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

“It’s to be tolerated. And tolerate it I must. It’s quieted.”

“That’s good. Well, I better beat it, Mom.” He wriggled into his coat. “Say goodbye to Pop and to Minnie.”

“I’ll have to leave her word.”

“What do you mean?”

“We may be gone before she comes home.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ira hefted the carton reflectively. “That’s right.”

“The great sire will have to write her a message: to wait a little while for supper. The gefilte fish is in the window box. She can light the stove under the soup again if she wants to. I told her about his—” Mom’s fingers waved in ironic festoon—“his magnanimity. She was glad. Naturally.”

“You didn’t tell her about anything else?”

“Only you I would tell.” Rotating turbines. The empty house. Bleak kitchen. Wintry ambience of humid glistening blistery green walls. The brain needed a circuit breaker. Edith was like a shunt to a new life, but the old was still there, intact, accessible, with all the ferocious allure of the forbidden — Satan’s dilemma in Milton — the forbidden that augured ruinous foreboding, but still— Ira affected dawdling, set down the carton on the table. “What did Stella say when you came in?”

“You’re not going?”

“I can spare another minute. I’m not wrought up. Honest. Calm down.”

“Truth?”

“Truth.”

“And if he were to come in the door this minute?”

“I told you.” Ira shrugged emphatically. “It’s passed. I’m outta this dump, this life, if you call it that, this craziness. I’m outta your tsuris ,” he capped sentiment with false toughness in Yiddish. “I don’t care if he comes home. ‘So long, Pop,’” Ira projected facetious farewell.

“I’m glad. I was afraid for a while. He’s not worth your ire. The whole thing. It’s Chaim’l, noo ?”

“Yeah. Chaim’l is right. So what did she say?”

“What could she say? She turned red as the clout she was wearing.”

“The what? She was wearing a clout, you say?”

“That too.” Mom pressed her lips sideways in revulsion. “Shameless she, and shameless he.”

“Yeah. I don’t blame you, Mom.”

“Well. Nothing. But what fiend possessed her to come here?” Mom contracted in a fresh spasm of indignation. “She knows I have nothing in common with her. She’s flavorless. She’s insipid. The silly nonsense she talks about — she prattles. I can scarce abide her. And to come here to our neighborhood, to 119th Street. She fears it. But here she is. Why?”

Ira shook his head. “Got me, Mom,” he said in English. He lifted his briefcase. “Sorry, Mom. They say in English: Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

“Indeed, so it is. At least you’ll be in better hands. When will you come home?”

“Soon as I can.”

“And your career you won’t abandon? College you won’t abandon?”

“No, no. Listen, Mom, you asked me before, and I told you. I can’t stay there all the time. Part of the summer she goes west and rents the apartment. So I’ll have to come back here. And she’s getting that book together that I told you about. An anthology it’s called. She’ll be busy. Maybe I can help, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I don’t know where I’ll stay a lot of the time. You haven’t lost me yet.”

“No? Zolst gehen gesint . Give me a kiss.”

“G’bye, Mom.” Ira laid briefcase on carton to embrace her. He clasped her bulky, thick body in his arms, kissed her surprisingly soft cheeks, kissed her brow, as she had always wanted him to do since childhood. His throat tightened.

“God protect you,” she said.

“I hope so.” He transferred the heavy carton from table to washtub, so that he could the more conveniently take hold of it when he opened the door. He opened the door, hooked fingers into the carton strings, and was about to lift his burden from the white-oilcloth-covered washtub when he heard out of the hallway chill, out of the dim corridor, the light step, saw the slight figure, saw the glint of eyeglasses. His hand on the crossed cords of the carton opened. He stood with briefcase dangling from his arm.

“Hi ye, Pop.” Uttering his usual preliminary puff, the unsmiling little man came into the kitchen.

Unfriendly — offended — he looked first at Mom, then at Ira, and then at the carton on the washtub. “ Noo , you’ve driven him off,” he said. “You weren’t content until you drove him off.”

“I? I drove him off?” Mom countered. “Are you mad? He’s going of his own accord. Tell him, Ira.”

But Pop interjected before Ira could speak: “You take me for a fool? I don’t understand that you already told him last night? And now he flees for good.” He pointed at the carton.

“Go. You’re demented.”

“I can’t recognize it?” He pointed up at Ira’s face.

“Listen, Pop—”

“Listen, Pop,” Pop mocked. “ Noo? ” he challenged. “It was such an abominable thing? And even so, a wife will tell a son about it. This isn’t an abominable thing?”

“Nobody said it was,” Ira palliated.

“Aha!”

“So I told him!” Mom flung defiantly at her husband. “Do I need to be ashamed, or you?”

“You see how her head works? Does she need to be ashamed, or I? Not that she shouldn’t be ashamed to tell her son, to besmirch his father. That’s nothing. Only to show how blameless she is. Why did you have to tell?” Pop confronted his wife. And then to Ira: “She enlightened you greatly with this? What have you to say?”

“Leave the boy alone,” Mom warned.

“Listen, Pop, will you listen? As far as what happened, it’s none of my damn business, all right? I’m not leaving home because of anything you did — about that — all right? I’m leaving because I’m going to live with somebody else. I’m going to live with a woman. Okay? In Greenwich Village. You’ve heard me talk about her: Edith, yes? I’m going to live with her. Part of the time. It has nothing to do with you at all. It’s practically my only hope. That’s why I’m going.”

“There you have the truth,” said Mom.

Pop, his suspicious, dog-brown eyes staring behind spectacles, searched Ira’s countenance with rare fixity. “Your only hope?”

“Yes.”

“To go live with an old shiksa ?”

“I won’t go into that — that’s my affair.”

“And my affair?”

“That’s yours.”

“It’s so heinous?”

“I won’t go into that. It’s yours.”

“But she had to splash you with it. What have you to say? Tell.”

“Leave him alone!” Mom intervened.

“I demand to know.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Pop, all you did was, well—” Ira shrugged, denigrated. “It was just human, all right? Can I go now?”

“Tell her.” Pop pointed to his wife. “A man is left alone with a toy. What she’s doing here I don’t know. But a comely little toy she is. So what terrible thing has he done? Noo ? He played with her. A pretty young plaything yields to a man’s caresses. He toys with her, and such a little toy. Does he merit the gibbet for that? I have such a dear and loving wife that I’m not tempted, tell me? Such a doting wife—”

“ Gey mir in der erd ,” Mom cut in stonily.

“Uh! That answer she has ready.”

“All right, let’s cut it out. Please.” Ira looked toward the door.

“And how many times need I hear about her brother’s prowess? She knows about her brother’s prowess. How?”

“Indeed. Moe would have suited me.”

“You see?”

“Mom, cut it out!” Ira snapped. “Let’s forget it! Jeez, I’ve got no argument, Pop. It’s one of those things. Please! As far as I’m concerned, I may be as much to blame as anybody.”