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

He had long passed his three score and ten. Who had time now to research the historic events of his eleventh year, to recreate 1917 in 1980? Still, something, however brief, was needed to provide a bygone setting. What? At the moment, he had no other alternative than to consult the nearest thing at hand, the microscopically compressed synopsis of the most important events of 1917, according to The World Almanac of 1972. 1917, the year Pop went to St. Louis, and Uncle Louie tried to woo Mom. Fateful year for Ira, when he rubbed against Mom in dream, and felt that strange welling up — and shame. Fateful year for Ira, when he was beginning to get a glimmering of what Uncle Louie desired, and Mom wouldn’t grant. And his own ambivalence afterward, fantasizing: What if Mom had said yes to Louie — lean Uncle Louie and plump Mom. Pretend to sleep and listen. . and imagine. . sanction what never happened.

Why? Ira asked himself: Why was he so crazy? Interlarding the bomb blast at the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade of the year before, and the death sentence imposed on the innocent labor leaders, Mooney and Billings, with Louie’s furor and Mom’s rapture. Why? Abnormally, precociously attuned to Mom’s deprivation, probably. That was it, his deprived mother consumed at the sight of Moe’s phallus, Ai, vot my mannikin gevesen zoi vie, Moishe: “One needs a horse for you. A horse for you.” Verbrent , from two in the morning, when he left for his milk-wagon, alone I flamed, with a stout brother snoring in the next room. “ Oy, gevald .” Fateful year for Ira: Even if she had said yes to Pop, and they would have moved to St. Louis, how different life would have been.

1917—U.S. ENTERS WAR

When Germany began unrestricted submarine war, the U.S. Feb. 3, broke relations, refused negotiations until the (German) order was rescinded. Wilson Feb. 26, asked Congress to order arming of merchant ships; when Senate refused, Wilson armed them by executive order Mar. 12. An intercepted note of German Foreign Sec. Zimmerman to German minister in Mexico suggested Mexico be asked to enter war to recover U.S. Southwest Feb. 28. U.S. declared war on Germany Apr. 6, adopted selective conscription May 18, registered men 21–30 June 5. .

Soon after he returned from his trip to St. Louis, as Mom foresaw he would, Pop was notified he had to go into war-essential work — otherwise he faced imprisonment or draft into the armed services. “You are required to present evidence of employment to your local draft board before the 30th instant,” Ira helped Pop translate the document into Yiddish for Mom’s benefit. The document had come in a large, daunting envelope, and bore the bold black heading: WAR LABOR RESOURCES BOARD. “Below you will find a partial listing of essential work. If you have any questions with regard to whether the work you are presently engaged in is essential to the war effort, inquire at your local draft board in person or by telephone. You are hereby advised to do so at once.”

“ Noo , read. Let us hear what is needful labor,” said Pop.

Ira ran his eye over the columns of occupations listed below: “Cons — Construction. That means they build,” Ira read aloud and translated each category as best he could. “Dock worker, Farmer, Food Processor, Fisherman, Highway Maintenance, Machinist, Welder, Transport Worker, i.e., Trainman, Conductor, Motorman, Track Maintenance, et cetera—”

“ Vus heist ‘tsetra’? ” asked Mom.

“You don’t understand?” Pop said patronizingly. “Ten years in America, and she knows nothing!”

“Then you’re the clever one,” Mom retorted. “Where am I to learn? Over the pots and pans, or among the Yiddish pushcart peddlers?”

“Then learn now. ‘Tsetra’ means other things.”

“Can’t you say so without making a ceremony of it?”

“Shah!” Pop stalled her indignation. And to Ira: “Food Protzess, what does that mean again?”

“Like salami,” Ira ventured. “Or all kinds of goyish things to eat. You know: like ketchup in the restaurant. I think.”

“Then perhaps they defer cooks?” Mom suggested.

“Go,” Pop scoffed. “Cooks! If they defer cooks, they’ll defer noodle-porters too.”

“Then what?”

“I’ve found a remedy.”

“Indeed? So soon?”

“A trolley-car conductor. Read again, Ira, from that tsetra.” Ira reread the list of transport workers.

“That would stop their mouths — a trolley-car conductor,” said Pop.

“Do you know how? What do you know about trolley cars?” Mom asked.

“What is there to learn? If a thick Irisher can learn, I can learn. They drop a nickel in the glass pishkeh . You grind it until it falls into a little tray at the bottom. You pull a cord. You give out a transfer. They’ll teach me the other things. I’ll go find out where to apply.”

“But the streets,” Mom reminded. “Such a frightful myriad of streets! You’ll have to learn them too. Gevald! ”

“The woman gabbles!” Pop dismissed her fears with a practiced gesture. “In New York I have nothing to worry about. How did I learn the streets as a milkman? I learned. Shoyn . And I had to drive a horse and wagon through them too.”

“That was the East Side,” Mom reminded him. “There are—” she clutched her cheek—“Brooklyn, the Bronx, and who knows where else?”

“What? Is it better to molder in a stockade than to learn a route in — ah! — anywhere: In Brooklyn, in the Bronx. Noo .”

So Pop became a trolley-car conductor. The route assigned to him could not have been more conveniently located: the Fourth and Madison Avenue line that crossed 119th Street only a block away. His was the “relief shift,” as it was called: from midmorning to well into the evening. Reporting for work or returning home, he wore the uniform of the trolley-car conductor, a navy-blue jacket and a visored cap with badge. Ira caught sight of him once or twice when school let out — he still attended P.S. 103 on Madison Avenue and 119th Street — saw his father on the rear platform of the passing trolley, cranking coins down the transparent chute into the till below.

All would have gone well. Pop’s job met the official criterion that the work be essential. It was essential. But after awhile, the constant lurching of the trolley — so he complained, though it may have been his nervous tension — began to affect him. He suffered more and more from diarrhea. Finally it became chronic. Diarrhea on a trolley car! Sometimes his bowel spasms were so severe, he was unable to contain himself long enough until the trolley reached its terminal, in whose offices were toilets. Instead he had to signal the motorman to halt the trolley in midroute, while he ran into one or another of the lunchrooms along the avenue and relieved himself.

“ Mein ormeh mann ,” Mom commiserated (in a way that Pop both welcomed and rebuffed). “My poor husband. Perhaps if you eat only wholesome food, hard-boiled eggs, a little chicken broth, coffee with scalded milk, such things as prevent diarrhea. Or strong tea with lemon. But best of all, scalded milk with a thick skim — that will stem the wild flux.”

“How? Where? To keep scalded milk with a thick skim in a trolley car? Had you come to St. Louis as I asked, I wouldn’t be suffering these pangs. But you refused. So I’m twice a poor man, poor in money, poor in health.”

“And what if you had gone to St. Louis and opened a cafeteria and failed, then what? How would you be any better off? A bankrupt, the military would surely have seized you.”

“Uh, she has me bankrupt already!”

“No? You become so bewildered in transactions.”