My Name Is Asher Lev (18 page)

“The first ones we saw?”

“Yes.”

“They were about a man called Jesus.”

Next to us on the platform stood an old man with a gray beard and a dark hat and coat. He was reading a Yiddish newspaper. He looked up from the newspaper and stared at my mother.

I felt my mother’s fingers on my arm. We moved away from the old man.

“I know about Jesus,” I said. “Jesus is the God of the goyim.”

“Jesus was a Jew who lived in Eretz Yisroel at the time of the Romans. The Romans killed him. That was the way Romans executed people. They hung them from those big poles, the way you saw in the paintings.”

“Were many Jews killed by the Romans?”

“Thousands. Tens of thousands.”

“Why did the Romans kill Jesus?”

“He said he was the moshiach. They thought he would make a revolution against them.”

“Was he the moshiach, Mama?”

“No. He was not the moshiach. The moshiach has not yet come, Asher. Look how much suffering there is in the world. Would there be so much suffering if the moshiach had really come?”

“Why are there so many paintings about him if he wasn’t the moshiach?”

“The goyim believe he was the moshiach. The goyim believe he was the son of the Ribbono Shel Olom. They make paintings of him because he is holy to them.”

“What does that mean, the son of the Ribbono Shel Olom?”

“I don’t begin to understand it,” my mother said. She was silent a moment, staring moodily at the tracks. Then she said, “Where your painting has brought me, Asher. To Jesus.” She shook her head.

The train roared out of the darkness into the station. Our car was crowded. I stood next to my mother, holding tightly to a pole and swaying with the motions of the car. A film of perspiration covered my mother’s forehead and upper lip. She was silent all the way home.

Late that night, she came into my room and sat down on my bed. A while earlier, she had heard me say the Krias Shema and had gone from the room. Now she sat on my bed and I felt her against my legs in the darkness.

“Are you awake, Asher?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“I can’t sleep. I was thinking of your father.”

“I missed Papa’s zemiros tonight.”

She stirred faintly on the bed.

“I especially miss Papa on Shabbos.”

“Yes,” she said. “I also miss your father especially on Shabbos.”

“Papa would be very angry if he knew about the museum.”

“He would be very angry.”

“Will you tell him?”

“Of course I’ll tell him.”

I was quiet.

“Asher, would you go to the museum if I told you not to?”

I did not say anything.

“Asher?”

“I don’t know, Mama. Please don’t tell me not to.”

I heard her sigh. “I wish I knew what to do,” she said. “I hope the Ribbono Shel Olom will help me not to hurt your father. Look where it’s taken us, Asher. Your painting. It’s taken us to Jesus. And to the way they paint women. Painting is for goyim, Asher. Jews don’t draw and paint.”

“Chagall is a Jew.”

“Religious Jews, Asher. Torah Jews. Such Jews don’t draw and paint. What would the Rebbe say if he knew we were in the museum? God forbid the Rebbe should find out.”

I didn’t know what the Rebbe would say. It frightened me to think that the Rebbe might be angry.

“I wish I knew what to do,” my mother murmured. “I wish your father was home.”

The next Monday, I went alone to the museum after school and spent an hour copying paintings of Jesus into my sketchbook. I noticed two guards watching me and whispering to each other. People went by and stared curiously. A short big-chested man looked at me, looked at my sketchbook, then scowled and walked stiffly away. I worked slowly and carefully, copying with a pencil into the sketchbook. It was only later, on my way home, that it occurred to me how strange it must have been to see a red-haired boy in a black skullcap and dangling ear-locks
standing in a museum and copying paintings about Jesus.

I showed the drawings to my mother. “I’m teaching myself to draw better this way, Mama.”

She was horrified. “Do you know how much Jewish blood has been spilled because of him, Asher? How could you spend your precious time doing this?”

“But I needed to, Mama.”

“There are other paintings you can copy, Asher.”

“But I needed the expression, Mama. I couldn’t find that expression anywhere else.”

She stared intently at the drawings. Then she sighed and shook her head. She seemed not to know what to say.

