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

“Ah, would she come to her senses!” Pop addressed unseen auditors in a transport of fulfillment. “Would she sponsor me with that few hundred. The balance, if the bank didn’t loan me, suppliers would advance. And then”—Pop glowed with inner light—“who would sidle up to the restaurant window to peer in and count my customers? Her brothers: Moe and Saul, that swindler, and Max and Harry with his long nose. ‘Come in,’ I would wave from the cash register. ‘Come in.’ And I would say: ‘Why loiter outside? Have a prune tart. Have a coffee.’ I can be munificent too. And who would be the first one to brag that her husband had a kopf for business like no other? She.”

“Mad to the death.” Mom sat perfectly still, her palms flat on the figured red cloth of the housedress on her broad thighs; only her head shook, barely, as if trembling — trembling with incredulity. “Isn’t this a dreamer? Isn’t this a child? What I married.” Then suddenly aroused: “Talk till you drop! This time I won’t budge. You can’t tempt me. Ah.” She rubbed her breast in a fierce joy of triumph. “The few hundred are mine.”

“Cow!”

“Baby!”

“You goad me?” Pop jumped to his feet. “I warned you!”

“Fling, if you dare. Mad dog!” Mom pushed the table suddenly and stood up. A candle guttered out, smoked.

“Pop!” Ira stood between them. “For Christ’s sake, will you quit it! What the hell, are you going crazy?”

“Out of the way! Shtarkeh! Na! ” He gave Ira a sudden shove.

“I fear you,” Mom taunted. “I’m not that same timid, docile slave you brought over from Galitzia.”

“No? Let’s see.” He had turned quite pale. All in one motion he seized Mom’s half-empty glass from the table and dashed the tea in her face.

“You filth! You mange!” Mom’s voice seemed to drop whole octaves, appallingly, viscerally frenzied. “Vile mannikin!” She wiped drops from her chin that were falling on her florid bosom. “Be torn to shreds.”

“You still seek? I’ll slap your gross mouth too!” Pop advanced on her.

“And I’ll submit?”

Ira threw himself at his father. “That’s enough, Pop. Cut it out!”

“Let go!”

“No!”

“I said let go!” Pop stamped his foot.

“No!”

“No?” Pop made a sudden vicious thrust downward toward Ira’s crotch — and not a moment too soon Ira pinned Pop’s arms to his sides.

“Cut it out, Pop! You do that again—”

They tussled, swayed. Compact, surging with rage, Pop’s head in his felt hat butted his son’s face, while he tried to bowl him over, yelled curses in Yiddish, and Mom screamed — and then, from below: a series of terrifying thumps, like demented gaveling at a mad auction: thump, thump, thump, and unintelligible epithets like shouted bids, undistinguishable babel of opprobrium converging on one distinct word: “Jews!” Thump. Thump. Thump. Pop went slack. And the next instant, as if he were falling away, he tore himself from Ira’s hold. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Ah!” Mom patted her stomach in an exaltation of gloating. “A splendid goy ! Oh, is that a fine goy ! Stamp your foot again, Chaim!”

“Leah.” Pop retreated. “Leah, enough.”

“Why enough? Knock their ceiling down. He’ll come up and smash your paltry face. I would rejoice.”

“Leah, my jewel.”

“Huh. Huh. I’ll tell him: there he stands.” Her head snapped back, and she pointed at Pop. “ Oy, Raboinish ha loilim , let him come up!”

“Leah, please,” Pop entreated. “Say you tumbled, you tripped, you fell. You knocked a chair over.”

“No. Let him know what a cur I have here. Look, I’ll show him.” She wiped the moisture from her cheek, mocking her husband in what English she had. “Mister Irisher, azoy you do vit your vife’s gless tea? Look on mein housedress, vie sit’s vet. Ai , may he buffet you soundly!”

“Mom!” Ira implored hopelessly. “Calm down.” And in a sudden fit of wrath: “You were to blame yourself. You didn’t have to bring up that goddamn two dollars. Friday, let the goddamn thing go!” He pawed at the air. “Two lousy bucks!”

“Gey mir in der erd. It was my money. A whole week he tormented my blood — and now this?” Her chin lowered to the dark stain below the neckline of the housedress. “Lord bless me, that Esau is on the way!”

“Leah, I beg before you. Two dollars is due you. True. True. You’re right. Here. Let’s not dispute.” Pop tugged at his pocketbook, fingered among the banknotes. In the frantic haste he tore the bills out, a third greenback clung to the second.

“ Na, a drittle! ” Irate with himself, he threw all three to the floor. “Here. Peace. Turn him aside. You’re my wife, no?”

“Burn to a cinder — for my sake!” The tears starting from her eyes, Mom stooped and gathered up the scattered dollar bills. “How hideous, my life. Martira. Martira. L’chaim, na, ” she punned bitterly on Pop’s name, and straightening up, the three greenbacks in one hand, she made a fig with the other: “To life indeed.”

“Do you hear anyone?” Poised for retreat, Pop shrank against the bedroom door. “Ira, child, tell me.”

“Yeah.” Ira thought he heard something in the hall. “Yes.” Now what? “I hear somebody.”

“Maybe it’s the virago. She won’t devour you,” Mom advised her husband — as she herself staunchly confronted the door to the hall. Pop slipped into the dark of the bedroom. Without a knock, the knob turned, the hall door opened — Minnie entered. “Come out, my stalwart,” Mom called. “It’s your daughter.”

Everything took on a different tenor the moment Minnie entered. She dissipated tension. Rosy-cheeked from the cold, breathing quickly with hurrying and climbing of stairs, she looked pretty and animated as she got out of her coat, took off her cloche, shook her reddish bobbed hair.

“You didn’t see the downstairsniks?” Pop reappeared from the bedroom. “You didn’t see the Irisher on the ground floor, Tokhterel ?” The very sight of his daughter cheered him.

“No, Papa, I didn’t see anybody,” was her puzzled answer. “In the hall?” And as Mom took Minnie’s coat and hat, saying, “Give me, I’ll hang it up,” Minnie noticed the stain on Mom’s housedress. “Whatsa matter?” she asked in that pacifying tone she so often used with Pop and Mom.

“Goor nisht ,” said Mom.

“It’s the first time nobody asked me what I had to eat at Mamie’s.”

There were times when Minnie could have been a stranger, as far as Ira was concerned. No connection between the two: the impersonal young woman, with brows knit, reaching for the coat that Mom held, and continued to cling to. “What’d you spill?” Minnie asked.

“Nothing,” said Mom. “I had to take the balance of my allowance from him. We became a little vexed, don’t you know?”

“Oh, again? So why’re you asking me if I saw somebody from downstairs?” She addressed Pop. “You mean the McRoneys?”

“Yeh, we bickered a little here.” Pop made light of the matter.

Minnie understood his understatement. “So?”

“They knocked, a once-twice on the ceiling. You don’t know Irishers? Right away they get mad.”

As he spoke, Mom nodded, in complex, nullifying agreement.

Minnie looked at Ira for elaboration. “Listen,” he began brusquely, and then snickered: “They had their regular workout — over two bucks.”

“So what’s so funny about it?”

“It’s not. I didn’t say it was, did I?”

“You laughed,” she accused. “You didn’t have to say.”