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

— But that was a year later. You were twelve.

Indeed. That was in 1918.

— And you’re speaking of the year before, 1917.

Just before the United States entered the war. Yes.

— But the critical point, or moment, was 1918.

Yes.

— Then why not let it wait?

Why not indeed.

— You’ll sooner or later have to get over that hurdle.

Yes.

— I told you at the outset, when you deliberately omitted that most crucial element in your account, that you would not be able to avoid reckoning with it.

You did, Ecclesias. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for it.

— And are you now?

Yes. I became so.

— When you had to. It finally became inescapable.

Yes. Face-to-face with it as a consequence of continuing. Which is something, you notice, Ecclesias, I managed to evade in the only novel I ever wrote: coming to grips with it.

— It was adroit. You made a climax of evasion, an apocalypse out of your refusal to go on, an apocalyptic tour de force at the price of renouncing a literary future. As pyrotechnics, it was commendable, it found favor, at any rate. Proceed.

Pop suddenly decided he wanted to go to St. Louis; he yearned to revisit his brothers there; or was it some nostalgia too for those very first months in 1899 when he came to America? And interwoven with this, the usual illusion that in some way he might make a fresh start with the help of his brother Gabe, who by steady devotion to the Republican Party (and also by his allegiance to Freemasonry) had risen to a position of some importance within the ranks of the Republican Party: It was through Gabe’s good offices that his brother Sam had secured the position of Inspector of Sanitation in the St. Louis Street Cleaning Department. In the same way, Gabe had secured for his nephew, also named Gabe, a position in the Comptroller’s office. Uncle Gabe, Pop’s brother, had become a power in the Republican Party not only because of his long and unswerving devotion to it, but even more because he had chosen to live in a largely “colored” neighborhood, and served the interests of his district with great sympathy and such exceptional dedication, he could be counted on eventually “to deliver the colored vote.” “Maybe, maybe,” said Pop, “I’ll have luck this time.” Success or failure was almost always a matter of luck with Pop— mazel —almost never a matter of good or bad judgment. “Maybe, maybe I’ll have luck. Gabe could help me. He’s got a lot of pull. You understand what pull means?” He interrogated Mom, and translated the word into Yiddish for her benefit: “Pull means he has the ear of the mayor and the assemblyman, and other g’vir among the politicians. He knows maybe where is a good luncheonette to open in City Hall. With pull and a few hundred dollars to help me out, I could also became a makher .”

“You quarreled with him last time,” Mom reminded him.

“Last time was last time. What has that to do with this?”

Mom grimaced.

“Then if nothing comes of it, still I would see my brothers. You have a whole tribe here in New York. Whom have I to turn to? Nobody.”

“And when you were there, in St. Louis, much good it did you.”

“Go, you speak like a fool. How can you compare the youth of eighteen I was then to the man I am now? I have a trade. I’m a waiter. I understand the restaurant business. A luncheonette, if I opened one with Gabe’s advice, I wager would be a success. Let him only intercede for me among the politicians. Look what he did for my brother Sam, for my nephew Gabe S. And for young Sam, I hear he’s helping him open a cigar store on a busy avenue.”

“Let it be so,” Mom acquiesced. “As long as you leave me my allowance to run the household.”

“I’ll leave you, I’ll leave you. What, I’ll depart without leaving you your eight dollars a week? The rent is paid, the gas bill is paid,” Pop lapsed into davening singsong. “Two weeks’ allowance I’ll leave you. And the rest we’ll see.”

“ Noo ,” Mom raised resigned eyebrows, adding wryly: “I’ll be without a husband — abandoned, like Mrs. Greenspan across the street. And when the family hears, what they’ll say.” She rocked her head.

“Let them gabble,” said Pop. “Much good they’ve done me. Let me only have a little luck, I’d show them.”

It was a relief for Ira to know that his father would be gone — for days on end — a relief, and yet also a little disquieting. The respite of Pop’s absence, gladness of the new freedom he would enjoy meanwhile, was overlaid with Mom’s anxiety over the absence of the family breadwinner.

In a week, Pop was packed to go, the clasps of his second-hand satchel on the kitchen floor reinforced with washline. Tense, his face pinched, his nervousness manifest in every movement, tiny red and blue capillaries webbed the end of his nose, conspicuous despite their minuteness, like the threads on a bank note. “ Noo , Leah,” he said, brusque with nervousness, “let us bid farewell and embrace.”

“Let us bid farewell,” said Mom.

They embraced, the thin, slight man with eyeglasses, the heavy, buxom woman, full-lipped, almost stolid. Like two strangers, embarrassed by the formality, they separated. “Go in good health,” said Mom.

“I don’t want to hear any bad report of you,” Pop said to Ira.

He stooped, kissed Ira with strangely soft, tender lips, and picked up his satchel.

“You’ll write,” said Mom.

“What else? Of course.” His face darkened with apprehension, he opened the door. “Goodbye.” Closed it behind him.

“May he go in a happy hour,” Mom said, but without conviction. . sighed, “Ai, how he runs. Runs. God help him. Strange man. What can one do?” And after a troubled pause, “I’ll go to Baba’s for a little while. And shop on the way home. Do you want to come along?”

“No, I’ll read.”

“You’ll read your eyes out. Shall I light the gas mantle now? It will soon be dark.”

“No, it won’t be,” he said sulkily. “I can still see by the window.”

She was gone an hour or two, returned just as dusk began to settle on the washpole and washlines in the backyard. She seemed not so much forlorn as resentful, angrily cheerless. Frowning, she prepared supper — one of Ira’s favorite dishes, breaded veal cutlet — and then tried to restrain his voracity. “Now twice left behind. The first time in Tysmenitz with that stern, unbending mother-in-law, now here. Well, let him go — in a good year,” she added, vexed at herself for being upset. “It’s not Tysmenitz, where I waited on sufferance of my in-laws, months, till passage arrived, and with an infant. I can see by your face you don’t care to hear these things.”

“No, I don’t. That’s Europe.”

“Much difference that made — No, indeed,” she corrected herself. “You’re right. That’s what I ought to say: That was Tysmenitz, and I was alone, half among strangers. This is New York, America. My family is here. I have relatives. Still, where is he running? Will he find better reception with the brother he quarreled with years ago? They need him? As I need a plague. He hunts for rusty horseshoes. A settled man would long ago have found a suitable livelihood: If not in ladies’ wear, like Mamie’s Joe, then in other things. He’s a waiter, then remain a waiter. My brother Moe is now a head waiter in the same restaurant where he began as a waiter. My Chaim has become known in half the dairy restaurants on the East Side, and without doubt, half the vegetarian restaurants as well. What to do?”

“All right!” Ira countered impatiently.

“Indeed all right. I made some compote.”

“All right.”