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

He still wet his bed sometimes, humiliating him, but he couldn’t help it: He dreamt he was peeing in the gutter often, or down at the foot of the outdoor cellar steps. He left the kitchen, went out into the passageway, dark because the janitor always turned out the skimpy fish-tail burner in the stair hallway on the odd flights — after nine o’clock. From the passageway to the toilet door; even in the dark, you could still see the glimmering white of the toilet bowl — it was near the window was the reason why — past the long, long tin bathtub in its wooden coffer; he urinated. Be awful if he wet — nah, he wouldn’t, not tonight. He found, grabbed the chain in the dark, yanked, held for the usual length of gush. Returned, undressed to his underwear, looked at Mom questioningly, before asking her. “Where do you want?”

“You sleep next to the wall,” she said. .

III

Two or three evenings later, early, supper scarcely over, too early for Mrs. Shapiro to knock, the voice on the other side of the door replied to Mom’s “Whozit?” with, “It’s Louie, Louie S.” Mom flushed, opened the kitchen door, and tall and thin in his postman’s uniform, in came Uncle Louie.

“Uncle Louie!” Ira leaped up in rapturous greeting. “Uncle Louie!”

“ Yingle ,” he smiled his broad, square, gold-dentured smile. He’s growing to a big yingotch, keyn ayin-horeh ,” he said to Mom. That was the other wonderful thing about Uncle Louie: He could speak Yiddish like any other Jew, and yet speak English like a real American, a Yankee. “ Noo , Chaim is in St. Louis, Leah. I got a postcard from him. When did he leave?”

“This Monday. He wrote you? Come sit down,” Mom invited. “How is your family? How is Sarah? And the children?”

“Everyone is well, praise God. Sarah is busy with the house and children. We bought a piano for Rose.” He turned his gold-toothed smile toward Ira.

“Yeah?” Ira dropped his eyes and grinned sheepishly.

“ Noo, mazel tov ,” said Mom. “A little zjabba ,” she joked. Zjabba meant a frog, and could also mean coffee: java, kava.

“No,” he declined. “ A scheinem dank . Chaim wrote you.”

“He wrote me,” said Mom. “A long letter. He’s staying with Gabe and Clara.”

“So he wrote me. And how long?”

“That is”—Mom smiled speculatively—”that is something only Chaim knows.”

“He wrote me that he felt as if he had just come to America. To a new land. Indeed,” Uncle Louis meditated. “His words sounded to me as if he sought more than to visit Gabe and Sam, and the rest of the mishpokha . Is that so?”

“Me he told — what can I say? A visit and more. I know Chaim. Nothing that happens to him can happen to him by itself — if you understand me: Everything draws after it another notion, an opportunity. Perhaps Gabe will help him in business. Gabe is a politician; perhaps he will use his influence, he will guide him where best to open a luncheonette, a cafeteria, among the shvartze , such things. Will Gabe help him? He doesn’t know Chaim? It’s foolishness. And I don’t say this to belittle him. He doesn’t have that kind of head. And me he doesn’t take either into account nor into his confidence. Not that I have that kind of head either.”

“But calm. But reasonable.” Uncle Louis shook his head in demurral. “You know what you endure without help. And the chronic catarrh?”

“Today it’s to be borne. A mere piping in the ear.”

“A mere piping,” Uncle Louie repeated sympathetically, and nodded. “Does it seem so, or can it be heard?”

“Only misfortune knows.”

Louie stood up, bent his head toward Mom’s, so close their cheeks almost touched. She flushed. It was the only thing Ira was sure he wasn’t imagining, that Mom’s features suffused, not that Uncle Louie’s eyes were fixed on Mom’s bosom or hers moved quickly away from his mailman’s blue thigh. It was the strangest thing what you could imagine if you wanted to. And you wanted to, and nearly knew why.

Louie straightened up, his glance compassionate. “No, I hear nothing, Leah.”

“It’s a malady, and no more. I’m happy when it whines so faintly. An affliction, noo .”

“I fear so.” Louie sat down. “A few more joys in your life would do no harm, I’m sure. Companionship, change, another climate, to learn English, to see a little of the world—”

“Passion and Kholyorado,” Mom laughed.

“Indeed passion and Colorado,” Louie reiterated. “Who knows? High in the mountains, in thin, clear air, the whistling might vanish altogether.”

“In the other world. Ben Zion, my father, inflicted many a blow on me because I was so stubborn. If she says no, he would cry, you can slay her.”

Louie shook his head ever so slightly, turned his attention to Ira. “Well. Yingle , you remember that flock of chickens your father and I raised in East New York.”

“I remember!” Ira said eagerly.

“East New York? Azoy . You couldn’t have been more than three years old.”

“A big, big red rooster,” said Ira. “And Aunt Sarah scolded me from the window. Maybe I was gonna hit him with a stick.”

Uncle Louie laughed his wide, gold-toothed laugh. “A yin - gotch ,” he said admiringly to Mom.

“Ah, was that ever a handsome rooster,” said Mom. “And they were all stolen one night, every chicken.”

“I like Chaim,” Uncle Louie said earnestly. “He sees so much to laugh at, when he isn’t nervous. And good-hearted he is. But a settled judgment, that he lacks, no? It’s sad, what else is to say? And Gabe knows that too.”

“At present it’s better for me that way. I know he’ll come home. I won’t have to journey—” she gesticulated. “St. Louis I need to add to my sorrows. And you, you’re in New York tonight.”

“A mail sorter is sick — perhaps the whole week. I’m staying with Fannie in Brooklyn. Leah, why don’t we go for a short walk. It’s pleasant out. Almost like summer. A short walk to that park you have nearby.”

“Mt. Morris Park,” Ira offered eagerly. “I like it there.”

“I wear only my postman’s jacket,” said Louie. “It’s so much like summer.”

“Mom, come on with Uncle Louie!”

Uncle Louie helped Mom get into a light coat, and they left the house, the gas mantle-light still burning. Ira was overjoyed. To be near Uncle Louie, walk with him, while he talked about the farm in Stelton and about the crisis in the world, the certainty of war, to Mom’s “Thank God, I have no son to be a soldier. Now almost three years,” she added: “A curse fallen on the world. And how is Sarah?”

“Sarah is Sarah,” Uncle Louis said, and made a regretful sound with his tongue. “It’s not enough for her to be a housewife and mother of three. And I earn a good salary; I don’t have to tell you—”

“This way,” Ira directed as they reached Madison Avenue. “Here’s my school.”

“Yes.” Uncle Louie took Mom’s hand to guide her.

“What does she wish?” asked Mom.

“That we should move from Stelton, from among the socialists, somewhere else, somewhere in New York. Buy a larger house there, and take in a few paying guests.”

“ Yiddisher business,” said Mom.

“Indeed.”

“Well, if she wishes. All the work will fall on her.”

“I know. And we would have more money, perhaps. But I’m not a businessman, Leah. She doesn’t understand that. To me to speak to other socialists, to other free-thinkers, to hear a good speaker enlightens one. And afterward a discussion—” Louie’s lean face became animate, his long arm blurred the space it swept through. “About the future, about how different people will be, when religion no longer divides us, and gelt , as we say, when women will have equality, in politics, in marriage, in love. Sometimes I even have an urge to write about it, especially about how changed the life of women will be. Free love I’m sure will come in the future. We can talk for hours on that. And we get angry and excited, and we’ll still be friends. Sarah doesn’t understand that.”