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

Leo had offered to set him up with his girl’s girlfriend. Ira could have embraced and ravished Iola, Edith’s former roommate, he had so impressed her with his story in the Lavender , and so disappointed her with his manhood. He could even have hoarded Mamie’s dollars for a whore now and again. What was a dose compared to this — this? Incest, of Biblical proportions, committed while Zaida, earnest, kosherer than kosher Zaida, pored over Talmud in the back room.

But now — what if Zaida couldn’t tolerate the noise, the protogoyishness, he observed in the girls? Now his excuse, his raison d’être, was in Flushing. Now Mom wouldn’t even have to stop at Mamie’s anymore to help make Zaida’s bed and straighten out his room.

But what the hell was the difference now? Longer or shorter absence. He couldn’t get it anyway. No, no, better wait until tomorrow, tomorrow late afternoon. Forget about his fears of Zaida’s getting wise — he was a sap to think so. Go there late Saturday, sit next to the fancy new radio, turn it up a little; and Stella would drift over at the right moment, shift the sling of her teddy aside, squat down on his hard-on. But all this was a day away. Christ, he ought to be home, reviewing Milton.

On to Fifth Avenue. He turned. Well, not the first time he’d mashed a grade hunting and hunting a lay. And here he was again, walking briskly downtown. . just to find out there was nothing to worry about. . heading downtown. .

Boyoboy, hadn’t Mom and Pop battled over the two bucks though. He had to laugh, except it was so goddamn awful. Pop scared shitless about the goy coming up, and instead who should step in but Minnie. But you know, while they wrestled there, Pop could have gone crazy enough to grab a candlestick from the table and bat his son with it, a sin to touch the candlestick or not. The old days when Pop had a horsewhip and flogged his son with it were gone. For one thing, times had changed and no one carried a horsewhip anymore, and for another, Ira was bigger than his father was. But if Pop had grabbed that candlestick, yeah, what would he have done? Grabbed the other candlestick. Yee-hee-hee! Wouldn’t Mom have screeched? His thoughts became impervious to the passing nightscene, or it dissolved. Wouldn’t that have made some movie? Ira felt his cheekbones lift in a grin. They fought with everything in the movies: swords, of course: Doug Fairbanks hopping up and over tables, wielding his rapier; daggers too, pistols, rifles, it went without saying, and even whips, and phony medieval knights-at-arms, with maces, Robin Hood with quarterstaves, and fake Roman gladiators with net and trident. But nobody had ever fought with a couple of solid brass candlesticks. Had both candles gone out? 116th Street already. On Shabbes you fight with candlestick? Ha-ha-ha! Reformed out of the nightscene he passed and passed, doorways, lighted store windows of mostly closed stores, autos traveling toward and away with headlights low, pedestrians wearing gloves, bundled-up couples.

Ira felt a sudden twinge of pity as he crossed the trolley car tracks. Poor Mom. Tea dripping down her chin, darkening the neckline of her red housedress. Poor Mom, the way her voice dove down to a distraught bass. He ought to kill that sonofabitch. If he ever busted Pop with a candlestick — they were goddamn heavy, those European ones. Grump: his skull would cave in. Pop goes Pop’s pate. Yeah, but no joke. Cops in the house. Oy, gevald! It was all a mistake, officer. It was all an accident. What kind of an accident, Jew-boy? We were playing Loki and the Utgard Giants. I thought he had a mountain between his head and the candlesticks. Yeah? Tell that to the judge. Right now you’re under arrest. Homicide. No, patricide. Handcuffs snapped on his wrists. Mom wringing her cheeks, Minnie hanging on to him. Say, maybe, after they let him out, on bail maybe, and Minnie hung around him to comfort him, who knew? Work on her sympathy; he had done it before, and it worked: H-v-v — o-o-h. Woddayasay, Minnie? Tell her how much he needed it. Kill your father to lay his daughter. Wasn’t this the meaning of it all? If you knocked her up, you’d be the kid’s father and the kid’s uncle at the same time, a duncle, with a dad, or a puncle with a pop, or a funcle with a father. And Mom, hey, listen, she’d be a double grandmother, sure, the kid’s maternal and paternal Baba. 114th Street.

That sonofabitch went for his balls, didn’t he?

Turn backward, turn backward, O time in thy flight — Ira crossed the street, halted in the light of the show window full of electrical fixtures, lamps and lampshades. Turn, turn, Sir Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Started out with a cat. . But what the hell did the old man say when Ira was on the way out? Still with a Trojan on — did he or didn’t he have it on? Disgraceful, downright sacrilegious, to sit down with a devout old man, with holy writ, a siddur , in front of him, and still be wearing a bag of sticky stuff: semen, Abraham’s seed. Onanism, wasn’t it? For which you got stoned in the old days. The more he ruminated on it, the daffier life was. Zaida communing with his third-generation offspring, with his fourth-generation seed caught in a condom (he hoped). But who the hell knew the old man was going to stop him? Ira slowly began walking again; he could see the bright drugstore a block and a half ahead. But what the hell had the old guy said? Now think, think. “When I was a child, I thought as a child—” No, no, no. That was Saint Paul: now we see as through a glass eye darkly. No, Zaida had offered Ira snuff. . not a cigarette this time (because it was Saturday; no smoking?), snuff out of a lacquered black snuffbox, and when Ira declined, Zaida had plied his nostrils with a pinch between thumb and forefinger vibrato. Very good. Go on. “How the Talmud teaches one, how the Talmud prepares the child for adulthood. You would have found out, had you continued faithful to Judaism. How different a college youth you would have been.”

That was the code to the cypher, wasn’t it? The cryptogram? Or was it? Ira walked ahead, mechanically. He had sat with hat and coat on listening, feigned he was listening, and yet puzzled. Stella had remained discreetly in the front room — or retired to her bedroom. Anyway. . “What does one understand with the mind of a child?” Zaida said. “I’ll tell you from my own experience.” Was that a thrust under cloak of reminiscence? Now think: did it or didn’t it mean anything? “From my own life experience.” His hand in didactic cusp: “When I was eleven, and I first read in Kedushim ”—was that right? Kedushim , whatever that was—“a portion of Talmud: How do you get a wife? How does one acquire a wife?” And Ira with a condom glued fast — it was, wasn’t it? “There are three ways of getting a wife.” Zaida depressed his little finger as if it were a cash-register key: “One is with kessef .”

“Huh?” A few more steps and he’d reach the drugstore.

“ Kessef , coin, silver. Seh heist kessef .”

“Oh, yeh. Kessef .” Ira had heard that word before — in Yiddish. “Okay.”

“Another is by shtar .” By written agreement, by bond. (Twinkle, twinkle, little shtar —that was easy to remember.) And the third is by biyah ,” said Zaida.

“By beer,” Ira had chortled nervously.

“By biyah . To have intercourse with her. You come upon her, and you have intercourse with her.”

“That’s simple, Zaida.” Ira had maintained his sangfroid with a show of facetiousness: “ Kessef, shtar , and biyah . Anybody can remember those.” Holy jumpin’ Jesus! How much more did he need to be told? The old boy was driving the spike right through him. That was it, that was it.