My Name Is Asher Lev (8 page)

“Dear children. Today the enemies of the Jewish people have again shown us how much they hate us and our Torah. The Russian bear has cast six of our people into the pit. Our tears and our prayers go out to our brothers the children of Israel in this moment of darkness. For hundreds of years, Jews have suffered from the murderous hatred of the Russians, first under the czars and now under the Bolsheviks. The Russian government is different, but the Russian hatred of the Jew is the same. This morning, the Rebbe asked me to ask all our dear students to plead with the Master of the Universe to spare the lives of the Jewish doctors and return them safely to their families, and to pray for the redemption of all our oppressed people everywhere.”

We all stood as the mashpia chanted a Hebrew prayer. Then we answered amen, and filed silently back to our classrooms.

I came out of the school building in the early darkness of the winter day, and instead of turning toward home I went in the opposite direction to Kingston Avenue. I walked quickly
along Kingston Avenue, went past my Uncle Yitzchok’s jewelry and watch-repair store, and came into the stationery store where Yudel Krinsky worked. I saw him standing on a ladder behind the counter, reaching for pads of paper. There were two women ahead of me. I waited. Looking around, I noticed that a new glass display case had been placed to the right of the door. The case was small and had three shelves filled with art supplies—pencils, crayons, watercolors, brushes. There were boxes with names I did not understand, like Conté Crayons, Rembrandt Pastels, Grumbacher Zinc White. Next to this display case was a tall metal cabinet with an open slanting top divided into sections by metal strips. The sections were stocked with tubes of oil colors.

“The son of Reb Aryeh Lev,” I heard Yudel Krinsky say in Yiddish in his hoarse voice. “How can I help you?”

He wore a white frock over his shirt and trousers. He had on his kaskett. He looked relaxed and cheerful.

“I need a notebook,” I said in Yiddish.

“A Hebrew notebook or a goyische notebook?”

“A Hebrew notebook.”

“Here is a Hebrew notebook for the son of Reb Aryeh Lev.”

“I need also a pencil.”

“A dark pencil or a light pencil?”

“A dark pencil.”

“Here is a dark pencil for the son of Reb Aryeh Lev. How is your father?”

“He is well, thank you. He is at meetings all day long. About the doctors.”

“The doctors?”

“The Jewish doctors in Russia.”

“Ah,” he said. His thin face darkened. “Yes. The Cossacks came out again.”

“Will they send the doctors to Siberia?”

“I do not doubt it. If they will not shoot them, they will send them to Siberia.”

“Is Siberia really very cold?”

He looked at me closely, his eyes clouding. “Siberia is the home of the Angel of Death. It is the place where the Angel of Death feeds and grows fat. No one should know of it, Asher. No one. Not even my worst enemies, all of whom, thank God, I left behind in Russia. Only Stalin should know of it. But even he should know of it only for a little while. I have a Jewish heart even where Stalin, may his name and memory be erased, is concerned. Now, what else do you need? Paper, pens, erasers? It is a big store and we have, thank God, everything.”

I did not need anything else. I thanked him and hurried home in the dark.

My mother was not due back from college until later. Mrs. Rackover met me at the door.

“Where were you?”

“I had to buy a notebook.”

“Your mother knew you had to buy a notebook?”

“I forgot to tell her.”

“Your mother does not like you to come home late. What shall I say when she asks when you came home?”

“I don’t care.”

She looked at me sadly. “You are not the boy I thought you would be,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Take off your coat and galoshes. I will give you a glass of milk. You still care about milk, yes?”

She did not tell my mother.

I slept late the next morning. My father woke me. I sat up in my bed. My father looked upset.

“I saw the mashpia at yesterday’s meeting with the Rebbe. He gave me a bad report, Asher.”

I looked down at the hills my knees made beneath the blanket.

“Look at me, Asher.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m tired, Papa.”

“The mashpia told me you aren’t studying. What would your grandfather say if he knew you weren’t studying?”

I was quiet.

