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

She got up from the table to serve him. “Upstairs lives a Mrs. Karp. The man goes to work day in day out. At what? He’s a curtain maker. He doesn’t seek to become a boss overnight. I’m sure they’re saving money. Because she told me when the time is ripe, and they have the money, with God’s help they hope to buy out a small curtain-making factory. The boss himself might accept part payment. His children shun curtain making. Their minds are set only on going to college. So prudent people plan. She will help; her youngsters will help. They’re practical. They trust each other. They devise the future together. With him, everything is a secret, his earnings, his schemes.”

“All right!” Ira interrupted.

“In truth, why do I trouble you with this.” She set the compote before him. “The heart speaks of its own accord.”

He did homework until bedtime. He disliked arithmetic drill; most arithmetic that had to do with dollars and cents: interest on money in the bank, commission on sales, profit in trade. He hated long division. Only when there was a figure to deal with did he like doing the example: an oblong, a square, a triangle that gave you a formula to apply. He disliked geography, he tolerated history. But reading, ah! That was the trouble; he spent too much time reading, at the expense of everything else. He hadn’t read so much on 9th Street; he couldn’t even recall where the library was on the East Side. He knew where the cheder was, but not the library. Now it was almost the other way round. He knew the location of at least four different libraries. And he could read English so much better; he could guess words in a fairy tale or legend, even if he couldn’t say the word right. Ira smiled at himself. Once when he was reading aloud in 3B, he said “kircle” for circle. Even the teacher laughed.

II

Squat, dumpy Mrs. Shapiro visited them in the evening (would Ira ever forget her kindness and her courage in the face of Pop’s fury). Alerting them by a knock on the door, Mrs. Shapiro would announce herself on the other side of the portal. She had begun dropping in during the evening the last few weeks because Pop was working as a “sopper”: Pop was waiting at tables for all three meals lately, for dinner — in addition to his regular stint of breakfast and lunch — in order to accumulate all the finances he could in readiness for opportunities in St. Louis. Because she dearly loved to hear the roman , the serial romance that was printed daily in Der Tag , Mrs. Shapiro had been taking advantage of Pop’s absence. Ira insulated himself from Mom’s flow of Yiddish, grinning sarcastically now and then, when he heard Mom say, “Kha! Kha! Kha! hat er gelakht .” What a way to say, “Ha, ha, ha, he laughed.”

Mom said nothing at first of Pop’s departure, since Pop hadn’t been home evenings anyway, but after a while she confided in her neighbor that Pop was in St. Louis. They talked about his absence a great deal, and Mom read a long letter from Pop in Yiddish all about his St. Louis. He was very favorably impressed. He was hopeful of prospects there, of achieving success in the easier pace of life there — not like New York, snappish and full of khukhims . And he got along fine with the shvartze . Gabe thought a luncheonette or a café would do well in the precinct where he himself lived, mostly surrounded by shvartze . They preferred to patronize establishments owned by whites, rather than those owned by people of their own race. Besides, they hardly knew the first thing about running a restaurant.

“He sounds very much as if he would like to go live there in this St. Louis,” said Mrs. Shapiro. “And you?”

“I? If he thinks I would go live in St. Louis, then he’s truly demented. I would go live there with those cold relatives of his?”

“ Azoy? And what would you do?”

“We haven’t reached that point yet,” Mom rejoined shortly, but resolutely.

“Pop says it’s a big city,” Ira chimed in. “Maybe there wouldn’t be so many Irishers there. I could have friends.”

“If not Irishers, then blacks. Would that suit you better?”

“It would be different.”

“Such an ungifted people,” said Mrs. Shapiro. “And homely. Oy, gevald .”

“And shleppen with the furniture. You would have to go to a different school too. You complain about Irishers— goyim , rabid anti-Semites. How do you know what you’ll have to suffer there?”

“Pop says they’re friends. There’s more Irishers in P.S. 24 than in P.S. 103,” Ira countered. “Next year I’m going to go to P.S. 24. So I have to change schools anyway. How do you know you wouldn’t like it better in St. Louis?”

“You hear the child?” Mom turned to Mrs. Shapiro. “Childish wits are childish wits. When we moved here to Harlem, he wept to go back to the East Side. Now that he’s accustomed to living here, he wants to move to St. Louis.”

“You have here grandmother and grandfather,” Mrs. Shapiro reminded Ira. “And aunts and uncles—”

“I’ll have aunts and uncles there too,” Ira interrupted.

“But so few blocks away: on 115th Street.”

“Go,” Mom dismissed him. “Here I have sisters and a mother. Here I have learned my way around. I know where to shop for clothes, for a bedspread, where to buy horseradish and fresh pike and cracked eggs. A Jewish bank teller greets me in the savings bank. What will I know, a new goyish city? So far away into the wilderness. Immediately they’ll be mimicking my every step and tread. There’ll be havoc if he takes it into his head to move there. I won’t go! At least I have my kin here; I can endure this penury. What will it be like among his folk? They’re alien. Aloof. And you don’t think he’ll be embroiled with them in a short time? Then where will I turn? I’ll stay here. Let him send me my weekly allowance. No, Mrs. Shapiro?”

“Indeed. Indeed,” said Mrs. Shapiro.

“All right.” Ira looked worriedly at Mom’s vexed, obdurate face. And yet, infringing on the uneasiness that her disquiet awoke in him, odd contrarieties beckoned: shapeless notions of life in St. Louis, a distant world, a more spacious one, a fresh and better one than here in Harlem. Which did he want? Here without Pop, there, with him in St. Louis? Here without Pop, beyond the danger ever of another terrible beating like the one after Mrs. True came in to complain — and Mrs. Shapiro — here she was this evening, so expressionlessly had saved him from who knew how much worse. No, he had never told anyone — and whom was there to tell? — that he had dreamt that night of trying to pick up a knife with which to stab Pop, but it was stuck fast to the table, as if a magnet held it. And he had dreamt it another time too, so bright the sharp blade! No, he would like it better without Pop, or with Pop in a new world, with new relatives, relatives who spoke English. He couldn’t say.

After Mrs. Shapiro left, Mom seemed to reverse herself; she became annoyed at her own agitation: “What am I babbling about? They already haven’t had to do with him, his brothers? They don’t know Chaim and his giddiness and his antics? I babble. It’s nothing. You’ll have a father — give him a week or two.” She nodded in abrupt confirmation. “What? They’ll bear with him as I do? They’ll pity him as I do? As yesterday is today. Are you ready for bed?”

“Yeh.”

“You’ll sleep in my bed.”

“Where will you—” He didn’t know how to finish. “I’ll sleep in yours and Pop’s bed?”

“Indeed. To have you close by me, should anything happen.”

“What’s gonna happen?”

“Who knows. I’m alone. That I know. Go, pee.”