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

Reorientation felt almost physical, as if accepted landmarks were reinterpreted by a sudden jolt. “Boy, I never been so fooled before in my life. Honest.”

“Let’s get across the street,” Larry nudged. “What did you think it was?”

“A goy . What else? You — you’re Bar Mitzvah and everything?”

“Of course. I used to teach Sunday school, too.”

“Sunday school!” Ira echoed incredulously. “Sunday school is for—” He was glad the El train passing above rattled over his near display of ignorance.

“At Temple Beth El on Fifth Avenue. I just loved teaching Old Testament stories. They mean a lot to me still.”

“They do? Old Testament stories? You mean from the Jewish religion? Right? From the Bible? In English?”

“Oh, certainly in English. Oh, a few of us knew some Hebrew. But very few. The stories I taught were in English. They were the same stories I loved hearing myself when I went to Sunday school. You must know them: about Saul and David and Absalom. Samson.”

“I know about ’em. I learned them from reading English too — I mean not from reading Hebrew.”

“Really? I thought of you as being a lot more Jewish than I was.”

“But we didn’t learn it that way. I mean in the cheder —you know what a cheder is?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard about it. My brother-in-law Sam told me about it. He’s a lawyer. And he knows quite a bit of Hebrew. And some Yiddish words too. That’s where you were taught religion, wasn’t it?”

“If you wanna call it that. This one was on the East Side. Jewish East Side. Mostly. I learned in Harlem, too. But we learned to say prayers, you know what I mean? To daven . You know what I mean?”

“That means to pray, doesn’t it?”

“To pray in the shul , in the synagogue. You shake when you’re doing it.” Ira mimed as a way out of engagement with the subject any further.

But Larry was still interested. He smiled tentatively. “I lost out on a lot of that kind of learning.”

“Lost out? Say, it’s not like that temple on Fifth Avenue. I know that one. It’s beautiful. These are little dumps like huts in the backyard.”

Larry shook his head. “I didn’t know they were that bad.”

“Hell, I hate ’em.”

“Really? And you didn’t find the Biblical subjects inspiring?”

“Nah. Maybe I might have — if I learned them the way you did. But I didn’t get any Biblical subjects.”

“There’s so much inspiring about the Bible. I mean, it relates to so much in the American tradition, the English tradition, I should say. But the American tradition is much more meaningful. Do you know that King Saul and Custer have a lot in common?”

“Huh! General Custer?”

“I’m writing a poem about both men. A Jewish king and gentile general—”

“A poem? You’re writing a poem ?”

“A long poem. A connected series, half narrative, half sort of lyric.”

But Ira continued standing stock-still, frowning and incredulous. “A poem? You’re still in high school.”

“That doesn’t matter. People younger than I am have written great poems. And no one’s ever done this before. It’s very exciting: man opposing fate. There’s a universality about it, whether it’s Saul on Mt. Gilboa, or Custer at Little Bighorn.”

Larry led the way into an aromatic, brilliantly lit cigar store. With what a worldly flair he ordered a package of Camels from the promptly obliging gray-mustached clerk, even as he continued to address Ira—“Of course, I can’t speak Yiddish,” he said with complete self-composure, as Ira felt himself curdle slightly with self-consciousness — and effortlessly returned the clerk’s thanks while picking up his purchase and the change. “I can speak a little Hungarian. Mostly because of Mary, our maid. My folks use a Hungarian word or two with her. I’ve picked up a few words.” He led the way back out into the open air. “And sometimes on the school holidays when we visited my grandparents in New Haven. They were both born here, but my great-grandparents on both sides came here from Hungary.”

“Yeah? You got any of ’em left? A grandfather or somebody?”

“No, I was the baby of the family. You?”

“I still got a grandfather and grandmother.”

“You have? Were they born here?”

“Hell, no. I wasn’t even born here!”

“You weren’t?”

“I was born in Galitzia. In Austro-Hungary. There once used to be an Austro-Hungary.”

“Of course. I know. Before the Great War.”

“So we’re some kind of landslayt , nearly.”

“I know that word. Landsleute . It’s the same in German. That’s what I’m taking.”

“Yeah? It’s Yiddish too.”

“Is it? I know a few words of Yiddish. Tsuris . I’ve heard Sam say that. Troubles. Keyn ayin-horeh . He says that when somebody praises my niece. Actually, I think I know more Hungarian words than I know Yiddish — I spent so much time with my Uncle Leon in Bermuda. He’d say something in Hungarian once in a while.”

Silently, resentful of his own bewilderment at the peculiar displacement going on within him, he watched Larry’s big capable hands tear a square of foil from the top of the yellow package of Camels, tap the package expertly until several cigarettes extruded. He did everything with such superb assurance — and facility. “Cigarette?” He proffered the pack.

“Yeah. But you’re goin’ upstairs, to the El, aren’t you?”

“Oh, we can shmooze down here awhile. I hope you’re not in any hurry. Are you?”

Shmooze . It was as though Larry were dedicated to authenticating his Jewishness, placing a seal on it. “Well. .” Ira hesitated, took a cigarette. “No, I’m not in a hurry.” Probably Mom was home anyway. The thought, the evil prompting, flared up in his mind: tell her about Larry next chance, the handsome acquaintance. Stir her up that way. Yeah. What the hell. Larry wrote poems, he could tell her. A poet. Jewish, you’d never know — but something sobering, suddenly sobering, perplexing, preempted: what kind of Jewish? What kind of world?

They found a niche of refuge under the slant of the El stairs. Wonderful, the way Larry could hold a lit match in the cup of his large, white hand. “Then how did you learn prayers at the cheder , as you call it? Didn’t you translate out of the Hebrew?”

“Oh, no, I told you. The old guy with the whiskers slapped you around when you didn’t make the right sounds. Komets-aleph, ‘o’; komets-beth, ‘bo’; komets-gimel, ‘go.’ You ducked as soon as you saw his pointer drop from his hand to the page.”

As though the scene were animate before his eyes, Larry listened with lips parted in pleasure. “Is that so?”

“Oh, sure. We learned Hebrew in a little shack in the backyard, or a cellar store. Till I was eight and a half. I got pretty good at it, too. The melamed , you know, the teacher, told my mother when I was about seven that I could have had a real future. But then we moved to Harlem.”

“I practically grew up in Bermuda. My older brother and sisters lived in Yorkville a short while. I spent only a short time there, and now we’re in the near Bronx.” Larry inhaled. “I told you I’m the baby of the family.”

“Oh, now I see. You mean you got older brothers and sisters.” Ira raised his arm in gesticulation. “That’s why.”

“Haven’t I? Two are married and have children.” And speaking through cigarette smoke, “Then I have an older sister, Irma. She’s the next older. She lives with us. She’s a private secretary. My older brother, you know about him. He’s in the ladies’-housedress-manufacturing business. He’s going to be married soon — to his secretary.”