My father regarded me silently. His clothes were rumpled. He looked as if he had been up all night. “I’ll talk to you more about this another time,” he said. “I’m disturbed by what the mashpia told me.”

I lay back on my pillow and covered my eyes with my hand.

“Asher, today is a school day,” I heard my father say.

“I’m tired, Papa.”

“Are you sick?”

“I don’t know.”

I felt his hand on my forehead. His fingers were dry and cool.

“You have no fever.”

“I’m very tired, Papa.”

“I want you to get up and get dressed and go to school.”

The phone rang.

“I want you to get up now, Asher.”

“Aryeh,” my mother called.

My father went from the room.

Now, I thought. Now now now. But I’m tired. And I don’t care. And what difference does it make? Oh, I’m tired. Why am I so tired? Maybe I’m sick. Maybe I should ask Mama to take me to the doctor. Mama wouldn’t take me to the doctor. Mama has no time. She’ll ask Mrs. Rackover to take me to the doctor. Then I thought of the Jewish doctors in Russia. Then I thought
of Siberia. Then I thought of Yudel Krinsky. I sat up on the edge of my bed and began to get dressed. I heard my father go through the hallway and out of the apartment. I dressed quickly.

Later that day, I came out onto the street after school and walked along Brooklyn Parkway and Kingston Avenue to the stationery store. Yudel Krinsky was behind the counter, stacking reams of paper on a shelf.

“Sholom aleichem to the son of Reb Aryeh Lev,” he said.

“I need another notebook,” I said.

“Yes? What kind of notebook?”

“A Hebrew notebook.”

“And a pencil? You need a pencil?”

“No, thank you.”

The store smelled of paper and pencils and crayons. It was a warm smell. I liked being inside that store. Yudel Krinsky looked across the counter and smiled at me.

“What else can I do for the son of Reb Aryeh Lev?”

“Did Stalin send many people to Siberia?”

He blinked. Then he said, nodding, “Ah, I understand.”

“Did he?”

“Many millions.”

“Did he kill many people?”

“Tens of millions.”

“Did the world do anything?”

“Exactly what it did when Hitler killed Jews.”

“What?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“I do not understand.”

“What do you not understand?”

“Why the world kept silent.”

“I also do not understand.”

We looked at each other across the counter.

“I have to go home,” I said.

“Do not forget your notebook.”

I picked the notebook up off the counter.

“Asher, you do not have to buy something each time you want to come in to talk to me.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I went out of the store and ran home.

“Another notebook?” Mrs. Rackover said.

I showed her the notebook.

“I see. And what should I tell your mother?”

I shrugged.

“I should tell your mother you made like this with your shoulder?”

I said nothing.

“Asher, why do you go to that store?”

“I like Reb Yudel Krinsky.”

She looked at me and was quiet. Then she said, “Take off your coat, Asher, and I will give you a glass of milk.”

The next day, my father flew to Washington and returned home very late at night. When I woke Friday morning, he had already left for his office. In the kitchen over breakfast, my mother said, “You’ve been going to Reb Yudel Krinsky’s store after school?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Why?”

“I like him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

“I was afraid you would be angry.”

She regarded me in silence for a moment. Then she said softly, “I’m sorry I make you afraid of me, my Asher. I don’t want to make you afraid of me.”

I was quiet.

After a long moment, she said, “Asher, you understand your father is very busy now because of what has happened in Russia.”

“Yes.” But I wasn’t really certain I understood.

“You understand the Russians are hurting Jews.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You understand your father is trying to help those Jews.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“We think there will be a great persecution of Jews in Russia now. Your father is talking about that with important people in the American government.”

I was quiet.

“Asher, I don’t like your father to be away from home so much. But your father is doing what the Rebbe asks. Would you want your father to say no to the Rebbe?”

“No, Mama.”

“Asher, do you understand I have to finish my work in school?”

I hesitated, not knowing how to respond.

“You don’t understand.”

I was quiet.

“No,” my mother said. “Of course you don’t understand.” She was silent a long time. Then she said, “All right, Asher. You may go to Reb Yudel Krinsky’s store.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“But don’t stay too long and come straight home when you leave.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”

“No, Mama.”

