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

“That’s because he’s here in America,” Hannah remarked.

“Well, just the same, I’m not sorry he’s gone,” Stella said boldly. “Why should I be sorry? If you want to know, I’m glad. Would you want somebody in the house who’s always chasing out every fellow that comes in? And good Jewish fellows too. You’re the only one he’d let into the house. Everybody else was a trombenyik .”

“Yeah?” Ira scratched an eyebrow.

“Go, who’s talking of such things,” Mamie rebuked her daughter. “What he wanted I ran to get: the freshest bulkies. I went to the bakery three times a day to bring back fresh bulkies—”

“You ran five times a day,” Hannah contradicted.

“ Noo , five times a day. And those hard egg biscuits I got him for a nosh between meals. They had to be just so. If they were too brown, too crisp, he wouldn’t eat them. If they were too soft, he wouldn’t eat them. All I did for him, and he leaves. What? He flees. All right, he was an embittered man: nothing suited him; he was that kind of a man. But flee without saying a word, I don’t understand.”

“ Iz nisht gefilte fish,” Joe remarked humorously. “Another kosher home like this he won’t find again.”

“Yeah, that’s what Pop said.” Ira watched his uncle cut a slice of kholleh into small cubes and pop them into his mouth as if they were bonbons.

“Well.” He stood, went for his coat and hat on the washtub surface. Though he had ruled out another visit for the weekend, he had much to be thankful for. He was cleared of all suspicion. That was certain. And besides, when he called at Mamie’s again, Zaida would no longer be there: one hazard less when he got Stella alone. Still, why had the old man recited that business about getting a wife, especially that business about coming upon her and having sexual relations with her? Only a week ago, and so pointed in Ira’s direction. There was only one person who might know, who could clinch matters. Stella. He had screwed her in the front room only minutes before. Was it possible the old man said something to her after Ira had departed? She was about to leave the kitchen for the front room.

“What are you reading, Stella?” Ira called after her.

“I’m not reading. It’s Pitkin shorthand.” Her voice trailed from the hall.

“Yeah? I studied Gregg years ago. Is Pitman better?”

“Oh, a lot.”

“Well,” Ira hesitated. No, he was sure he was out in the clear. Why bother to follow Stella into the front room?

“Well, good night, everybody.” He slid into his coat. “Excuse me for coming so late, but you know when Minnie told us—”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Mamie reassured.

“O-o-h, Papa.” Hannah turned to Joe suddenly. “You’re gonna let Ira go away without your goodbye thing?”

“Let him be,” Mamie interceded. “He has other things on his mind besides that. And on Friday night.”

“ Noo , it won’t harm anything,” Joe countered, smiling. “The old man isn’t here, so I may. Wait, I’ll go get it.”

“A goodbye thing?” Ira repeated, nonplussed.

“Yeh. Wait, wait. It’s in my jacket pocket.” Joe left the kitchen for the back bedroom.

“What’s he up to?” Ira inquired of Mamie.

“A foolish thing,” was her answer.

But Joe seemed to have difficulty finding the object he sought. “Maybe it’s in my overcoat,” he said. “Where did I — when did I show you?”

“Do you wanna see how Pitman looks, Ira?” Stella called from the front room.

“Sure.” Ira was certain she was sending him some kind of signal. Why of course: she wanted to remind him that with Zaida gone, Joe working, and Mamie escorting Mom to Flushing, the house would be virtually empty Sunday. He made for the front room.

“Don’t go away,” Joe urged.

Mamie kept on the subject of Zaida’s departure as Ira tried to insinuate his way into the front room after his prey. “For the children, for me, it’s easier. You can see. Would they dare play the new radio tonight? But that has nothing to do with it.”

“New radio?” Ira asked in surprise.

“Wait till you see it,” said Stella. “He got it at a place on Main Street.”

“You fret yourself and fret yourself.” Joe savored a kholleh cube while comforting his wife. “It’s nothing with nothing. “He’s a pious Jew. Perhaps he was afraid you’d try to dissuade him—”

“But why did he mumble about his grandchildren?”

“Who knows? Go. I’m not stopping you from going. Go in good health. And I wager he won’t tell you. He’ll give you some other excuse. Faults he has in plenty, but an observant Jew he is. He wouldn’t let his own son, Saul, jilt Ida, to whom he had pledged marriage. Why? Because she was an orphan. And Saul had to be led fainting to the canopy. That’s how Ben Zion is. Hear me out. If you want to know what my complaint is, it’s not his love of fresh bulkies and fresh egg biscuits. At age fifty — you hear, Ira? — when he came to America, what man in his fifties can’t work? Hired work didn’t suit him. Commerce and trade he couldn’t pursue — how? Without a word of English? His brother Nathan was a diamond dealer. That would have suited Ben Zion. But dealing in diamonds you don’t learn so easily, and Nathan, brother or not, wasn’t willing to teach him—”

“Especially to sell diamonds with little black spots in them to all your relatives,” Hannah remarked, and for Ira’s benefit, “To all Uncle Nathan’s relatives, he sold a diamond with a little, a black spot.”

“Shah! He’s dead. Wild prattler,” Mamie reprimanded. “You know, Uncle Nathan threw himself from the window. He had a cancer.”

“I know. Mom told me.” Ira’s gaze furtively followed Stella as she left the kitchen again.

“It’s a great scandal.” Mamie lowered her voice. “Zaida was never told.”

“So if he leans on all his sons for support,” Hannah observed tartly, “how can he be such an ehrlikher yeet , when all his sons work on Shabbes? Doesn’t that sin fall on him too?”

“And he knows it,” Stella called from the hall on the way to the front room.

“America is America,” Joe yawned, a cruet between thumb and forefinger. “Everything is a little treife . What? I don’t take a coffee with milk at night when I’m in the cafeteria? And the cup — it’s not washed by the dishwasher with everything else milkhdik, fleishik ? A piece of steak, like Max, I don’t eat. But a piece of fish, yes. Piety is stretched here. It’s not Europe, and that’s how it is.”

“And with Zaida, what you do, you do. What I do, I do,” said Mamie.

“And women count for nothing,” Hannah added. “It’s no use talking. That’s how he was brought up. You told me yourself a hundred times,” she said to her mother with asperity: “A girl is only good to get married.”

“She’s a thorn,” Mamie smiled.

“I’ll save you a trip,” said Joe. “Saturday night I go to work, I’ll ask Morris: Why? What happened? Morris will tell me sooner than your father will tell you.”

“No. I want to see him,” Mamie insisted.

“You know what?” Stella’s voice preceded her from the front room. She was holding a textbook. “He knows we’re not going to get married the way he wants us to get married. Kosher it should be. With a shotkhin and pictures. So he doesn’t want to stand in the way.”

“Go, you’re foolish,” said Mamie.

“All right, so I’m foolish.” Stella held up her book: Pitman Method Shorthand . “So why do you take a whole towel along when we go to somebody’s wedding, and they say, ‘The same should happen to you next year’? Why?” She addressed Ira. “You know I’m sixteen, and I’m supposed to be a kolleh moit already, a bride.”