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

Holding the chipped blue enamel coffeepot in the scorched pot holder, Mom poured coffee into the white mug. “Have you everything you need?”

“I think so, Mom.”

“Handkerchiefs too?”

“Oh, yeh. I nearly forgot ’em.” He reached for a bagel.

“Take. Eat. Don’t skimp.”

“When did I ever?”

“I have to entreat you to eat now. You’re my guest.”

“I’ll be home again. I told you.”

Mom sat down opposite him. If he hadn’t long ago become accustomed — become inured — to the mournful, deep-eyed fixity with which she regarded him, he would hardly have been able to eat.

“I might have sliced an onion for you, except that I know where you are going.”

“Thanks.”

“And what does she say about your frayed underwear?”

“Aw, Mom! What does she say about my frayed underwear?”

She laughed her light, humble, extenuating laugh. “Undoubtedly, she can buy you better.”

“I won’t sleep in my underwear anymore. She bought me pajamas.”

“ Azoy? ”

“At Wanamaker’s, this morning.” Ira chomped away. “She bought me a bathrobe too. A woolen one. A red one. She said it made me look like a Turkish sultan when I tried it on — he’s a king.”

“Will I ever have the bliss of seeing you in it?”

“I don’t know, Mom. She would like to meet you.”

“And I her. Noo? When?”

He delayed before answering, sought noncommittal evasion. “Well, it’s up to her.”

“Are you ashamed?”

“Of you?”

“Of your crude mother?”

“No.” Ira shook his head, not convincingly, but in predicament. “What will Pop say?”

“He’ll grieve.”

“What? What for?”

“Friends you’re not.”

“That’s right. I thought he’d be glad to get rid of me.”

“On good terms you will never be,” Mom continued. “And a burden you’ve been; don’t think you haven’t. But he’s an odd, peculiar creature. Follow him I can’t. Would I could understend him. You’re his son. His son, and for all the ill will between you, when he knows you’re going away from us, leaving us for a strange world, with its strange ways he can’t follow — well, God forbid, as if you were to die. Or as we left Austria for America. He’ll grieve.”

“Yeah? That’s news. You sure it’s not you?”

“No. It’s your father. A stupid man he isn’t. Shrewd, no. Not at all. But for some things, yes. Some things he discerns, he has pity for, he has feeling — who knows him? Only the bleak year.”

“So what would he want?” Ira stopped eating, could feel himself become grim and contrary.

“He hoped when you graduated, we would all move to the Bronx — in a handsome apartment near the Concourse — Minnie is working — someplace where she could entertain a caller. A caller; he doesn’t have to be a suitor. Lately, something has come to pass: he has the manner of a swain. So she whispered. He’s been accepted for training in the fire department. Now he’s a temporary policeman in a new reservoir they’re building. Of course, nothing is decided. I’m not even supposed to speak of it.”

“No. So what did he have in mind for me?”

“With you a schoolteacher, in a larger place to live, in a better one, of course, for you an extra bedroom. That was what he counted on. You would live with us.”

“In the Bronx?”

“Indeed.”

“Minnie would have a bedroom, I would have a bedroom. We’d be like Larry and his family.”

“ Noo , about time. Would it harm us to live together until one of you married?” Mom asked rhetorically. “Bedrooms with doors. Genteel. Upstanding. A fine bathroom with a tile floor.”

“Yes?” Ira looked about the green walls, his gaze coming to rest on the clock: the hour was approaching four. “When was all this going to happen?”

“When you become half a schoolteacher.”

“Half a schoolteacher?”

“It’s a saying we Jews have. After you graduated from college. More coffee?”

“No, no. Thanks.” Ira tempered impatience. “I’ve got to be going.”

“She doesn’t make an early Shabbes , your dama ?” Mom jested.

“Neither early nor late. No.”

“ Noo , if it’s time to go,” Mom concluded obligingly. “Your friend Larry didn’t leave a good home to go live with an old shiksa —”

“The hell she is! She’s not old!” Ira snapped.

“I only told you what he said. Old or not old, you’re leaving us, no?” She indicated the carton. “And just when home might be shayn , nice, good.” She mixed English with Yiddish.

“I’ll be back. I told you I’ll be back. Where do you think I’m going? I’m only going downtown!”

“But strange it is. Can you say it isn’t? Where will you stay, when she has her own visitors, collegios, professorim, who knows?”

“I may have to disappear for a few hours. What else? She’s talking about moving across the street to a bigger apartment, maybe with an extra little room. I’ll come back here. Don’t worry.”

“Not here. To the Bronx — with God’s help — if only for Minnie’s sake.”

“Okay. Then to the Bronx.”

“And what if she taunts you with that good word: Jew?”

“Aw, come on, Mom! For Chrissake!”

She loves you so much?” And at Ira’s silence. “ Noo , why not, why not indeed? Handsome and young and full of beguiling fancies. There grows another Maxim Gorky, said our first boarder on 9th Street: Feldman. You enchanted him with your tales, even as a child. ‘Mrs. Stigman, there grows another Maxim Gorky.’ Well, what can you do? Do you remember Feldman?”

“Yeah, and I’m gonna leave in about ten minutes.”

“Then you do remember him?”

“A short fellow, wasn’t he? With curly hair. He used to stand on the stoop in 9th Street in the summer and watch us kids whirl punks against the mosquitoes. Punks are those long thin sticks that give off a smell. That’s how I remember him.”

“He was a very gentle, refined man.”

“That’s good. Mom, I love talking to you, but—” Ira stood up and began interlocking the flaps of the carton. “Let’s get some string.”

Mom stood up also — slowly. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to him?”

“Huh?” Ira rested hands on carton. “Pop?”

“He’ll be home soon. And he’ll be home promptly.”

“Oh, you mean Friday, and all that? No, what for? Let’s have the string. Tell me where you keep it. I’ll get it.”

“I’ll get it.” She went to the sink, pulled the little polka-dot curtain back under the dark recess of the sink, to disclose the wooden box where she kept household items. “It’s not because of Friday.” She stooped down, rummaged in the box, before she brought out a ball of sorted, knotted twine. “It’s not because of Friday he’ll be home so promptly. When was he ever so pious as that?”

“We’re getting all mixed up,” Ira said irritably. “I didn’t mean what for, when I said it. I meant stay around to say goodbye. I’m not going a thousand miles. I told you that.” He beckoned for the string impatiently. “I don’t want to get into a big quarrel with him.”

“I understend.” She handed him the knot-fringed ball. “It’s stout enough?”

“I’ll go around each way a few times.” He was beginning to feel uneasy: there it was again: something impending. He rolled the carton from side to side, binding it. Get out as soon as he could.

“Do you love her?” Mom asked.

“Boy, what a question. I guess so.”

“Sinful mother that I am, I seek to live in my son’s life. How did you make known your passion?”