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

“I remember something,” Ira admitted grudgingly.

“ Noo? ” said Mom.

“He was a captain,” Uncle Louie explained. “And not only that. He was on the French General Staff, too. You understand what that means? It means that he could betray all the secret plans of the army. But so strong was the hatred of Jews that when it was discovered that somebody gave away these plans, he was found guilty. He gave them away to the Deutscher , they said, and sent him to Devil’s Island. To Devil’s Island noch .” Uncle Louis’s bony, hairy hand stressed his words. “A Major Esterhazy, a Gentile, was guilty of giving away the secrets of the French army—”

“I would spit in his face, if I could but see him,” Mom interrupted.

“They feel safe only with their own kind,” said Uncle Louie. “Do you understand? That’s why you don’t have Jewish generals. Bist doch geboyren in Galitzia ,” Uncle Louie reverted to Yiddish, and smiled his wide, golden smile. “ A Yeet . Do you know the first words you learned to speak in English?” He lowered his voice: “Goddemnfuckenbestit.”

If only Pop would talk to him like Uncle Louie, could show him the way, could have been there before, prepared the way. But there were only Mom and Pop — and those just ripened into America, his uncles and aunts. And it was always money, money, business, business with them. Te de benk, te de benk, te de benk! The goyish kids chanted in drum-beat staccato: “Football, baseball, svimming in de tenk. Ve got money, but ve put it in de benk. . ” It was no use. He might have sniffled maybe, if he were alone. America didn’t want him. Even though he was willing not to be a Jew, to try to be different, to avoid business, profit, commission and interest — the things he hated about the arithmetic books: If a gross of penholders cost. . If a ton cost. . If a barrel cost. .

What made him think all at once about H. S. M. Hutcheson’s book, The Happy Warrior , which he had finished reading only a few days before. Why did that passage come back to tease his mind: about the hero being a gentleman on a modest income of fifty pounds a year from a legacy consisting of shares in an Indian textile mill. How did that faraway mill by itself make him a gentleman? Those funny, swarthy people he had seen in geography books, barefooted, in crazy white diapers. How could that make an Englishman a gentleman? They didn’t count, that was why. So what did that have to do with him, with the Dreyfus Uncle Louie was talking about, with West Point that didn’t like Jews? If only he had Uncle Louie to explain it. What to do when you couldn’t find the way something went? Thoughts always ended in a. . in a tangle.

Why did he have to think about those Indians in their big diapers when no one else did? Out of a whole book, a long book, why should that have come back to him? He wasn’t an Indian. No, it was that he didn’t count. So he noticed what he wasn’t supposed to about what didn’t count. So they didn’t want him at West Point. He could never not notice what he wasn’t supposed to. Even if he tried. . He watched Pop listen avidly to Uncle Louie talking about the possibility of taking in a few guests for the summer in his new place in Spring Valley. . No, just because he thought about things that didn’t count didn’t mean he didn’t count. Just because he thought about Indians in white diapers in spinning mills that made the hero a gentleman of leisure — and Ira himself was Jewish and the son of a waiter, and they lived in a Harlem dump, too — didn’t mean he wasn’t a different kind of “high degree,” as the fairy tales used to say. He could put words to what he felt. If you could put words to what you felt, it was yours. You couldn’t tell that to anybody, but it was true. You didn’t have to have realms and estates to be a nobleman the way the book said. You could put words to the way life went, the way life felt, and be a nobleman too — even if nobody knew your title: maybe Mom, maybe Uncle Louis, maybe Mr. Sullivan. .

And finally came 1920, a newly minted decade, and with it, graduation from public school: It was a winter graduation, at the end of January. Schooling was over for the majority of Ira’s classmates; schooling was at an end forever. Petey O’Hearn had already been hired as a helper on an ice-wagon. Frankie Spompini (so adept at braiding raffia mats, so neat) was bound for his uncle’s barber shop. Scrawny Davey Bayer, who lived in Ira’s block, hoped to get a job as an office boy. Sid Deffer, who already worked after school in a photography studio, had his job there assured. Leo Dugonz, the Hungarian classmate of Ira’s with whom he got along well, had applied for a job at a materials testing laboratory and been told to come in with his diploma and his working papers.

Almost the whole class was going to work, almost everyone had his working papers or was going to get them. A kind of euphoria was in the air: euphoria at the last of school, euphoria at the future. Only a small number of Ira’s classmates were going to high school, or like himself, were persuaded to go to the new junior high school that had just been innovated in P.S. 24.

II

Question in his mind at the moment was whether to interlard his narrative with events of strong personal interest, or reserve the information for another, a separate vehicle (his handwriting, incidentally, was now reduced to near illegibility). Events of strong personal or immediate interest in one vehicle, and the autobiographic narrative in another, or both together, that was the question. It would simply be easier to do them together, or both on the same document. As a matter of fact, he had already begun to do so, or rather had already done so without preliminary statement, without preface. So. . even if not of greatest literary style, but more or less spontaneously, why not continue? It was more convenient.

He had called Jane over the weekend to find out her condition, mood and circumstances since her return to Toronto. He found her, according to her report, in fluctuating mood, and he again brought up the subject of the feasibility of her coming to Albuquerque. M protested that he wasn’t giving due consideration to the responsibility his apparent magnanimity incurred — and she had called to him sharply to terminate the long-distance conversation. He had answered that he had an ulterior motive in having Jane here, one that he thought could be of profit both to Jane and himself. In short, he thought he could guide her, with very little expenditure of time and effort since she was an experienced journalist, in the writing of something that, to put it bluntly, would sell. He saw a story with an unusual twist. And this, this hunch, if nothing else, because she was so intent on getting a copy of the one tape of their conversation that he had decided to retain (he promised to send it, and did).

Of further interest was her stating that listening to the other tapes made it clear to her that she had been repeating the same thing over again and been unable to understand what a rational solution of her plight required (something that M and Ira had also concluded).

So matters in barest outline ended, with Ira promising to find out more about immigration laws and chances of her obtaining residency here, and also — key question — what her own inclinations in this direction were. She still sounded uncertain.

In the meantime, two other matters of moment cropped up: one with his computer, old friend, Ecclesias, aggravatingly replicating the old saw: Abort. Ignore. Repeat. So that for the entire weekend he was without means of communicating — while the computer was being subject to diagnostic tests at Entre, the purchase place and, exasperation of exasperations, nought was found wrong with it or the software. Returning and reinstalling the device in his study, he changed surge suppressor, removed fluorescent lamp, tape recorder adapter, changed location of cordless phone — and, perhaps sole source of the malfunction perhaps not, closed the little gate before the drive port less gingerly, more aggressively. Fortunately (!), he was able to coerce his unwelcome idleness into filling out his income tax return, at least to within sight of completion.