My Name Is Asher Lev (12 page)

“It’s true,” my mother murmured. “It’s true.”

“Now listen to me, Asher. I know you are only a boy, but perhaps you will be able to understand anyway. Someone once asked how it is possible to establish a connection between man and the Master of the Universe. The answer was that man must take the first step. In order for there to be a connection between man and the Master of the Universe, there must first be an opening, a passageway, even a passageway as small as the eye of a needle. But man must make the opening by himself; man must take the beginning step. Then the Master of the Universe will move in, as it were, and widen the passageway. Asher, we have to make passageways to our people in Russia. We have a responsibility to them. We must make passageways for them to move into. They cannot make the opening on their side, so we must make it on our side. Do you understand me, Asher?”

I nodded slowly.

“Jews in Europe are starving for Torah. The Rebbe is sending me to Europe to build centers for Torah. Our people in Russia are starving for words from the outside. The Rebbe is sending me to Europe to make passageways for them. This is more important than anything else. These are Jewish lives, Asher. Nothing is more important in the eyes of the Master of the Universe than a Jewish life. Do you understand me?”

I was quiet. I saw his dark eyes and the strong dream that filled them, and I was quiet.

“Asher,” my father said.

“I think Asher understands,” my mother said quietly.

“Let Asher say if he understands.”

“Yes, Papa.”

He was silent a moment, nodding his head. Then he said, “Finish your tea, Asher, and we will sing more zemiros.”

I said to my mother later, as she sat on the edge of my bed, “I’m also a Jewish life, Mama. I’m also precious in the eyes of the Ribbono Shel Olom.”

Her thin hands fluttered over a button on the front of her dress. “Yes,” she said faintly.

“Does someone have a responsibility to me?”

She seemed not to know what to say.

“Mama?”

“Taking you to Vienna is not irresponsibility, Asher.”

“I don’t want to go. I’m afraid to go. Something inside me says I shouldn’t go.”

“Now you’re being a child.”

“It says I shouldn’t go, Mama.”

“Asher, please.”

“Can I stay with Aunt Leah in Boston? No, I can’t stay in Boston. I have to stay here. I have to stay here on my street, Mama. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”

She put her hand gently against my face. I saw the white skin and the bony ridges and the rise of the veins. Her fingers were cool. Her dress rustled softly as she moved.

“Everyone is listening,” she said. “There would be no problem if no one were listening to you, Asher.”

    My Uncle Yitzchok and his family joined us for the first Seder of the Passover festival. It was a long respectful Seder, with much singing and words of Torah and telling of stories about the Rebbe and his father. My father sat on large cushions on his chair. He wore a white cotton robe. With his strong body and long red beard and dark eyes, he dominated the room.

I do not remember how it happened, but sometime during the Seder meal my uncle and I were together in my room and he was looking at some of my drawings.

“Yes,” he said. “You can draw. Millions of people can draw.”

I looked away from him, my face hot.

“Your father doesn’t know what to do with you, Asher.”

“Can I stay with you? I can work for you in the store. Is there anything I can do in the store?”

“Asher, listen to me. I wish I could tell you this without hurting you. You’re behaving like a child. Everyone is saying that you’re behaving like a child.”

“I can do errands for you, Uncle Yitzchok. It won’t cost you much. I’ll just need some money for charcoal and paper and things.”

“Where do you get your money now, Asher?”

“I save up the candy money Mama gives me.”

“For God’s sake, Asher, grow up. You’re driving your father crazy.”

“Can’t I stay with you?”

“No, you can’t stay with me. Do you think my brother will let you stay with me while he and your mother go off to Europe? What’s the matter with you, Asher? You sound like you can’t use your head any more.”

I may have to stay with Aunt Leah, after all, I thought. But I can’t leave my street.

“Let’s go back to the Seder,” my Uncle Yitzchok said. As we started from the room, he said to me, “Listen, I won’t lie to you, Asher. It doesn’t change my mind, but I won’t lie to you. Millions of people can draw, but I don’t think too many of them draw like you.”

