I asked it again.
“What is this all of a sudden? Who told you about Jewish Communists?”
“My father.”
“Ah,” he said. “I understand.” He put the remnants of the hard-boiled egg and matzo on the paper he had spread on top of the counter and wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He glanced around. It was early afternoon. We were alone. A bright April sun shone outside. “I do not know if they were the only ones,” he said. “But they fought, and not only against Jewish Communists, but against goyische Communists also. Sometimes the Jewish Communists were worse than the goyim. Ask your mother about the Jewish Communists, Asher. She is studying about Russia. Yes, we and the Breslover fought, and they hated us for it and still hate us, those of them Stalin left alive. The secret police would find out about Ladover or Breslover Jews, and they would come to arrest them on Friday night when they were sure the Jews would be home with their families. In Siberia, I met a Breslover Hasid who told me that twenty-nine Breslover Hasidim were arrested in the city of Uman in 1938. They were accused of attempting to organize an underground Trotsky organization with the checks they were receiving from friends in America. You are young, Asher. You cannot begin to understand the stupidity of such an accusation. Breslover Hasidim organizing a Trotsky underground! They were beaten and tortured. One of them was beaten in front of the others in order to force the others to confess to the accusation. They also suffered from hunger, because they would not dirty themselves eating the food they were given. Three of them died in the prison in Uman. The rest were sent to Siberia. I discovered after the war that only three survived. The Breslover who told me this was taken from my camp a few weeks later and I never saw him again. I do not know if he is one of the three. Asher, they hated us and were afraid of us and arrested and killed us whenever they could.”
He glanced around quickly. He took a deep breath. He stared gloomily at the matzo on the counter. “I remember when I first met you I was in a grocery store with matzos over my head. In Russia, to obtain matzos we had to turn over the world. People went to prison because of matzos. Ah, it is a strange world, Asher. Sometimes I think the Master of the Universe has another world to take care of, and He neglects this world, God forbid. Would you like a piece of matzo, Asher?”
I did not want any matzo. I came out of the store onto the street. It was a warm day, one of the first warm days after the long winter.
I walked slowly along Brooklyn Parkway beneath the trees. Old women sat on the benches along the islands of the parkway, sunning themselves and gossiping. Soon Passover would be over; soon I would not have Yudel Krinsky to talk to; soon the street would be gone. There was a feeling of the summer coming, of decisions being made, of haste and departure, of light and shade, of brightness and darkness. I saw the sun glinting off the black metal of a fireplug. I saw a gaunt skeletal-faced old lady laughing happily on a bench. I saw a little boy in a skullcap and sidecurls walking along the parkway dragging his metal-braced right leg in a heavy flatfooted limp. I saw a little girl of about three walking with a boy of about seven. They were talking and laughing and holding their hands together and swinging their arms. The boy wore a skullcap and sidecurls; ritual fringes protruded from beneath his shirt and flapped gaily in the air as he walked. They looked to be brother and sister. How many times had I seen a brother and sister walking like that along Brooklyn Parkway? How many times? Something was happening to my eyes and my head and I did not know how to think or feel about it.
Mrs. Rackover said to me when I came into the apartment, “Where were you? You are more than an hour late for lunch.”
“I was walking.”
“You were walking. You were driving me crazy. Go wash your hands and I will give you something to eat.”
“Where is my mother?”
“Your mother went to the library. Go wash your hands, Asher. I cannot spend half the day giving you lunch.”
“They were very beautiful,” I said. “Why didn’t I see it before?”
“What?” Mrs. Rackover said.
“I wonder if they have a mother and father,” I said.
“What is the matter with you, Asher? Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”
“No.”
“Go wash your hands. You are driving us all crazy with your pictures and your stubbornness. What kind of Jewish boy behaves this way to a mother and father? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Why didn’t I ever see it before? I asked myself. Something has happened to my eyes and my head. I looked at my eyes and head in the mirror over the bathroom sink. They looked the same as always, eyes dark and hair red and wild. But something had happened inside them. And I did not think I was frightened now.
