My Name Is Asher Lev (4 page)

Toward the end of the meal, I said abruptly, “I made a drawing today, Mama.” My thin voice sounded loud in the smoky silence of the kitchen.

My father had been sitting tiredly over his food. Now he looked at me, startled.

“Yes?” my mother said in a dead voice. “Yes? Was it a pretty drawing?”

“It was a drawing of my papa on the telephone.”

“On the telephone,” my mother echoed. She looked dully at my father.

“Asher,” my father said quietly.

“It was a good drawing, Mama.”

“Was it a pretty drawing, Asher?”

“No, Mama. But it was a good drawing.”

Her eyes narrowed. They seemed tiny slits in the blue-gray darkness of her sockets.

“I don’t want to make pretty drawings, Mama.”

She lit another cigarette. Her hands trembled faintly. An odor rose from her, fetid, cloying. I put down my fork and stopped eating. My father took a deep breath. Mrs. Rackover stood very still near the sink.

“Yes?” my mother said. Her voice was sharp. “I want the pennies now, Yaakov.”

“Rivkeh,” my father said. “Please.”

“You should make the world pretty, Asher,” my mother whispered, leaning toward me. I could smell her breath.

“I don’t like the world, Mama. It’s not pretty. I won’t draw it pretty.”

I felt my father’s fingers on my arm. He was hurting me.

“Yes?” my mother said. “Yes?” She stubbed out the cigarette she had just lit and began to light another. Her hands trembled visibly. “No, no, Asher. No, no. You must not dislike God’s world. Even if it is unfinished.”

“I hate the world,” I said.

“Stop it,” my father said.

“You must not hate, you must not hate,” my mother whispered. “You must try to finish.”

“Mama, when will you get well?”

“Asher!” someone said.

“Mama, I want you to get well.”

“Asher!”

To this day, I have no idea what happened then. There was a sensation of something tearing wide apart inside me and a steep quivering climb out of myself. I felt myself suddenly another person. I heard that other person screaming, shrieking, beating his fists against the top of the table. “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” that other person kept screaming. I remember nothing after that. Sometime later, I woke in my room. My father stood over my bed, looking exhausted.

“Mama,” I said.

“Your mama is asleep.”

“Mama, please.”

“Go back to sleep, Asher. It’s the middle of the night.”

I was in pajamas. The night light was on near my desk. The slit of window not covered by the shade was black.

“No one likes my drawings,” I said through the fog of half sleep. “My drawings don’t help.”

My father said nothing.

“I don’t like to feel this way, Papa.”

Gently, my father put his hand on my cheek.

“It’s not a pretty world, Papa.”

“I’ve noticed,” my father said softly.

    My father’s brother came over to our apartment some time before Passover. He was about five years older than my father, short, somewhat portly, with a round dark-bearded face, watery brown eyes, and full moist lips that collected spittle at the corners when he spoke. He operated a successful jewelry and watch-repair store on Kingston Avenue, a few blocks from where we lived. He had two sons and two daughters and lived in a two-story brownstone on President Street.

We sat in the living room. The window was partly open. The Venetian blind swayed faintly in the breeze that blew into the room.

My father’s brother wanted us to join his family in his home for the Passover sedorim. My father thanked him but would not accept.

“Why?”

“Rivkeh cannot leave the apartment. We’ll have the sedorim here.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

My uncle squinted his watery eyes. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t want to mix into your affairs, but I’m your brother, and if a brother can’t mix, who can? Have you talked to the Rebbe?”

“No.”

“You should talk to the Rebbe.”

My father looked at his hands and said nothing.

“Don’t look away from me like that. Listen to me. I know how you feel about such things. But when our father had trouble he went to the Rebbe’s father. I remember. You were only a baby. But I remember.”

“It’s not yet time to go to the Rebbe.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“The doctor doesn’t say anything any more.”

“Then it’s time. Believe me, it’s time. What are you waiting for? People go to the Rebbe because they have a cold.”

“I’m not such people.”

“Listen to me. You should talk to the Rebbe.”

“The Rebbe has a thousand problems.”

“Then one more can’t hurt. Listen to an older brother. Talk to the Rebbe.”