She looked at me and shook her head sadly. Her eyes were dark. “Please drink your juice,” she said quietly. “All the vitamins will go out of it.”

    It was my father’s custom to wake very early on Shabbos morning and go to the mikveh, which was a one-story red-brick building on the corner diagonally across the street from our
house. My mother would go every few weeks, but my father went every Friday and Shabbos and sometimes in the middle of the week. I did not go with him then, for it is only necessary to immerse oneself in a ritual bath when one has reached puberty.

My father went to the mikveh that Shabbos morning. It was a cold clear January day. He returned to the apartment with his hair still wet, as always. We started to the synagogue together. On the way, I asked him if he would be traveling to Washington again that week.

“Monday,” he said.

“Will the Russians arrest more Jews, Papa?”

“Who knows what the Russians will do?”

“Mama says you’ll be traveling a lot now.”

“Yes.”

“Reb Yudel Krinsky said Stalin killed tens of millions of people.”

“Yes,” my father said. Then he looked at me and said quietly, “Give my good wishes to Reb Yudel Krinsky when you see him again.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Inside the synagogue, my father took his seat at the table near the Ark and I sat at a table in the rear with some of my classmates. The synagogue was always crowded. It was a large synagogue with paneled walls, chandeliers, tables and benches, a podium near the center of the floor, and an Ark built into the front wall. Off in the corner to the right of the Ark, near a narrow door that led from the synagogue to a small private room, was the cushioned chair on which the Rebbe usually sat, a tallis covering his head so that his face could not be seen. He would come in with his head covered and go out with his head covered; only an edge of his beard would be visible. Sometimes he came in only for those sections of the service that had to be prayed together with the congregation. He prayed without swaying back and forth, with no movement of any kind.

He came into the synagogue that Shabbos about twenty minutes after the start of the service. He seemed particularly still as he prayed. His face was buried in his tallis. He sat in his chair, looking like a small white sacred mountain. I watched him. I saw others watching him. About ten minutes before the end of the service, he rose and left the synagogue through the small door near the Ark.

I said to my father on the way back to the synagogue, “Did the Rebbe pray for the doctors, Papa?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Will you be traveling to Russia now?”

“If a person was born in Russia and then left, it’s dangerous for him to travel there.”

“But will you travel there, Papa?”

“I don’t know, Asher. Right now I think I’ll travel into bed. I have a headache.”

My father did not attend the Rebbe’s talk that afternoon. Instead, he went to bed with a fever.

I saw him lying in his bed, his red beard sticking out over the pale-green blanket.

“Rivkeh, this is foolishness,” he said.

“A fever is never foolishness,” my mother said.

“It’s foolishness. I have to be in Washington Monday.”

The talk about foolishness echoed faintly inside me, as if I had heard it before. But I could not remember.

“Asher, please go out,” my mother said to me. “Out. Please. One sick man in the house is enough.”

“I need two aspirins,” my father said.

“You need antibiotics, and I’m calling the doctor as soon as Shabbos is over,” my mother said. “We don’t want complications. You have Washington Monday morning and I have a test Monday afternoon. Asher, out I said, out. Please.”

The doctor came that night, a cheerful young man with a round face and shell-rimmed glasses. My father had a slight
bronchitis. The doctor prescribed antibiotics, liquids, and bed.

When I came into the kitchen the next morning, I found my mother at the table, asleep over her books. She had on the same clothes she had worn the night before.

“Mama,” I said.

She did not move. She lay with her head on her arms, almost sprawled on top of her books, breathing softly.

I put my hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

“Yes,” I heard her say, her voice muffled by her arm. “Yes, yes, Yaakov.”

I took my hand from her shoulder.

“Yaakov, I will pass the examination,” she said, moving her lips against her arm. She talked in Yiddish. “Do not worry yourself, Yaakov.”

“Mama,” I said loudly.

She came suddenly and sharply awake and sat up straight and stared at me. Her blond wig was awry. She had worn it when the doctor had come in, and had not removed it.