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

They gaped at him, more taken aback, startled, than even Mom and Pop had been. “Hollo, mishpokha ,” he greeted the assembly. He felt like Douglas Fairbanks adroitly, improbably, foiling the thrust of so much openmouthed cynosure with a single blade of jocularity. “ Vus macht sikh? ”

His uncle Saul, ever taut, suspicious conniver, scowled. “Who’re you?”

“’Tis I. Don’t you know me? Mom, your sister, asked me to come over.”

And of all the people to recognize him first, it was his aunt Sadie. Mom’s youngest sister, so myopic that Pop, in benign mood, called her The Purblind; but more often, his spite prevailing, he called her Der Blindeh. “ Oy , it’s Ira! Gevald!” she cried out. “It’s Leah’s son!”

Commotion and outcry throughout the room. “What do you say to that?” and “What’s got into you?” from Moe’s wife, sharp, disapproving, bleached-blond Ida. Ever-tactless Harry, Ira’s youngest uncle, demanded, “Whatsa matter, you’re such a koptsn , you can’t afford a safety razor?” And “See, Father!” Mamie cried out. “Your oldest grandson, a Jew with a beard.” And meek Ella, her meat-cutter spouse Meyer absent, gaming in a café on 116th Street, “ Oy , is he handsome! Avert the Evil Eye!”

“Leah’s son?” Gray-bearded Zaida, though his cataracts had been removed, still squinted. He had eyeglasses, but wore them only when reading. Invincible hypochondriac, he peered at Ira with histrionic squint. “I don’t see well. Who? Is that Leah’s son?”

Burly, affectionate Moe, now permanently Morris, stood up, came over, shook hands and laughed, “ Tockin, a yeet mit a boort ,” he addressed the assemblage. “I used to carry him with one hand in Galitzia.”

“Who doesn’t remember? He was a tot,” said Ella. “Smaller than you,” she addressed little Yettie. “Just look.”

“A rebbeh ,” Morris chuckled. He stroked Ira’s beard with blunt fingers. “His malamut came to the house on 9th Street when I boarded there, and told Leah that God had bidden her son to be a rabbi.”

“I don’t like whiskers on a young man,” Ida reproved, secure in her platinum-blond acculturation. “When I was still single, I never made a date with a man with whiskers.”

“You didn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to make a date with you too,” acute Max twitted. “Did a man with whiskers ever ask you?”

Ida ignored the innuendo. “He knew I would’ve turned him down.”

“You?” Max replied.

“Don’t be snotty. I wouldn’t care who he was. I’m Jewish, but to go with somebody with whiskers? On an old man, a religious Jew, all right. But on a young man like you,” she addressed Ira, lapsing simultaneously into Yiddish: “ S’pahst nisht .” Vehemence kindled the large wen on her chin into a fiery plug.

“No?” Ira said apologetically. “I wouldn’t inflict it on you. It was Mom’s idea. She wanted me to come here.”

“Take it off.”

“Oh, sure, sure, Ida. First thing in the morning. After Minnie sees it.” Goddamn Delancey Street tramp. Ira looked away.

“Why should he take it off? Maybe he wants to become a rabbi, like Morris says,” talkative and mettlesome Hannah drawled in Ira’s defense. “We’ll have a rov in the family. A real rov . He’ll come to the family circle. He’ll say all the baruches for us—”

“Maybe he’ll be the rabbi that marries us. He would learn all the Hebrew he would have to say.” Stella’s wit was whetted. “You hear, Mama? If Ira was a rabbi, he’d get the twenty dollars you pay for marrying,”

“Kissingly I would present it to him,” Mamie said with fervor. “ Oy , I should see the day.”

“I’d love to do that, Mamie.”

“For my sake I know you would. Ah, the very thought serves me with a large helping of health.”

“Mama’s always worrying about marrying.”

