The Gift of Asher Lev

by Chaim Potok

  I asked Rocheleh if the drawings I had made the day before were still on the blackboard. She said they had been erased before she got to school.

  Later, I said to Devorah, “Why do you suppose they handled the fight that way?”

  “What way?”

  “An assembly. It could’ve been done in five minutes just with the two boys. Why the whole school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It strikes me as a little strange. The whole school called out for a little incident like that.”

  “The Rebbe telephoned.”

  “That’s what I mean. Why did the Rebbe get involved with something as trivial as that?”

  “Your father must have told him about it.”

  “I’m sure he did. Why? I was in school fights all the time. My father never interfered, not once. And to go to the Rebbe. Why didn’t my father call Rav Greenspan?”

  “What’s troubling you, my husband?”

  “I don’t know, Dev. I’m ready to go home.”

  “In a week or so. Do you want the children to go back with the taste of fighting in their mouths? For the sake of peace. Another week or so. All right, my husband? For the sake of good memories and peace.”

  Zemiros and riddles filled the air of our Shabbos table that Friday night. Avrumel climbed onto my father’s lap and fell asleep. He slept there, snoring lightly, as we chanted the Grace After Meals. His lip was healing, and his bruised cheek had turned a dull purple with dry under-the-skin blood. Devorah put him to bed and returned to the kitchen. Rocheleh, wearing one of my mother’s aprons over her light-blue dress, helped Devorah and my mother with the dishes. My father asked me if I would like to study with him for a while, and we went into the living room and studied together one of the works written by the Rebbe’s great-grandfather, reading the passages aloud and explaining them to each other. We studied the passage about one who is able to engage in the study of Torah and instead occupies himself with frivolous matters; such a one suffers severe penalties. In like manner, “he who occupies himself with the sciences of the nations of the world is included among those who waste their time with profane matters, insofar as the sin of neglecting the Torah is concerned…. Moreover, the uncleanness of the science of the nations is greater than that of profane speech….” We spent a good deal of time trying to understand the reasons for that. We studied that the sciences are forbidden because they lead to the defilement of the intellectual faculties in the divine soul, and then we came upon a passage that stated the study of science was permissible if “he employs these sciences as a useful instrument, as a means of a more affluent livelihood to be able to serve God, or knows how to apply them in the service of God and His Torah. This is the reason why Maimonides and Nachmonides, of blessed memory, and their adherents engaged in them.” We studied that “all lusts and boasting and anger and similar passions are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the whole body, rising also to the brain and the head…. But the abode of the divine soul is in the brains that are in the head, and from there it extends to all the limbs….” We studied about “the completely righteous man” in whom the evil inclination has been converted to goodness, who utterly despises the pleasures of this world and finds no enjoyment in the mere gratification of the physical appetites instead of seeking the service of God, because the physical appetites originate from the sitra achra, and whatever is of the sitra achra is hated by the perfectly righteous man. We read the words of the great sage Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai: “I have seen superior men, and their numbers are few. The reason for their title of ‘superior men’ is that they convert evil and make it ascend to holiness….”

  My father looked up from the book and gazed off into space, his dark eyes glittering. He combed his long beard with his fingers and swayed slightly back and forth in his armchair and began to sing a Ladover melody. The words and music gently filled the living room, caressing the still air. The curtains were open, and I saw the lawn and the trees, tall and ghostly in the streetlights. A squirrel raced crookedly across the lawn, leaped upon the trunk of a sycamore, and vanished into its dark labyrinthine branches. I sat and listened to my father sing and closed my eyes and let the melody move against me, and it seemed to me at that moment that all was possible, that the world still held open the luminous doors of reconciliation, and I promised myself I would at least advance to the threshold and peer in and see what awaited me inside. I sat very still, listening to my father sing.

  The next morning in the synagogue Avrumel sat with my father, huddled inside the cool white world of his large tallis. The Rebbe did not appear. My Cousin Yonkel was his usual surly self and barely acknowledged my presence. It was a warm spring day washed with brilliant sunlight and canopied by a clean blue sky. We walked home beneath budding trees. Rocheleh said the blue color overhead reminded her of the sky over our home in Saint-Paul. Avrumel, his bruises nearly healed, was walking with my parents. Devorah asked Rocheleh if she was homesick. No, she said. She liked it here. There were girls her age everywhere, her teachers were very good. “But I don’t like the weather,” she said. “It’s like the weather of Paris.”

  “Without the beauty of Paris,” I said.

  “There is beauty here, Papa,” she said. “Making new friends is beautiful. Being close to the Rebbe is beautiful.”

  Devorah smiled deeply.

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re right. They are both beautiful.”

