My Name Is Asher Lev

  I went to Yudel Krinsky’s store later that day and found him sorting tubes of oil colors, taking them from their boxes and putting them into the compartments of the metal cabinet near the door.

  “Sholom aleichem to the son of Reb Aryeh Lev,” Yudel Krinsky said cheerfully. “Put down your books and take off your coat. You can help me sort the brushes.” He looked at me closely. “How do you feel, Asher? You do not look very good.”

  “How do you use these colors?” I asked.

  “These? The oil colors? You want to use the oil colors?”

  “How do you use them? Is there a special way they are used?”

  “Oil colors is an entire Torah, Asher. I know nothing about oil colors.”

  “Why is it called oil color?”

  “They mix the original color with a certain oil. With watercolor, they mix the color with water. That is all I know.”

  “I put the color on a brush and I paint with it?”

  “You paint with it on something like this.” He reached behind the counter and came up with a small canvas board. “This is the easy thing to paint on. Others paint on canvas they prepare themselves. But this is even beyond Torah already. That is Gemorra and Tosefos.”

  “I drew on my Chumash today,” I said.

  “Ah?”

  “I drew the face of the Rebbe on my Chumash and I did not even know I drew it until others saw it.”

  He glanced around the store, scratched his beaked nose, and sighed.

  “I made the Rebbe look like a being from the Other Side.”

  “Asher!” He was horrified.

  “And I did not even know,” I said. “I did not even know I was drawing it.”

  “You should talk to your mother and father,” Yudel Krinsky said.

  “The doctors said I was all right. There was nothing the matter with me, they said. How could I do something like that if there is nothing the matter with me? How much does oil color cost?”

  He told me.

  “I do not have enough money. I would need at least three—no, at least five—colors, and I do not have enough money. How much will brushes cost? I will need one or two brushes.”

  He told me.

  “What else will I need? I will need something to clean the brushes. I will need a canvas board. How much will it cost to buy something to clean the brushes—turpentine, yes—and to buy a canvas board?”

  He told me.

  “I will never have enough money to paint in oil colors. How can anyone paint in oil colors if it costs so much money? I do not feel well. I think I will go home now and lie down. Did I tell you I drew the face of the Rebbe in my Chumash today? I told you. Goodbye, goodbye.”

  It was a warm evening. There was a pale film of light in the sky. Soon it would be summer. And then Rosh Hashonoh and Yom Kippur. And then October. And then Vienna. So I’ll go to Vienna. I can draw in Vienna, too. I’ll draw the cafés and the strange streets. I’ll learn the language. What is so terrible about going to Vienna? I felt myself trembling. I love this street. Yes. I don’t want to go into exile. But I’ll draw another street. Streets are all the same. Oh, they’re not. They’re not the same. I don’t know enough about this street to really draw it yet; how can I draw a strange street in a foreign land full of people who hate me? Why should I even want to draw such a street?

  I walked beneath the trees looking at the people of the street. The parkway was busy with traffic. People were coming out of the subway tunnels. There were green buds on the trees. The benches were empty. Cats scratched through garbage cans. Car horns blared. It seemed to be getting dark. I thought it had become dark very quickly. There were stars. I took the elevator up to our apartment.

  My mother was at the door. Her small face was pale and frightened.

  “Asher, do you know what time it is?”

  I did not know.

  “It’s after seven o’clock.” Her voice was very high. There was that strange look in her eyes. “Where have you been?”

  “Walking.”

  “Walking? Until after seven o’clock? Asher, what am I going to do with you? I was ready to call the police.”

  “I’m very tired, Mama. I think I’ll go to sleep.”

  “Don’t you want supper? Are you all right, Asher? Are you sick?”

  “I’ll never have enough for the oil colors. How does anyone buy all he needs?”

  She stared at me.

  “I didn’t know, Mama. Is it wrong if you do something when you don’t even know you did it? How could that be wrong?”