I spent the afternoon drawing pictures of the brother and sister I had seen walking together on Brooklyn Parkway. I remembered their thin faces and I drew them walking along the parkway. Then I drew them crossing a country road, walking beneath tall trees, chasing a butterfly. I drew them reading together and talking together. I drew them crossing a street together. I drew them laughing together. The desk and the dresser and the bed were strewn with drawings. Later in the afternoon, I went downstairs and walked along the parkway, but I could not find any girl and boy together who looked to be brother and sister.
I was in my room when my mother returned from the library, her arms laden with books. She put the books on the wall table in the hallway and removed her coat. I called her into my room.
“Look,” I said, and pointed to the drawings.
“Not now, Asher.”
“Mama, please.”
She seemed impatient and glanced quickly through a few of the drawings. Then she sat down on the bed and went through them all slowly. She looked a long time at the drawings of the brother and sister reading together and talking together. She put the drawings down. Her eyes were wide and moist. She went from my room without a word. I heard the door to her bedroom close softly. I waited awhile, then went out to the hallway and looked at the books she had left on the table. They were all on Russia. One of them was a grammar of the Russian language.
My father said to me at the Shabbos table the next night, “You look so unhappy these days, Asher.”
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
“It bothers you that I am away so much?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“It bothered me, too, when my father, may he rest in peace, was away. But I do not know how else the work can be done. To touch a person’s heart, you must see a person’s face. One cannot reach a soul through a telephone.” He stroked his red beard slowly. Then he said in a soft singsong voice, “The early tzaddikim, the ones who were the first disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov, also used to travel. Some took it upon themselves to go into exile in order to atone for the sins of Israel and to hasten the redemption. Others wandered about looking for kidnapped Jewish children they could ransom. Others traveled to the ends of the earth looking for a teacher whose soul was like their soul and with whom they could study Torah. And others journeyed from place to place teaching the words of the Ba’al Shem Tov and changing people’s hearts and souls to Hasidus. My father, olov hasholom, after whom you are named, was a great scholar. That you know, Asher. An emissary from the Rebbe’s father stayed with my father for a while. They studied together. A year later, my father moved his family to Ladov and became an emissary of the Rebbe’s father. The night he was killed, they had been making plans together. My father was to travel to the Ukraine to start underground yeshivos. Their heads were full of plans for Torah. They forgot it was the night before Easter. The drunken peasant remembered.” He paused. His eyes glittered in the light of the Shabbos candles. Then he continued in that same singsong voice, “When the Rebbe’s father was able to come to America, he brought me and your Uncle Yitzchok and our mother, may she rest in peace, with him. I was fourteen then. I remember that journey.” He paused again and hummed a brief passage from one of the zemiros. “Yes,” he murmured. “The Rebbe’s father felt s
omething had been left unfinished in the world. Plans had been made and had been left unfinished. A life had been lost because of those plans and the plans had been left unfulfilled.” He hummed another verse from the zemiros. Then he stopped and closed his eyes. Then he said, his eyes still closed, “Sing zemiros with me, Asher. You, too, Rivkeh. Sing zemiros with me.”
Later that night, as I got into bed, my mother asked me, “Did you understand what your father said to you, Asher?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand what it means to leave a great work incomplete?”
“I think so, Mama.”
“It’s important that you understand that, Asher.”
“Why are you studying Russian history, Mama?”
“To help your father in his work.”
“Was your brother supposed to go to Europe and do what Papa will be doing?”
“No. Your Uncle Yaakov”—her lips trembled—“was going to teach Russian history in New York University. He was also going to be an adviser in the government.”
“The American government?”
“Yes, Asher.”
“Will you be an adviser in the American government, Mama?”
“No,” she said. “I will not be an adviser in the American government. I will graduate from college in June and go with you and your father to Vienna in October. Are you ready to say your Krias Shema, Asher?”
