My Name Is Asher Lev

  “… to Vienna in October?” I heard the mashpia say.

  I looked at him blankly.

  He sighed. “You were not listening to me, Asherel.”

  I did not say anything.

  “What shall we do with you, Asherel? What shall we do with you?” He shook his head sadly.

  Everyone seemed to be asking that now. What shall we do with you, Asher?

  “I was asking, Asherel, how do you feel about going with your father and mother to Vienna in October.”

  “To Vienna in October,” I heard myself say. “Yes.” I took a breath. “How should I feel? I will go to Vienna. Papa and Mama are going to Vienna. How can I not go?”

  He sat there with his arms crossed, one hand over his mouth, and regarded me intently.

  “Where would I stay?” I said. “How can a ten-year-old child stay alone? I cannot stay with my Uncle Yitzchok. My father will not allow me to stay. Of course I will go to Vienna with my father and mother in October.”

  What month is this? I thought. April. May, June, July, August, September, October. Six months. I can draw and paint some of the street in six months. But how will I buy the oil colors? Maybe I can find something in place of oil colors. How can I know what can be in place of oil colors when I don’t know anything at all about oil colors?

  “Of course I will go to Vienna,” I heard myself say again. “Of course I will go to Vienna. My father is going to Vienna to build yeshivos for the Rebbe. How can I not go to Vienna?” Then I was crying. I could not help myself. I was crying. “How?” I said. “How? Ribbono Shel Olom, how?” I sat there crying. “I do not want to go, but I will go,” I said. “Ribbono Shel Olom, I am afraid to go away now from my street. It will leave me again and I will never have any of it back. But I will go to Vienna with Papa and Mama. How can I not go? What do they all want from me? How can I not go?”

  The mashpia had taken his hand away from his mouth. He was standing now behind the desk. He leaned down and from a drawer in the desk brought out a small bottle of water and a paper cup. He poured some water and handed me the cup.

  “Drink, Asherel,” he said softly.

  I remembered to make the blessing over water, to which he responded with amen. I drank the water and put the cup on the desk. I looked at my hand and found it was trembling. Then I felt all of me trembling. It seemed to me I had spent long hours of my life until then shaking and trembling. I was tired. I wanted to go home and go to bed.

  The mashpia said very quietly, “Listen, Asherel, do me a favor. Once when I was in your classroom, I saw you drawing in your notebook. But I did not see the drawing. Make a drawing for me. Here is a clean notebook and a pencil. Make a few drawings for me.”

  I looked at him and did not know what to say.

  “Asherel?” he said softly. “I will leave you alone for a while. Yes? Can you make a few drawings for me?”

  I nodded, feeling a pounding inside my head.

  “You can take your time, Asherel. If I am not back when you finish, leave the notebook and pencil on the desk and go back to your classroom. I will ask only that you turn out the light and close the door.” He came around from behind the desk and stood by the door. “You may finish the water in the bottle if you wish. Give my good wishes to your mother.”

  He went out so quietly I did not hear the door close.

  I sat there feeling the pounding inside my head and a sudden heaviness against my chest. I took a deep breath. I was able to breathe without difficulty but the heaviness remained. I did not know what to do. I did not want to draw. I was tired and I wanted to go home and go to bed. I stared at the notebook and pencil on the desk. I should not have said that about going to Vienna. I should not have cried. The mashpia would tell my mother and father and they would be upset and angry, and my father had enough to worry about now. I stared at the window. It was still raining. The trees looked forlorn in the rain. I saw the rain dripping off the buildings and splashing into the dark pools on the street. I moved my chair closer to the desk and opened the notebook. Its pages were blank and unlined. I looked closely at the heavy cover; it was a sketch pad. The pencil was a soft-leaded Eberhard, a drawing pencil. I stared at the door to the office. It was closed.

  I drew a point with the pencil on the first page of the sketchbook. I drew another point a few inches away. I connected the two points with a straight line. I drew another straight line, in tension with the first line. I drew a third, balancing line. Then I was drawing a face. Then I was drawing faces. Then there were trees and lines of walking people. I drew faces of children laughing and crying. I drew the look of the street from the window of our living room. I drew Yudel Krinsky surrounded by matzos in the grocery store. I drew the Ladover building. I drew a man walking alone beneath the trees of the parkway, wearing dark clothes, a dark beard, and an ordinary dark hat. I drew until the point of the pencil was gone; then I tore at the wood with my fingernails to get to the lead. I drew and shaded and sketched and left blank patches and filled patches, and at one point I thought I needed something more for a face at a window and I poured some water into the cup and dipped my forefinger into the water and rubbed the wet forefinger across the side of the face beneath the high delicate curve of cheekbone. The shading inside the concave plane of cheek came sharply alive, and there was my mother’s face at the window. Then I drew a boy and girl walking together beneath the maples of the parkway. They’re brother and sister, I thought, and drew them holding hands, heads close together, faces alike, thin with high cheekbones. Then I drew the Rebbe praying quietly near the Ark, his head covered by his tallis. Then I no longer knew what I was drawing. I was filling the pages with beings and shapes and textures, trying to feel the rain on the windows and on the trees, trying to feel cold and snow, trying to feel darkness and night, and getting none of it on the pages, and finally I threw the pencil down on the desk and slammed the sketchbook shut. I picked up my coat and my books and ran from the room. I was part of the way down the corridor when I remembered I had forgotten to turn off the light. I went back and opened the door and looked inside. The sketchbook lay nakedly on the desk. I turned off the light and closed the door and went down the corridor and out of the school.

