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

And then one evening, long before his shift was up, Pop came home with both eyes blackened, nose bruised, blood still adhering to his nostrils. He had tried to eject a drunken sailor from the trolley car and been badly beaten, badly enough so that the dispatcher had sent him home.

Mom wept; so did Ira. And Pop too at his malign fate.

“ Oy, gevald! ” Mom cried out. “What woe is mine! Did you have to wrangle with a drunken sailor?”

“I with him? He attacked me. He wouldn’t pay his fare when I told him to. I merely said he would have to get off.”

“Then let him be. And let him be slain,” Mom lamented. “May the war take its toll of him!”

“It’s my jop,” said Pop. “And if there was an inspector aboard the car, and I was a fare short, I would be fired.”

“ Ai , my poor husband!” Mom clasped her slightly built spouse to her large bosom. “Would I could take your place! Would I were there to defend you. I have shoulders. I have strength!”

“Now you comfort me!” Pop extricated himself from Mom’s arms. “I thought that with America in the accursed war, it would last two months, three months. When so many men were soldiers, businessmen too, I could easily establish myself in a luncheonette in St. Louis. Or with Gabe’s finagling — I’m his brother— ai , fortune, fortune. Such good fortune betide Woodrow Wilson and his advisers. Gabe said: Have nothing to do with the stinking Democrats. How right he was. How right, how right! Ten days longer I’ll suffer there on that verflukhteh trolley car — until my black eyes recover — fortunately I took off my glasses when I went to put him off.”

“ Oy, gevald! ” Mom grieved. “I thought so.”

“ Noo , what else?”

“And then?” Mom asked.

“And then let them be destroyed with their jop. Ten days, two weeks more. The most. I’ll sneak to the employment office: not to the union hall full of patriots, but to a plain employment office goniff . Where is there a jop for a waiter, I’ll ask. They must be jops in the unheard-of thousands.”

“And if they come after you? Those who seek the shirkers, the dreft-dodgers, as one hears on all sides the hue and cry?”

“ Luzn seh mir gehn in d’red . I’ll tell them: Go be a conductor on a trolley car yourself, when you have to discharge every half-hour. Let us see what you’ll do. I’m like an invalid, no? Cremps. Cremps. Cremps. You want a soldier with cremps in the militaire? ”

“Indeed,” said Mom. “ Oy , that they may not seize you!”

“Seize me!” Pop scouted. “I’ve already been seized.”

“And I would ask them a general doesn’t need a waiter? An officer doesn’t need a waiter? He doesn’t have to be a stalwart, a hero—”

“As long as he knows how to set a table, how to serve, that’s enough.” Encouraged, Pop interrupted. “Better to be a waiter to a general, a colonel, than a trolley-car conductor. Allevai ,” he added fervently after a moment. “Wages they would have to pay me to support my family. Even if they never gave me a tip, it would still be better than spasms of the bowels on the back of a trolley car.” His fingers stroked his discolored cheekbones. “And black eyes when you try to collect a fare. Such an ugly fate may my friend, President Wilson, have to endure!”

VIII

Pop worked for another two weeks, reported to the personnel office that he no longer could work on the trolley line because of the disorder of his bowels. He requested a release so that he could seek other essential work. He was accorded a release, and he handed in his badge (visored hat and navy-blue jacket were his by-purchase, and Mom sold them in the same secondhand store on 114th Street where she so often and with such tenacity — to Ira’s intense embarrassment — haggled for his secondhand clothes).

The day following his separation from the trolley line, Pop was already working. So scarce were experienced waiters, the employment agency sent him to one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city: the Wall Street Stock Exchange Club dining room. No tips — the diners were enjoined from paying them and he from accepting them. He received a fixed salary and a percentage of the bill, and that was all — not as much as he might have received otherwise in as high-toned a restaurant but he was free weekends, and could seek, and easily find, “extra jops by a benket.” But at least he was over that trolley-car plague, he congratulated himself, adding. “Anything is better than that. A living I make. My bowels are at peace. And seek me out I’m sure they won’t.”

“No? Would it were so. Why?” Mom asked.

“I work among magnates. Not only magnates? Magnates of magnates.”

“ Azoy? So rich?”

“Yesterday I waited on J. P. Morgan.”

“ Azoy! ”

“And Bernard Baruch the day before.”

“ Gotinyoo! And they allow a plebeian like you to approach them?”

“Who else will set a salad in front of them? Naturally, the headwaiter takes charge. He takes the orders. He oversees all that I do. I take the plate of food from the cart, place it on the table. Everything is done according to rule. But I hear them talk, one to the other.”

“And what do they say, such powers as these?” Mom marveled.

“What they wish. Morgan will say to Baruch: ‘What do you think of such and such a stock, Bernie?’ And he will answer: ‘I’ll tell you, John, such and such a gesheft has a great future.’ They talk about the war, about Wilson, his kebinet, about great transactions.”

“Hear, only hear!” said Mom. “And none of these mighty asks whether you are—” She hesitated. “I have such a clogged head I’ve forgotten the word. You’re not needed for the War?”

“The headwaiter is only too happy to have an experienced waiter on the floor,” said Pop. “And a lively one, not some broken down alter kocker from a private club. He’s as quiet as a mouse, the headwaiter, whether I’m essential, whether I’m not essential, as they call it.” Pop used the English word. “ There I’m essential. Sometimes Morgan or some other of the mighty brings in a guest, an admiral, a high state official. Believe me, they look the other way. Had I only known before. I would have heeded them with their essential like the cat.”

“ Gott sei dank ,” said Mom.

What Pop said was true. He worked in the Stock Exchange restaurant throughout the entire War. He was completely ignored or deliberately overlooked. Not so Uncle Moe, now a headwaiter in Radsky’s famous dairy restaurant on Rivington Street.

Husky, sanguine Uncle Moe was drafted.

“ Mein Moishe ,” Baba lamented, wept, rocked back and forth with anguish. “ Veh iz mir, oy, veh iz mir . My good child, my devoted, happy son, my Moishe. Ai! Ai! Ai! They’re sending him into that charnel house. God give me strength to endure it.”

Grieving continually, from the day that Moe received his induction notice, she shrank visibly — she withered. Neither would she be distracted nor humored, refusing all solace. “May I not live to see the day that anything happens to him.”

Nor would she respond to Zaida’s chidings: “You must eat! You must live! How will you help him by starving to death? You’ll make a widower of me with your mourning, that’s what you’ll accomplish.”

Morris was sent away to camp. She pined; she scarcely spoke. Her face became brown, shriveled and wrinkled. Fortunately Tanta Mamie lived across the street. She did most of the shopping for the household, and much of the cooking too. Listlessly Baba sat beside the window under the summer awning, sat for hours with two fingers on her cheek and one across her lips, gazing, gazing out on the street. A physician was called in, and he tried to reason with her. “She wants to die before she lives to see her son dead,” he told an exasperated Zaida. “See that she drinks enough. If she won’t eat, force her to drink. Otherwise, she may have to go to a hospital.”