Two days later, I went back to the museum and copied paintings of women without clothes. I drew them slowly, following the contours with care. I found it difficult to do. I returned the next day and the day after. I did not show any of those drawings to my mother.

For the rest of March and through the first week of April, I went to that museum every chance I had. By the second week of April, I was able to draw many of the figures in the paintings from memory.

My mother was busy preparing the apartment for Passover and at the same time writing a dissertation for her master’s degree. She knew I was going regularly to the museum. But she said nothing more to me about it.

Late in the night of the second Sunday in April, I felt someone moving about near my bed and heard whispered voices. I knew it was a dream about my mythic ancestor. I lay in the bed with my eyes closed and waited for him to appear. The voices ceased. My ancestor did not appear. I went on sleeping. The next morning, I came into the kitchen and found my father at the table with an orange in his hand.

*    *    *

He had lost a lot of weight. He looked weary and gaunt. He did not greet me. He ordered me to sit down. My mother looked small and pale. He knew about the oil-color set. He knew about the visits to the museum. He had seen the sketchbook filled with drawings of Jesus and nudes. He had spent half a year of his life creating yeshivos and teaching Torah and Hasidus all over Europe. Then he had returned to America and had discovered that his own home was now inhabited by pagans. He was in an uncontrollable rage. I had never before seen him in such a rage. Even years ago, when he had once talked on the telephone about how Russians treated Jews, there had not been this quality of relentless and lashing fury to his anger. My drawings had touched something fundamental to his being. He kept talking about my drawings of “that man.” He would not pronounce the name. Did I know how much Jewish blood had been spilled because of that man? Did I know how many Jews had been killed in the name of that man during the Crusades? Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man? Did I know that his father, olov hasholom, my grandfather, had been murdered by a Russian peasant who was celebrating a holiday having to do with that man? And the other drawings, the drawings of women and girls—didn’t I know that the body was the gift of the Ribbono Shel Olom; that the Torah forbade us to treat it without modesty; that such drawings were vile, that they followed in the ways of the goyim; that Jews, Torah Jews, would never think of drawing such things? The body was a private and sacred domain. To display that privacy in a painting was disgusting. And look what all the time I wasted drawing had done to my schoolwork. I acted as if I weren’t going to school at all. What was the matter with me? Where had I been born? Whose son was I? What had I been learning all these years? How
could I have done such things? Why wasn’t I studying? Did I want him to regret all the work he had done in Europe? Did I want to destroy the task he had chosen for himself? Did I want to shame him? Did I want to shame myself?

Day after day, this went on. He did not talk to me any more; he shouted. In the night, I heard him shouting at my mother. They began to fight regularly.

“Why does Papa yell at you?” I asked my mother one night toward the end of that week. We were in the living room together. She was at her desk. My father was at a meeting with the Rebbe.

“Your father is upset.”

“But he yells at you. Why does he have to yell at you? He never yelled at you like that before.”

“He gave me a responsibility.”

“What responsibility, Mama?”

“To raise you.”

“Papa is yelling at you because he doesn’t think you’re raising me?”

“Your father came home and saw your drawings and your school marks and was very upset.”

“What was Papa yelling last night?”

“He was upset that I bought you oil colors.”

“Why?”

“Your father thinks I’m encouraging your foolishness. I told your father I bought you oil colors because I hoped you would thank me by studying harder in school.”

“You didn’t tell me that, Mama.”

“I know.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, Asher.”

“Why did you buy me the oil colors?”

“So you shouldn’t steal them again from Reb Yudel Krinsky.”

I felt my face go very hot.

“I have at least two more hours of work left, Asher. Please go to your room. Draw if you want. But don’t draw Jesus or any of the other things. I can’t talk to you any more now. Please.”

My father said to me at the kitchen table the next morning, “Asher, stop drawing with your fork on the napkin, and eat.”

