My Name Is Asher Lev (11 page)

“I don’t want to go to Vienna.”

He looked at me sadly. “I understand,” he said.

I said to my mother that evening, “I don’t want to go to Vienna.”

“I know,” my mother said softly.

I said to my father that night, “Why did the Rebbe choose you to go to Vienna?”

“The Rebbe chose me to be head of a new office that is being organized. We are going to teach Ladover Hasidus all over Europe. We are going to open Ladover yeshivos in Paris, Geneva, London, Zurich, Bucharest, Rome, in Sweden and Norway, wherever the Ribbono Shel Olom will give us the strength to go.”

“But why do we have to go to Vienna?”

“Because this work can’t be done from Brooklyn, Asher.”

“But why Vienna, Papa?”

“Because it’s the center of Europe. From Vienna, I’ll be able to travel all through Europe.”

I stared at my father. “You’re going to travel in Europe?”

“Of course, Asher.”

“I don’t want to go to Vienna, Papa.”

“Asher.”

“I don’t want to leave here. I like it here.”

“Yes,” my father said quietly. “I’ve noticed you like it here. But we’ll go anyway, Asher. And you’ll learn to like it there.”

    I saw my Uncle Yitzchok outside our synagogue after services the next Shabbos, and I said to him, “My papa is taking us to Vienna after Simchas Torah.”

He smiled down at me and his watery brown eyes crinkled.
“I know, I know. What an honor. You should be proud of your papa.”

“Uncle Yitzchok, I don’t want to go.”

“Of course you don’t want to go. What little boy wants to leave his neighborhood and his school and his friends and go off to a strange land? But it’s for Torah, Asher.” His round face beamed at me. “Your papa will be spreading Hasidus. That is what our papa, olov hasholom, did when he traveled for the Rebbe’s father. You will get used to Vienna, Asher. I hear it’s a nice city. Don’t look so unhappy. Listen to your uncle. You should be proud of your father.”

I turned away from him.

“Asher,” he said.

I turned back.

“I see you all the time in Yudel Krinsky’s store. Why don’t you come in and say hello sometimes?”

I was quiet.

“Come in and say hello to your uncle sometimes,” he said. “Yes, Asher?”

I nodded.

“Asher, not to speak of it on Shabbos, but have you drawn anything lately?”

I shrugged a shoulder.

“Come in and say hello sometimes.” He took a step away from me, then looked back. “The Rebbe must think your father is a very great man to have given him such a responsibility.” He said it quietly, with a distant look in his eyes. “My little brother is now a great man.” He walked slowly off into the crowd in front of the synagogue.

I said to my father during our Shabbos meal that afternoon, “Where will I go to school in Vienna?”

He had just finished singing one of the zemiros. He was holding his head in his hands.

“There is a small yeshiva in Vienna,” he said.

“Is it a Ladover yeshiva?”

“No. In a year or two, we’ll begin to build a Ladover yeshiva. You will be one of its first students.”

“What language do they talk in Vienna?”

“In the yeshiva they talk Yiddish.”

“But what language do the people talk?”

“German. And some French.”

“I don’t know German and French, Papa.”

“You’ll learn. Now let’s sing zemiros.”

“I don’t want to learn German and French, Papa.”

He began to sing softly, his head in his hands. My mother looked down at the top of the table.

“I’m frightened,” I said to my father. “I don’t want to go away.”

“Sha,” my father said, interrupting his song. “Everything will be all right, Asher.”

I sat there in rigid silence, listening to him sing.

“Will we have to fly to Vienna?” I asked my mother later that day.

“I don’t know, Asher.”

“I’m frightened of flying, Mama.”

She said nothing.

“There won’t be anyone for me to talk to in Vienna.”

“You’ll find someone to talk to.”

“Papa said he was going to Vienna to teach Hasidus.”

“Yes.”

“You said Papa was going to Vienna to help Jews in Russia.”

“Yes.”

“Which is Papa going to do?”

“Both,” my mother said.

“Mama, I don’t want to go. I’m afraid to fly. I can’t talk German.”

“Asher, there are more important reasons for us not to go than whether or not you like to fly or can speak German.”

“What reasons, Mama?”

“Reasons,” she said. “But it makes no difference, Asher. We’ll go anyway.”