  She stared at me, open-mouthed. I could feel her looking at me as I went through the hallway to my room. It’s a nice street, I was thinking. Why do they want to take it from me?

  I put on pajamas and got into bed. My mother came into the room. She was telling me I could not go to sleep without supper. She sounded frightened. I wondered why she was frightened. She hadn’t drawn the Rebbe’s face in a Chumash. Why was she frightened? She kept pleading with me to get out of bed and eat supper. I was barely listening. After a while, she looked ready to cry. She turned and started from the room. She was almost at the doorway when the phone rang. I heard her hurrying through the hall to the phone. She was talking into the phone. How can I get money to buy the oil colors and the canvas board and the brushes and the turpentine? Maybe I can sell a picture to my Uncle Yitzchok. My mother came back into the room and stood by my bed.

  “The mashpia called.”

  I turned my face to the wall.

  “The mashpia asked you to see him in his office tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

  There was a crack in the wall I had not seen before. I liked the way it sent out spidery fingers along the surface of the paint.

  “What did you do in school today?” my mother asked.

  I closed my eyes. Then I opened my eyes very slightly and peered out through my lashes. There were spidery fingers there, too, moving in and out across my eyes. I liked seeing them that way, moving back and forth and in and out like a concealing fog across my eyes. I was slanting my eyes. Do the Rebbe’s eyes see spidery fingers in my picture?

  I welcomed the fog and fell asleep.

  Almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for the moment of sleep the way ancient guardian armies waited for the blast of warning trumpets, my mythic ancestor thundered through the enshrouding fog, his dark-bearded face trembling with rage. There was the roar of moving earth and the rolling sound of his anger. I could not hear what he was saying but I felt his words push against me. I woke and went to the bathroom. I thought I heard my parents talking in their room. I went back to bed and slept. I woke again in the night, feeling very hungry. How can I get money for the oil colors? I must try the oil colors. I fell back asleep and woke in the morning to the sound of rain on the window.

  My father was preparing the orange juice. My mother was at the stove. They looked at me when I came into the kitchen and stopped what they were doing.

  “Good morning, Asher,” my mother said very quietly.

  “The mashpia called me in my office late yesterday,” my father said, without preliminaries. “Did you know what you were doing?”

  “No, Papa.”

  “You did it and didn’t know you were doing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “Aryeh,” my mother said softly.

  He turned to her. “I don’t know how to react, Rivkeh. A responsible ten-year-old boy doesn’t do such things.” He turned back to me. “You will be respectful to the mashpia, you hear?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “You will listen carefully to what he has to say and you will apologize.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I have a million things on my mind now, and I have to worry about my son drawing the face of the Rebbe in a Chumash. How could you have done such a thing?”

  “Aryeh,” my mother said.

  “To desecrate a Chumash. And to make fun of the Rebbe.”

  ??
?I was not making fun of the Rebbe,” I said.

  “What were you doing?”

  “I don’t know. But I was not making fun of the Rebbe. I don’t draw pictures to make fun.”

  “I wish you would stop drawing. We were done with that foolishness.”

  “Aryeh,” my mother said.

  “Aryeh, Aryeh,” my father said. “What are you Aryehing me for, Rivkeh? How does it look when my son goes around drawing all day instead of learning? How does it look?”

  “Stop calling it foolishness,” I said.

  They turned slowly to look at me.

  “Please don’t call it foolishness any more, Papa,” I said.

  They stared at me and were very quiet. My father’s face was going rigid. I saw him swallow. My mother was pale.

  “Foolishness is something that’s stupid,” I said. “Foolishness is something a person shouldn’t do. Foolishness is something that brings harm to the world. Foolishness is a waste of time. Please don’t ever call it foolishness any more, Papa.”

  There was a long silence. I heard the rain on the window of the kitchen. The refrigerator suddenly turned itself off, deepening the silence. I felt frightened. I had never talked to my father that way before.

  “Asher,” my mother said. “You are being disrespectful to your father. Kibud ov, Asher. Remember, kibud ov.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and lowered my eyes.