“What’re you gonna be? A Reform rabbi? I like Reform rabbis. They talk in English,” Hannah chattered on. “You could talk over the radio, too, like Rabbi Wise. He’s such a smart rabbi. Everybody loves to listen to him—”

“Listen, local talent, children should be seen, not heard,” Ida attempted to squelch her niece.

“Who’s speaking to you? I’m speaking to him, not you. I got a right to talk to him. He’s my cousin. You know why I’m only local talent? That’s because Mama won’t let me go to dancing school. She’s afraid I’ll grow up to be a you-know-what.”

Almost everyone laughed at Hannah’s retort. It might have been innocent in intent, but Ida took umbrage. Her wen glowed. She glared at Hannah. Ira had to admire the kid’s crust, speaking in such tones to Ida.

“Where did you grow such a big black boort ?” Harry demanded bluntly. “ Aza boort .”

“On his chin. Where else?” Hannah offered at once.

“Smart. You’re so clever. You’re local talent, just like I told you,” Ida huffed. “Where else?”

“You don’t think there’s a where else?” Saul asked unpleasantly. “Max. Tell her.”

“ You tell her. Morris, you didn’t show her already?”

“Not even once.”

Laughter mingled with Hannah’s sharp “Oh, shoddop, you and your where elses. I don’t have to know. How long did it take you, Ira?” She defended her modesty staunchly.

“Only about two weeks.”

“You hear? Azoy! ”

It was time to go. He had been on exhibit long enough. Besides, he had come for Zaida’s diversion, but the old man sitting cheerlessly at the end of the table across the room obviously understood nothing of the English repartee. Nor, in all likelihood, would he have approved: he existed in a lopped-off, truncated ethos.

“I haven’t had supper yet,” Ira said by way of prelude to leave-taking. “I hope everybody’s had a good look.” He mingled Yiddish with English. “ Noo , Zaida, I’m going.” He brushed by Stella to where Zaida was sitting — could feel raptor desire spread wing within him: Sinbad’s roc. Who was Sinbad — apt word — who the roc? Lucky he had whiskers to muffle facial twitch. “’Bye, Stella,” he bade gruff-voiced, and neutrally, “’Bye, Hannah, Mamie, Ella, Sadie, uncles and everybody, Morris, Max, Harry, Sadie. ’Bye, Zaida. Don’t get up.” He knew the kind of handshake to expect: the weak token pressure of the Orthodox Jewish handshake.

Instead Zaida stood up. Even without glasses, the old boy’s eyesight wasn’t really gone. The steadiness, nay, fixity of his scrutiny made Ira feel suddenly flimsy, a tatter of self, sailing erratically like a scrap of wind-driven newspaper in the street. Jesus, he hadn’t come here for that; he had come here at Mom’s behest to display two weeks’ growth of beard, grown in another place, another world, for reasons they would never dream. “Yeah, it’s really me, Zaida, Leah’s son,” Ira reassured him in Yiddish. “Your oldest grandson, Ira Stigman.”

“I know, I know,” Zaida said once. “I want to behold you close, as well as these feeble eyes are able.”

The two gazed at each other. How antic his own whiskers compared to the millennial-seeming gray beard of his grandfather; it was the difference between a transitory caper and a covenant. Boy, everything was turning out altogether unexpectedly — thumping out unhappy meanings, when all he had anticipated was a jovial greeting, a display amid hilarity — and after a brief visit, departure.

“ Noo , let me remember you so.” The old man stretched out his short thick arms, encircled Ira within them. “A Jew as God willed. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Weak as my vision is, these eyes have seen my oldest grandson a Jew.” He grasped Ira to himself, holding his grandson to his thick torso in strong embrace. They kissed each other, beard through beard. “ Baruch atah adonoi, elohainu, melekh ha oylum. . ” Zaida began the traditional prayer celebrating the rare occasion when a Jew feels he has been privileged to survive to a supreme moment. “ L’hazman hazeh ,” he concluded.