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

“A doctor?” Mamie scouted. “In Veljish they called a doctor when you were dying. That’s when you saw a doctor, and that’s when you saw an orange.”

“Neurasthenia,” Ira suddenly recalled. “That’s the name in English.”

“Don’t give it fancy names.” Stella’s voice preceded her. She had apparently overheard, and was coming from front room to kitchen. “New rasthenia, old rasthenia. Believe me, you don’t have to go to college and use fancy words for him. I can tell you in plain English.” In buff dress, always with that bland misleading unconcern, she leaned against the doorpost.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you wanna know?”

Jesus Christ. He felt like shutting his eyes. Get your ass out of here, and go home. You don’t stand a chance. What was he waiting for? His shoes scraped the linoleum as he abruptly shifted his legs. Don’t give yourself away. The little knish , the little twat, knew he was beginning to smolder, and she basked in his heat at a discreet distance from the — yes, the skewer. Helter-skelter libido swirled the associations about: associations with just the right prefix. His behavior had to be more than noncommittal; he had to overcompensate. A grim appearance was the only one he could rely on. “Neurasthenia’ isn’t a fancy word,” he said severely. “That’s the word for Zaida’s condition.”

“That old guy?” Stella scoffed. “He likes the misery, that’s all.”

“Daughter dear, you know what? You’re turning into an anti-Semite,” Mamie reproved — but without conviction.

“Of course he likes his misery,” Stella reiterated. “Ira, listen, if you’re sick, and you tell everybody about it, doesn’t it mean you like your misery?”

“Well. I don’t know. .”

“My daughter,” said Mamie. “May no harm ever come to you, and enjoy a thousand blessings, but sympathy for another person you never had.”

Stella was not to be put off so easily. “Look, Ira, your uncle Gabe, your father’s brother, came here from St. Louis. When did he see Zaida before? Never. Maybe in Galitzia. Maybe. So what’s the first thing Zaida begins to tell him? How mean his granddaughters are, with their radio and their dancing and springing, how lousy they make him feel, Jewish girls, and how rotten life is. Now if you talk like that right away to strangers, it must mean you like it.”

“Go, you have no heart,” Mamie rebuked. “Go back to your moving-picture megglezine that you’re reading.” She sighed — like a great bale of something, kind, obese woman. “Comes an old Jew to the door, an old Jew with a beard and a pishkeh , collecting money for the yeshivas or the poor in Eretz Yisroel. She gives him a penny, one penny.”

“I gave him a penny, and that’s enough, but she gave him a dime. Why? Because he’s got whiskers.”

“A fortunate thing your grandfather is in bed in his bedroom,” said Mamie. “Go back to the front room, Stella, and let us be. It will soon be your bedtime.”

“That’s right,” Ira said, and stood up — as Stella left the kitchen.

“Sit! Sit!” Mamie’s vehemence halted him. “I hardly have a chance to talk to you. We’ve been interrupted at every turn. One minute more. Be a good child.”

“One minute.” Ira dropped back in his chair.

“I have such good verenekehs; they smack of paradise,” she cajoled. “Before you go, eat some. Tell me if they’re not the best verenekehs —the best pirogen you ever tasted.”

“Oh, is that why you want me to stay?”

“Well, isn’t that a good reason?”

“That’s what I thought. It so happens that I’m hungry.”

“And that’s what I thought,” Mamie said, triumphantly tapping her large bosom.

“God, why do you have to tempt me, Mamie. I’m going home. Mom’ll give me some supper.”

“ Nein. Nein . I have a whole potful of verenekehs , more than twice what Jonas and I will eat when he comes home. They didn’t please the old man. The children avoid them, makes them fat. Why should they go into the garbage?” Mamie moved quickly for so heavy a woman; she was at the stove in an instant, wooden ladle in hand, stirring the white enamel pot on the stove lid that she used for a simmerer over the low gas flame. “A few. They won’t harm you, believe me.” She began the transfer of pirogen from pot to platter. “You’ll still have a bit of appetite when you get home.”

“I won’t need it.”

“You’ll see. Appetite comes with eating.”

“That’s enough, Mamie! Gee, that’s my weakness. You’re a pasta masta too,” he said ruefully.

“A what?” She brought the plate of gently steaming pirogen to the table and provided him with a fork. “What means a ‘pasta masta’? Wait, I’ll bring you bread.”

“Oh, no! Not bread too.”

“And a little sour cream. I have good heavy sour cream I bought this morning on Park Avenue.”

“No — oh, all right,” he capitulated. “Thanks, Tanta . Boy! That’s enough sour cream.” What a transmogrification took place when humble mashed potatoes were laced with sautéed onions, then clad in a jacket of boiled dough and drowned under sour cream.

“You are hungry. You swallow them whole.”

“I’ll say. Jewish oysters. What time does Jonas come home?”

“Another two hours. Twelve o’clock, sometime a little earlier. It depends on the train from Jamaica after he leaves the cafeteria. And sometimes on my brother Harry too, how promptly he gets to the store to relieve Joe. Are they good?”

“Are they good!”

“More?”

“No, no, no! Well, maybe a couple more.”

“Aha.” Mamie spooned out half a dozen. “I told you: appetite comes with eating.”

“And I thought it went!” he guffawed with zany mirth. “Ooh, if I’m not a goner!” Ira assailed the fresh batch with a gusto that made the pirogen seem to blench.

“You should know that with my poor husband I had to move heaven and earth,” Mamie said as she rested the pot on the simmerer, “until I got my fine brothers to take him in for a partner. ‘A cap maker, a tailor,’ was their cry — Jonas was a good ladies’ tailor too—‘what has that got to do with the restaurant business? How can the one go together with the other?’ So they said.”

“How will they suit?” Delectable, the warm, slippery Jewish pirogen , lubricated by sour cream, and skidding down his gullet on an English pun. “Aah!”

“What?”

“A match,” he chortled.

“A match,” Mamie repeated, puzzled. “You know, they’re dairy. You can stay and sit a little longer. Have some coffee with milk afterward, keep me company awhile.”

“No, thanks, Tanta. Please!”

“I know why they didn’t want him in the cafeteria. Jonas is not very imposing. Jonas is little. He is short. So? He can’t hold his own at the cash register? If it weren’t that Zaida intervened—‘you must take your brother-in-law in as a partner’—I would be bickering with them still.”

“Go ahead. Why does Jonas have to eat at home? He’s got a whole cafeteria to get his meals in — to get his supper.”

“Is it kosher?” Mamie tacked question to question.

“Oh.”

“They said how will a cap maker, a tailor, be of use in a restaurant, how will he—”

“Fare?” Ira giggled.

“What?”

“Never mind. Just joking. Bill of fare.”

“So I said, how did Harry become a makher in a restaurant? He was a furrier’s apprentice. How did Max do it? He was a sign painter. He was a glove maker—”

“And my father.” Ira tried to slow down his rate of consumption out of courtesy to the dwindling remnant. “My father came right from driving a wet-wash wagon, after he stopped being a milkman, and in no time at all, he was a waiter.”