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

“You look dejected,” said Mamie.

“Yeah, I am. I don’t have much hope for the future myself.”

“Why?”

“My college career is kaput. Farshtest?”

“Go, you’re just tired. They say in Yiddish, everything depends on will. He who wills achieves more than he who knows.”

“Yeah? I don’t know much, Mamie, but I sure will a lot,” Ira said in Yinglish — and chortled wickedly.

“ Azoy doff sein.” Mamie got to her feet. “Money lost is nothing lost. But will lost, then is everything lost. Keep on willing.” She went to the gas stove and tried to turn the fringe of flame under the stove lid still lower. The fringe winked out. “ Noo, ferfallen, ” she said, “I’ll light it again when Jonas comes home. Another hour and a half. Maybe two. It’ll stay warm.” She returned to the table, turned her back to the kitchen chair to sit down — her knees lost control of her bulk, and she tumbled heavily onto the chair seat. “Oy!”

“She ruins all the sofas that way, my dear mother,” Stella observed coolly. “Plop, the springs go.”

“What can I do? I dearly love to eat. I’m only waiting for Jonas to come home to have a few verenekehs .”

“So why don’t you give Ira some? He’s looking so sad.”

“I already had some,” Ira rejoined.

“Oh, then it’s a wonder you’re sad. My mother cures every kind of trouble with eating. If my father says business in the cafeteria isn’t so good, she eats. If that drunken shikker upstairs doesn’t pay his rent, she eats. The trouble with you is you cure everything with eating.”

“Very clever of you, Stella. Go bathe.”

“You know, Ira, my mother can finish a whole pound box of chocolate cherries in one hour.”

“I told you to go bathe!”

“Hannah’s in the bathroom.”

“And that’s where you should be, too.”

“I have to get my clothes off first, don’t I?” Stella retorted.

“Then go into your bedroom. And turn off the front-room lights. Is the radio off?”

“Ye-e-s. O-o-f. Can you hear it?” Stella drawled petulantly, gave her mother an angry look as she left the kitchen for the hallway. “You’d think we still had batteries in the radio. She tsitses , my mother. It’s a penny — electricity.” She disappeared. A moment later the front room’s electric wall buttons could be heard clicking.

“Something today,” Mamie said to Ira. “I don’t know what. Aggravations. Between two daughters and their grandfather, between the tenants and the bank, oy , what one has to bear.”

“I bet.” Time to go. Time to have gone — long ago. Hellish tedium. How could he be such a goddamn horse’s ass? Jesus, all for the sake of a half minute. Was it even a half minute? All these sanctimonious preachers prating the same thing: was the soul’s salvation or damnation worth a half minute? No, that wasn’t what they said. Risking hell’s fire worth the pleasure of a half minute? Evidently.

“That one, especially,” Mamie spoke through a wide, prolonged yawn. “Till I see her under the canopy, the hair will creep out of my head.” She passed her grubby hand before her eyes. Flesh rimmed the gold band on her finger. “Oh, I would so dearly love to lie down a few minutes.”

“Well, why don’t you? I’m leaving.” Ira really meant it.

“Jonas may come home a little early today. Harry was off yesterday. So he may relieve him earlier. That’s the way we have a few minutes together.”

“Oh, yes.” In the midst of his thwarting, a ray of pity made its way: for his gross, ponderous aunt, her immigrant striving, limitless, limitless sacrifice to climb out of her steerage arrival in the goldeneh medina , servant girl and indentured drudge paying off her passage to Granduncle Nathan, the diamond merchant. That’s the way we have a few minutes together. Pity. The rays opened wider, like Blake’s calipers. “Well, good night, Mamie.” Ira stepped to the threshold.

He remained there, for down the hall, the doorbell whirred. Ira gaped in astonishment at his aunt.

“ Oy, gevald!” Mamie sat transfixed, upright.

“Is it Jonas?” Ira asked.

“No, no! He has a key! It’s too early.” She thrust herself to her feet. “They’ll wake the old man!” She squeezed past Ira into the hall.

Again the doorbell whirred.

Mamie’s speed was again surprising; solicitude drove her shuffling down the hall. “Who?” she challenged at the door. “Whozit?” And then apparently reassured by the answer she heard, she withdrew the bolt of the lock, swung open the door. “Mrs. Gomez, it’s you?”

With Mamie’s girth filling the doorway, the newcomer couldn’t be seen, only heard: a woman’s voice excitedly sputtering a medley of Spanish and English. Then a small girl’s treble, supplementing the first voice: something about little Teodoro. “Little Teodoro no can get out.”

“How? Vie zoy? In the closet?” Mamie demanded. “Is not no locks on closet doors, Mrs. Gomez.”

High-pitched protestations in Spanish. The apartment doorknob was rattled, as if in demonstration — which was followed by an admonitory “Sh!” sounded by Mamie.

“He break,” said the woman’s voice. “He cry inside. Cry! Cry! ‘Out! Mama!’”

Mamie apparently understood. “Ver is Isabella? The other big sister? Ver is Mr. Gomez?”

“He night man Horna Harda work.”

Horna Hardon, Ira coughed with weary, hectic mirth: Horn & Hardart, the Automat.

And the child’s voice: “Isabella go with my big sister. Gonna marry.”

“And a neighbor? The next doorkeh? Somebody. It’s a nothing with nothing. A scrooldriver can open it.”

“Scrooldrive?”

“A pointig knife you put in de hull und give a drei —Sh! Oy, gevald, der alter . Pliss comm. In de hall.”

Perhaps he could help, whatever it was, Ira wavered. He ought to try. It couldn’t be very much of a job: a screwdriver can open it, Mamie said. Maybe it was just a— Oh. . he hadn’t heard her, Stella, and no shadow thrown before her as she came out of the gloom of the front room into the muted light in the hallway from the kitchen, juvenile, voluptuous apparition: “You!”

She simpered.

“O-o-oh,” he purred. His hand under the green-striped bathrobe sought her rump in rapturous turpitude, digits seemed to sprout eyes, spread their width to clutch: “Ooh, if only I had a hand twice as big.” And marched around to her mound with forty thousand men. “Get back.” He nudged her toward the dark of the front room. “Jesus, maybe Mamie’ll have to go upstairs.”

“Hannah’s in the bathroom. She’ll come out.”

“Oh, nuts! I forgot.” Checked, goddamn it, checked, mated, checked, not mated — he didn’t know enough chess. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”

She lagged behind him as he withdrew toward the kitchen, speaking as she followed: “These Puerto Ricans must never have lived in houses. They don’t know what to do in a house. Give them the sidewalk. They love the sidewalk. There’s nothing to fix there.”

How could she prattle so inanely when seconds mattered, prattle away a prat. “You think she’ll come out right away?”

“She’s out already. She must have heard Mama.”

Down the hall a door creaked. Seconds later, bosomless Hannah, boyish in petticoat, pattered in, barefoot. “I heard the bell,” she said anxiously. “Is Mama outside?”

“What else? She’s outside with your Puerto Rican friends,” Stella informed her sister. “She’s telling Mrs. Gomez how she should open the closet door without knobs. They fell off.”

“Poor Mama. Why?”

“Mrs. Gomez doesn’t know how. Her little Teodoro is inside.”