“I hate to hear Papa shouting at you.”
“Your father is a little frightened. So he shouts at the person closest to him. My brother, olov hasholom, used to shout at me.”
“Why is Papa frightened?”
“He has many responsibilities. And he sees you aren’t learning. He thinks you will become a goy. He doesn’t want to go back to Vienna. But he also doesn’t want to remain here and stop his work in Europe. Are you listening, Asher?”
“Mama, can I go to the museum this week?”
She sighed softly. “Wait until after your father leaves,” she said.
I woke one night later in the week and heard them quarreling in their bedroom. The words were muffled but the sounds were loud. I lay in the darkness. Stop it, I thought. Stop it. Please stop it. I heard his voice and I thought of my mother in the bedroom with him. Ribbono Shel Olom, stop it. Maybe I can go to Vienna now. I’ll tell him in the morning that I’ll go. But I felt sudden terror and knew I could not tell him. The quarreling ended abruptly. I listened to the silence. My window was slightly open. The shade scraped softly against the sill.
In the morning after my father left the apartment, I said to my mother, “I heard you fighting last night, Mama.”
She looked upset and embarrassed.
“I don’t like Papa when he shouts at you. Why was he shouting at you?”
“Your father wanted me to promise I would not let you go to the museum.” She shook her head sadly. “I can’t promise the impossible.”
“I don’t like Papa when he’s like this.”
“I’m not sure your father is wrong, Asher.”
I stared at her.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
I went to the museum later that day. I wanted to look again at one of the Picassos. On the way to the Picasso, I stopped at one of the paintings of Jesus. I did not copy the painting; I merely looked at it. My eyes moved across it. The wounds intrigued me. How had he made the wounds so real? Had there really been wounds like that? I wondered what it felt like having wounds like that.
I returned home late in the afternoon. My mother did not ask me where I had been.
I remember little else about that Passover, save the quality of menacing darkness that seeped into everything we said and did inside that apartment. All my life, I had loved that festival. It had meant for me warmth and love, the end of winter and the coming of grass and summer sun. Now it was choked with bitterness and fear. My father dominated the apartment on the nights when he was there, and dominated it, too, on the days when he was not. The small kitchen echoed his anger. I lay awake in the nights and heard his shouts even when the apartment was silent and the only sound in my room was the soft scraping of the window shade against the sill.
He seemed a different person. He was in his mid-thirties now, but his red hair had begun to gray. There were weblike lines around his eyes and deep wedges along his forehead and on the bridge between his eyes. He had never been a happy person; but there had always been some moments when he had been light-hearted and frivolous. That was all gone now. He carried himself erect; he was tall and strong. But he carried, too, a burden he had brought back with him from Europe, the burden of the years it would take him to realize his dream.
He had his own dream. He needed all his strength for that dream. Interference drained his strength. He would fight interference. It was clear enough that he now regarded me as a serious interference.
He said very little to me during the last two days of the festival. He spent most of his time in the synagogue. In the apartment, he read a Hasidic book or talked with my mother. There was another loud quarrel the night after Passover. It took me out of deep sleep and was over even before I came fully awake. But I was awake enough to feel a sense of fear at his presence and, together with the fear, a sense of sudden anger at my helplessness.
I was not unhappy to hear my mother wish him a safe journey two days after Passover and see him go off to his waiting aircraft, limping slightly, his black attaché case and a copy of the New York Times in his hands.
I chose two subjects, the two I knew concerned him most: Talmud and Bible. I began to study those two subjects. I read and memorized. I did not stop drawing, but I did not draw as often as I had earlier. Whenever I felt unable to study, I remembered the quarrels and my mother’s pale features, and I studied. I studied only what I thought the teacher wanted me to know for class and for tests. I continued going to the museum, but less frequently than before. I continued copying paintings of Jesus and nudes, and other subjects as well.
