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

The flipping pages stopped — or he stopped them, deliberately, though he had already perused the one that attracted his attention — the all too relevant lines of verse mocking his state. No wonder people sorted — was that the right word? Told their fortunes by opening to someplace in the Bible:

Pensive here I sat

Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb,

Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown

Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.

Damn right. He slapped the pages over. Book X, Book X. That was where he had left off: Full of sticky theology that old man Mott would be sure to ask about, pose questions requiring essay-type answers — at which he stunk. Well, he’d have to resign himself to losing credits — hell, skip it. Adam couldn’t figure it out either:

O Conscience, into what abyss of fears

And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which

I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!

The tread in the hall was light — Ira listened, his ears straining to the light tread: he heard the door opposite open, and a youngster’s voice: One of Mrs. Gruberg’s kids. .

Ever since he was twelve, he thought to himself. No wonder he was a virtuoso at dissembling. Even fooled Edith. What would have happened if Minnie hadn’t refused, if she had yielded every time, like Stella? Oh, they’d have found out, Pop, Mom, by now. Boy, what a racket. Worse than the silver-filigreed fountain pen. Then what? A whipping like nothing ever before. But would it cure him? What happened in families where it happened? If the guy was grown up, as he was now, and was caught — out, bum! Out, crumb, out of the house; yuh miserable punk! “Aw, I was just givin’ her a fuck,” he’d say, if they were goyim , the way the Irish say in the street, I was just fuckin’ around. And make a gag out of it: “What about you, Pop? She’s better’n Mom, ain’t she?” And Ira had always thought as a kid “yuh motherfucker” was just a fanciful insult, like “Aw, yer father’s hairy balls!” Boy, though, a father fucking his daughter, like Satan fucking Sin, that must be wonderful — see what Milton had done to him, see what he was? Ira bowed his head — impenitently. But if they were Jews: Oy, gevald, Peigern zollst deh! Paskudnyack! Be torn into shreds — he could just see Zaida’s whiskers opening like a maw to hurl curses at the abomination. He’d rend his garments. And worse: raise his walking stick. But if it happened now, now that he was twenty-one, it would be just as he would have been with Pop the other night, Friday. Frig you, Pop. Maybe bust him one and run. Oh, nuts. Read, will you? Book X. You’re not in enough of a mess with Stella already. Ho, Jesus, what if he had gone back to Edith, and told her he had knocked up his sister too. You knocked up your cousin. You knocked up your sister. You busted your old man. Could you sleep on the floor till you found a job? Boyoboy, and she thought you were an innocent: unawakened, was that what she said? If she knew when you were awakened. And how. Boyoboy, what paralysis that was, that awakening, after Moe went off to war: in the springtime, the only pretty ringtime: erev Pesach of 1918—

Her color heightened by cold and exertion, Mom swept the kitchen with her brown eyes as she entered, bringing a merciful end to wakeful nightmares. “He’s not here?” She removed her black turban hat, shook her speckled gray hair. “Was he home?” She freed herself of her dark coat.

“Yeah. He was here. He went to a movie.”

“Wandered off.” She nodded — with undue, unpleasant emphasis, features creased in unspoken grudge. “Wandered off.” She opened the bedroom door, muttered something in Polish: “Let him go hang. May I never see him again.” Coat over arm, she was about to enter the bedroom.

“Whatsa matter?”

“May he be slain.”

“Why? He even wanted to take me along,” Ira probed.

“ Azoy ? My fine husband, he’ll be tender as a mulberry, may he moulder.” Her voice was vengeful, even for Mom.

“What did he do this time?”

“May they do him under.” She refused to answer his direct question. Instead, she stepped into the bedroom.

What was up now? Ira wondered. What the hell was up? Oh, nuts. He had too much on his mind to be concerned. Finish up Book X, Book XI, Book XII, call Stella on the phone tomorrow. If he could only get a break — this once. He ought to look at his ed texts. Oh, balls.

Mom returned, shut the kitchen door to the cold bedroom. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“No.”

“I left kugel and sour cream. He didn’t eat either?”

“No.”

“He’s the affronted one, my mannikin. I’ll warm up the kugel .”

“What the hell’s the matter now?” Ira demanded irritably. “He gave you your allowance Friday.”

“Go! Why deliberate on the carrion? Let him rot.” She opened the kitchen window, brought out a pan, a bowl. “I’ll warm it right away.” She busied herself with frying pan and gas stove. “I’ll cut some bread. I have some farmer cheese.”

“All right. All right. What I want to know is, what did you find out at Zaida’s? I mean at Sadie’s. What was the whole to-do about? It wasn’t about Pop, that I’m sure of.”

“Only that I lack.”

“Well, the way you’re talking, anybody would think—”

“It was nothing with nothing.”

“No? Please, no chicory in the coffee, Mom.”

“I know, I know.”

“What do you mean, nothing with nothing?”

“To me, to Mamie, it would have been nothing with nothing. To him, he’s a koyen , a priest — ekh, who can follow it all. An old man, he imagines — don’t you know? He swears he once heard Stella and a lover — anh, weeks ago. At the door, you hear?”

“Yes?”

“The radio music fills him with terror. That we know already. And the neighborhood grows more and more Portorickie. The girls grow friendlier and friendlier with them. And then blacks too moving in. Ask not. He imagines, God knows.” Mom laughed in short pained resignation. “A disgrace, a bastard, and a dark one.”

“Is that all?”

“Preys on his mind, ever since that night he swears he heard — and wouldn’t the dire year befall: on his way home from the synagogue Friday morning — and you know how much it pleases him to be a Jew with a beard among Portorickies and blacks? — his fortune it is on his way home from the synagogue he comes to the corner of 112th Street near Fifth Avenue — and there, in an empty lot, where a house has been torn down, in the rubble stands a policeman — and while bystanders gather and watch and as Zaida goes by, he sees the policeman take out a newborn infant from a paper grocery bag — dead. Now,” Mom nodded in imitation of Zaida’s admission, “he confesses it was illusion. But then, when he saw the dead infant: Stella’s features, Stella’s light hair— noo, noo . You needn’t ask.”

“What bullshit.”

“Go debate with a panic-stricken old man, and one eye half blind. He fled. In an instant he makes up his mind — he’s defiled if he stays at Mamie’s. Heraus from Mamie’s. Heraus erev Shabbes . The neighbor calls up Morris: Bring the meshinkeh at once. He fares forth.”

“Well, I’ll be—”

“And now, do you think he’s content?” Mom set plate and cutlery in front of Ira. “A bygone day.”

“He’s never content.”

“This time he may have reason. Sadie, with all her thick eyeglasses, is also half blind. And blind as he is, he says he thought he saw her once about to confuse a meat with a dairy dish — so he whispered to us.”