  Later that day, some of my parents’ friends came over to the house, and we sat on the terrace, talking. The warm afternoon air, bathed in sunlight, carried faint hints of coming summer days. My mother, helped by Devorah, served cakes and juice. I listened and on occasion joined the talk, drifting in and out of the waves of conversation. It felt oddly comforting to be here, enfolded, accepted. One of those present was a computer engineer; another, a mathematician. Near me sat a professor of philosophy and a professor of classics. All either lived within walking distance of the synagogue or were spending the Shabbos with relatives or friends in the neighborhood. They were all followers of the Rebbe. We talked about Hasidus and Torah and the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Rebbe. The Ba’al Shem Tov asked: Why was evil, or the appearance of evil, created? So that after surmounting the most difficult of barriers man can enjoy all the more his coming into the presence of the Master of the Universe. We told stories about other Hasidic Rebbes. Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk claimed he was not a miracle worker, only the Ba’al Shem Tov could make miracles, could issue a decree and God would fulfill it; but he, Menachem Mendel, would pray for his Hasidim that they have children, good health, and a means of making a living. Someone told about Nachman of Bratslav, who believed in the virtues of solitude. A man should spend at least one hour each day alone in a room or a field, engaged in secret dialogue with the Master of the Universe. And a man should think only of what he has to do for God that day, and it will not be too burdensome for him. All a man has in the world is the now, the day and the hour where he is, because tomorrow is an entirely different world. Someone else told about Aaron Rokeach of Belz, who found it difficult to rebuke his people, always discovered good in them, no matter what they did, and who would not permit his synagogue to use electricity because the same current provided light for the nearby Catholic church.

  The professor of philosophy, a man in his early sixties, trim and silver-haired, with keen blue eyes and a lively demeanor, asked me what I thought about Chagall being buried in a Catholic cemetery in Saint-Paul. I told him I thought it was shameful and scandalous; for the first time in two thousand years, Jews produced a world-class artist, one who helped shape the modern period—and he’s buried in a Gentile cemetery because his assimilated family wanted him nearby and felt that the Jewish cemetery in Nice was too far away, or was too Jewish. I could not go to the cemetery in Saint-Paul and recite a chapter of Psalms over the grave, because entry into such a cemetery is forbidden to a religious Jew. I could see the cemetery from where I lived, and every time I looked at it
I thought of Chagall buried there. It was an anguish. I saw my father watching me as I talked; his face wore a troubled look, as if he thought I might end up that way, too, if I continued my life as an artist.

  The professor of classics, a handsome-looking woman in her fifties, asked me what I thought about the breakdown of the canons of aesthetic judgment in contemporary art now that Picasso was dead and modernism was over, and we talked about that for a while. Someone, I think it was the mathematician, mentioned having recently seen the film Au Revoir les Enfants and urged everyone to see it. I glanced at Devorah, who was sitting next to my mother; she stiffened perceptibly but remained quiet. I thought it curious that a follower of the Rebbe, in the course of a Shabbos-afternoon conversation, would recommend a film, even a film on the Holocaust. This was not the usual sort of Ladover Shabbos talk. They were interesting people. I could live with such people. Maybe I’ll surprise all of you, after all. I was a little drowsy—the warm air, the sun, the play of light through the now densely budded sycamore—and I drifted away from the conversation.

  In the evening my father and I returned from the synagogue, and my father chanted the brief Havdalah Service. Avrumel held the braided candle; Rocheleh, the spice box. Shabbos was over.

  In our room a few minutes later, Devorah said that she would like me to take her to see Au Revoir les Enfants.

  I said I didn’t think it was a good idea, and whom could we get to watch the children.

  “I asked your parents. They will be happy to stay with the children.”

  “You know what happens when you see movies like that, Dev.”

  “I cannot let them dictate my life to me, Asher. If I let them do that, they remain the masters and I remain defeated. They dictated my life to me for two years. If you don’t want to go, I’ll go alone.”

  We took the subway to the Manhattan theater where the film was playing. There was a long line on the street in front of the theater. The street was ablaze with neon lights and crowded with strollers and young people on dates. We waited in the line to get our tickets, then we waited inside the theater. There was a long line in front of the popcorn counter. Devorah looked pale and said nothing. We sat and watched the film.

  The film is about Jewish boys who are brought to a Catholic boarding school south of Paris near Fontainebleau during the Second World War. Their Jewishness is kept secret, and they try to blend in with the other students. But they are betrayed and, together with the priest who is the headmaster, are taken away by the Germans. The boys and the priest perish in the Holocaust.

  I glanced repeatedly at Devorah in the course of the movie; her face looked white in the flickering lights reflecting off the huge screen.

  She was very quiet during the subway ride home. The parkway and residential streets were dark and deserted, the trees like vaguely menacing sentinels. We let ourselves into the house. My parents and the children were asleep. I brewed up some coffee, and we sat in the kitchen.

  “Memories,” she said, her eyes blinking nervously. “The things we think we’ve forgotten.”

  “I wish we hadn’t seen it.”

  “You protect me too much, Asher. Do you want me to hide from the world? I was hidden long enough.”

  “You don’t have to keep punishing yourself because you survived and the others didn’t.”

  “To remember is not a punishment, Asher. To remember is a victory against the sitra achra, against Hitler, may his name be erased. The film is a sanctification of the name of God. Why should I not participate in it?”

  She sipped from her cup. She had removed her wig. Her long neck and cropped head and ashen features gave her the appearance of a concentration-camp victim. I stared at her and shuddered.