    He came to me that night out of the woods, my mythic ancestor, huge, mountainous, dressed in his dark caftan and fur-trimmed cap, pounding his way through the trees on his Russian master’s estate, the earth shaking, the mountains quivering, thunder in his voice. I could not hear what he said. I woke in dread and lay very still, listening to the darkness. I needed to go to the bathroom but I was afraid to leave the bed. I moved down beneath the blanket and slept and then, as if my moment awake had been an intermission between acts of an authored play, saw him again plowing toward me through giant cedars. I woke and went to the bathroom. I stood in the bathroom, shivering. I did not want to go back to my bed. I stood listening to the night, then went through the hallway to the living room. It was dark and hushed and I could hear the sounds of night traffic through the window. I opened the slats of the Venetian blind and peered between them at the street below. It was a clear night. I could not see the moon, but a clear cold blue-white light lay like a ghostly sheen over the parkway and cast the shadows of buildings and trees across the sidewalks. I saw a man walking beneath the trees. He was a man of medium height with a dark beard, a dark coat, and an ordinary dark hat. I saw him walking in the shadows of the trees. Then I did not see him. Then I saw him again, walking slowly beneath the trees. Then he was gone again and I did not know if I was seeing him or not, if I had been asleep before and was awake now, or if I had been awake before and was dreaming now.
Then I saw him again, walking slowly, alone; then he entered a shadow and was gone. I do not remember going back to bed. I only remember waking in the morning and staring up at the white ceiling of my room and feeling light and disembodied, as if I were floating on the shadows cast by dark trees beneath a moon.

“Asher,” my father said to me at breakfast. “Drink your orange juice.”

I was barely listening.

“Asher.”

“I dreamed of the Rebbe last night.”

I saw them glance at each other.

“I think I dreamed of the Rebbe. I dreamed—I think—He was very loud and there were woods.”

“Asher,” my mother said. I felt her fingers on my arm. My father put down the orange juice and looked at me.

“It’s not a pretty world, Mama.”

I saw her lips tremble. Her fingers tightened momentarily on my hand.

“Will you walk with me to school, Mama?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I don’t want to walk by myself under the trees.”

“I’ll walk with you, Asher.”

    The mashpia came into the classroom and spoke to us in a soft voice. I made a point with my dark pencil in the center of a clean page in my Hebrew notebook. About three inches to the right of that point, I made another point. I connected the two points with a single straight line. The mashpia spoke softly. I made straight lines and curved lines. The pencil moved as part of my hand across the page of the Hebrew notebook. The mashpia waved his hands gently. I made circles and short choppy
lines. The mashpia rose and went slowly from the room. The teacher sat down behind the desk. I put down the pencil and closed the notebook. I opened the notebook and looked at the page. I closed the notebook very quickly. I watched my fingers trembling on top of the notebook. I put my hands under my thighs. I could feel them trembling. A while later, I opened the notebook and looked again at the page. I had drawn a picture of Stalin dead in his coffin.

    I drew him dead in his coffin surrounded by flowers. I drew his closed heavy-lidded eyes, his thick straight hair, his walrus mustache. I drew it all from memory into that Hebrew notebook and later that day I drew him again from memory into my English notebook. In the days that followed, I drew him over and over and over again. I drew him empty and hollow; I drew him swollen and bloated. I distorted his face and twisted his eyes. Over and over and over again, I drew him disfigured, ghoulish, a horror of a face in front of that mountain of flowers.

My father went into my room one night that week and found my desk strewn with drawings. There were drawings on the dresser and on the floor. I saw him peering at the drawings on the desk when I came in from the bathroom.

“What is all this?” he asked.

“Drawings.”

“Don’t be disrespectful to me, Asher. I see they’re drawings. You can’t study Chumash, but this you have time for.”

“Aryeh,” my mother called softly. She was standing in the doorway.

“I’m talking to our son, who is an artist again.”

“Aryeh,” my mother said again.

The two of them went from the room. I sat at my desk in my pajamas. I used one of the charcoal sticks I had bought from Yudel Krinsky earlier that day. Drawing on a sheet of heavy
paper in one continuous line, I did the contour of Stalin’s face, then his eyes and nose and mustache. Slowly, I shaded the area around his eyes and along the side of his head. I had never used charcoal before. I watched the dead face take on depth. I darkened the area directly beneath the cheekbones and in the ears. I ignored the thick straight hair and the mustache, except for a few quick lines. Now he was a man on the paper, with volume and depth, and he was dead. Then I erased the closed heavy-lidded eyes and redrew them open and staring, eyes wide and dead-staring out onto the world.

I moved back my chair and saw my mother standing behind me. She was looking at the charcoal drawing of Stalin.

“It’s a good drawing, Asher,” she said softly.

“It isn’t pretty.”

“No,” she said.

I got into bed.

“Your father is worried about your studies, Asher.”

I did not say anything.

“Asher, you can’t ignore your studies.”

“I study, Mama.”

“Yes. We see how you study.”

“Can I draw you one day, Mama? Yudel Krinsky said he would let me draw him.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Tomorrow, Mama?”

“No, not tomorrow.”

“This week?”

“Not this week. I have tests this week.”

“Next week, then.”