  My father stroked his beard and took a deep breath. “Sit down, Asher, and drink your orange juice,” he said in a voice tremulous with anger. “There are probably no vitamins left in it by now.”

  The mashpia’s office was at the end of the first-floor corridor of the school building, two doors beyond my classroom. I knocked on the door and heard him say in Yiddish, “Come in.” I went inside and closed the door quietly behind me.

  It was a narrow office, entirely bare except for a small bookcase filled with books and a small dark wood desk that had on it a notebook and a pencil. Rav Yosef Cutler, the mashpia, sat behind the desk in an ordinary wood chair. He wore a long dark jacket, dark trousers, a white shirt with a crumpled collar, a tall dark skullcap, and a dark tie. His hands were white. He smiled at me across the closetlike room. “Come in, come in, Asherel. Take off your coat; yes, put it there. Good. Sit down, sit down. Put your books on the desk. Tell me, how is your mother? About your father I have no need to ask. I see your father all the time. But how is your mother? Yes? And how are you, Asherel? You look pale. Your eyes are as red as your hair. Are you feeling well?” He spoke in Yiddish and I responded in Yiddish. With the mashpia, one talked only in Yiddish.

  I told him I was feeling well. I was a little tired, I said. My mother has taken me to see three different doctors, I said. I was fine, I said. I was fine.

  A narrow window took up most of the wall behind the mashpia. I looked out the window at the maples on the street. It was raining outside on the maples. I saw the branches dripping in the rain. How would I paint that, the rain dripping from the branches, the rain streaking the window, the gray rain filling the world with dismal mist? People walked beneath umbrellas. The asphalt glistened. The bleak sky hovered menacingly over the tops of the buildings. The mashpia was saying something to me, but I was not listening because I saw the clouds moving swiftly and darkly across the buildings and I wondered how I could catch that dark movement, that watery swirl of light and dark grays. I watched the mashpia put his hands on the desk, saw him still talking to me, and thought the street was crying and wondered how I could paint the street crying. I thought I had said something like that to myself before, but I could not remember when or where it might have been. The street is crying, I thought, and I’m sitting here. It’s my street and I can’t draw it. I want to paint it, I have to paint it while it’s crying, and why am I sitting here? They’re going to take my street away from me, I thought. Do streets in Vienna cry? Not for Jews, they don’t. Ribbono Shel Olom, what are You doing to me?

  “Asherel,” the mashpia was saying in a strange loud voice. “Asherel.”

  I came slowly back inside myself from the dripping trees and the dismal street and looked at him with a sense of surprise and shock. He was leaning almost halfway across the desk, his eyes wide with alarm.

  “Asherel,” he said again. “Are you feeling all right?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I heard myself say. I did not recognize my own voice. “Yes. Yes.”

  “I thought—Asherel, I will call your father and he will take you home.”

  “No,” I said. “Do not call my father.”

  I said it very loudly. He gave me a startled look. Then, slowly, he sat back in his chair.

  There was a long silence. He sat very still, regarding me intently. I watched the rain-made rivulets on the window, the patterned flow of colorless liquid upon colorless glass. It will all die when the rain ends, I thought. But what difference does it make?

  Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn’t make a difference you will make it make a difference. Yes? No. Perhaps it really doesn’t make a difference, after all.

  “Asherel, listen to me,” the mashpia was saying. “I am talking to you and you are dreaming.”

  “I am sorry,” I heard myself say.

  “If you are not ill, be so good as to listen to me.”

  I took my eyes from the window.

  “How shall we start, Asherel? Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You feel all right now, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. Asherel, how shall we start? I do not want to, God forbid, hurt you or make you feel bad. I talk to you out of love for you and your dear parents.” He paused. “I knew your grandfather in Russia. I was with him and the Rebbe’s father the night he was killed. All the Jewish people are one body and one soul, he believed. If one part of the body hurts, the entire body hurts—and the entire body must come to the help of the part that hurts. Are you listening to me, Asher?”

