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

Menachem Begin is in Cairo. He is reported to be enjoying the cool, though correct, reception accorded him by the Egyptians (and refrained from mentioning that part of the labor that went into constructing the Pyramids he viewed was that of Hebrew slaves). To me the man is without appeal, both in presence and address, something like our own Cal Coolidge of long ago mapped into a fiercely partisan Israeli context. But all that’s irrelevant, dubiously whimsical, I tell myself. El Arish is to be returned to Egypt on May 27, 1979. Most of the Arab world is focusing its hatred on Sadat; and yet, even his Arab enemies are divided — as always, praise be to Allah.

Is it genuine, durable, I ask myself: Will the peace between the two countries hold? Or should one regard the whole business as a piece (peace) of consummate trickery on the part of Anwar Sadat, a genius at machination and trickery, who apparently succeeded in lulling the Israeli government, the Israeli high command, into complacency — and then with Syria for ally, attacked on Yom Kippur. As usual, the minor detail tends to attain undue prominence in memory because human and dramatic: the debate between the two allies whether the attack should be launched at dawn or dusk, when the sun would be behind the one, and in the other’s eyes. Truly, the man is a genius of trickery, and with the help of portly German-Jewish Henry Kissinger—“Vee biliefe. . und dun’t preempt”—regained oil fields captured by Israel and so vital to her economy without firing another shot; and now, with the blessings of Prexy Jolly Jimmy, is about to recover the entire Sinai.

And yet, what other alternative than to do so? Not whether Begin is personally, or politically, attractive to me is the important thing; but whether his agreements and concessions have placed Israel in mortal danger — or brought a real peace a step closer. .

It was more than he could hope to disentangle at the moment. He frowned at the ensuing pages, yellow, slippery, tissue-thin second-copy he had saved money in purchasing — like Pop with his ineffable, inveterate buying by price alone, inferior merchandise. “Doesn’t the merchant know the cost of his goods?” Mom would try to reason with Pop. It did no good: He would still buy the printed piece of floor covering rather than genuine linoleum of some quality; and in a short time his purchase was scuffed to dead brown underlay, the painted floral design flaked off. Mom’s practical common-sense importunings did no good.

Had the pages slithered about? The narrative on the ensuing page began in the middle — and he knew, he knew that events of that year — or was it the year before? — were of great significance to him personally, to him as narrator. It would be best — he looked at his watch: 3:20 P.M. — it would be best to take time out, save the working copy on the screen, and try to impose some order on what followed. He could hear his tongue click in annoyance at the unpleasant prospect of making a little sense of the disarray before him. But there was no help for it. Somehow he would have to assemble it, account for it, dispose of it — clear it out of his way. Like Plato’s infinite mind (was the thought worth recording, as he poised mentally to terminate, to “save”; no, it was silly: the notion of infinite mind existing on an infinite floppy disk).

XII

Kids who owned the new steering-sleds, as the latest models were called, sleds with iron runners, scooted down the snowy slope on the west side of Mt. Morris Park. How few were the times of joyous abandon: when the kids who owned steering-sleds allowed you to fling yourself on top of them as they belly-whopped down the slope in full career. Uncle Max built his impoverished nephew a sled out of a wooden box and scrap-wood runners — and stood to one side, sheepish and noncommittal at the ridicule that greeted his nephew when he joined the others with his crude homemade sled. With their steel runners, they could even belly-whop down the snow-covered stone stairs of the Mt. Morris Park hill. Ira’s flimsy sled came apart after a few tries on just a gentle incline. Yes, spraddled out into a silly apple-box with the label still on it, and pieces of board with nails sticking out of the erstwhile runners, a sorry cripple, a caricature of a sled, abandoned in the snow. .

And with Harry, the ordeal of his elementary schooling over, the two tried hawking Yiddish newspapers after school, crying the headlines through the darkening streets of Jewish Harlem, but with little success. They had no great “Wuxtra” to peddle like the great extra in August a few months ago, and passersby knew it. . So their cry was in vain, and most of their papers went unsold, and in a day or two they gave up the venture.

