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

Oh, hell, guilt again: Jesus, had Ira been out working, bringing home a pay envelope, the way the other kids on the street did, how different, how much easier for Mom — having to wrangle with the old bastard for all of two bucks.

He gazed at the candles, trying to make up his mind whether to get his copy of Milton’s poems from the shelf under the china closet, or to try to protect Mom, interject some witticism, maybe, divert her fixation on the subject of her allowance. How she tormented herself over it, and how Pop enjoyed prolonging her torment. No, he couldn’t lose himself in Milton. Not on Shabbes bay nakht . Not with Pop digging his mother’s grave before him.

Again, his gaze rested on the wavering light of the candles. Tapers they were called once. Probably because they did taper once. Burned halfway down. Weren’t they a measure of time in ancient days? Once they were lit, if you were an Orthodox Jew you weren’t allowed to touch them again, or touch the flame. Or relight them if they were blown out. To do so was to perform work. And on Shabbes no work was permitted. Wasn’t that the silliest goddamn idea? And yet for him this particular observance, this particular manifestation of Judaism, had become an intertwining of rebellion with memory, of erstwhile piety with present disbelief.

Ira was about to get up and go for his book, but paused to listen to Pop reminisce. “To every married couple my father allotted a milk cow,” Pop resumed.

“Yeah?”

The expansive little man adjusted his eyeglasses and pushed his stained felt hat back on his head, revealing the deepening coves of his balding brow. “To my brother Sam, who already had two children, he allotted two cows. And to all married pairs, of course, a flock of chickens, a garden plot — and a goy to tend it, naturally. Firewood we had, eggs we had, sour cream we had, cottage cheese also.”

Ira smirked surreptitiously, diverted in spite of himself by Pop’s pronunciation of the English word: Kaddish cheese.

“It’s true,” Pop insisted.

“I believe you, Pop.”

“We didn’t starve — as they did, the children in her family. That old glutton Zaida took good care of himself, you can be sure of that. He kept food under lock and key. But not so my father. We had an abundance of everything. Even brandy we didn’t lack. Schnapps. What, Saul, the superintendent of Count Ustorsky’s distillery, should begrudge us a measure of brandy?”

“Then why did you leave Austria, Pop?”

“Why? To go around idle, that’s not my nature.”

“But your father was the superintendent of a big distillery.”

“Hah! Struck the mark.” Mom brought up the glass bowl of compote. “My clever son.”

“Struck the mark? What do you know about it?” Pop turned on her. “I’m not one to rely on my father.”

“Oh.”

Ira smacked his lips as Mom set down the compote and went to the sideboard for saucers and a serving spoon. He loved Mom’s compote, the variegated prunes, raisins, and dried pears in dark sauce.

“Go tell your grandmother. We’ve heard your stories.” Mom returned and sat down. Her laughter too often held the hint of a jeer, and it did now. “Why do you believe him?”

“It’s all right,” Ira appeased. Jesus, that goddamn two bucks. She was as implacable as a piranha when he baited her.

“You were too light-witted for that kind of work. To run a large distillery takes judgment. Your father didn’t trust you. True?” She picked up a saucer.

“In your addled brain it’s true,” Pop retorted. “My father didn’t want all his sons working at the same trade. My brother Simon was already working there — and Raphael and Meyer and my brother-in-law, Schnapper. The rest of us he wanted to learn a trade.”

“Aha.”

“No,” he mocked in turn. “Look! Look how she serves! A thousand times I told you, don’t dump it out of the bowl. Use the serving spoon.”

“Chaim,” Mom rejoined, “you serve your customers in the restaurant however you wish. I’ll serve however I wish at home.”

“Even a horse would have learned by now.”

“Dine with a horse then, my finical spouse.” An angry and constrained silence followed, all too latent with furious quarrel.

“Wow, this is good compote, Mom,” Ira said with enthusiasm — that he hoped would allay tension. “It tastes good, so good.”

“ Ess, ess, zindle .”

“With pleasure, Mom. You know that.”

“I’ll brew some tea.”

“Such a compote I could wish on my foes.” Pop put down his spoon.

“Sin, what you’re saying is sin,” Mom warned.

“Aw, c’mon, Pop.” Lacking Minnie’s tender supplication, Ira tried jollying his father. “It’s tasty, Pop.”

“Let her next husband eat it.” He pushed away his saucer.

“Would the Almighty bless me with one.”

“Okay.” Ira was determined to avert head-on collision. “What trade did you learn, Pop?”

“None. I never learned a trade.” Pop evidently sought to collaborate in keeping the Sabbath peaceful — despite Mom’s knowing moue. “That was my misfortune. That’s why I had to come to America. My brother Gabe was here dealing in junk—”

“But you say your father wanted you to learn a trade,” Ira interrupted.

“And I didn’t want to learn the trade he chose for me — Uh, she’s grimacing again!”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Mom, just let me talk to Pop, will you?”

“Talk. To your heart’s content.” She couldn’t have signaled more clearly that she meant not a word of it.

“My father apprenticed me to an artisan in wrought iron. I wanted to be a fiddler.”

“A what? A fiddler?”

“A fiddler.”

“You wanted to be a fiddler?” Ira had never heard Pop say that before. He had wanted to be a fiddler. All at once, so much about him appeared to fall into place, could be made explicable: his fits of merriment at times, on weekends or during the summer vacation, when they rode together in the milk wagon, when the strain Pop was under seemed to relax, or his distance from Ira seemed to diminish, when brief, antic interludes of camaraderie slipped out from behind the strict guise of father; those times when he watered the horse at the polished granite watering troughs with other teamsters, and they chaffered, laughed at Pop’s comic remarks, joked and bantered. And he joined them, prankish and merry, boyish, waggish, off-guard, hardly Pop, his forbidding aspect in abeyance.

So he had wanted to be a fiddler. If one could but hold that phase of him in mind, consider who he might have been, the impulses that once ruled him — implied in his wanting to be a fiddler. No, it was too late. Too late because of what Pop thought he had to be, strict and aloof toward his son, too late because of Mom, because Ira saw Pop as she saw him, as she had trained Ira to see him.

But here was that glimpse: of an atrophied core, a core that bespoke a latent kinship, also atrophied, scarified, and hardened beyond Ira’s reaching.

“I wanted to be where people were enjoying themselves and were happy,” Pop said. “Where people danced and had a gay time. At a wedding. At a festival. A party. . No, it didn’t suit my father: Saul Schaffer, the Count’s distillery master, in charge of hundreds of cattle — they were fed mash from the distillery. As good as a veterinarian in the eyes of the peasants — they knew him for miles around. Saul Schaffer’s son apprenticed to a common fiddler? The son of distillery master Saul Schaffer to play in a kletchmer ? Never! That was no trade. He apprenticed me to an artisan in wrought iron. Imagine a stalwart like me working at a forge, with hammer and tool and tong amid flame and soot. And his wife, she provided fare — after what I was accustomed to at home — so may she fare. I ran away. I ran home again.”