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

“Joe is a businessman.” Mom refused to budge.

“And I’m not?”

“Joe is circumspect and collected. Are you? No. Joe can reckon. Can you? I don’t say it’s your fault. Have I ever said it was your fault? It’s your trait. You become flustered. When you were a milkman you were always shutt .” Mom used the English word “short.” “ Shutt and again shutt in your receipts. When you were a trolley car conductor you were always shutt . I worked with you in the little delicatessen on 116th Street, you became bewildered—”

The little delicatessen on 116th Street, ha, boy — attention found release in lubricity: static flashed off in jagged streaks of recall. Those evenings, alone, with Minnie, wow, at leisure, post — Bar Mitzvah, what a charge, what a bolt! If only that damned delicatessen had succeeded. Yeah. He wrung his hands in concealment.

“ I became bewildered? If I became bewildered, it was because of you!” Pop accused Mom irately. “The woman slices salami like lemon wedges. Just like for tea. Go make a sandwich from that for a customer.”

“The customers liked my service better than yours. I didn’t become z’misht the way you did. I’m not telling you that to bait you.” Mom raised a deprecating hand against her breast. “I’m saying that only to show you that you’re better off being a simple waiter, working a steady job, living quietly on your earnings, your tips. What does Max, Sadie’s husband, do? The brothers wanted to take him in for a partner. He didn’t want the headaches. He wanted to work his lunch and supper, and go home. What do the rest of the tenants who live here do, Jew and gentile alike? See, Mr. Beigman on the third floor works in a cleaning and dyeing shop; Lefkowitz on the third floor in the back is a baker. What is Shapiro in the back? An upholsterer. And McIntyre on the top floor, whose wife has only that one fang in her head? In a foundry making stoves. And besides he gives his wife the whole pay envelope — only keeps enough for a bottle of moshkeh on a Saturday night. D’Angelo on the second floor works in a barber shop—”

“Away with your stupid prating! I’ll be a common shlepper like the rest: a noodle porter all my life. I can’t sit behind a cash register as well as your brothers, as well as that mealy-mouthed gnome?”

“I’m trying to tell you—”

“You’re telling me nothing. Prattle. Ah, if I haven’t a clever wife, had I but a little fortune in other things.”

“Then go into business with Ella!”

“In a minute. If she had what to contribute, if she didn’t have three young children. Ai . There’s a coffeepot on 26th Street, if I had another thousand dollars I could buy it — like nothing. Give those Greeks two thousand dollars, and I could tell them to take their hats and coats and get out. They’re losing their shirts.”

“Oy, gevald .” Mom snatched at her cheek. “If they’re losing their shirts, how can you hope to succeed?”

“It’s a coffeepot, don’t you understand? It’s in a furriers’ district. Furriers don’t like coffeepots. They like — as if—” he twirled his hand—“half kosher. They’re still Jews.”

“Noo? ”

“Ha!” Pop gloried in his vision. “I would take out the round white tables, and put in square wooden tables. I would take out the white tiles from the wall, it shouldn’t look like a toilet, and put in nice brown panels. And immediately, I would hire away Schildkraut’s salad woman for a couple of dollars more a week.”

“Why Schildkraut’s?” Mom asked apathetically.

“You don’t understand anything,” Pop rebuked. “It would be a vegetarian restaurant.”

“Aha.”

“Wouldn’t Schildkraut’s nose fall when he came to the door, and saw me standing in my vegetarian restaurant across the street.”

“Across the street!” Mom cried in dismay. “You mean it’s in the same street?”

“The same street. The same street,” Pop reiterated triumphantly. “He’ll know better next time to fire a man like me. After all I did for him. I opened up the restaurant in the morning. I took in the bags of fresh rolls and bread, and the boxes of milk. I dragged in the crates of vegetables—”

“So what has that to do with it?”

“To get fired?”

“No. To open a restaurant across the street.”

“Let him see what he did!”

“But you pulled the chair out from under the headwaiter!”

“He was a right-winger!”

“ Oy ,” Mom mourned. She turned to her son. “Am I not condemned, am I not cursed?”

“Mom, he’s just talking,” Ira burst in heatedly. “He’s just imagining. There’s no restaurant.”

“No. Because she hoards for a Persian lamb coat!”

“And hoard I will,” Mom said defiantly. “I’ll pour my skrimping and skimping into his wild schemes? Ai , judgment, judgment. He sees one vegetarian restaurant in the street already. And he has to squeeze in with another — why? Out of spite for a boss who sacked him. Isn’t that an infant’s mind?”

“Say that again and I’ll fling something at your head!”

“Fling,” Mom challenged. “A novelty.”

“There can’t be two vegetarian restaurants in one block?” Pop chose to ignore her provocation. “How many times have you seen two jewelers in the same block, two clothing stores, two hardware stores, furniture, florists — even more than two? It’s a furrier’s district, I told you: furriers and furriers and furriers: of rabbit and of mink, of seal and sable. She babbles on.”

“And people will shop from one vegetarian restaurant to the other — the way a buyer shops for clothing, for a diamond ring, for a dining-room set,” Mom thrust.

“They won’t shop,” Pop parried. “If Schildkraut’s has sand in the spinach, the next time they’ll go elsewhere; they’ll come to mine.”

“And if you have sand in the spinach?”

“That’s why I would hire away his salad woman. She would break in Ella with her wonderful hands. Don’t you see?”

“ Oy , mad to the death,” said Mom. “Isn’t this a child’s mind?”

“Leah, I warn you!”

“Mom, please,” Ira pleaded vehemently. “Can’t you just let him talk? You’re only making things worse all the time. Anh, what’s the use.” He snapped the book shut.

But Mom seemed obdurate beyond retrieval now, stony, irrevocably desolate. “I’m making things worse. I. Two dollars a whole week he owes me, and if I didn’t flay him for it, he’d cheat me. He’d forget. But me, who penny by penny, with tears, scraped together a few hundred dollars toward some comfort in my life, he would wrest away to squander in his lunatic schemes. Oh, my mother, where you lie there in the grave: ‘Break it off,’ you said. ‘Give him back his gift. He’s a lunatic.’ Everyone in Tysmenicz comes to me with the same story, everyone who knows him: ‘ Er’s a mishugeneh . Break it off.’ Ha, Mamaleh, Mamaleh , that I didn’t heed you. But with four younger sisters at my back, how could I? ‘No, Mamaleh ,’ I said. ‘My shoulders are broad. Sorrows I can bear, griefs won’t break me.’”

“And good wares they foisted on me too!”

“I’m getting the hell out of here!” Ira slammed his book down on the table and sprang to his feet.

“Go, go,” Mom invited. “Who’s keeping you? Do you still have to hear this story?”

“He won’t take your lousy few hundred dollars!” Ira raged. “You’re out of your mind!”

“No? I don’t know his burnings and his blisterings. He’ll burn at me until I offer it, just for relief.”

“He won’t, I tell you! He can’t!”