My mother saw me studying and said nothing. My teacher smiled triumphantly. The mashpia blessed me. At the end of May, my mother told me she had written to my father about the improvement in my schoolwork.
My father wrote habitually two or three times a week. By the end of the first week in June, ten days had passed without mail from him. By the end of the second week, there was still no mail, and my mother was showing signs of concern. She called the Rebbe’s office and was told they, too, had not heard from my father and that she should have faith in the Master of the Universe, everything would be all right. By the middle of the fourth week, my mother seemed ill; her face was sallow; there was darkness around her eyes; when I talked to her, she did not hear me. She did not get out of bed on Thursday. Mrs. Rackover came early, gave me breakfast, and sent me off to school.
Late that night, I heard my mother in the living room, chanting from the Book of Psalms. I came quietly into the room and saw her standing by the window. The room was dark. She stood by the window staring out into the street and chanting Psalms by heart. Then she stopped. She moved forward slightly, inclined her head, and rested her forehead against the window-pane. “Yaakov, do not let anything happen to Aryeh,” she said softly in Yiddish. “Yaakov, are you listening? This is your sister. Do not let anything happen to my Aryeh. Are you listening to me, Yaakov? Please. Yaakov. Please.”
I went back to my room. I did not sleep that night.
The next day, Friday, was the final day of my school year. My mother was unable to get out of bed and would not eat all day. I spent that Shabbos with my Uncle Yitzchok and his family. My uncle tried hard not to let me see his fear, and failed.
Early Monday morning, the phone rang. My mother answered it. I heard her talking in Yiddish. It was a brief conversation.
I stood next to her in our hallway.
“The Rebbe’s office called. Your father is in Vienna.”
“Where was he all that time?”
“They only told me that he was safe in Vienna.”
“He would have written if he had been Vienna all that time.”
“Yes.”
“He was in Russia,” I said.
“Get dressed,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day outside. We’ll go somewhere. Where do you want to go, Asher? Let’s go to Prospect Park. We’ll go to Prospect Park and take food for a picnic and we’ll even go rowing. You can draw me rowing. But don’t draw me if I fall backward off the seat. Then we’ll go to the museum. Yes,” she said, “we’ll go to the museum.”
We spent the summer in the bungalow colony in the Berkshires. I painted and drew and studied Talmud and Bible. My mother read and worked on the last section of her master’s dissertation. She was in her early thirties now, and she seemed particularly lovely that summer, rowing with me along the lake, walking with me beneath the pines, watching a summer rain with me from the porch of our bungalow. I drew her over and over again that summer.
My father spent the summer in Vienna. He returned a week before Rosh Hashonoh. His dark eyes glittered with achievement. It had been a good summer. Ladover yeshivos were opening in Vienna and Paris. Yes, it had been an excellent summer. He said nothing to me about my studies.
I remember that Rosh Hashonoh. I remember the sounding of the shofar, the congregation standing, a sea of heads covered with prayer shawls, the Rebbe at the podium, the shofar at his lips. He wore a long white garment over his
dark clothes. On the podium lay the white sacks filled with pieces of paper containing prayers the people wished the Rebbe to say for them. He sounded the shofar over the prayers. The sounds pierced the silence. Over and over, he sounded the shofar. I remember that day because I saw my father look up from his prayer book and stare at me across the synagogue. He stared at me through almost the entire sounding of the shofar. It occurred to me later that one of the prayers in those sacks had contained my name.
He asked me during Succos if I thought I would want to come to Vienna the following year. But now I did not want to be any place where he was, for he had set himself up as an adversary to me and I feared going with him. He could not force me now to go to Vienna; my schoolwork was good. I had the feeling he regretted the improvement in my grades.
He left for Vienna toward the end of October, two days after Simchas Torah.
The following summer, my mother went to Europe. She told me in the last week of June that she missed my father very much; five days later she sailed to Le Havre. She had her master’s degree now and was working on her doctorate. From time to time throughout the year, she had gone to the Ladover building; for meetings with the Rebbe’s staff, she had said in answer to my questions.