  I hated what I had drawn in that sketchbook. I should not have done it. Why had he asked me to do it? I hated the drawings. They were lies, stagnant creations done to someone else’s demand, and I despised them. I was walking beneath the trees in the rain. I felt the rain on my face and in my eyes. How do you draw rain in someone’s eyes? It seemed there was a great deal of rain and I was walking in it endlessly. There was the sound of cars in the rain, and occasionally the sound of aircraft in the clouds overhead, and the dripping of the trees and the lawns soggy, and sometimes a stray wet cat between the pails of garbage in the alleyways. I was going into a huge gray stone building and I remembered none of the drawings had been of my father. Not a single drawing in that sketchbook was of my father. There were huge glass doors bordered in bronze and a marble interior and someone at a counter talking to me, looking at me curiously and pointing up a marble staircase. I climbed the stairs. I saw the rain on the tall rectangular windows. There were long corridors. I wandered through the corridors. I was very hungry and my head hurt. I wandered through the corridors looking closely at the walls. I do not know how long I was there. Someone came over and said something to me and I could not hear him. There was something on a wall I needed to see. He said it again and I felt him staring at me as I went from there down the marble staircase. It was dark outside. The rain had stopped. The air was misty with fog. The fog clung to the vague circles of light around the lampposts. I walked home in that fog. As I came up to the apartment house, I looked up at the living-room window. It was dark. I took the elevator upstairs.

  The door to the apartment opened a second after I rang the bell. Mrs. Rackover stood there, gaping at me. Then she ran back through the hallway and picked up the phone.

  I went into my room and took off my clothes. Mrs.
Rackover was talking excitedly into the phone. I wondered where my mother was. My father was in Washington. I was putting on my pajamas when Mrs. Rackover came into my room. Where had I been? Did I know what time it was? My mother was sick with fear and had gone to bed. They had called the police. She had just called them back to tell them I was home. What was I doing? I was driving everybody crazy.

  I was not listening. It intrigued me that I had made no drawings of my father. The mashpia would notice that. But why had I made no drawings of my father?

  My mother stood in the doorway. She was in a loose-fitting pale-blue nightgown. Her short dark hair was tangled. She seemed frenzied and there were dark circles around her eyes. I felt myself beginning to cry when I saw her. But I did not cry. I would not cry. She would ask me to make drawings for her.

  I said, “There’s a statue of Moses right under the roof. Did you ever see that, Mama? A statue of Moses.”

  “Master of the Universe,” Mrs. Rackover breathed. “What is the boy saying?”

  My mother looked at me dazedly. She seemed so small, so frail.

  “The others all had strange names,” I said. “But Moses was there. Moshe Rabbenu was there near the top of the building.”

  “What building? What building?” Mrs. Rackover asked.

  “The museum,” my mother said in a very small voice.

  Mrs. Rackover stared at her in disbelief.

  “I liked Robert Henri best of all,” I said. “Of all the Americans, he was the best. Am I saying the name right? Henri?” I was pronouncing it “Henry.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?” my mother said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  She hugged the nightgown to herself and stared at me.

  “I liked Hopper, too,” I said. “I liked his sunlight.”

  “Asher, Asher, what are you doing? You went out of the school in the middle of the day and disappeared. Your father isn’t home and you disappeared. What are you doing?”

  I was no longer listening. My mother went on talking. She seemed to be talking very loudly. Now Mrs. Rackover was talking. I got into bed. Their talking was very loud. I turned my face to the wall. There was the crack and its spidery tributaries. I had forgotten to draw the crack for the mashpia. I wondered what else I had forgotten to draw besides that and my father. I fell asleep.

  The darkness woke me. I felt it upon me in my sleep and I came awake and stared into it, listening. I did not know how long I had slept. The darkness seemed faintly resonant with distant sound. I thought I heard someone singing. The sound faded in and out. I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming. I could feel my eyes wide open but I knew I must be dreaming that my mother was singing somewhere in the darkness.

  My father was in the kitchen when I came in the next morning. His eyes were heavy and tired. My mother was at the stove, her back to me. They looked at me as I sat down at the table. They seemed to be moving very slowly. My father said something to me and I responded. He was preparing our orange juice but moving very slowly.

  I heard him say, “You should not have done that, Asher.” His voice was without expression.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Papa.”

  “You frightened your mother.”

  “I won’t do it again, Papa.”

  “You will come home immediately after school.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “You will not go to Reb Yudel Krinsky’s store.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “You will not go to the museum again without permission.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  My mother turned and watched me. She was very pale and the sockets of her eyes were dark.

