My father spoke English, Yiddish, or Hebrew into the phones. But the second week I was in his office I heard him use a language I did not recognize. On our way back to the apartment for lunch, I asked him what language it had been.
“That was French, Asher,” he said.
“I never heard my papa speak French before.”
“I use it when I need it, Asher. I don’t need it around the house.”
“Does Mama speak French?”
“No, Asher.”
“Did you learn French in Europe, Papa?”
“I learned it in America. The Rebbe asked me to study it.”
“Didn’t the Frenchman on the phone know Yiddish, Papa?”
“The Frenchman on the phone wasn’t a Jew.”
“What did my papa speak to him about?”
“You are full of questions today, Asher. Now I have a question. Your papa also has questions sometimes. Here is my question. Do you think Mrs. Rackover made chocolate pudding for dessert? You wanted chocolate pudding.”
Mrs. Rackover had not made chocolate pudding.
Even when my father used the languages I understood, it was often not clear to me what he was saying. Calls seemed to come to him from all over the country. He would listen and write. He would talk into the phone about train and boat schedules, about this person flying here and that person sailing there, about one community in New Jersey that did not have enough prayer books, another community in Boston that needed school-books, a third community in Chicago whose building had been vandalized. At the end of a day behind that desk, he would be tired and a dark look would fill his eyes.
“I’m not made for this,” he would say. “I need people. I hate sitting with telephones.”
He would walk home with me in brooding silence.
One day, he spent almost an entire morning on the telephone arranging to move two Ladover families from somewhere in France to the United States.
“Why are they moving, Papa?” I asked him on the way home to lunch.
“To be near the Rebbe.”
“What is the State Department, Papa?”
He told me.
“Why did you talk to that man in the State Department?”
“He’s the man who is helping the families to come to America.”
“How is he helping?”
“Asher, you’ve asked enough questions. Now it’s my turn. Are you ready? Do you think Mrs. Rackover finally made chocolate pudding for dessert?”
Mrs. Rackover had indeed made chocolate pudding for dessert. My absence from the apartment had begun to mellow her.
Late one afternoon toward the end of March, I sat in my father’s office drawing the trees I could see through his window. One of the telephones rang. My father put down his pen, picked up the receiver, and listened for a moment. I looked at his face and stopped drawing.
Lines of anger were forming around his eyes and along his forehead. Two sharp furrows appeared above the bridge of his nose between his eyes. His lips became rigid. He gripped the phone so tightly I could see the knuckles of his hand go white. He listened for a long time. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice of cold rage. He used a language I had never heard before. He spoke briefly, listened again for a length of time, spoke again briefly, then hung up. He sat at the desk for a moment, staring at the phone. He wrote something on a piece of paper, read over what he had written, made some corrections, then picked up the paper and went quickly from the office.
I sat there alone. One of the phones rang. Then the second phone rang. The first stopped ringing. The second continued. The ringing sounded suddenly piercing and thunderous inside that little office. I went out and spent the rest of the day on the flagstone porch, drawing the street.
On the way home, I asked my father what language he had spoken.
“When?”
“When you were angry, Papa.”
“Russian,” he said.
“You were very angry, Papa.”
“Yes.”
“Did the man hurt you?”
“No, Asher. He was telling me what some people are doing to hurt others.”
“They’re hurting Jews, Papa?”
“Yes.”
We were walking together along the street. The parkway was clogged with late-afternoon traffic.
“There are lots of goyim in the world, Papa.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed.”
That evening, my mother refused to join us for supper. I heard my father through the closed door of their bedroom, pleading with her. “Rivkeh, please eat with us. We ask you to eat with us. You can’t go on like this, Rivkeh.” She would not move from the bed. We ate in heavy silence without her, served by Mrs. Rackover.
Later that night, I was awakened by the sound of my father’s voice. I went on bare feet along the hallway and looked into the living room. He was standing in front of the window, chanting softly from the Book of Psalms.
The next day, there were more phone calls in Russian. My father was tense and restless. Between calls, he sat staring morosely at the top of his desk. He went to the window and stood gazing out at the busy parkway. He paced the floor. He seemed caged.
He saw me looking at him. “I’m not made for desks, Asher.” He rubbed the side of his face. “I should be there, not here. How can I spend my life talking on the telephone? Who can sit like this all day?”
“I like to sit, Papa.”
He gave me a dark brooding look. “Yes,” he said. “I know you like to sit.”
I held up the drawing I had made that morning of my father behind his desk talking into a telephone. It showed him with an angry face.
“It was before, when you were talking Russian, Papa.”
He looked at the drawing. He looked at it a long time. Then he looked at me. Then he sat down behind the desk. One of the phones rang. He picked it up, listened for a moment, then began talking in Yiddish. I went out and spent the rest of the day on the porch, drawing the trees and the cars and the old women on the benches along the street.
My mother joined us for supper that evening. She smoked cigarette after cigarette. She had put on one of her blond wigs, but it was awry and gave her head a grotesque elongated look. My father tried talking to her but she would not respond. Finally, he gave it up. We ate in silence. The cigarette smoke formed an acrid cloud around our heads. Mrs. Rackover moved about quietly. From time to time, I heard her sigh.