I lived with my Uncle Yitzchok all that summer. I drew and painted and spent a lot of time in Yudel Krinsky’s store. He was married now. He no longer wore the kaskett. I ran errands for him. Occasionally I ran errands for my Uncle Yitzchok.
That was the summer three new Ladover families moved into the big apartment house across the street from my Uncle Yitzchok’s home, all of them from Russia. I would watch them from the stoop of my uncle’s house—shy, hesitant, bewildered, glancing fearfully at whoever came near them. There was a boy my age in one of the families. I saw him on the street one day in front of his apartment house. I went over to him. He was shorter and thinner than I and had wide eyes and long dangling earlocks.
“How are you?” I said in Yiddish.
He looked at me suspiciously.
“Welcome to Brooklyn.”
He started to turn away.
“My name is Asher Lev.”
He stopped and gazed at me intently, his eyes narrow. I saw him glance quickly around.
“The son of Reb Aryeh Lev?” he said in a quiet voice.
“Yes.”
“How do I know you are the son of Reb Aryeh Lev?”
“Everyone knows.”
“Yes? Everyone?” He glanced around again. “What do you want?”
“Where are you from in Russia?”
He looked at me again out of narrowed eyes. “Tashkent.”
“Did you meet my father in Russia?”
His lip stiffened.
“How did my father get you out?”
“Who said your father got us out? Who said that?” He seemed suddenly frightened. “I never said that.”
“I thought he might have helped to get you out.”
“Listen, what do you want from me? Ask your father.”
“My father is in Europe.”
“Listen,” he said in a thin tight voice. “In Russia, there are Jews with beards and earlocks who spy for the government. What do you want from me? If your father will not tell you, how can I tell you? I do not know anything.”
He turned and walked quickly away and disappeared into the apartment house. I did not speak to him again.
Seven
The mashpia called me into his office. The Rebbe wanted to meet with me, he said. The Rebbe met with all the yeshiva students who were about to become bnai mitzvah, he said. The Rebbe especially wanted to meet with me alone; he gave quiet and resonant emphasis to the word yechidus—alone.
A week before my meeting with the Rebbe, I began going to the office of the mashpia every day after school. We studied Torah and Hasidus. The mashpia was preparing me for my meeting with the Rebbe.
We studied about three kinds of Jews in the world: the rosho, the one who sins and has evil thoughts, whose efforts to live a good life are an endless struggle—most of us are in that category, the mashpia said sadly; the benoni, the one whose acts are without fault but who cannot control his thinking—very few achieve that high level, the mashpia said; and the tzaddik—a tzaddik can only be born, the mashpia said. It is the greatest gift of the Ribbono Shel Olom; yes, a tzaddik can only be born. Only tzaddikim have control over their hearts; the mashpia said, quoting the Midrash.
We studied the meaning of the verse in Deuteronomy, “But the thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” What does the word very come to teach us? That the person whose understanding in the knowledge of the Master of the Universe is limited, who cannot comprehend the greatness of the blessed Being Without End, who cannot produce awe and love of God in his mind and understanding—such a person can nevertheless come to fear and love God through the observance of all the commandments of the Torah, for the commandments are very near to all Jews.
We studied the meaning of the verse in Proverbs “The candle of God is the soul of man.” The souls of Jews are like the flame of a candle, the mashpia said. The flame burns upward; it seeks to be parted from the wick in order to unite with its source above, in the universal element of fire. Similarly, the soul of the Jew yearns to separate itself and depart from the body in order to unite with the Master of the Universe, even though this means that nothing will remain of its former nature as a distinct and separate entity. It is in the nature of the Jewish soul to desire this union with the Being Without End, unlike the souls of the Gentiles, which are derived from the Other Side and which strive to remain independent beings and entities.