  “Did you understand what the mashpia said to you?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “You are sure you understand?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “If you were a genius in mathematics, I would understand. If you were a genius in writing, I would also understand. If you were a genius in Gemorra, I would certainly understand. But a genius in drawing is foolishness, and I will not let it interfere with our lives. Do you understand me, Asher?”

  “Yes, Papa.” Yes Papa, yes Papa, it’s foolishness Papa, yes Papa. “Are you going away again today, Papa?”

  “Yes.”

  There was sunlight on the trees and the parkway looked clean. The cars parked along the inside lanes shone in the sun. I came into the school. The thin pimply-faced boy who sat in front of me stood in the doorway to the classroom with a group of four or five other students. He watched me come up the corridor.

  “Here comes the desecrater of sacred books,” he said in Yiddish in his loud nasal voice.

  The ones near him laughed. The corridor was crowded with students and I saw some of them turn and look at him curiously.

  “You want to go inside?” he said to me.

  I did not respond.

  “Shall we let him inside, this goy, this destroyer of Jewish books?”

  I pushed by him and went to my seat. Behind me I heard the one with the nasal voice say something, but I could not make out the words. Those around him burst into laughter.

  I came out of school later that day and turned up the parkway and walked to Yudel Krinsky’s store. Sometime during the half hour I spent with him, he went into the back of the store. I put five tubes of oil color, a bottle of turpentine, and a bottle of linseed oil into one of my coat pockets. I slipped two bristle brushes into my loose-leaf notebook. Before I left the store, I bought a small canvas board; I had enough money for that. I walked home in the last of the sunlight and saw my mother framed in the window of our living room as I came up to the house.

  She did not ask me why I was late. My father was not home.

  I put the tubes and bottles and the brushes into a drawer of my desk and slipped the canvas board into the space between the desk and the wall.

  In school the next Sunday morning, the thin boy with the nasal voice stood blocking the doorway again. He saw me coming up the corridor. “Here he comes,” he said loudly. “Asher Lev, the desecrater of Chumoshim.”

  The corridor seemed to echo with his words and with the laughter of students.

  I went straight home from school; my father was not traveling that day.

  The following day, I came into the classroom a moment after the teacher arrived. The pimply-faced boy was seated at his desk. He leered at me as I passed him.

  The mashpia came into the room during the day and spoke to us about the verse “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” From time to time during the talk, he glanced at me. He wants to see if I am drawing or listening, I thought. I kept my eyes on him but was drawing inside my head and moving my forefinger carefully and slowly across a small portion of the surface of my desk. Then the mashpia left.

  On the street after school, the thin boy said to me loudly, “You did not desecrate a Chumash today, Asher Lev. How come?”

  “Leave him alone,” someone else said.

  I walked away from them and spent the next hour and a half in the museum.

  There was no one in the window of the apartment as I came up the street. Mrs. Rackover opened the door. She said, “Supper is waiting for you,” and went up the hallway into the kitchen.

  I ate supper with my mother. She did not say anything to me about being late. My father was in Detroit.

  At breakfast the next morning, I said, “Is Papa coming home from Detroit today?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “In the early afternoon.”

  I came home immediately after school.

  The next morning, I asked my father, “Are you going away today, Papa?”

  My mother gave me an uneasy look.

  “I don’t have to travel anywhere until a week from next Tuesday,” my father said. “We have meetings until then.”

  My days passed slowly. The thin boy stopped bothering me. I came straight home from school every day. I returned home
one Monday and thought my desk had been moved: the canvas board was not quite where I had placed it; the drawer with the oil tubes seemed to have been hurriedly gone through. But I could not be certain.

  It was May. I could see leaves on the trees. From the window of my living room, the maples along the parkway seemed young and delicate, fragile with spring growth. I sketched and drew them. I watched the growing of the leaves and drew the twists and turns of their branches against the sky. I was drawing my street, and inside me was the fearful awareness that I would soon lose it and have nothing I loved that I could draw.

  That month, my father began to help my mother with her study of Russian. I would hear them together in the nights after I had gone to bed and the lights were out in my room. He was helping her memorize the meanings of words and the conjugations of verbs. He corrected her pronunciation. Sometimes I would hear them laughing.

  On Tuesday in the second week of May, my father flew to Washington. He would not return until Thursday. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon in the museum.

  That Thursday afternoon, a Washington-New York airliner came down in the East River on its approach to LaGuardia Airport. The fifty-seven people aboard were killed. We heard the news over the kitchen radio during supper. My mother froze in her chair until the flight number was announced. Then she took a series of small gulping breaths and sat very still, her eyes flat and dead.

  “Mama,” I called out.

  She shuddered, and looked at me. After a moment, she said very quietly, “I wonder if artists also travel a lot, Asher.”

  Dimly, then, I began to sense what my father’s journeys demanded of her. “Have a safe journey, Aryeh,” she would always say to him at the start of one of his trips. I had always thought that to be a simple formula for departure. Now I began to hear the muted tonalities within the words.