fever remained. Our doctor came on Thursday, called it a low-grade infection, and left a prescription.

All through that week, my mother went to school. My father returned from Chicago on Monday and spent the remaining days of the week in his office. Each night, they came into my room together. I saw them standing together by my bed, looking down at me. I saw them as through a fog, distorted, my father tall and strong, his features framed by his red hair and long red beard, all of him rigid and shimmering; my mother short and wraithlike, a being of smoky clouds shaped by changing winds. My uncle Yitzchok came into the room one day. He
leaned over the bed and gave me a broad smile. I could see his round face and the streaks of gray hair in his beard. He smelled strongly of cigars. “Listen to me,” I heard him say. “Listen to your Uncle Yitzchok. Get well and I’ll buy your drawings. You hear me, Asher? I’ll buy your drawings.” I turned my head away. Yudel Krinsky came to see me. His eyes looked around nervously. He scratched his beaked nose and said in his hoarse voice, “The son of Reb Aryeh Lev must get out of bed. Asher and Yudel have to talk some more. And there is paper to stack. Yes, this is cold-pressed paper and this is hot-pressed paper. This is twenty-pound paper and this is forty-pound paper. This is paper for charcoal and this is paper for watercolor. On this canvas board you can use oil color, and on this heavy paper you can use pastels. How do I know these things? I learned. If you want to survive in this world, you have to learn to learn quickly. Vienna? I was only a few hours once in Vienna. Before the war, it was known as a city of cafés and waltzes. It is a city that hates Jews.”

I lay in bed with my eyes closed and did not want to leave my room. I thought at one time during that week that a violent snowstorm raged outside; but I was not sure and I did not care. I did not want to leave my room. I did not want to leave my street. I knew the boys in my class and the men in my synagogue; I knew the women on the benches and the owners of the shops. I knew the trees and the buildings and the cracks in the sidewalk: I knew the lampposts and the fireplugs and the shrubs on the lawns. And I was frightened of traveling. I hated taking the subway. I hated taking the bus. I was terrified of taking an airplane, terrified. Vienna. The name conjured up distorted horrors: dark foreign streets, evil shadows, incomprehensible words, menacing laughter at my sidecurls and skullcap. I would not go to Vienna. But what would I say to the Rebbe? I did not know. Maybe the Rebbe would change his mind. Ribbono Shel Olom, help the Rebbe to change his mind. Please, Ribbono Shel Olom. Please.

By Shabbos morning, the fever was gone. But my mother would not permit me to go to the synagogue. I moved slowly about the house in my pajamas and robe, feeling very tired.

Sometime during the afternoon, I asked my mother, “Did Uncle Yitzchok and Reb Yudel Krinsky visit me when I was sick?”

She gave me a tired worried look. “No.”

“I must have dreamed it,” I said.

That Monday evening, my father came home and told us we would be moving to Vienna next October, immediately after the holidays.

    I told Yudel Krinsky the next day, “My papa said we’re moving to Vienna after Simchas Torah.”

“Ah,” he said in his hoarse voice. “That is why you asked about Vienna.”

“Do you know about Vienna?”

“Vienna is the center of Europe. Many people and many things move from Western Europe to Eastern Europe through Vienna. And many people and many things move from Eastern Europe to Western Europe through Vienna.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Asher, I was one who came from Eastern Europe to Western Europe through Vienna.”

I stared at him.

“They told me it was once a city of happy waltzes. I did not see its happiness. I saw that it hates Jews.” He glanced around briefly. “Where are Jews not hated? But somehow one feels Vienna should be different. It is not different. Hand me the box of oil colors, Asher. Thank you. It is not different. This is soft charcoal, Asher. It is good to use on this paper. In Russia, I made hatpins. You see what a man can learn in order to survive? The only charcoal I saw in Russia was in the Jewish
houses that were burned by Petlyura and his madmen. Ah, how we felt when we heard Petlyura had been shot in Paris. But you do not know about Petlyura.”