Toward the end of the meal, I said abruptly, “I made a drawing today, Mama.” My thin voice sounded loud in the smoky silence of the kitchen.
My father had been sitting tiredly over his food. Now he looked at me, startled.
“Yes?” my mother said in a dead voice. “Yes? Was it a pretty drawing?”
“It was a drawing of my papa on the telephone.”
“On the telephone,” my mother echoed. She looked dully at my father.
“Asher,” my father said quietly.
“It was a good drawing, Mama.”
“Was it a pretty drawing, Asher?”
“No, Mama. But it was a good drawing.”
Her eyes narrowed. They seemed tiny slits in the blue-gray darkness of her sockets.
“I don’t want to make pretty drawings, Mama.”
She lit another cigarette. Her hands trembled faintly. An odor rose from her, fetid, cloying. I put down my fork and stopped eating. My father took a deep breath. Mrs. Rackover stood very still near the sink.
“Yes?” my mother said. Her voice was sharp. “I want the pennies now, Yaakov.”
“Rivkeh,” my father said. “Please.”
“You should make the world pretty, Asher,” my mother whispered, leaning toward me. I could smell her breath.
“I don’t like the world, Mama. It’s not pretty. I won’t draw it pretty.”
I felt my father’s fingers on my arm. He was hurting me.
“Yes?” my mother said. “Yes?” She stubbed out the cigarette she had just lit and began to light
another. Her hands trembled visibly. “No, no, Asher. No, no. You must not dislike God’s world. Even if it is unfinished.”
“I hate the world,” I said.
“Stop it,” my father said.
“You must not hate, you must not hate,” my mother whispered. “You must try to finish.”
“Mama, when will you get well?”
“Asher!” someone said.
“Mama, I want you to get well.”
“Asher!”
To this day, I have no idea what happened then. There was a sensation of something tearing wide apart inside me and a steep quivering climb out of myself. I felt myself suddenly another person. I heard that other person screaming, shrieking, beating his fists against the top of the table. “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” that other person kept screaming. I remember nothing after that. Sometime later, I woke in my room. My father stood over my bed, looking exhausted.
“Mama,” I said.
“Your mama is asleep.”
“Mama, please.”
“Go back to sleep, Asher. It’s the middle of the night.”
I was in pajamas. The night light was on near my desk. The slit of window not covered by the shade was black.
“No one likes my drawings,” I said through the fog of half sleep. “My drawings don’t help.”
My father said nothing.
“I don’t like to feel this way, Papa.”
Gently, my father put his hand on my cheek.
“It’s not a pretty world, Papa.”
“I’ve noticed,” my father said softly.
My father’s brother came over to our apartment some time before Passover. He was about five years older than my father, short, somewhat portly, with a round dark-bearded face, watery brown eyes, and full moist lips that collected spittle at the corners when he spoke. He operated a successful jewelry and watch-repair store on Kingston Avenue, a few blocks from where we lived. He had two sons and two daughters and lived in a two-story brownstone on President Street.
We sat in the living room. The window was partly open. The Venetian blind swayed faintly in the breeze that blew into the room.
My father’s brother wanted us to join his family in his home for the Passover sedorim. My father thanked him but would not accept.
“Why?”
“Rivkeh cannot leave the apartment. We’ll have the sedorim here.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
My uncle squinted his watery eyes. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t want to mix into your affairs, but I’m your brother, and if a brother can’t mix, who can? Have you talked to the Rebbe?”
“No.”
“You should talk to the Rebbe.”
My father looked at his hands and said nothing.
“Don’t look away from me like that. Listen to me. I know how you feel about such things. But when our father had trouble he went to the Rebbe’s father. I remember. You were only a baby. But I remember.”
“It’s not yet time to go to the Rebbe.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“The doctor doesn’t say anything any more.”
“Then it’s time. Believe me, it’s time. What are you waiting for? People go to the Rebbe because they have a cold.”
“I’m not such people.”
“Listen to me. You should talk to the Rebbe.”
“The Rebbe has a thousand problems.”
“Then one more can’t hurt. Listen to an older brother. Talk to the Rebbe.”
At that point, my father asked me to leave. I went to my room, sat at my desk, and drew pictures of my uncle. I made him very round and dark-bearded, and I gave him a kind smile and warm eyes. He always wore dark-blue suits, but I made his suit light blue because he did not feel dark blue to me.
I was working on the third picture of my uncle when he and my father came into my room. They stood behind me. My uncle peered over my shoulder at the drawings.
“This is a six-year-old boy?” he said softly.
My father said nothing.
“A little Chagall,” my uncle said.
I felt more than saw my father make a motion with his hands and head.
“I fix watches and sell jewelry,” my uncle said. “But I have eyes.”
“Who is Chagall?” I asked.
“A great artist,” my uncle said.
“Is he the greatest artist in the world?”
“He is the greatest Jewish artist in the world.”
