Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

Mom noticed how quiet he was on the long ride home. “ Noo , did you enjoy yourself?” she asked.

“Yeh.”

“You have so little to say about it? You were so eager to go.” She looked at him more closely. “Why have you become so sulky?”

“I’m not sulky. I don’t wanna talk Yiddish in the train.”

“Who is listening to us?”

“I don’t wanna talk.”

“Foolish child. Until 116th Street?”

Ira made no reply.

“Do you need to relieve yourself? Is that the trouble?”

“No. I went in the street.”

“Are you hungry?”

”No,” he replied irritably. “Leave me alone.”

“Then I won’t speak — until we reach home.” She leaned over, whispered teasingly. “Afterward I may?”

“I’m gonna take off my good clothes an’ go to the liberry.”

“Aha. Another story with a bear. Will it be open still?”

“Till six o’clock they let you in.”

V

How swiftly the changes had taken place within him, in these few months, from the time they first moved into the house on 119th Street to the time his Uncle Harry quit school. He was different now, different from that very first day, after he had helped Mom unpack the sugar barrel in which the crockery came packed, wrapped in Yiddish newspapers. When he grew bored, he had left the kitchen, and descended the linoleum-covered stairs warily, like a young animal appraising new surroundings — and stepped quietly through the long, shadowy hallway between the janitor’s flat and the one occupied by the cigar makers. He had seen them sitting next to the open window on the ground floor rolling cigars. Daylight shone on the battered brass letter boxes in the foyer. Just outside, on the stone steps of the stoop, three kids were sitting, three kids his own age, the backs of their heads bleached to tow by the summer sun. He had stood on the top stone step just outside the door, waiting — while they talked, talked in hard, clear, Gentile voices — waiting for some sign of recognition, some acknowledgment of his presence. The one who sat in the middle — Heffernan — Ira would learn the kid’s name later — turned his head: “You livin’ here?”

“Yeh,” Ira offered eagerly. “We just moved in.”

“We don’t want no goddamn Jews livin’ here.”

“No?”

“No.” The boy was blue-eyed, with winning countenance, fair of skin and with upturned nose: “You lousy Jew bastards, why dontcha stay where you belong?”

Stabbed, Ira retreated into the hall, climbed up the stairs again, and stormed into the kitchen.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

“They’re sitting on the stoop, the Irishers.”

“So. Let them sit.”

“They don’t like me. They called me a dirty name. They called me a Jew bestit.”

“That’s news indeed,” Mom said. “What better to expect from goyim? Don’t play with them. Go somewhere else. Go to Baba’s. Go to 114th Street, where we lived. I’ll look out of the window until you leave the corner.”

“I don’t wanna go there.”

“Then stay here and help me unpack the Passover dishes.”

“I don’t wanna stay here, I wanna go downstairs.”

“Then what do you want of me?”

“We shouldn’t have moved here.”

“Again?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m more concerned that I still haven’t found my red coral beads, my wedding present from my Aunt Rachel in Lemberg.” Mom tore the Yiddish newspaper from around the silver Passover salt cellar. “Such heartless thieves, these movers. I haven’t come across it anywhere. The lovely coral. Gevald . Where is it?” And to Ira, in vexed tones: “Don’t be like your father. Don’t quail so before a goy .”

“I’m not quailing!” Ira flared. “There’s three kids down there on the stoop.”

“Then what can I do? Do you want me to contend with them?”

Full of rancor, he left the kitchen, passed through the two freshly painted, intervening bedrooms to the front room, with its furnishings still in disarray, and leaned out of the open window on the street. He leaned out of the unobstructed window; the other opened on the fire escape, on the black iron balcony shared with the neighbors next door. On the stone steps of the stoop below sat the same three kids, the same blond-haired kid in the middle, the lousy Irish bestit who’d called him a dirty Jew. He’d show him.

Hiding his fierce spite from Mom, acquiescing with a noncommittal, “Yeh,” to her preoccupied behest that a soft word would keep him out of trouble, he went back through the kitchen and down the stairs again. Sunlight shining on their fair hair, their backs were turned toward him. With fist doubled, he sneaked out of the doorway behind Heffernan — and struck him as hard a wallop on the cheek as he could. The kid rocked with the impact. Then Ira fled back into the hall, and upstairs.

He said nothing to Mom. Once more at the window, he could see them below, still sitting on the stoop. And then one of the trio left. Ira went downstairs again, came out of the hall onto the stoop. Fists clenched, prepared for fray, he descended to the street, eyes fixed vindictively on Heffernan: The kid smiled back, deprecating, amiable, in sign of truce.

It was what he should have done, Ira would tell himself over and over again years later: fought, fair or foul, but fought. He would remember “Greeny,” a few years older than himself, but a total greenhorn, a young Jewish immigrant from Russia whose family came to America only a few months before Ira’s relatives. Greeny had fought his Irish tormentors on 119th Street. He had been licked, nose bloodied, both his eyes blackened, but he fought again — and again. He reached the point where the Irish accepted him; they took him to the parochial school gym to learn to box, seconded him when he was matched in a bout — and played a dirty Irish trick on him by telling him to stuff himself with food, and guzzle all the beer he could, because that would make him strong: He retched all over the ring — to the boundless hilarity of the spectators. Still, they accepted him: long nose and Jewish accent and all. He became a member in good standing with the gang on 119th Street.

It was what he should have done, Ira told himself, and recalled that even then, that first day on 119th Street, the lesson wasn’t lost on him — though it did him no good either. He lacked the moral courage — so it would seem to him — the pluck, the persistence, to cope against such odds. He grew flabby, too. Shortly after the second term began, the spring term, 3B, he brought home a note from the school nurse advising his parents that he suffered from “malnutrition”—poor nourishment, his teacher explained — at which Mom scoffed: “I don’t give you enough bulkies and butter to eat, and lotkehs and sour cream, or what?” Flabby, overweight, he lost agility and stamina. And in that fateful street-fight in late winter, the recent snowfall treacherous underfoot, he was being bested by his skinny, wiry Irish adversary, on whose large two front teeth the saliva glistened distractingly — when of a sudden Mom came rushing into the circle of hostile partisans. “ Gerara! ” She raised a threatening arm against Ira’s opponent.

“Aw, g’wan yuh lousy Jew!” His adversary defied her. Still, he retreated before the menace of Mom’s upraised arm; he jeered and retreated.

And Ira — Ira burst into tears. He would never live down the humiliation. What more woeful stigma of ignominy than to be rescued from defeat by your pale and agitated Jewish mother, by your taunted and frantic Jewish mother, wading in to your defense. Weeping, Ira ran from his exulting opponent, ran through the circle of jeering kids, ran for the house. He felt as if his spirit were crushed forever.