I said the Krias Shema.
A while later, I sensed them through dim and restless sleep standing by my bed, whispering. I felt a hand straighten my blanket. Then I felt fingers move across my face and forehead in a caress, my father’s fingers. Then I felt nothing, but I knew they were standing there in silence. Then they went from the room.
I saw my mythic ancestor again that night, moving in huge strides across the face of the earth, stepping over snow-filled mountains, spanning wide and fertile valleys, journeying, journeying, endlessly journeying. I saw him traverse warm villages and regions of ice and snow. I saw him peer into the windows of secret yeshivos and into the barracks of Siberian camps. “It’s colder inside than outside,” I thought I heard him say. “And what are you doing with your time, my Asher Lev?” I thought I heard him say. He said it thunderously, and I woke and lay in the darkness. Then I got out of bed and went to my desk and turned on the light. I looked at the drawings of the brother and sister. They seemed a scrawl, an absurd and childish movement of the hand, a small-minded frivolity. There were prisons of stone and wastelands of snow and night. What was a drawing in the face of the darkness of the Other Side? What was a pen and paper, what were pastels, in the face of the evil of the shell? I felt myself suddenly entombed and I snapped off the light and got back into bed. Even in the dark, I could see the different kinds of blackness in the room and the way the slit of pale light between the bottom of the window shade and the window sill played on the wall near my desk and glinted off the drawings. What do You want from me? I thought. I’m only a ten-year-old boy. Ten-year-old boys play in the streets; ten-year-old boys chase back and forth through the hallways of apartment houses; ten-year-old boys ride up and down elevators for afternoon entertainment; ten-year-old boys run after cars along New York Avenue. If You don’t want me to use the gift, why did You give it to me? Or did it come to me from the Other Side? It was horrifying to think my gift may have been given to me by the source of evil and ugliness. How can evil and ugliness make a gift of beauty? I lay in my bed and thought a long time about what was wanted from me. Then I was tired and began to drift off to sleep. I thought I would see my mythic ancestor again and I fought to stay awake. But I felt myself moving off. It was only then that I realized I had violated the Shabbos by turning on the light to look at my drawings, and by turning it off again. Then it was a while before I was able to sleep.
During that Passover, the new Soviet government announced that the doctors arrested under the Stalin regime had been released; the announcement said that the accusations had all been lies. My father was informed by telephone that two of the Jewish doctors had been beaten to death by the police while in prison.
The announcement said that fifteen doctors had been released. I remembered having heard that nine had been arrested. I did not ask about the difference in numbers. I was tired, very tired.
On the Thursday after Passover, I went with my parents for our passports.
Five
I remember drawing a building burning, a large marble building set in a green glade and surrounded by gentle hills. I drew it in pastels and made the marble of the building pale blue and veined with small wandering rivulets of white. There was a golden dome with a trim of purple arabesques; there were tall arched windows, somewhat like the windows of the Ladover building. I drew flames pouring from the windows and swirling around the roof and eating into the marble. My mother asked me what it was, and I said it was the library in Alexandria, the one the Moslems had ordered burned because its books could not be as important as the Koran. Did my mother remember telling me that story? My mother remembered. Why had I drawn such a picture? I didn’t know. What did the picture mean to me? I shrugged a shoulder.
I drew a book burning. Then I drew piles of books burning. Then I drew houses burning. Then I drew the Ladover building burning. And my mother was no longer asking me what it all meant.
Sometime during those weeks, my mother took me to our family doctor. He prodded and poked and tapped. What is our Asher Lev drawing these days? Ears are fine. Chest is fine. Have you ever been in the museum? No? An afternoon in a good museum is good for the soul—he used the Hebrew word “neshomoh.” You’re skinny but healthy. Yes, I’ll send you to someone for the eyes. How is your husband? You heard about the doctors? Give my regards to your husband. Tell him this American-born Jewish doctor thinks of him often. Goodbye, Asher. Are you using oils? No? When you use oils, be careful of flake white. It contains lead and can hurt you if it gets into your body. Advice from one artist to another. I paint on Sundays. Goodbye, Asher. Goodbye, Mrs. Lev.
