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

So those first weeks were spent, Harlem continually displacing the East Side, plying new impressions into old memories, like those raffia braids he would weave in school to make mats out of, new bunches of raffia plaited into the old. After Saturday morning services he followed Zaida upstairs into the kitchen — or was invited upstairs to light the gas stove, since he was too young to sin — and stood there awhile afterwards talking to meek Baba, while her husband’s dinner warmed. Served, Zaida fell to voraciously — halted in mid-mouthful: “Here, my child, before you go, relish this.” He picked up a boiled chicken foot from his plate, bit out the one meaty bubble at the base of the toes, and handed his grandson the yellow shank and skimpy talons.

“Thanks, Zaida.”

Before the end of the summer Pop’s fortunes mended. At his brother-in-law Moe’s urging, Pop became a busboy in the same restaurant where Moe worked as a waiter, Karg and Zinz. Forthright, muscular, kind-hearted Moe, striving to help out his poverty-stricken sister. But before Pop quit — or was fired — he created a scene of terrible proportion — only years later did Ira learn, from Pop himself, laughing at the farce of his own creating (he did have that aptitude, in common with his son, of perceiving the absurdity of predicament brought on by himself): He had been pestered, he alleged, by one of the owners, Mr. Zinz, who continually looked askance at everything Pop did (alas, his inveterate chafing at any kind of subordination). He gave Pop “arguments” about his work. In vain, Moe counseled: “He’s the boss, he’s paying you, and you’re making a good collection from the tips of the five waiters in the place; you’re making a living. Every waiter gets ‘arguments,’ if not from the boss, from a customer. Every waiter knows,” Moe concluded, “when they give you an argument, you put it in your pocket.”

To no avail. Pop hurled a water pitcher into the large plate-glass mirror on the wall. Someone, a customer, called a cop who arrived just as the tall, enraged Mr. Zinz was about to administer a thrashing to Pop, changing his clothes down in the restaurant cellar. “Look at him, and look at me,” Pop appealed to the big Irish cop. “Can I do something to him? He was going to beat me up, so I threw the pitcher, somebody should call the police.” And he had “squeezed out a few tears,” Pop added by way of cynical parenthesis. The officer threatened to arrest Mr. Zinz.

Pop’s violent act caused a rift between Mom and the rest of her family: Though Zaida censured, with characteristic acerbity, called Pop a lunatic, Mom sided with her wronged and persecuted husband — as she would for some while longer, until the truth of his nature finally became inescapable. Pop in turn dismissed the estrangement with typical contempt — and with typical ingratitude. “I don’t need their help. I’ve mastered this learned calling,” he said scornfully, “I’ve learned this complicated skill. I need my in-laws, you know where? In the rear! I’m a seasoned waiter.”

He made good on his boast. With newly bought dickey and secondhand tuxedo, he succeeded in passing himself off as a waiter, and in a short time became a competent one. His income increased, but to what extent, he kept a secret — as always.

The pawned valuables were redeemed. And once again, Mom brought up the subject of Ira’s attending cheder . It was now Ira who resisted: “I don’t wanna go!”

“Go you must. What do you mean you don’t want to go? You’ll become entirely a goy . I have the twenty-five cents. There’s no longer excuse for your not going. How will you prepare for your Bar Mitzvah? And what will Zaida say? I don’t want to hear any more protests. I’ll find out the nearest malamut .”

“Anh!”

Whining was of no use. She hauled Ira to the Hebrew teacher who conducted his cheder in his living room on 117th Street east of Madison Avenue, and after concluding arrangements, she left Ira there. It was now late spring. Because of the ill-will between his own and his grandparents’ family, months had passed since he had accompanied Zaida to the shul . And to Ira’s chagrin — and bafflement as well — his rote reading of Hebrew, which he could babble with such facility only a short time ago, had deteriorated. Where once he had been warmly commended by his grandfather — and by his last malamut , who especially on Sunday mornings, when alone with his pupil in the bare cellar-store cheder , had often rewarded Ira with a copper for his fluency — he was now the object of frequent promptings, disapproving cluckings and head-waggings and disciplinary ear-wringings. Nor did his old facility ever come back — nor his eagerness to please. Heeding the text became onerous. He seemed to retrogress rather than improve. Reproof by word for his performance gave way more and more to reproof by deed: ear-tweakings, arm-yankings, an impatient slap on the thigh.

“I don’t wanna go!” Ira stormed at Mom after a few weeks. “I’m not going!”

“You are going! I’ll tell your father. He’ll soon give you to understand.”

“I don’t care. Let him hit me, that’s all. I’m not going! The rabbi stinks. His mouth stinks. It stinks from cigarettes and onions!”

“Go tell it to your grandmother. He complained to me how remiss you are. You heed nothing. At all admonition you cavil, you shrug. What has happened to you? A year ago — more than a year ago, the malamut on 9th Street told me himself you were ready to begin khumish , to begin Torah. Woe is me! If he saw what a goy you are today, darkness would shroud his eyes.”

“I don’t care.”

“And what will you know at your Bar Mitzvah, if you don’t go to cheder ? And Zaida, what will he say when he hears you daven like a mute?”

“Who cares? I don’t see him. I never go to Baba’s house. I can go to cheder just before Bar Mitzvah.”

“ Oy, gevald! Plague take you! I won’t let you become a goy! In this you won’t prevail. We’ll find another malamut .”

She told Pop about what had taken place. “The way you bring him up, that’s what he’s become,” was Pop’s brusque reply. “The right kind of mother would slap his face roundly and make him attend. So you save a twenty-five-cent piece of your allowance if he doesn’t go to cheder .”

“ Gey mir in der erd! I said we ought to find another malamut .” Mom flushed angrily. “What the man can contrive: I save a whole quarter of a dollar if the scamp doesn’t go to cheder . Is that a thing to consider? I would gladly give twice that from my allowance if he went to cheder , and went eagerly. What my father will say when he hears of it.”

“Devout Jew. Let him hear of it. I’m not good enough for him. Let his grandson grow up a goy .”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Go relieve yourself. You want him to go, send him.”

“And you not? You’re his father.”

“He’s your pampered son.”

Mom kept silent a few seconds, then sighed heavily. “I see, I already see. As you were, so is he. Did you care to go to cheder ? Only your father’s stick compelled you. You tormented your younger brother Jacob when he studied Talmud, no?”

“ Gey mir in kehver! ” Pop snapped open the Yiddish newspaper. “I don’t want to speak about it anymore.”

“Go also into the dolorous year,” Mom addressed Ira. “The grief you cause me.”

“All right, I’ll go,” Ira conceded. “Jeezis!”

“Spare us so much Jeezising in the house, or I’ll deal you one,” Pop warned.