My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok Page B

faintly. My mother and I sang with him. From time to time, he stopped and sat in silence, his hand over his mouth. I saw him give me an occasional glance. After the meal, he left the house and went to the synagogue.
    I saw a picture in the
Times
the following day of Stalin lying in his coffin. Behind the coffin were mounds of flowers. I could not take my eyes off the picture. This was the man who had killed tens of millions of people. Now he lay in his mustache and uniform in front of a mountain of flowers, dead, as dead as the millions he had slain, as dead as Yudel Krinsky’s wife and children. I could not stop staring at the picture of Stalin dead in his coffin.
    I went over to Yudel Krinsky’s store that Monday and helped him wait on some customers. We were alone for a few minutes between customers and he said to me, glancing aroundquickly, “The others who follow him will be just like him. There are many Stalins in Russia.”
    I helped him stack packages of paper. I was beginning to understand the differences between grades of paper. Often now I could tell the weight and quality of a piece of paper by holding it in my hands.
    My mother said to me that night, “No, Asher. I don’t think there can be another Stalin now in Russia.”
    “Reb Yudel Krinsky said there are many Stalins in Russia.”
    “Yes, your Reb Yudel Krinsky is right, Asher. Russia is full of Stalins. But the time of Stalin in Russia is over for now.”
    “Mama, does it make a difference for Jews that Stalin is dead?”
    “Yes, Asher. I think it makes a difference.”
    The following Shabbos afternoon, my father went to the synagogue to hear the Rebbe’s talk. My mother asked me to come into the living room. She wanted to talk to me, she said. We sat on the sofa. I looked out the window at the winter trees.
    “Asher, do you know where Vienna is?” my mother said softly. “We may move to Vienna.”
    I stared at her and could not respond.
    “Your father asked me to tell you. There’s certain work he has to do now, and he can only do it if we live in Vienna.”
    “What work?” I heard myself ask.
    She was silent a moment. Then she said, “It has to do with the Jews in Russia.”
    “Papa has been doing that here for years.”
    “This is different work, Asher.”
    “I don’t want to go to Vienna, Mama.”
    “The Rebbe has told your father that he may ask us to go.”
    “Why now? Why all of a sudden now?”
    “Because Stalin is dead, Asher. Things can be done now that no one could have done before.”
    “I don’t want to go.”
    “We’ll go if your father is asked to go.”
    “No,” I said.
    “Asher, please.”
    “I don’t care,” I said.
    “Asher,” my mother said softly. She leaned forward. “Asher.” I felt her hands brush across my face in a caress. “My Asher, my baby, I don’t know what else to tell you. We’ll go if the Rebbe tells us to go. We must help your father. If the Rebbe tells us to go, we’ll go.”
    Later, I lay on my bed in my room and covered my eyes with my hands. I felt tired. I thought of Yudel Krinsky. I saw his bulging eyes glancing nervously around. Stalin should have died thirty years ago, Yudel Krinsky had said. Yes, I thought. Yes, yes, thirty years ago. Not now. Not last week. Thirty years ago or ten years from now. But not last week. I hated him for dying last week.
    My father returned home very late that night. The next morning, he flew to Chicago.
        I was ill that week. I lay in bed with a sore throat and a fever. By Wednesday, the sore throat was gone but the fever remained. Our doctor came on Thursday, called it a low-grade infection, and left a prescription.
    All through that week, my mother went to school. My father returned from Chicago on Monday and spent the remaining days of the week in his office. Each night, they came into my room together. I saw them standing together by my bed, looking down at me. I saw them as through a fog, distorted, my father tall and strong, his