At that point, my father asked me to leave. I went to my room, sat at my desk, and drew pictures of my uncle. I made him very round and dark-bearded, and I gave him a kind smile and warm eyes. He always wore dark-blue suits, but I made his suit light blue because he did not feel dark blue to me.

I was working on the third picture of my uncle when he and my father came into my room. They stood behind me. My uncle peered over my shoulder at the drawings.

“This is a six-year-old boy?” he said softly.

My father said nothing.

“A little Chagall,” my uncle said.

I felt more than saw my father make a motion with his hands and head.

“I fix watches and sell jewelry,” my uncle said. “But I have eyes.”

“Who is Chagall?” I asked.

“A great artist,” my uncle said.

“Is he the greatest artist in the world?”

“He is the greatest Jewish artist in the world.”

“Who is the greatest artist?”

My uncle thought a moment. “Picasso,” he said.

“Picasso,” I said, tasting the name. “Picasso. Is Picasso American?”

“Picasso is Spanish. But he lives in France.”

“What does Picasso look like?” I asked.

My uncle pursed his lips and squinted his eyes. “He is short and bald and has dark burning eyes.”

“How do you know about such things?” my father asked.

“I read. A watchmaker does not necessarily have to be an ignoramus.”

“It’s late,” my father said to me. “Get into your pajamas, Asher. I’ll come back to put you to sleep.”

“A regular Chagall,” my uncle said.

I turned in my chair and looked up at him. “No,” I said. “My name is Asher Lev.”

The two of them stared at me for a moment. My father’s mouth dropped open a little. My uncle laughed softly.

“This is six years old?” he said. “Good night, Asher.” Then
he said, “I want to buy one of these drawings. Will you sell it to me for this?”

He took a coin from his pocket and showed it to me. He picked up one of the drawings and put the coin in its place. “Now I own an early Lev,” he said, with a smile.

I did not understand what he was saying. I looked at my father. His face was dark.

“Good night, Asher,” my uncle said.

They went out of the room.

The coin gleamed in the light of the lamp on my desk. I could not understand what had happened. I found myself suddenly missing the drawing and afraid to touch the coin. I wanted the drawing back.

My father came into the room. He held the drawing in his hand. Without a word, he put it on the desk and took the coin. He was angry.

“Your Uncle Yitzchok has a strange sense of humor,” he said, and went from my room.

I looked at the drawing. I felt happy to have it back. But I felt unhappy my uncle had not kept it. It was a strange feeling. I could not understand it.

My father returned to the room. “I asked you to get into pajamas,” he said.

I began to undress. He sat on my bed, watching me. He did not offer to help.

“Is my papa angry?” I asked when I came back from the bathroom.

“Your papa’s tired,” he said. Then he said, “Asher, would you like to go to Uncle Yitzchok for the sedorim?”

“Will you and Mama be with me?”

“Your mama can’t leave the house.”

“I want to be with you and Mama.”

He sighed softly and was silent a moment. Then he shook
his head. “Master of the Universe,” he said in Yiddish. “What are You doing?”

    The weather turned warm. Green buds appeared on the trees. The sun shone into the living room through the huge window. The rug and white walls and furniture shimmered with light. The light seemed to have a life of its own. On Shabbos and Sunday afternoons, when my father did not go to his office, I stayed in the living room and watched the sunlight. I watched the colors change. I watched new shapes come alive and die in the slow movement of color and light. Sometimes my eyes would hurt after a day of watching.

My mother began to sit in the living room in the sunlight. She sat on the sofa near the window, her eyes closed, sunlight bathing her face. She rarely moved once she sat down on the sofa. Her skin was sallow, translucent. She seemed drained of substance, dry skin and brittle bones surrounding empty space.

One Sunday afternoon, I brought my pencil and pad into the living room and drew my mother sitting on the sofa. I drew the sagging curve of her shoulders and back, the concave depression of her chest, the bony stalks of her arms crossed on her lap, the tilt of her head resting against a shoulder with the sun full on her eyes. She did not appear to be bothered by the sun. It was as if there were nothing behind her eyes for the sun to bother.

