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

“Verily?”

“Do I have to show you?”

“No, no. Gott sei dank . From where did you filch three dollars?”

“I didn’t filch it. Edith gave it to me.”

“The Professora? Azoy? ”

Ira shrugged — noncommittally.

“Aha. I have a gigolo for a son. Cadger!”

“I’m not a cadger!” He had raised his voice. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her when she’s been in trouble— tsuris , you understand? I’ve listened to her complaining. I’ve sympathized with her. She feels I’ve been of service, I’ve done a great favor, done her a lot of favors. She feels indebted. So what am I going to do? She won’t let me go around penniless.”

“You don’t feel ashamed?”

“I don’t know what to feel.”

“But you take it. Noo , bless her for her generosity. What a fine, noble person she must be.”

“She is.”

“Woe is me.” Mom’s sigh would have been stagy in anyone else, but with her, emotion resonated from the depths of her being.

“Why do you say that?” Ira demanded gruffly.

“I already see,” she said.

“Oh, you do? You see what?”

“Indeed, my son.” A sibylline presence, a sibylline quiescence enveloped her as she spoke. “A woman forsaken is like a vine. She clings to whatever will support her.”

“Who says she’s forsaken?”

“She’s not?”

“You make it sound so Jewish.”

“Jewish, goyish , regardless.” When she meditated, Mom’s lips always swelled out in a pout. “How destiny fulfills itself: that you should be on hand, impecunious Jewish youth, out of this poverty, out of this destitute 119th Street, in her need for someone to turn to. Truly, it’s something to marvel at.”

“Mom, will you cut it out? You’re going way, way off. She’s an independent woman: she doesn’t have to turn to anybody; she doesn’t have to lean on anybody. She’s just the opposite of you. She’s self-reliant, they call it in English. Brave. Self-supporting. You should have seen how brave she was after she had an abortion.”

“A what? Oy, gevald! She was pregnant?”

“Well, what else?” Ira could scarcely refrain from yelling. “If she had an abortion!”

“Poor woman! He deserves the gibbet, that rascal.”

“Oh, boy! The gibbet, no less.”

“No? He who toys with a woman’s heart deserves the gibbet. And to get her with child beside.”

“Listen, he didn’t toy with her heart, and he got her an abortionist, it’s called, as soon as she found out. He paid for the whole thing. He paid the doctor.”

“A great boon.” Mom was unimpressed.

“No? You’ve got a short memory, Mom. Don’t be such a saint. You had to lift up your brother Morris. You picked up two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Morris, when you didn’t want another baby. You think I don’t remember.”

“What else could I do with a miser like my husband, tell me?”

“Oh, all right. I wasn’t talking about that.” They were both silent, vexed with each other.

“Don’t forget there were other men around. Larry was there too.” Ira buttressed contention with reminder.

“Larry?” Mom dismissed her son’s plea. “What was Larry to a grown woman? A boy, a comely boy, nothing more. Could she consider him seriously? Go. This Lewleh you call him, this was an adult. Cholera carry him off, but an adult he was. And he gave her to understend he might marry her. You told me yourself.” Mom interspersed words with ominous strokes of double fingers.

“Yeah, but Christ’s sake, we weren’t talking about that!”

“What were we talking about?”

“We were talking about how she could have been pregnant— who made her pregnant.”

“You don’t have to shout. I understand.”

“Yeah, but you’re always winding things around.” Ira gesticulated vehemently. “I just wanted to tell you that he paid for it all.”

“ He paid. What are you saying?”

“Cash I mean.”

“All right. A fine man.” Mom halted further discourse in that direction with heavy sarcasm. “Deep into the sod let him go, for my sake.”

“Yeah?”

“The man buys a passage to England — last summer you told me. He knows months in advance where his choice lies. His choice lies with another woman. And he returns and toys with her heart. He deludes her into thinking he is still undecided.”

“How do you know?”

“You told me, no?”

“Well, she knew too. She knew that he had chosen the other woman, the woman in England!” Ira shouted. “She saw a book the other woman gave him: Shakespeare’s Sonnets they were called. Inscribed — you know what I mean: inscribed ‘To our future together’—Ah, what’s the use,” he growled. “You just live in a different world, that’s all.”

“ Noo , I’m a Dummkopf , a greenhorn. Not a sophisticate like your Professora. What can I do? I wept these eyes out to enhance your education, to keep you from becoming the common Dummkopf that I am.”

“Aw, Mom, you’re not a Dummkopf . I didn’t say that. I said you lived in a different world.”

“Well, let’s talk further.” Mom directed her sad, searching gaze at him — in challenge. “Would you like? You can tell me. I’m your mother.”

“Like what?” Ira countered guardedly.

“You’ve seen her fondled by other lovers; you’ve seen her kissed and cherished and handled by others. She’s lost her appeal to you, hasn’t she?”

“Oh, is that it? You’re back to the clinging vine again.”

“Don’t sneer.” Once more oracular her gravity: “How old is she?”

“Edith? She’s thirty-two.”

“Undoubtedly thirty-five.”

“I said she was thirty-two!” Ira bristled. “Tsvei’n dreizig! If I say she’s thirty-two, why do you tell me she’s thirty-five?”

“Very well, thirty-two. Eleven years older than you are.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything and nothing. I mean only—” Mom groped for words. “Granted she isn’t a clinging vine. Today you are her confidant. But tomorrow? The distance between confidant and lover grows ever shorter.”

“I never measured it,” he sulked.

“No? But I have.”

“Yeah? How?”

“You shared the same bed with her.”

“But I told you! Nothing happened!” Ira again raised his voice.

“Not this time. But she shed tears before you, did she not?”

“Shed tears before me. Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

Mom sighed again. “I wouldn’t blame you if you became her lover — in real earnest: you may go and live with her.”

“Is that so? Thanks.”

“No? What? Live in these gloomy, little crypts, this forlorn coldwater flat of four cells, when you can have better? And in this poverty to have to depend on him , tight-fisted and stingy — do I need edify you — when she already has shown over and over how bountiful she is, how fond of you, no? What do you prefer? My travails, my tears, his hostility, our dearth, the four of us pent up between narrow walls. Or do you crave trudging for alms to Mamie’s on 112th Street once a week? Go to the Professora if you wish. She is kind to you. She is generous. She is refined. That she’s a shiksa and older? That’s nothing, counts for nothing. She would take care of you. I bless her for that. Perhaps she would help you find a path to become someone: a mensh . Who knows? Something other than you are now, a shlemiel . Still, you’re my son.”

“Yeah?”

Mom made no answer. In the silence, Ira heard Pop’s quick, light step entering the hallway outside — and nodded in signal.