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

“I’m sorry.” Ira advanced into the kitchen with simpleton apology. “I started to take a walk, and just thought, I’m here, I’ll see Joe.” He extended his hand in greeting. “ Noo, vus macht a yeet? ” There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to have been alarmed about. What a dope. “How’s the gesheft? ”

“ Nisht kosher. ” Joe stood up from the table. “You’re indeed a grown man, avert the evil eye. How long since I’ve seen you? It must be — God knows.”

“I really don’t remember.” Ira looked down at the face under the brim of Joe’s gray felt hat. It was a wholly unprepossessing countenance, blue-eyed and long-nosed. Joe was a very little man, scarcely five feet in height, shorter by inches even than Pop. Nor was he the kind of little man that Pop was, strong for his size, close-knit and quick, but trudging in his gait, weak-kneed and deliberate in movement. Temperament seemed to conform to outward appearance. He dragged out his words; he was patient in manner; he submitted docilely to interruption. And yet, there was about his lips, his small pointed jaw, something obstinate, canny, of which his very deliberation was part: one might expect him to ask endless questions, unabashed, about anything he was interested in — unlike Pop — and even then not feel bound to come to a decision, again unlike Pop, so impetuous, trusting in luck. One felt about Joe that it was futile to expect him to show pride or obligation where his interests were concerned.

Ira recalled seeing the apartment years later when Hannah gave him a tour. She supplied Ira with her own shrewd descriptions of her parent’s predilections. “Just as my father was short, shorter than your father, he liked everything big. And everywhere they gave you a prize, when you opened up a new bank account, there he would go and open up a new bank account: we had great big clocks, half-naked Venuses with a big round clock in their pipick ; we had two of them with a clock in their bellies. We had table lamps that he got when he opened a new account; you could get a hernia when you tried to lift them. And the table itself — it was banquet-size. Of course, even when Zaida didn’t live with us anymore, he still came to the house for the Passover Seder. So with our family, and sometimes with the uncles and aunts — Ella’s husband was in the asylum, so she came with the three children; Morris and his wife didn’t have any children because she already had a hysterectomy before she was married, so they came — who else? You needed a table as big as a dance floor. When you pulled it out, and put in the spacers, it could seat twenty-four people. That was my father.”

“I think Harry’s wedding was the last time I saw you,” said Joe as he and Ira shook hands.

“I guess so. It’s funny, no matter how much time has passed, I still remember you shaving with a straight razor. It was on a Sunday.”

“ Azoy. Gotinyoo! So long ago you remember me? I must have been working on ladies’ dresses yet.”

“It’s funny how some things stick. You were stropping your razor.”

“ Azoy” Noo , come in, come in. Sit down. Sit down. Have a glazel tea,” Joe invited. “Let’s shmooze a little. I never see you.”

“He never comes Fridays. We see Minnie, but you only pop in when it pleases you,” Hannah accused.

“Well, Fraytik bay nakht ,” Ira excused himself. “You know how it is. I came because I heard about Zaida.”

“Aha. Noo , what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“We know like you know,” said Mamie.

“Is that so? No reason?”

“No reason, no reason. He’s gone.”

“I’ll be darned. Where’s Stella?”

“She’s in the front room reading.”

“Oh. It’s really a mystery,” Ira said in English.

“If he wants to go because we turn the radio up, and we dance the Charleston, so—” Hannah shrugged saucily. “We’re girls, what does he expect? So Sadie’s got boys. They won’t dance the Charleston too? They won’t turn on the radio?”

“It’s not that alone,” Mamie interjected.

“No?” Ira listened intently.

“He dreams they have lovers, gevald . They let them into the house at night, let them out. Girls sixteen, fourteen, antics to play.”

“What goes on in his head,” said Hannah.

“He’ll soon talk fetus in their belly,” said Joe.

“ Noo , we all get old. What can you do? Ah, what is there to say? Is your father working?”

“As far as I know.”

“What’s Minnie doing?” Hannah asked.

“Well, you know what she’s doing. Office and night school. She’s the one who told us tonight.”

“You didn’t listen to what I had to say,” Mamie intervened. “You didn’t listen till I finished.”

“Okay. What?” Hannah accorded audience.

“I already know what you’re going to say,” said Joe.

“ You know. But Hannah thinks,” Mamie stressed with upraised grubby finger, which flowed in gesture toward the front room. “And Stella, indeed: the reason the grandsire left was because of the radio and the Charlesburg, azoy— ”

“He had dreams,” Hannah interrupted.

“So he says,” Mamie added. “But the true reason is that we were beginning to bicker about you, about you and Stella. He would not allow good Jewish youth into the house, only you, Ira. And he knew that I was vexed. I told him time and again this was America, and not Galitzia. It didn’t help. If his sons work on Shabbes , that’s their affair. But to encourage — he thinks — that some youth and his granddaughter should embrace each other, seize each other, he would be guilty of sinning before God: fornication, you understand?”

“Oh, tseegekhappen !” Hannah scoffed, echoed her mother’s Yiddish word.

“Yeh, yeh, tockin . He, the patriarch, all the household sins would be upon his head. The coming and going by night, who knows: whether he imagines, whether he feigns?”

“So he isn’t here. Don’t think we won’t invite boys, now.”

“Invite, invite, to your heart’s content. Why do I have a new radio? As long as they’re good Jewish boys. A little fluden ?” Mamie offered Ira. “I baked such good fluden today.”

“No, thanks, Mamie. It’s late. I just dropped in to get the news to tell Mom. She said something about your traveling out to Flushing together.”

“Indeed. We’ll have to pursue him now.”

“Who is it you don’t see here tonight?” Stella proposed a riddle, as she appeared in the doorway, textbook in hand.

“We just told him,” Hannah informed her sister scathingly. “What do you think we’ve been talking about?”

“I know,” Ira said to mitigate Hannah’s sharpness. “Minnie told me.”

“So who do you think is gonna have his room? Guess.”

“You?”

“Naturally. She gets everything,” said Hannah.

“ Aza mensh .” Mamie locked gross fingers and deplored. “Whatever I cooked for him, no matter how good it was, he never praised it. He would just nod his head. It passed. Shoyn— ”

“It was coming to him,” Hannah seconded.

“Shah! Don’t interrupt your mother,” Jonas chided.

Hannah refused to be squelched: “What is it about these European fathers — just because they begot you, like the Bible says, you owe them everything.”

“You think he’s strict,” said Joe. “You should have known my father. We quivered. I had a brother, Leibele. He was eighteen already. It was Yom Kippur, and he was hungry. So he ate something. Freg nisht . When he came back to the shul , my father said, ‘Where have you been? Let me see your tongue.’ Noo, noo. He gave him with the stick right in front of the synagogue. I can still see Leibele with the blood running from his face. With my father, his word was law. Life and death. Zaida is nothing compared to my father.”