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

XVIII

The ride to Larry’s home the following Friday after school Ira would always say was windier than windy Troy. The trainman who opened the El train gates at the station not objecting, the two chose to ride with him on the rear platform of the El, the roar platform, Ira had quipped, their fedoras jammed down on their heads, topcoats buttoned up to the collar against the gale that mounted from one station to the next. They shouted snatches of information about themselves, about anything of interest. What delightful family reunions the Gordon clan had almost every weekend. They were gemütlich , that was a German word, “cozy, I think,” Larry translated. “There’s really no word in English that gives you quite the full meaning of it. Homey. Agreeable.”

Information, in shouted remark, together with much humorous comment about his family, passed from Larry to Ira during the trip, that first trip to the Bronx. Larry evidently loved his family. He loved them — all of them. Jesus, how could that be? No, no, Ira could feel himself almost physically raise up barriers to ward off dwelling on the contrast between the two. Now there was something intriguing. How much new he could learn.

Larry was a better friend to have, to cultivate, especially now that Ira felt he had broken his precious link with Billy. With Larry there could be still a way. . to a world elsewhere. He was dreaming. He had smashed something in himself: a romantic something. He couldn’t be romantic, he who gave his sister a dollar in the slept-in-smelling bed. And when she asked, “Is that rubber thing all right?” he said, “Sure, what d’ye think?” Romantic? For him the unexpected lucky break in the afternoon, after school, that was romantic, boy, when the green, blistery walls trembled as if they were stammering with joy, his joy at Minnie’s quick, curt “All right, so, c’mon.” That was romantic. He’d never get over it, never get over it. It towered above him, hulked over Larry’s romantic image, barred the way forever, oh, forever. When the class read Tennyson’s Idylls of the King , look how different, Ira told himself, look how different. The teacher told the class that the huge, black-armored knight that blocked Sir Gawain’s path was death, and not to be feared, because only a child was inside (even if it was nutty to think that a kid could sustain such huge bulk of armor, but. .): that was Tennyson’s meaning, yeah, and the class accepted it. But for Ira what did the parable summon up? Himself and Minnie, himself when he was twelve, and she was only ten — child she, with a smooth little round ass. And after it happened, the bad, the bad, the bad took over. Now he was death, the child in black armor; he was death, the one who killed the romantic.

Pulling on his discolored leather gloves more firmly, the crabbed-looking Irish trainman came out of the car, straddled the space between cars, and grasped the burnished steel lever handles on each side of him, while he waited for the train to come to a stop.

“You’re going to major in bio, aren’t you?” Larry asked.

“Huh?”

“I mean in college.”

“Oh, yeah. Bio. Bugology.”

The gates snapped open. Tête-à-tête , in the brief quiet of station pause, the two stood against the gate opposite the one the few passengers left by or came in. Only at certain express stops, when the local opened gates on the opposite side, did Larry and Ira have to shift sides on the platform. Larry knew when.

“Biology, boy, I love that stuff,” Ira added. “I’ve been getting A’s in everything.”

“It doesn’t pay very well. That’s the only trouble with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you might teach.”

“Oh, yeah, high school. I wanna teach bio.”

The gates snapped shut.

“That’s what I mean,” Larry said. The trainman pulled the bell cord overhead. “Schoolteachers don’t earn very much.” The train began moving.

“They don’t?” Ira felt unaccountably disconcerted, as if something mundane had intervened where he least expected it, roiled up glamour, smudged Larry’s romantic luster. And what about those poems Larry wrote, and was taking him home to show him? Like the modern poems that he had recited, poems that liberated one from stale perspectives, made free and vibrant the grimy streets and filled them with promise. Money? Earning? All that freedom was suddenly hedged, that shimmering romantic freedom Larry seemed to possess a minute ago constrained. Something was amiss, something didn’t fit. “I don’t know what high school teachers get paid,” Ira said, disturbed by his own display of vacancy.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“That’s the first thing you ought to find out. I could ask my sister Sophie — or Wilma — what a high school starting salary is. Of course, they both taught in the elementary school, and they didn’t have to support a family. You might.”

“Me?”

“I don’t mean at the start, at the beginning of your teaching career. But sooner or later. You don’t intend to be a bachelor, do you?”

“I don’t know. I mean — well, I never thought.” Support a family? Boy.

“I’m sure the starting salary is a little more in high school than elementary school, but it can’t be too much more.”

“No.” Ira suddenly understood. It was practicality, practicality that tethered the entrancing world of Larry’s modernity, that hobbled its visionary freedom. Practicality that trammeled the romantic. Jesus, what a dope. He didn’t understand anything. “That’s why I was telling you about taking the Cornell scholarship exam.” Ira tried to exonerate his improvidence, gain purchase on defined, on accepted, attitudes. “Maybe I could be a zoologist, a real zoologist in a lab or something. But. .” He reverted to refuge in levity. “I’m a melamed , that’s all.”

“A what?” Larry invited, alert to apprehend.

“A melamed ,” Ira raised his voice against the train clatter and rush of wind. “That’s the guy who teaches you to read Hebrew. My father calls me that.”

“What do you mean? It’s a joke?” Larry laughed a little helplessly. “A melamed ? Do I say it right? Doesn’t he want you to be one? Or does he?”

“Oh, well. He doesn’t really care. I mean—” Ira tossed a shrug. “It was my mother who wanted me to go to college. And I figured teaching school is about the best thing I can do. Listen, you know what a shlemiel is?”

“Oh, I’ve heard that expression. It’s funny. Sam uses it too. It means not very — what? — capable, bright.”

“Well, I’m a shlemiel . That’s what my father means.”

“Just because you prefer teaching as a career?” Larry awaited a reply, and receiving only a vague, mute, indeterminate gesture, he went on: “I like teaching. Honestly I do. I told you I love teaching in Sunday school. But not as a profession. It’s absolutely the lowest-paid one of all. It’s really a pity, but—”

“Yeah, but you gotta remember,” Ira interjected. “With us, in my family, except for my father, Pop, but with Mom, in the rest of my family, and where we live, it’s got a lotta respect. You know what I mean? My son is a high school teacher. Ousgeshtudiert . You know what ousgeshtudiert means?”

“ Ausgestudiert is German. It means learned, scholarly.”

“All right. And besides, for me, by teaching high school, I’d make a lot more money that I ever made — even though I don’t know how much, how much high school teachers get paid.” Ira grinned sheepishly. “I know it’s more. And long vacations too. It’s easy too. It’s just as if I’m keeping on going to school. So instead of being one of the pupils, I’m a melamed .” Ira watched the black railroad ties slur together, separate a moment, slur together — almost emblematic of what he was trying to say. “You know what my principal, Mr. O’Reilly, used to tell us? Those marbles he didn’t lose, the other kids stole from him. That’s why he became a schoolteacher. That’s me.”