We had no school during the Passover festival. On the first of the intermediate days of the festival, I walked over to Yudel Krinsky’s store and found him behind the counter eating a hard-boiled egg and chewing a matzo. He greeted me soberly.

“Hello, Asher. Everyone is talking about you.”

“Were the Ladover and Breslover Hasidim the only groups
in Russia who fought for Torah against the Jewish Communists?”

He seemed startled. “Ah,” he said, chewing hard and swallowing. He was having trouble getting the matzo down. He coughed. His eyes watered. He took a deep breath and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his white smock. “At least say hello first, Asher. A man cannot eat hard-boiled eggs and matzos and answer serious questions all at the same time.” He chewed and swallowed again. “Now, Asher, what did you ask me?”

I asked it again.

“What is this all of a sudden? Who told you about Jewish Communists?”

“My father.”

“Ah,” he said. “I understand.” He put the remnants of the hard-boiled egg and matzo on the paper he had spread on top of the counter and wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He glanced around. It was early afternoon. We were alone. A bright April sun shone outside. “I do not know if they were the only ones,” he said. “But they fought, and not only against Jewish Communists, but against goyische Communists also. Sometimes the Jewish Communists were worse than the goyim. Ask your mother about the Jewish Communists, Asher. She is studying about Russia. Yes, we and the Breslover fought, and they hated us for it and still hate us, those of them Stalin left alive. The secret police would find out about Ladover or Breslover Jews, and they would come to arrest them on Friday night when they were sure the Jews would be home with their families. In Siberia, I met a Breslover Hasid who told me that twenty-nine Breslover Hasidim were arrested in the city of Uman in 1938. They were accused of attempting to organize an underground Trotsky organization with the checks they were receiving from friends in America. You are young, Asher. You cannot begin to understand the stupidity of such an accusation.
Breslover Hasidim organizing a Trotsky underground! They were beaten and tortured. One of them was beaten in front of the others in order to force the others to confess to the accusation. They also suffered from hunger, because they would not dirty themselves eating the food they were given. Three of them died in the prison in Uman. The rest were sent to Siberia. I discovered after the war that only three survived. The Breslover who told me this was taken from my camp a few weeks later and I never saw him again. I do not know if he is one of the three. Asher, they hated us and were afraid of us and arrested and killed us whenever they could.”

He glanced around quickly. He took a deep breath. He stared gloomily at the matzo on the counter. “I remember when I first met you I was in a grocery store with matzos over my head. In Russia, to obtain matzos we had to turn over the world. People went to prison because of matzos. Ah, it is a strange world, Asher. Sometimes I think the Master of the Universe has another world to take care of, and He neglects this world, God forbid. Would you like a piece of matzo, Asher?”

I did not want any matzo. I came out of the store onto the street. It was a warm day, one of the first warm days after the long winter.

I walked slowly along Brooklyn Parkway beneath the trees. Old women sat on the benches along the islands of the parkway, sunning themselves and gossiping. Soon Passover would be over; soon I would not have Yudel Krinsky to talk to; soon the street would be gone. There was a feeling of the summer coming, of decisions being made, of haste and departure, of light and shade, of brightness and darkness. I saw the sun glinting off the black metal of a fireplug. I saw a gaunt skeletal-faced old lady laughing happily on a bench. I saw a little boy in a skullcap and sidecurls walking along the parkway dragging his metal-braced right leg in a heavy flatfooted limp. I saw a little girl of about three walking with a boy of about seven.
They were talking and laughing and holding their hands together and swinging their arms. The boy wore a skullcap and sidecurls; ritual fringes protruded from beneath his shirt and flapped gaily in the air as he walked. They looked to be brother and sister. How many times had I seen a brother and sister walking like that along Brooklyn Parkway? How many times? Something was happening to my eyes and my head and I did not know how to think or feel about it.

Mrs. Rackover said to me when I came into the apartment, “Where were you? You are more than an hour late for lunch.”

“I was walking.”

“You were walking. You were driving me crazy. Go wash your hands and I will give you something to eat.”