I put the fork back into the plate of eggs in front of me. I was thinking that the coffee in my mother’s cup might make a good color to wash across a face I had drawn the night before. I felt something on my hand, something very hard and tight, and I looked down and saw my father’s fingers clenched around my wrist. I stared in astonishment at the fingers, saw the bones jut out from beneath the flesh, saw the ridges of the knuckles, then felt the pain move up swiftly through my arm. He was squeezing the wrist of my right arm; his face, pale within its frame of red beard, was contorted with rage. I cried out. My mother shouted something. Above the noise of her shout, I heard something clatter to the table. The fork. I had without thinking begun to use the fork again as a drawing instrument. My mother shouted something again. I began to cry. My father released my hand. My wrist throbbed. I could not stop crying. My mother continued to shout. My father stood at the table, his face pale, all of him quivering with rage.

They were screaming at each other, my mother and father. They were screaming at each other and I sat there listening, wanting to run away but not daring to move, feeling the pain and the fear and knowing that it was because of me and not knowing what I could do about any of it. I stared at my wrist. It looked blotched. I could see the marks of my father’s fingers on the skin. I flexed it slowly. Nothing seemed broken.

“… ignored by my own son,” my father was shouting. “Kibud ov. Where is kibud ov? I will not bring up such a son.”

I started to say something. My mother interrupted. Her face was white with anger.

“Please,” I said. “Papa. Please.”

They ignored me. My mother said something in Russian. My father replied in Russian.

“Papa, please,” I said, raising my voice. “Papa, please!”

They both looked at me.

“Please don’t be angry at me, Papa. I can’t help it.”

They looked at each other. Then they looked again at me.

“An animal can’t help it,” my father said. “A human being can always help it.”

“I can’t help it, Papa,” I said.

“A man has a will,” my father said. “Do you understand me, Asher? The Ribbono Shel Olom gave every man a will. Every man is responsible for what he does, because he has a will and by that will he directs his life. There is no such thing as a man who can’t help it. Only a sick man can’t help it.”

“Aryeh,” my mother said. “Aryeh.” I barely heard her. Her voice was almost inaudible. She was talking to the surface of the table.

“I have a will, Papa. It makes me want to draw.”

“That’s an evil will. You must fight that will. That will comes from the Other Side.”

“I can’t fight it, Papa.”

“You will fight it. You will not waste your life with goyische foolishness. No, it isn’t foolishness any more. It’s worse than foolishness. You bring drawings of that man into the house. You bring drawings of girls without clothes into the house. What next? Next you will become a goy. Better you should not have been born.”

My mother gasped.

“Listen to me,” my father said. He was speaking suddenly in Yiddish. “I am killing myself for the Ribbono Shel Olom. I
have broken up my family for the Ribbono Shel Olom. I do not see my wife for months because of my work for the Ribbono Shel Olom. I came home for Pesach to be with my family, to be with the Rebbe, to rest. And what do I find? You know what I find. And what do I hear? I hear my son telling me he cannot stop drawing pictures of naked women and that man. Listen to me, Asher. This will stop. You will fight it. Or I will force you to return to Vienna with me after the summer. Better you should stay in Vienna and be a little crazy than you should stay in New York and become a goy.”

“Ribbono Shel Olom,” my mother breathed. “Aryeh, please.”

“We must fight against the Other Side, Rivkeh,” my father shouted in Yiddish. “We must fight against it! Otherwise it will destroy the world.”

All through that day, I kept hearing my father’s words. We must fight against it. Otherwise it will destroy the world. The words echoed throughout the apartment as we went through the final preparations for Passover, cleaning, repapering shelves, stacking the Passover foods. We must fight against it, I heard my father say. We must fight against it. In the afternoon, when I was no longer needed in the kitchen, I went into my room and drew my father angry, drew a picture of him in reds and browns, angry and shouting. It was a good picture. I put it into my desk beneath a pile of books.

He seemed to forget his anger that night and we sat at the Shabbos table. We sang zemiros. He told us of his travels and his work. There would be Ladover yeshivos one day in all the great cities of Europe, he said. But it would take time. And patience. And faith in the Ribbono Shel Olom. He was gentle, docile, apologetic, especially toward my mother. I saw him glancing at her repeatedly during the meal. Finally, she smiled at him. He began to sing a joyous Ladover tune. We joined him and the three of us sang together.