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

“It fares well with me,” said Zaida. Contemplation accented the distress in his eyes and lips. “ Sis mir git . Let God be my judge, how ill I fare.”

Unhappy and irreconcilable, they were silent again, in a silence coated like a pill by soft, cloying dance-band music that drifted through the long hallway. Should he leave; had he paid his respects sufficiently? Queer, how one had to estimate the just duration of a forced protocol. Or was all protocol forced? Another minute should do it. Then stand up and say goodbye. His eyes ranged about the room: bare and cheerless bedroom. Not dingy, the light beige walls looked recently painted — Mamie had probably had them painted over the summer for the New Year. Not dingy, no, but cheerless, with only a complimentary calendar from the Harlem Savings & Loan Bank hanging from a brad on the door of the closet. Calendar on the wall and mezuzah on the doorframe. What else did the reverent Orthodox Jew require? It was as if decor were consigned — or confined — to the mind alone — decor of justice, of righteousness, decor of divine sublimity, without a single tangible attribute. It seemed impossible of realization now, but he had known it long ago, when he was eight years old, and attended cheder on the lost and irrevocable — and unwanted — East Side. Decor of the invisible — well, no, not entirely: hanging from a hook on the other side of the closet door was the lambent sapphire-blue velvet bag containing Zaida’s prayer shawl and phylacteries. Ella’s work, no doubt, Mom’s fourth-oldest sister, placid, painstaking Ella of “the blessed hands.” It was she who had embroidered in gold thread the two lions rampant either side of the Tablets of the Law. Lions of Judah, they shone within the shadow of the closet, as if the gold thread of the design were informed with its own light.

“What is there to say? I am like one besieged. I am like one beset on every side,” Zaida finally said. “I have only the Almighty to turn to, blessed be He.”

“I’m sorry, Zaida.” Again he had expressed his commiseration in English, and again corrected himself. There — now all he had to do was to wish his grandfather’s pending cataract operation a success: “ Zol gehen mit mazel, Zaida,” Ira said on the point of arising — he had fulfilled his obligation.

“Do you know who I am like?” Zaida asked. “I often think I am like that bishop among the Christians, that Augustinus.”

“Who?”

“That saint among them: Augustinus.”

“Oh, Saint Augustine.”

“Is that how you name him?”

“Yeah. Saint Augustine in English.” The fact that his grandfather had said Christlikher , instead of goy, indicated respect. “You know about Saint Augustine?” Ira lingered.

“ Noo, vus den? I don’t read? While I could. I don’t know?”

“You do?” It was already late on Sunday evening, almost nine thirty, on Zaida’s open gold watch on the table. Terminate as fast as he could, Ira told himself. “Yes?” He began adjusting his jacket.

“His city was besieged by the barbarians, the Goths, the Vandals, the Teutonim,” Zaida Hebraized.

“The Teutonim.” Ira itched, scratched. What was it Eliot said in his notes on The Waste Land ? “To Carthage then I came. . unholy loves sang all about mine ears—” “I think he was supposed to be black, an African.”

“Black, white. Whatever he was. After weeks passed, and the barbarians were still outside the walls, he prayed the Almighty to end the siege. Or to end him.”

“Him?”

“Augustinus.”

Ira got to his feet. “I ought to say goodbye to Mamie, Zaida. It’s getting late.”

“Well, go in good health.”

“Thanks.”

“And greet your mother for me.”

“I will. I hope you see better after the operation, Zaida.”

Zaida nodded — with invincible skepticism.

Ira took a last look at the tranquil blue phylactery bag. Boy, those gold lions rampant, they reared up around the Tablets of the Law, shining. He paused in the doorway. “And I hope the siege lifts a little for you too, Zaida,” trying to instill a little humor into the parting.

The old man smiled at last: “What are you saying?”

“I meant I hope that things get a little easier, Zaida.”

“ Oy, vey, vey. You’re still a child. Can the siege of existence ever be lifted? How? Never. Wish me what happened to Augustinus: that the Almighty would do as well by me as He did by him.”

“Why?”

Zaida laughed — shortly, but for the first time. “You don’t know?”

“No.” Ira felt slightly annoyed to have Zaida laughing at him, and about a gentile subject too. “What happened?”

“What happened was that Augustinus never lived to see the Teutonim, the Vandals, sack the city. That’s what happened. He never saw the havoc they wrought. You can imagine what wild barbarians are capable of: the cruelty, the slaughter, the violations, the atrocities. None of that he lived to see. What a blessing. Would the Lord favor me likewise.”

Frowning, Ira tried to separate chagrin from confusion. “Is that what you meant?”

“What else?”

“Good night, Zaida.”

II

Cryptic. . His grandfather’s laugh echoed in Ira’s mind, as he walked past the now darkened bathroom door toward the lighted kitchen and front room. Did they or didn’t they lift the siege? Enigmatic. Wonder where the old boy gleaned that bit of ancient history? Probably from Der Tag . Didn’t the old guy want to die, though. Maybe that was the answer.

Apothanein thelo . Ah, how I understand today, Ecclesias.

His mind reverted to The Waste Land again. Funny — he smirked — a barrel of unholy loves buzzing about my ears: too late, though, for him to have a chance at Stella. And for Christ’s sake, he adjured himself: make it snappy. Bid Mamie “adJew” and be off, whether she rewarded him this evening with a buck or not. Stella was no longer in sight, and the radio was turned down to a barely audible floss of dance band as Ira entered the kitchen.

“Good night, Mamie. I gotta go.”

“Come in. Another minute won’t hurt.”

“Oh, no. I’ve been here long enough.”

“Come in. Sit.”

“I’ve been sitting.”

“Come in. Sit.”

Ira came into the kitchen, dropped into a chair.

“ Noo , was he complaining?” Mamie asked.

“Zaida? Well, he’s an old man.”

“He isn’t so old. Baba of beloved memory used to say that every part of her husband Ben Zion’s body failed him early, save one.”

“Did she?” Ira couldn’t resist a grin.

“After the disaster with the lime, he suddenly grew listless. ‘I’m wearying of watching the stones grow in Veljish,’ he would say. But appetite he had — the best was saved for him — and when it came to meting out punishment, blows he could deal out not a few. I sometimes think Leah married a man just like her father.”

Ira shook his head.

“‘The stones, only the stones thrive in Veljish,’ he would say. ‘Only stones prosper here.’”

“Yeah?” A hamlet he may himself have seen in earliest infancy, before he was three, Ira reflected: all the sights and sounds the toddler’s wondering eyes absorbed, absorbed from the vantage of his stout young mother’s arms. The Galitzianer hamlet of Mom’s girlhood, with its village anomie and stagnation, of which she had given him so many intimations, must have weighed down the young spirit to intolerable melancholy. Little wonder she inveighed against living in “the back” of a tenement.

“Did Zaida ever go to a doctor for his disorder?” Ira said soberly. “You know, they have a name for it in English. Did he ever go to a doctor?”