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

“One thinks that all this must vanish, the good and the bad, the treasured and detested, my heritage, my identity, must vanish with me, save for slight evocations, occasional distillation of eloquence preserved in print; all else must vanish. And eventually, even that too. From time immemorial, nay, ever since the universe became conscious of itself, in the form of Homo sapiens , the toll for that supreme ‘privilege’ has been consciousness of mortality — the toll, with all its overtones. The cry of every human has been: ‘And when I crumble, who will remember?’ Often have I imagined the rain leaching out memory, the wind making sport of it, the assiduous maggot consuming a recondite trope — or, for that matter, an elegant formula: E = MC 2; or e to the i pi = −1, ingested by happy helminthes. .

“All of these memories were a mere seventy years ago. That same summer, we flocked in droves out of our brick warrens into the street, shouting and pointing and craning up at the first squadron of aircraft we had ever seen, biplanes high above the rooftops. .

“Am I done? Am I sufficiently restored by my Antaean return to East Side origins to tackle what lies ahead?

“But there was still the matter of the tricycle. Mom and Moe — and I skipping in the van — stroll together to the store where ‘tickets’ are redeemed. By a combination of ‘tickets,’ a kind of trading coupon amassed by Moe as a result of his multitudinous candy-store purchases, ‘tickets’ plus a little cash, Moe was going to procure a tricycle — for me! Clearly remembered, as if fused together with the child’s extreme eagerness to get to the premium depot, was the subliminal realization that the two adults leading the way through the crowded streets, chatting amiably as they walked, should be Mom and Pop. But they were not Mom and Pop, and because they were not, they called forth an awareness, like a well-defined afterimage, the complementary realization, that that was the way Mom and Pop ought to behave together, easy and leisurely and pleasant — and did not. It wasn’t the stolen tricycle, stolen the same day it was purchased, that mattered so much now, as once it had; it was the poignant awareness of how much he yearned for the untroubled companionship of his elders, how much he missed it, even as he was aware of the same thing later on, when Mom and Uncle Louis strolled together in the evening beside Mt. Morris Park.

“And there was Johnny-in-a-high-chair, as we called him, the driver of an old-fashioned hansom cab, leaping down from his elevated perch, and whip in hand, pursuing a pack of little gamins who had volleyed him with stones: furious, top-hatted cabby, whip in hand, chasing a covey of Jewish kids scampering away through 9th Street, leaving the patient, spotted white horse motionless in mid-street. . And my first near encounter with an automobile. Yes, I stepped off the curb into the path of the oncoming vehicle, and such was my frantic doubling back out of the way, my ribs ached for days afterward. And I would remember — even to this present — the amused profiles of driver and passenger as the motorcar rolled by. .

“Two eggs cost a nickel. Mom sent me down four flights of stairs to buy them; and an egg in each hand, I climbed back up four flights of stairs. Mom sent me down four flights of stairs to buy a pound of honey, bronze, crystallized honey, scooped up by the grocer out of a stubby wooden firkin in the little, untidy grocery store across the street. Hunik-lekekh was the Yiddish name of the cake that Mom concocted and baked from the crystallized honey, hunik-lekekh , a dark solid slab of cake, substantial enough to bolster up any Sabbath. .

“Oh, how lighthearted, light-footed, he who once was I, hopped down four flights of sandstone stairs, and up four flights of sandstone stairs.

“Yes, and do you remember how her father spanked Yettie, a girl of about twelve, for swinging a little kid between her legs, and thus exposing the crack between her legs through her torn drawers?

“I remember.”

Alas, my friends — Ira scanned the lines of the typescript — the 1979 draft, the old one, just won’t do. Oh, damn it, damn it: subterfuges he had had to resort to, and the rectifications that supplanted, they made him feel like a juggler keeping aloft a number of incongruous objects, an orange, a skillet, a paintbrush. And there was another element too that would have to be reckoned with, and that he already foresaw would plague him with its consequences: to depart from the typescript meant departing from his general guide, demanding not only a different set of circumstances for the episode, but alterations in the treatment of it as well, a general reordering, in short. But if he was compelled to range too far abroad in the re-creation of the episode, when would he ever return to the comfortable mainstream of work largely accomplished? To his story? Ever? Discouraging, to say the least.

At one side of the typescript, the object that had lain there for days and days, with no particular significance, now asserted its significance: the paperweight (at least, he used it for that purpose), the bronze relief of Townsend Harris, the medal CCNY had given him for “Notable Achievement.” (Notable achievement equal to a C-minus average in his scholastic work — but that wasn’t the point.) The medal recalled the luncheon given in his honor by the then president of the college and members of the English faculty, and the account he gave them in the course of his address in acknowledgment of the honor the college bestowed on him: of the moment when he was lackadaisically listening to Mr. Dickson’s comments on the quality of the term papers — and the sudden, the startling turn of events that ensued — none of which was on the original typescript, and which he now felt should be included. Why? Because those things he had subordinated before took on new prominence as a consequence of his new, his liberated, approach to his writing.

It was the last day of class. Mr. Dickson had read and graded all the term papers, and was about to return them to the various members of the class. They were surprisingly good, Mr. Dickson commented — and commended: some were exceptionally good. And one was of such unusual quality that in his capacity as faculty adviser to the staff of the magazine, he had recommended the inclusion of the piece, at the last minute, in the City College quarterly, The Lavender . Who was that whiz? Ira wondered idly at first, and then for some reason, listlessness gave way to an abrupt sharpening of attention. Was there, could there have been any substance to that zest he had felt, that lift, when he was writing the piece apart from Minnie’s extravagant, though by her brother patronizingly discounted, praise of how “wonderful” it was when he accorded her the privilege of reading the typescript at breakfast in the morning? The term paper Mr. Dickson had recommended for inclusion in The Lavender was entitled “Impressions of a Plumber,” and the author was Ira Stigman.

“Wow!” Ira had exclaimed.

Classmates turned to locate the recipient of the distinction.

“Is that you?” someone nearby asked, with gratifying incredulity. “He means you?” And another fellow student, “You mean to say you wrote it?”

Ira grinned, elated: he had fooled these wiseguys just as he had fooled the kids in Mr. Sullivan’s class.

Mr. Dickson manifested his displeasure at this ruffling of classroom decorum. He grimaced in disapproval, and lest the grimace go unnoticed, he framed it by arching an arm over his leaf-brown poll and scratching the opposing ear. “You realize, don’t you, Mr. Stigman, that for some reason you chose not to follow my very explicit instructions with regard to the treatment of subject matter?”