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

— But that wasn’t it alone.

No, exactly. It was like a resonance, Ecclesias, if that’s the right word, a reinforcement within the psyche. As you can see: a self overt, a self covert, a self candid, a self stealthy. Nothing uncommon.

— No, but with you supremely exacerbated, into a veritable virtuosity.

I agree.

XVI

Though the intimations had been many before, Bar Mitzvah brought realization into sharp focus, not of the parting of his ways from Jewishness, but of never wanting to return. Vitiated for him, repugnant virtually all aspects of what he was to learn in time bore the name Diaspora. He knew it then only as Jewishness , detested it, was held to it, to the extent that he was held by a single bond: his attachment to Mom, his love for her, for the artless eloquence that imbued so much of her speech, for her martyrdom on his behalf, and for her nobility in spite of her sentimentality, humble nobility again and again shining through the rifts of its sentimental husk: “I didn’t know how noble you were, Leah,” Mom told Ira that Zaida said to her once — and removed his yarmulke and bowed: “Forgive me, Leah. I abused you when you were young.” (Almost too much to bear, the picture of that selfish, intolerant old Jew removing his yarmulke and doing obeisance to his daughter, his firstborn, plain and seemingly unfavored, as her Biblical namesake.)

Once more the school vacation had begun, once again it was summer, the early summer of 1919. Warm, but not so stifling as that August afternoon in 1914, when Zaida sent him downstairs, nickel in hand, to buy the Yiddish “Wuxtra.” It was more like the afternoon — and time of year — when Mamie and Mom and he and blonde little Stella waited in the newly furnished Harlem apartment for the immigrants to arrive. Another child had been added to the family since then: carrot-topped Pola, Mamie’s second daughter. . But now it was Moe that everyone waited for, the former immigrants too, all waited for Moe, safely back from France. Saul and Max had gone to the mustering-out center to escort their brother home. Everyone kept leaping to the front windows at the sound of an approaching motor car, kept looking to the west for a sign of the glorious appearance of the taxicab that would bear the one in whom all their hopes were centered: Moe, son and brother and uncle, home from the World War.

It was just at that moment when Mamie was admonishing her seven-year-old daughter, Stella, not to lean out so far, and Ira, stealing glances at his cousin’s plump legs, slumped further down in his chair so that he could see up further, and fantasizing with fierce intensity that Stella was older, when a car was heard slowing down, chugging to a stop with a squeal of tires against the curb. “He’s here!” Stella shrilled. “Uncle Moe is here! I saw him first!”

Crying “Moishe! Moe!” everyone rushed to the windows. Down below, doors were opened on both sides of the yellow-and-black-checkered cab before the house. Nimble Max stepped out on the street side as Saul stepped out on the sidewalk. And after him, Moe, burly and radiant in khaki. At the same time, across the street, from the candy store with the placard in the window printed freehand, WELCOME HOME MOE, out rushed Dave Eshkin, rolypoly, curly-haired proprietor, in his chocolate-flecked white apron: “Moe! Moe! Hallo, Moe!” he cried as he ran to greet Moe with outstretched arms. “The whole block is heppy you home! Gott sei dank , you home! Look, everybody, from the windows! He’s here!” Dave shouted upward at the increasing number of spectators leaning out of windows: “It’s Moe!” And was met by a medley of cries descending from all levels, “ Mazel tov , Moe! Hooray, Moe!” Some came out of doorways to shake hands with him.

“Moe! Moishe! Uncle Moe!” Everyone in the front room who could crowd into a window or beside it, so many, Ira would think afterward with a shudder: What if the wall gave way with such a mass of relatives pressing against it. “Hallo, Soldier! Hooray, Moe! Here’s Moe!” reverberated from houses on both sides of the street, as some shouted from windows, others beckoned to those behind them to join in the triumphal chorus. Smiling with peculiar composure, Moe looked up, his blue eyes steady in the shadow under his campaign hat. Saul paid the taxi driver, Max lifted the duffel bag out of the cab. The three brothers entered the house, leaving behind cheering, waving spectators from sidewalk to roof.

Harry rushed down the stairs to meet them. Everyone else rushed to the door — neighboring doors opened; the sound of other doors opening on the floors below and above was heard, other tenants shouted their greetings. And there he came — up the stairs — a golden khaki apparition. “Moe! Moishe! Oy, mein kindt! Oy, baruch ha shem , blessed be the name of the Lord!” Everyone in the apartment surrounded him, clung to him, clamored with joy.

Moe entered, with jaw set in his bronzed-fair countenance, his lips thickened to pouting. Campaign ribbons were bunched on his chest. Gone was the quarter-moon under the three chevrons on his arm; in its place nestled a castle above an additional black loop. He no longer spoke in his former good-natured way, but with a dry, grating voice — and with scarcely an intonation. He sat down heavily on a chair.

“ Oy, gevald , what they have done to my merry little Moishe?” Dressed in some dark, satiny cloth, Baba sat motionless, staring at her son. “My precious, happy child, my good child, my first son, they’ve turned you into a stone.”

“Not a stone, Mamaleh . A soldier. A staff sergeant beside. They wanted me to reenlist, Mamaleh; my colonel told me, ‘Reenlist, Morris’—he called me Morris—‘you’re my regimental sergeant.’”

“But you’re home now,” Baba appealed. “My Moishe, my Yiddish child, come back to us.” She raised both hands, imploring: “Moishe, hear!”

“A regimental sergeant, and I wished myself a hundred times dead.”

“Leave him alone,” Zaida commanded. “In time he’ll come to himself. He’s home. He’ll become Moishe again— May they be slaughtered, all who stunned him in that charnel house he had to abide. Ai, ai, ai, will they ever come to their senses? Ai! What lies and rots under the earth because of their madness. Kaddish, v’ yiskadaish, shmai raboh .”

“I’ll go to shul with you, this evening, Father, if I may. God knows what will help me.”

“ Noo , come to the shul with me this evening? What else?”

“Why is everyone so troubled?” Mamie interjected. “What’s wrong with us? We stand about him as if, as if, God knows, as if the Almighty didn’t return him to us unscathed. He’s here! He lives! And nothing maimed. It will all be forgotten soon. What is it with us? He’ll be a headwaiter again. Perhaps soon he’ll go into business. He’ll open a restaurant. He’ll be a success. With life he’ll be all this. Come, let’s rejoice. Gevald , what is this? I know what you need, brother!” Mamie shook her finger at Moe. “I know very well. I’ll bring it, and you’ll be another man. At once!” She hurried into the kitchen, came back in seconds with a glass tumbler and a seltzer siphon. “You’re still my little brother,” she wheedled as she proffered the glass. “Here. This will restore you. Like old times when you were a busboy: a glass of seltzer. This will make you our Moishe again. Here, quicken your heart!” She pressed the lever of the cold-sweating siphon, squirted a tumblerful of bubbling water into the tumbler he held, until it almost brimmed over— “Drink, drink, dear brother. It’s good and cold, the way you always liked it. You’ll belch heartily. See if that won’t restore you.”