But for over seventy years there would remain in Ira’s mind the projection of a kid in knee-pants and long black stockings hustling, panicky and shrill through a Harlem street into the twilight of the past. .

And ever and again in idleness, he would experience a harking back to a time — or forward to a time — not haphazard as the present had become, but seamless again, as it once had been; a harking back, an inarticulate yearning that somewhere, somehow, the scattered pieces of his random world would coalesce into unity once more. Else, why did he stand here on this street corner, in his solitary rambling, familiar street corner in bustling Jewish Harlem, suddenly transfigured, full of aureate promise, a redemption beyond the big dope he was, the “big ham,” the kids on the block called him, beyond Pop’s exasperated cry in Yiddish: “ Lemekh! What a lame Turk you’ve turned out to be!”

— Oh, yes, you did have little jobs, didn’t you? You tried to earn something.

Before school. He got up early in the morning, in the slum-bleary winter morning, and delivered fresh rolls and butter or cream cheese to homes on 119th Street, between Park and Madison, where the houses were a little better — and more Jewish. Yes, the grocer in the same block hired him. Shadowy, the kid running up and down stairs with fresh bulkies. Though Pop was always pleased when Ira earned a dollar or two, and his attitude during the time of his son’s earning would change — he would become friendly; he would tease Mom that Ira’s earnings should be deducted from her allowance. “ Gey mir in der erd! ” she would flush, and cry out, “ Gey mir in der erd! ”—it was Mom who objected to her son’s before-school delivery route, his early-morning exploitation, poor child. “I don’t need the few shmoolyaris ,” she said, calling the despised dollar a shmoolyareh , as was her wont. And he worked after school in a small, frowsy storefront shop where the owner and his wife, who lived in the rear, made fancy buttons; and Ira was taught how to make fancy buttons too: by spreading a patch of cloth on top of the bare metal button, and with a lever-operated press, force the cloth to unite with the metal. Working, as was his wont, lackadaisically, he caught his thumb between punch and button, and howled with pain.

He was sent on errands: once to deliver buttons to a tailor shop on east “A hundert und taiteent stritt.” Of course, Ira duly went to east a hundred and eighteenth street, found no tailor shop there, and reported back, with the buttons undelivered.

“I said a hundert und taiteent stritt,” the boss repeated in a dudgeon.

“I went there!” Ira clamored: “A hundred and eighteenth street.”

“No! Oy, gevald! Vot’s wrunk vit you? Taiteen, taiteen, not eighteen!”

And: at age eleven (How brief the age of innocence: The troll is on the bridge, Billygoat Gruff.). At age eleven, he worked in Biolov’s drugstore. Every day after school, and Saturdays all day. Doing all kinds of things, from chores to running errands: mopping the tiled floor, polishing the showcases — with a sheet of newspaper. “A little more elbow grease,” said the short, bald, affable Mr. Biolov. Elbow grease. It was the first time Ira had heard the expression, and for a moment he thought such a substance really existed. Delivering prescriptions, running errands. And all this for $2.50 per week. And when he lost, or his pocket was picked of a five-dollar bill Mr. Biolov had given him with which to buy drugs at the wholesale drug depot on Third Avenue, Ira had to work two weeks to make up for the loss. Mortars and pestles, yes, yes, in which drugs were ground, mixed in the back room of the drugstore. Syrup simple was sugar-water, wasn’t it? Sarsaparilla went with castor oil. Mr. Biolov was a “ shtickel duckter ,” Mom said, meaning he was a “bit of a doctor.” He gave first aid to accident victims who were brought into the drugstore, until the ambulance arrived. He took cinders out of eyes; he knew when to prescribe Seidlitz Powder and when to prescribe the dried berries that Mom brewed into a tea and were so pleasantly laxative; and when to prescribe citrate of magnesia — which was kept on ice, was cold and bubbly and lemony, and sent you to the toilet just as fast almost as castor oil. Sarsaparilla. Spirits of ammonia. Oil of peppermint. There were jars and jars of every sort of compound on the shelves, not ordinary jars, but all uniform in shape, made of pretty enamel, with wide mouths and glass stoppers.