“All right, Asher. Next week. But not Monday. Monday we are going downtown to be photographed for passports and to fill out papers.”

“What are passports?”

She told me.

“I’m not going,” I said.

“You’ll need to be photographed, Asher.”

“I’m not going to Vienna, Mama.”

“Asher, please don’t be a child.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no. I’m not going to Vienna. I’ll stay with Uncle Yitzchok.”

“Asher.”

“Good night, Mama,” I said.

“Don’t you want me to hear your Krias Shema?”

“I’ll say it to myself,” I said.

    I asked Yudel Krinsky the next day, “Do you know what a passport is?”

He was posing for me between customers. He kept his head straight but I saw his eyes move in my direction. “Yes,” he said. “I know what a passport is.”

“My mama and papa want me to get a passport.”

“Without a passport, you will not be able to go to Vienna.”

“I am not going to Vienna.”

“Asher, your father will be doing important things in Vienna.”

I did not answer. I was working on his wide sad bulging eyes.

“The Torah says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’” Yudel Krinsky said.

“I know. I can read the Torah.”

“Asher.” He was hurt.

I held up the drawing. He shook his head in amazement. “Such a gift,” he murmured. “Your Uncle Yitzchok told me once about this, but I listened the way one always listens to a bragging uncle. But this is a gift, Asher.”

“How do I keep the charcoal from rubbing off?”

“Ah,” he said. “You use this.” He went to a shelf near the display case of drawing material and came back with a spray can. “You can spray it on so. Stand away from the drawing so the spray does not get into your eyes.” He pushed the top button and moved the can quickly back and forth across the drawing. The spray was pungent. “Do not breathe it, Asher. Move away.” He released the button and looked down at the drawing. He looked at it a long time. “It is a good drawing,” he said softly. “The son of Reb Aryeh Lev has a great gift.”

“Keep it,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Please keep it,” I said.

He blinked. “I thank you.” He looked down again at the drawing.

Later, I went into my Uncle Yitzchok’s jewelry and watch-repair store. It was brightly lighted with ceiling fluorescents. The showcases glistened and gleamed. It was a large store and I did not like to go into it because its brightness was cold, like sunlight on distant ice.

My uncle was behind the center showcase. He wore a dark suit and was smoking a cigar. There were two customers in the store being waited on by a young man behind the left row of showcases. To the right of the door was a watchmaker’s workbench. A small man with a gray beard sat at the workbench, peering at a watch through an eyepiece. My uncle, the young man, and the watchmaker all wore small dark skullcaps.

“My nephew, the artist,” Uncle Yitzchok said, his moist lips smiling around his cigar. “You want to sell me a picture?”

“Can I stay with you when Mama and Papa go to Vienna?”

He stopped smiling and took the cigar out of his mouth. His round fleshy face looked startled. “What are you talking about, Asher?”

“I don’t want to go to Vienna.”

“I know you don’t want to go to Vienna. The whole world knows you don’t want to go to Vienna.”

“I won’t go. Can I stay with you?”

He peered at me in disbelief. He seemed to want to say something but did not know what words to use.

“I told my mama you would let me stay with you.”

“You told—” His voice became husky; he cleared his throat noisily. The customers glanced over at him. “Let me think about it,” he said. “A thing like this you can’t decide on one foot. I’ll need to think about it, Asher.”

“Uncle Yitzchok, I’ll have no place to stay if I can’t stay with you. I don’t want to go to Boston and stay with Aunt Leah. I want to stay here where I know people.”

“Let me think about it, Asher.”

I came out of the store into the March night. As I went past the large glittering window of the store, I looked inside and saw my uncle hurriedly dialing the telephone on the counter.

“Asher, why did you talk to your Uncle Yitzchok about living with him?” my father asked me that night.

“I’ll need a place to stay, Papa.”

“Asher, will you stop this foolishness?”

“It isn’t foolishness.”

“Stop it,” my father said.

“It isn’t foolishness, Papa.”

“Ribbono Shel Olom,” my father said. “What are You doing?”

“It’s time for you to go to bed, Asher,” my mother said softly. “Shall I come with you?”

“Yes, Mama.”

She sat looking at the drawings on the desk as I prepared for bed.

“Did you buy the charcoal from Reb Yudel Krinsky?” she asked.

“Yes.”

When I lay in the bed, she came over and said to me, “Asher, you’re hurting your father.”

I did not say anything.

“You shouldn’t hurt your father this way.”

“I don’t care.”

“Asher, please, you must not talk like that.”

“I don’t want to lose it again,” I said.

“What?” She stared at me.

“I don’t want to lose it again, Mama. I don’t care about anyone.”

She was silent for a long time. Then she went from the room without saying good night.

    That Monday, I would not go with my parents to the passport office. They decided to go another time. It was early, my mother said. There was plenty of time for passports. It was better for me not to miss a day of school, she said.

