My Name Is Asher Lev

  “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.”

  “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?”