We studied about the sitra achra, the Other Side, the realm of darkness and evil given life by God not out of His true desire but in the manner of one who reluctantly throws something over his shoulder to an enemy, thereby making it possible for God to punish the wicked who help the sitra achra and reward the righteous who subjugate it.
I did not understand many of the things that we studied, especially his explanations of the verse in Proverbs and his account of the difference between Jewish and Gentile souls. But he was a patient teacher and I enjoyed the hours I spent with him. I did not draw or paint that week.
My father was home the January night of my meeting with the Rebbe. He said to me in Yiddish as I was putting on my coat, “Remember with whom you will be speaking.”
He seemed tense and apprehensive. My mother looked proud.
It was a cold night. I walked quickly along the parkway. A winter wind blew through the street; I heard it in the bare trees overhead. The sky was clear and dark, jeweled with cold and distant stars.
I came into the Ladover building and walked up the stairway to the second floor. I had been told to go to the room at the end of the corridor to my right. The corridor was carpeted. Bright lights burned inside ceiling fixtures. I came to the room and opened the door.
It was a large waiting room with white walls, a single window in the wall to my right, and a heavy wooden door in the wall across from the window. There was a desk beneath the window and chairs along the walls. On the wall opposite the doorway where I stood was a framed photograph of the Rebbe. Rav Mendel Dorochoff sat behind the desk. He wore dark clothes and a tall dark skullcap. He was the Rebbe’s gabbai, the chief of staff, the one who arranged the Rebbe’s meetings and could speak in the name of the Rebbe with the same authority as the Rebbe.
The only other person in the room was a tall heavy-shouldered man in a dark winter coat and baggy brown trousers. His face was ruddy and deeply lined. He had a white walrus mustache and a thick shock of flowing white hair. His hands were huge, and he wore a dark beret. He was writing in a small pad he held in his left hand. He glanced up at me as I entered, smiled vaguely, and resumed writing in the pad. I could not remember ever having seen him before.
I went over to the desk. Rav Dorochoff looked up.
“Good evening, Asher Lev,” he said in Yiddish. He had a deep nasal voi
ce and sharp gray eyes. He was in his late forties, but his beard was coal black, as was the hair beneath the skullcap. “Your mother is well?”
I nodded.
“You have no tongue?” he said, looking at me.
I found my voice. “My mother is well, thank you.” I spoke in Yiddish.
Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the man in the beret smile faintly. I could not tell if he was smiling over my lost voice or over something he had written in his pad.
“Sit down,” Rav Dorochoff said. “The Rebbe will see you soon.”
I sat down two chairs to the right of the man in the beret. Rav Dorochoff sat behind the desk reading sheets of paper filled with Hebrew or Yiddish typing. I sat very still in the chair. It was a hard wooden chair with a straight back. The man next to me flipped a page in his pad and continued writing. An aircraft passed overhead. The man shook his head, flipped another page, and went on writing. He held the pad in his hand close to his chest. I looked closely at the pad and saw he was not writing but drawing. I looked away and sat very still, facing the door set into the wall opposite the window and the desk. It was a heavy wooden door, stained walnut. Gentle arabesques of thin dark metal played along its surface. Long triangular wedges of metal hinged the door to its frame. I felt eyes on my face. I felt them moving across my chest. I kept staring at the door. I felt the eyes leave my face for a moment; then I felt them again. I glanced at the man in the beret. He looked back at me. He had pale-blue eyes. He smiled vaguely through the thick walrus mustache, then looked down again at his pad. I glanced over at Rav Dorochoff. He sat at the desk, reading. The room was very still. The man in the beret flipped the page of his pad and went on drawing.
The door opposite me opened soundlessly. A woman stepped nimbly into the room and closed the door behind her. She was tall and slim and well dressed. She went quickly through the room and out the door.
Rav Dorochoff got up from behind his desk, motioned me to follow him, crossed the room, and opened the heavy wooden door. He stepped back and waved me across the threshold. The door closed soundlessly behind me.