“Who is the greatest artist?”
My uncle thought a moment. “Picasso,” he said.
“Picasso,” I said, tasting the name. “Picasso. Is Picasso American?”
“Picasso is Spanish. But he lives in France.”
“What does Picasso look like?” I asked.
My uncle pursed his lips and squinted his eyes. “He is short and bald and has dark burning eyes.”
“How do you know about such things?” my father asked.
“I read. A watchmaker does not necessarily have to be an ignoramus.”
“It’s late,” my father said to me. “Get into your pajamas, Asher. I’ll come back to put you to sleep.”
“A regular Chagall,” my uncle said.
I turned in my chair and looked up at him. “No,” I said. “My name is Asher Lev.”
The two of them stared at me for a moment. My father’s mouth dropped open a little. My uncle laughed softly.
“This is six years old?” he said. “Good night, Asher.” Then he said, “I want to buy one of these drawings. Will you sell it to me for this?”
He took a coin from his pocket and showed it to me. He picked up one of the drawings and put the coin in its place. “Now I own an early Lev,” he said, with a smile.
I did not understand what he was saying. I looked at my father. His face was dark.
“Good night, Asher,” my uncle said.
They went out of the room.
The coin gleamed in the light of the lamp on my desk. I could not understand what had happened. I found myself suddenly missing the drawing and afraid to touch the coin. I wanted the drawing back.
My father came into the room. He held the drawing in his hand. Without a word, he put it on the desk and took the coin. He was angry.
“Your Uncle Yitzchok has a strange sense of humor,” he said, and went from my room.
I looked at the drawing. I felt happy to have it back. But I felt unhappy my uncle had not kept it. It was a strange feeling. I could not understand it.
My father returned to the room. “I asked you to get into pajamas,” he said.
I began to undress. He sat on my bed, watching me. He did not offer to help.
“Is my papa angry?” I asked when I came back from the bathroom.
“Your papa’s tired,” he said. Then he said, “Asher, would you like to go to Uncle Yitzchok for the sedorim?”
“Will you and Mama be with me?”
“Your mama can’t leave the house.”
“I want to be with you and Mama.”
He sighed softly and was silent a moment. Then he shook his head. “Master of the Universe,” he said in Yiddish. “What are You doing?”
The weather turned warm. Green buds appeared on the trees. The sun shone into the living room through the huge window. The rug and white walls and furniture shimmered with light. The light seemed to have a life of its own. On Shabbos and Sunday afternoons, when my father did not go to his office, I stayed in the living room and watched the sunlight. I watched the colors change. I watched new shapes come alive and die in the slow movement of color and light. Sometimes my eyes would hurt after a day of watching.
My mother began to sit in the living room in the sunlight. She sat on the sofa near the window, her eyes closed, sunlight bathing her face. She rarely moved once she sat down on the sofa. Her skin was sallow, translucent. She seemed drained of substance, dry skin and brittle bones surrounding empty space.
One Sunday
afternoon, I brought my pencil and pad into the living room and drew my mother sitting on the sofa. I drew the sagging curve of her shoulders and back, the concave depression of her chest, the bony stalks of her arms crossed on her lap, the tilt of her head resting against a shoulder with the sun full on her eyes. She did not appear to be bothered by the sun. It was as if there were nothing behind her eyes for the sun to bother.
I was having trouble with her face. The cheek on the left side of her face dropped sharply into a concave plane from the high ridge of bone. I could not do the shading with the pencil. There were gradations of darkness in the shade which the pencil could not capture. I tried it once and it did not work. I used the eraser. Then I tried it again and used the eraser again, and now the drawing was smudged; some of the line had been weakened. I put it away and on a new piece of paper once again drew the outer contour of my mother’s body and the inner contour of her arms. I left the face blank for a while, then filled in the eyes and nose and mouth. I did not want to use the pencil again. The drawing felt incomplete. It bothered me to have it incomplete. I closed my eyes and looked at the drawing inside myself, went over its contours inside myself, and it was incomplete. I opened my eyes. Along the periphery of my vision, I saw the ashtray on the table next to the sofa. It was filled with my mother’s smoked-out cigarettes. I looked at the crushed dark ends of the cigarettes. Quietly I went to the ashtray and brought it to my chair. I put it on the floor. Then, holding the pad with the drawing on my lap, I carefully brushed the burnt end of a cigarette onto my mother’s face. The ash left an ugly smudge. I rubbed the smudge with my pinkie. It spread smoothly, leaving a gray film. I used the ash from another cigarette. The gray film deepened. I worked a long time. I used cigarette ash on the part of her shoulder not in sunlight and on the folds of her housecoat. The contours of her body began to come alive. I was working on the shadows in the sockets of her eyes when I realized that my father was in the room watching me.
I had no idea how long he had been standing in the doorway. But from the way he was leaning against the wall near the doorway I thought he had been there a long time. He was not looking at me but at the drawing. He could see the drawing clearly from where he stood. There was fascination and perplexity on his face. He seemed awed and angry and confused and dejected, all at the same time.