  I hurt, I thought. Who is coming to my help? “Yes,” I said. “I am listening.”

  “Good,” he said gently, and stroked his dark beard. “Asherel, your father also sees the Jewish people as one body and one soul. When a head hurts in the Ukraine, your father suffers in Brooklyn. When Jews cannot study Torah in Kiev, your father cannot sit still in Brooklyn. Do you understand me, Asherel?”

  I nodded. I was looking at the window again. It seemed dark outside. Why was it dark outside in the morning? The rain had stopped. The rivulets were gone from the window. But raindrops were still on the panes, looking frozen against the strange darkness outside.

  “Now, how do you think your father feels, Asherel, when his son does not want to study Torah, spends days and nights drawing, and even draws the face of the Rebbe in a Chumash? How should a father feel in such a matter, Asherel?”

  I did not know what to say, and so I said nothing. I had the impression I was not expected to respond. But how should I feel? I thought. Will he ask me how I feel? And why is it so dark outside?

  “Asherel, my child, understand what I am saying to you. We all know you have a gift. We all know such a gift cannot always be controlled. When my father, may he rest in peace, was young, he had a gift for carving. When I was young, I had a gift for writing stories. When the Rebbe was young, he had a gift for mathematics. Many people feel they are in possession of a great gift when they are young. But one does not always give in to a gift. One does with a life what is precious not only to one’s own self but to one’s own people. That is the way our people live, Asherel. Do you understand me?”

  I understood. It looked like night outside, black night in the morning.

  “Asherel, you have a gift. The gift causes you to think only of yourself and your own feelings. No one would care if these were normal times, Asherel. We do not interpret the second commandment the way others do. But these are not normal times.”

  When have times ever been normal for Jews? I thought. What is he telling me? To
stifle the gift? Does he also believe the gift is from the Other Side? Then it should be stifled even in normal times; what does it have to do with the Jewish people? And if it’s not from the Other Side, if it’s from the Ribbono Shel Olom, why is it less important than what Papa is doing?

  “Do you understand me, Asherel?”

  I did not understand but I did not say anything.

  “Asherel?”

  “Look, it is raining again,” I said. I could see the fat drops hurtle through the darkness and explode against the window. How could I ever draw or paint that? I thought. Rain like that from darkness like that exploding as though in midair upon invisible glass. But someone has done it. I’ve seen pictures of it, of a sky like that, of rain against glass. How did they do it?

  “Asherel?” the mashpia was saying gently, patiently.

  I took my eyes from the window.

  “Were you listening to me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He stroked his dark beard with his white hands and narrowed his eyes. “Asherel,” he said softly. “Is it true you did not know you were drawing the face of the Rebbe on the Chumash?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is such a tiling possible?”

  “I do not know.”

  “I believe you, Asherel.” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms and put a hand across his mouth. I saw him watching me intently, his eyes wide and gentle. He has a little of Yudel Krinsky’s eyes, I thought. I could make them a little wider and remove some of the lines and they would be like the eyes of Yudel Krinsky. The shapes are the same. Look at the rain on the window. The mashpia was saying something, but I did not want to listen to him any more. It’s raining in sharp diagonals to the verticals and horizontals of the window. Look at those slashing diagonals. The mashpia was saying something about Vienna but I would not listen. The darkness was gone from the street and I could see the trees beneath the lashing rain. The rain moved in waterfalls across the asphalt. The curbs were flooded with rushing streams of dark water. Oh, if I could paint this, I thought. Ribbono Shel Olom, if I could paint this world, this clean world of rain and patterns on glass, and trees on my street, and people beneath the trees. I would even paint and draw pain and suffering if I could paint and draw the other, too. I would paint the rain as tears and I would paint the rain as waters of purification. What do they want from me? Ribbono Shel Olom, it’s Your gift. Why don’t You show them it’s Your gift?