A few days later, I went to an eye doctor. He took a long time. My eyes were fine. I did not need glasses. No, there was absolutely nothing the matter with my eyes. Then I went to another kind of doctor. He was a young doctor with thick glasses and a fixed smile. There were games I had to play and questions I had to answer and drawings I had to make. A few days before, I had seen a large gray cat struck by a car on Kingston Avenue. It had run off into an alleyway dragging the lower half of itself in a queer way and leaving behind drops of glistening blood. I drew that cat for the doctor. I drew the cat under the wheels of the car and I drew the cat as I imagined it later in the alleyway. He stared at those drawings a very long time, without smiling. I do not know what he told my mother, but she was very subdued all the way home from his office. My father was in Montreal that day.
The next day, the boy sitting to my right in class leaned over and whispered in Yiddish, “Asher, what are you doing?”
I heard him but could not understand what he was saying and went on working with the pen.
“Asher,” I heard him say, still in a whisper but a little louder than before. “How could you do that?”
I felt the boy sitting behind me lean forward and look over my shoulder. The one sitting at my left looked, too. There were gasps and murmurs of surprise. Then the one sitting in front of me, a thin pimply-faced boy with an endlessly running nose and a high nasal voice, turned around, looked, and said in Yiddish in a voice that could have been heard on the other side of the parkway, “You defiled a holy book! Asher Lev, you desecrated the Name of God! You defiled a Chumash!” He seemed horrified and looked as if he were witnessing the sudden appearance of a representative of the Other Side. He moved out of his desk and backed away from me.
The class had been studying the Book of Leviticus. The teacher, a young dark-bearded recent graduate of the Ladover yeshiva, had been explaining concepts of holiness. Now, with the sudden invasion of the nasal voice, the class was instantly silent. There was a faint
stirring as bodies pivoted and heads focused upon me.
I looked at my hand. I saw the old Waterman fountain pen my father had once given me. On the way out of my room earlier that morning, I had put the pen into one of my pockets. Now I held it in my hand. I had drawn a face with it across an entire printed page of my Chumash. I had drawn the face in thick black ink. It was a bearded face, dark-eyed, dark-haired, vaguely menacing. On top of the face, I had drawn a head of dark hair covered by an ordinary dark hat.
The teacher was standing at my desk looking down at the drawing. He said quietly in Yiddish, “What did you do, Asher?”
I did not know what to say. I could not remember having drawn it.
“What would your father say if he saw this?” the teacher asked softly. He did not seem angry. He looked hurt. His voice was patient and gentle.
I felt hot and suddenly very tired. I wanted to go home and go to bed.
“I am surprised and upset,” the teacher said, “that the son of Reb Aryeh Lev should do such a thing. I do not know what to say. Please be so good as not to do it again, Asher. Drawing in a Chumash is a desecration of the Name of God.”
“Especially what he drew,” said the boy with the running nose and nasal voice.
The teacher turned to him. “Thank you,” he said softly. “But I do not need your help. Now everybody please be so good as to look back into your Chumash and let us continue with our discussion. You, too, Asher, put down your fountain pen and look into your Chumash.”
I looked into my Chumash. I stared at the face staring back out at me from the page. I had slanted the eyes somewhat and given the lips beneath the beard a sardonic turn. The Rebbe looked evil; the Rebbe looked threatening; the Rebbe looking out at me from the Chumash seemed about to hurt me. That was the expression he would wear when he decided to hurt me. That was the expression he had worn when he had told my father to go to Vienna. I looked at the framed photograph of the Rebbe on the front wall near the blackboard. The eyes were gray and clear; the face was kind. Only the ordinary dark hat was the same in both pictures. I was frightened at the picture I had drawn. I was especially frightened that I could not remember having drawn it.