I went to school. The next day, my father flew to Washington.

On Wednesday night, my mother sat near the window of the living room and I sat a few feet from her on an easy chair, drawing her face with pastels.

“I should be studying for a history test,” my mother said.

“Please don’t move your head, Mama.”

“How do you feel when you draw, Asher? Is it a good feeling?”

I was quiet.

“I’ve often wondered. It must be a good feeling.”

I drew her eyes, the clear brown eyes, and her small lips and straight nose and the delicately boned curves of her cheeks. She seemed small and delicate to me, a fledgling one holds in a hand. Her skin was fair and smooth and smelled of warm
perfume and night flowers. I shaded her face delicately with warm earth browns and put only the vaguest of cold viridian on her white neck.

I thought I heard her say, “Why do you draw, Asher?”

I did not reply.

“What does it mean to you, my Asher?” I thought I heard her say. “Because it may hurt us.”

Gently, I rubbed an earth red into the shadow beneath the delicate curve of her jaw.

“Asher,” I thought I heard her say. “Asher.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. What did you ask?”

“It wasn’t important,” she said after a moment.

I held up the drawing.

She looked at it for a very long time. Then she said, “What are we going to do, Asher?”

I was quiet.

“Ribbono Shel Olom, what are we going to do?”

“I have to put fixative on your picture, Mama.”

I could feel her staring at me as I went out of the room.

    My father returned from Washington late Thursday night and left for his office early Friday morning. I did not see him until that afternoon, when he came back from his office to prepare for Shabbos.

I was in my room when he came home. A few minutes later, I heard him in the kitchen talking to my mother. Then, suddenly, his voice was loud. He spoke in Yiddish. In recent weeks, he had begun speaking Yiddish as frequently as English. I could not make out what he said. I heard my mother say in English, “Aryeh, the boy.” Then their voices lowered. A moment later, I heard them go into their bedroom.

We sat at the Shabbos table that night and ate, and sang
zemiros. My father said very little. When he sang, he held his head in his hands and swayed slowly back and forth. My mother and I sang with him.

That was the night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose and the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little—I saw the stray gray strands in the tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color. I saw the Shabbos candles on the table glowing gold and red. I saw my mother small and warm and silken in a lovely Shabbos dress of pale blue and white. I saw my hands white and bony, my fingers long and thin, my face in the mirror above the buffet pale with black eyes and wild red hair. I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I closed my eyes. But I could still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake. I sat still in my chair and felt frightened.

I opened my eyes. My parents were looking at me.

“Are you all right, Asher?” my mother asked.

“Yes.”

“You look— Do you have a fever?” She put her hand on my head. I saw her fingers over the top of my eyes. “No,” she said, and withdrew her hand.

My father went on singing. I heard him as if from a distance but I could see him sharply, the tiny folds of skin in the outer corners of his eyes, the strong flare of his nostrils, the line of his
lips beneath the untrimmed beard. Then I saw him open his eyes. He may have felt my eyes on him. He opened his eyes and gazed directly into my eyes. His eyes, clear and dark, locked with mine, and for a long moment I felt his strength and sensed the pools from which it nourished—and I looked down at the table.

Then I heard him say quietly, “You made a beautiful drawing of your mother, Asher.” He spoke in Yiddish. “A beautiful drawing.” He closed his eyes and hummed a slow Ladover melody he had sung to me often years ago in the time before my mother had become ill. Then he opened his eyes again. “Asher, you have a gift. I do not know if it is a gift from the Ribbono Shel Olom or from the Other Side. If it is from the Other Side, then it is foolishness, dangerous foolishness, for it will take you away from Torah and from your people and lead you to think only of yourself. I want to tell you something. Listen to me, my Asher. About twenty-five years ago, all the yeshivos in Russia were closed by the Communists, and the students were scattered in different places in small groups. The only groups who continued to fight against this destruction of Torah by the enemies of Torah were the Ladover and Breslover Hasidim. The Rebbe’s father, may he rest in peace, fought to establish yeshivos, went to jail, and almost lost his life before he finally got out of Russia and came to America. Are you listening to me, Asher? During the ten years before the Second World War, Ladover Hasidim ran illegal yeshivos in Russia and helped keep Torah alive. They were small yeshivos, ten students here, twenty students there, forty students somewhere else. Torah remained alive. Your mother recently found an old copy of
Stern
in a library here in New York.
Stern
was a newspaper published in the Ukraine by Jewish Communists who hated the Master of the Universe and His Torah. These Jewish Communists wrote that they had completely destroyed Yiddishkeit
in Russia. The only ones standing in the way of their final goal were Ladover and Breslover Hasidim. The Communists themselves wrote this, Asher.”