  Later, in our room, Devorah lay in her bed with the lights on and her hand over her eyes.

  “Dev, I wish you wouldn’t insist on seeing those kinds of movies.”

  She turned away from me.

  “Dev?”

  “Leave me alone, Asher. Now I need to be left alone. Please do not turn off the lights.”

  She fell asleep with all the lights in the room burning.

  I woke in the middle of the night and felt her sliding into the bed beside me. She was trembling, and her skin was hot and dry. The lights were on. Her face was flushed, and her eyes looked frenzied. I held her to me and listened to her talk.

  “I can’t remember the food we ate. I remember everything, but not the food. Isn’t that strange?”

  “I don’t know, Dev. Is it?”

  “I remember the smell of the cold air. Like stones. Like caves. Dear God, it was cold in that apartment!”

  “Try to go back to sleep, Dev.”

  “There was no soap. We all had body lice. And scurvy. You see the things I remember. But I can’t remember what we ate. I know we never had meat and almost never had bread. I remember the man who would bring us our food. I’ve told you this before, haven’t I, my husband?”

  “Yes. But tell me again.”

  “He was bald and had a cleft palate and sometimes he wore his pants unbuttoned in front. Eight months he brought us food, and one day he didn’t come. We ate nothing. I told you this.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then an old woman came. ‘I am from the resistance,’ she said. ‘Armand has been arrested. I will bring your food from now on.’ She had a face like wrinkled paper. A pale-blue shawl. A ragged coat. White hair. She smelled like someone who did not bathe. Twice a week she brought us our food. But I can’t remember what we ate. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know, Dev.”

  “I remember Max’s father once gave the woman money to buy two kilos of butter on the black market. She had to walk a long distance. She returned with the butter wrapped in newspaper. We stood around watching Max’s father undo the wrapping. And when the newspapers were all off, we saw it wasn’t butter but an old shoe. Someone had substituted the shoe for the butter right under the old woman’s nose. The old woman was furious and said she would go back the next day to the one who had sold her the butter, but Max’s father said not to do it, he didn’t want to start trouble, he didn’t want anyone asking her who she was and was she buying all that butter for herself or for someone else. Max’s father was nervous all the time. I remember that, my husband. Very clearly. A little man with a skullcap and a goatee standing in a dark corner and talking to himself. That used to frighten me, seeing Max’s father like that, in a dark corner, talking to himself.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. Whenever he did that, he would talk in a language I couldn’t understand. After a while Max’s mother would go over to him and take him into their bedroom. She would tell me children’s stories from books she remembered by heart. I told you this. She had been a librarian in the children’s section of the library in their arrondissement. Stories about a bull that refused to fight, and an elephant that could fly, and a little girl and her brother lost in a forest. Many stories. She would tell them to me again and again. You see how I remember all these details, but I can’t remember what we ate.”

  “We’ll ask Max when we see him.”

  “You know what I especially remember? Max always needed colors. He was preparing a portfolio for after the war so he could show it when he went looking for a job. He kept asking his father for money for colors. His father said he didn’t have enough money for food, how could he keep giving him money for colors? Max said his father didn’t care about him, didn’t want him to be an artist. Once there was a terrible quarrel. It was after the business with the black-market butter and the shoe. I was so frightened. I was sure the neighbors would hear and call the police. Max didn’t get the colors. You see all the things I am able to remember, Asher. But I can’t remember what we ate. He is like a big brother to me, my Max. I am so tired, but I’m afraid to fall asleep. I was that way in the apartment. Always afraid to sleep. I thought the police would come and take away Max and his parents while I slept, and I would wake up and find myself
all alone in the apartment.”

  “Shall I tell you one of your children’s stories?”

  She laughed softly. “You are so good to me, my Asher. I am sorry for all the misery I cause you.”

  “Oh, Dev, don’t say that. I love you.”

  “What did you see in this wreck of a woman when Max brought me into your studio that day?”

  “You mean what did I like about that beautiful young woman Max brought to interview me?”

  “Yes. What?”

  “That she was smart and looked ten years younger than her age.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That she seemed a good person.”

  “Thank you again.”

  “That she came from a Ladover family and, amazingly, knew about art.”

  “Max was a good teacher.”

  “That she looked at one of my drawings hanging on the wall and said it was an important work but she didn’t like it.”

  “It is an important work, and I still do not like it.”

  “That she let me draw her face after the interview.”

  “That was a good drawing, and I did like it.”

  “And I was able to see her as my wife and the mother of our children.”

  “I would have been the mother of many more if there had not been the miscarriages.”

  “That is God’s will, my wife.”

  “Is it? Is it? Why couldn’t it have been God’s will for at least one person in my family to survive? I would have someone of my own blood to talk to about what happened.”

  I held her. She was trembling.

  “Isn’t it strange that I can’t remember what we ate? Two years of eating in that sealed apartment, and I can’t remember a single meal. Asher, I am not sorry we saw the movie. It’s a fine movie. Even though sometimes, sitting in a dark theater, I suddenly remember the dark apartment. If it’s all God’s will, my husband, there must be a plan. Don’t you think there must be a plan?”