“Where is my mother?”

“Your mother went to the library. Go wash your hands, Asher. I cannot spend half the day giving you lunch.”

“They were very beautiful,” I said. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

“What?” Mrs. Rackover said.

“I wonder if they have a mother and father,” I said.

“What is the matter with you, Asher? Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”

“No.”

“Go wash your hands. You are driving us all crazy with your pictures and your stubbornness. What kind of Jewish boy behaves this way to a mother and father? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Why didn’t I ever see it before? I asked myself. Something has happened to my eyes and my head. I looked at my eyes and head in the mirror over the bathroom sink. They looked the same as always, eyes dark and hair red and wild. But something had happened inside them. And I did not think I was frightened now.

I spent the afternoon drawing pictures of the brother and
sister I had seen walking together on Brooklyn Parkway. I remembered their thin faces and I drew them walking along the parkway. Then I drew them crossing a country road, walking beneath tall trees, chasing a butterfly. I drew them reading together and talking together. I drew them crossing a street together. I drew them laughing together. The desk and the dresser and the bed were strewn with drawings. Later in the afternoon, I went downstairs and walked along the parkway, but I could not find any girl and boy together who looked to be brother and sister.

I was in my room when my mother returned from the library, her arms laden with books. She put the books on the wall table in the hallway and removed her coat. I called her into my room.

“Look,” I said, and pointed to the drawings.

“Not now, Asher.”

“Mama, please.”

She seemed impatient and glanced quickly through a few of the drawings. Then she sat down on the bed and went through them all slowly. She looked a long time at the drawings of the brother and sister reading together and talking together. She put the drawings down. Her eyes were wide and moist. She went from my room without a word. I heard the door to her bedroom close softly. I waited awhile, then went out to the hallway and looked at the books she had left on the table. They were all on Russia. One of them was a grammar of the Russian language.

    My father said to me at the Shabbos table the next night, “You look so unhappy these days, Asher.”

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

“It bothers you that I am away so much?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“It bothered me, too, when my father, may he rest in peace, was away. But I do not know how else the work can be done. To touch a person’s heart, you must see a person’s face. One cannot reach a soul through a telephone.” He stroked his red beard slowly. Then he said in a soft singsong voice, “The early tzaddikim, the ones who were the first disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov, also used to travel. Some took it upon themselves to go into exile in order to atone for the sins of Israel and to hasten the redemption. Others wandered about looking for kidnapped Jewish children they could ransom. Others traveled to the ends of the earth looking for a teacher whose soul was like their soul and with whom they could study Torah. And others journeyed from place to place teaching the words of the Ba’al Shem Tov and changing people’s hearts and souls to Hasidus. My father, olov hasholom, after whom you are named, was a great scholar. That you know, Asher. An emissary from the Rebbe’s father stayed with my father for a while. They studied together. A year later, my father moved his family to Ladov and became an emissary of the Rebbe’s father. The night he was killed, they had been making plans together. My father was to travel to the Ukraine to start underground yeshivos. Their heads were full of plans for Torah. They forgot it was the night before Easter. The drunken peasant remembered.” He paused. His eyes glittered in the light of the Shabbos candles. Then he continued in that same singsong voice, “When the Rebbe’s father was able to come to America, he brought me and your Uncle Yitzchok and our mother, may she rest in peace, with him. I was fourteen then. I remember that journey.” He paused again and hummed a brief passage from one of the zemiros. “Yes,” he murmured. “The Rebbe’s father felt something had been left unfinished in the world. Plans had been made and had been left unfinished. A life had been lost because of those
plans and the plans had been left unfulfilled.” He hummed another verse from the zemiros. Then he stopped and closed his eyes. Then he said, his eyes still closed, “Sing zemiros with me, Asher. You, too, Rivkeh. Sing zemiros with me.”

Later that night, as I got into bed, my mother asked me, “Did you understand what your father said to you, Asher?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand what it means to leave a great work incomplete?”

“I think so, Mama.”

“It’s important that you understand that, Asher.”