I was having trouble with her face. The cheek on the left side of her face dropped sharply into a concave plane from the high ridge of bone. I could not do the shading with the pencil. There were gradations of darkness in the shade which the pencil could not capture. I tried it once and it did not work. I used the eraser. Then I tried it again and used the eraser again, and now the drawing was smudged; some of the line had been
weakened. I put it away and on a new piece of paper once again drew the outer contour of my mother’s body and the inner contour of her arms. I left the face blank for a while, then filled in the eyes and nose and mouth. I did not want to use the pencil again. The drawing felt incomplete. It bothered me to have it incomplete. I closed my eyes and looked at the drawing inside myself, went over its contours inside myself, and it was incomplete. I opened my eyes. Along the periphery of my vision, I saw the ashtray on the table next to the sofa. It was filled with my mother’s smoked-out cigarettes. I looked at the crushed dark ends of the cigarettes. Quietly I went to the ashtray and brought it to my chair. I put it on the floor. Then, holding the pad with the drawing on my lap, I carefully brushed the burnt end of a cigarette onto my mother’s face. The ash left an ugly smudge. I rubbed the smudge with my pinkie. It spread smoothly, leaving a gray film. I used the ash from another cigarette. The gray film deepened. I worked a long time. I used cigarette ash on the part of her shoulder not in sunlight and on the folds of her housecoat. The contours of her body began to come alive. I was working on the shadows in the sockets of her eyes when I realized that my father was in the room watching me.

I had no idea how long he had been standing in the doorway. But from the way he was leaning against the wall near the doorway I thought he had been there a long time. He was not looking at me but at the drawing. He could see the drawing clearly from where he stood. There was fascination and perplexity on his face. He seemed awed and angry and confused and dejected, all at the same time.

I thought he would be angry at me for drawing my mother while she rested. Instead he simply turned and went quietly from the room. I heard him walk up the hallway and go into his bedroom.

I put the ashtray back on the table near the sofa, collected my pad and pencil, and went to my room.

That night, as my father helped me out of my clothes, he said quietly, “I wish you wouldn’t spend all your time playing with pencils and crayons, Asher.”

“It isn’t playing, Papa. It’s drawing.”

“I wish you wouldn’t spend all your time drawing,” my father said.

“Is my papa angry with me for drawing my mama this afternoon?”

“No,” he said wearily. “No.”

“I was careful not to wake my mama.”

“I saw.”

“Mama didn’t wake up.”

“Who showed you to use cigarettes that way?”

“I thought of it by myself. Once I used sand in a drawing and I thought of it by myself, too. It was when I went rowing with Mama.”

My father was silent a long moment. He seemed very tired.

“Did I give you your vitamins today, Asher?”

“Yes, Papa.”

He turned off the light. “Let me hear your Krias Shema.”

I recited the Krias Shema. He kissed me and started slowly from the room.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Asher.”

“I’m sorry for drawing Mama and making you angry at me.”

He started to say something, then stopped.

“I wanted to draw the light and the dark,” I said.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Go to sleep, Asher.”

He went from the room.

I’ll have to draw it again, I thought. Maybe there is something else besides cigarettes I can use. It’s too hard to work with cigarettes. And they smell. There must be something else. I fell asleep. I dreamed of my father’s great-great-grandfather.

He was dozing in the sunlight in the living room and I was drawing him, when he woke. He went into a rage. He stormed about the room. He was huge. He towered over me. His dark beard cast huge swaying shadows across the rug. “Wasting time, wasting time,” he thundered. “Playing, drawing, wasting time.” I woke in terror, my heart beating loudly. I lay in bed and could not sleep. I went to the bathroom and urinated. On the way to my room, I saw a dim light in the living room. I looked in. My father stood near the window, swaying back and forth. I went silently back to my bed. I would find something other than cigarettes. I would put all the world into light and shade, bring life to all the wide and tired world. It did not seem an impossible thing to do.

    The stores that were run by observant Jews were all closed on Shabbos and open on Sunday. I went with my father early one Sunday morning to the grocery store. It was a cool sunny spring morning. There was little traffic on the parkway. Sunday morning was the only time the parkway rested.