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

“Yeah. Pershine wouldn’t hev no army left.”

“The Mexicans woulda had a field day, Klein.”

“Yeh.”

“Jesus, you didn’t git my gag. Did you? ” he addressed Ira.

“I don’t know. A field day?”

“Listen, Ira is your name?” Mr. Klein asked. “You see these small brown bags and this sugar in the barrel — did you ever weigh anything?”

“Lay anything?” asked the clerk named Walt.

“All right. You can go upstairs to the counter,” said Mr. Klein. “I got a new assistant.”

“Anything you say.” And to Ira: “Look out for that guy. He’s a slave driver.”

“Okay, already.” Mr. Klein dismissed his assistant, who walked from behind the counter and proceeded to climb up the stairs. And addressing Ira, he pointed to a barrel: “You see this? You know what it is?”

Ira looked. The barrel was half full of familiar white crystals. “It’s sugar.”

“Det’s right.” Mr. Klein pointed an accusing finger at Ira. “Can your mother get sugar?”

“Gee, no. She has to go all over.”

“So now you understand. The sugar is scarce nowadays. We give only a half pound to a customer. We’re Hooverizing. Other things don’t make so much difference, but sugar I want you to weigh it out, not more and not less. But just!” The index finger of the threatening hand curled around to join the thumb in a threatening loop. “I’ll show you the first one. You’re Jewish?”

“Yeh.”

“All right. So you got a Jewish kupf . Now watch me. This is a half-pound weight.” He set the round half-pound counter on one of the white platforms of the scale, and rapidly at first and then more slowly, let the sugar dribble from the scoop in his hand into the paper bag, the weighted platform barely lifted. “ Farshtest? Okay. Det’s all. Try to be fest, but it should be right.” He then showed Ira how to tie up the bag, yanking twine from a giant cone of it at the end of the table, whipping twine around the small paper package and forming a bight to snap the twine. “You’ll get the heng of it,” he watched Ira at his first awkward attempt, then went back to matching groceries to his invoices, stowing the items in one of the big hampers. Once in awhile, he would stop and consult a small red New York City street guide that he kept next to him on the zinc-sheathed table. “You know where 124th Street is?” he asked in peculiarly Jewish statement, when Ira had weighed out and tied about twenty or so bags.

“124th Street? That’s where I go to the library.”

Mr. Klein regarded Ira gravely a moment. “You go to the library. So, all right. Come with me.”

“Now?”

“Of course now. V’im lo akhsav, matai? Do you know any Hebrew?”

“No.” Ira followed him. “Yeah, maybe baruch atoo adonoi .”

“And you went to cheder .”

“Yeah. But I didn’t like it there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I liked it better on 9th Street.”

“That’s where you lived?”

“Yeah. 749 East 9th Street.”

“So why did you like it better there?”

Ira shrugged. “Everybody in the block went to cheder .”

“Aha. So okay.” Mr. Klein stopped before the locked glass door of the icebox, took the ring of keys off its clip on his belt. “You know what a steamer besket is?” He unlocked the glass door, stooped down, and as Ira was about to repeat wonderingly, “steamer basket,” brought out from the bottom shelf the most breathtaking basket Ira had ever seen, beautiful in its wicker weaving, its high, graceful handle, and piled high with most of the glorious fruit with which that part of the icebox was stocked, a mound of diverse fruits interspersed with bonbons, mints and jellies and jars of mixed shelled nuts. The contents were all bounded by a stiff, transparent canopy of celluloid, made fast to the basket rim by several windings of cord.

“Gee!”

“Now, listen,” said Mr. Klein severely. “I want you should deliver this to the party that’s on the ticket here. To them and nobody else. Farshtest? It cost more gelt than I make week. So no—” He frowned, cocked his head, and once again shook a cautionary manual circle at Ira. “No mistakes. It says where and who. It’s all right on the ticket here. Merrill. You should go to 27 West 124th Street. You ain’t a kid. Just make sure.”

“And when do I go?”

“When do you go?” Mr. Klein laughed shortly, hopelessly. “I told you. Tonight. This evening. Right now. You’ll get your jecket and your kep, and you’ll go this evening. You got the name and the address. It’s dark already, so make sure you’re in the right place.”

“I know how the numbers go.”

“ Sehr gut. And after you deliver it, you go home. Thet’s all. Now get your jecket and kep, and come to the table.”

The gorgeous basket was waiting for Ira on the tabletop and beside it stood Mr. Klein: “It’s all paid for. Just make sure you’re in the right place. Merrill is the name. See the tag? 27 West 124th Street. Near Fifth Avenue—”

“I tell you, I know the place!”

“No becktalks, you hear?”

“All right.”

“And pavollyeh , you know what that is?” he lowered his voice as he nodded his head. “Easy. Don’t squeeze it. Hold it like that. It’s Park and Tilford.”

Ira curved his arm through the high handle and around the basket gingerly.

VI

A car bomb explodes beside a mosque, bringing Shiite reprisal against Israel, and distracting the writer from his narrative. In fact, the Syrians may be behind the provocation. When will the cold-blooded, pitiless slaughter end? Who knows — if in fact it will ever end? Scapegoat of the world, Israel. Equally gruesome, but naturally affecting me less, Vietnam warring against the Khmer Rouge, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq mass-murdering each other’s civilian populations. What does that amount to, as they were wont to say in Maine. The blood-libel still lives in many parts of the world. Dr. Maarouf al Dawalibi, advisor to the king and the Saudi Arabian delegate, said at a conference on religious tolerance held in Geneva last December: “The Talmud states that ‘If a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, then he will be damned for eternity.’”. .

As one broods on this piece of lunacy, there seems to be only one solution: Get rid of religion! If the human race is to be preserved, is to be prevented from annihilating itself, then Marxist-Socialist atheism offers the only salvation, Marxist-Socialist-atheist-cum-coercion. The Jews go, the Mea Shearim kinkies with their foot-long earlocks go, as do the rabid cuckoos of other persuasions, with their purdahs and muezzins . What other way out is there? They’ll be destroying one another with fanatic frenzy till kingdom come. But no, but no, I’m wrong. That’s not the decisive element in the peace-making process. Oh, hell, I’m wildly wrong. What religious difference enters into the warfare between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge, between China and Vietnam, China and Russia, South Korea, North Korea, Iraq, Iran? Damn little, or none. So? Where am I? What is, or what are, the true reasons for strife between nations that generate this slaughter? The same “old” thing: material interests. Economic considerations, strategic advantage, expansion of territory, increased power. . Alas.

My mood is further thickened by a long-distance call last night from Jane in Toronto. Most unsettling, most distressing. This time not about my son Jess and his behavior in the framework of my “theories.” No, my theories are underlined. Jess begins to assume justification: His remark, which she produced, jotted down in red ballpoint on a slip of paper when he temporarily quit the premises, re his no longer being able to cope with her demons, now takes on validity in the light of fresh information. As M said, and that was the least or most favorable thing one could say, that she, Jane, was making no effort to cope. More, much more, could be added, could be brought to bear that would give the picture its grievous, disturbing chiaroscuro: She has been subject to a violent tirade (whose particulars she said were in a letter on the way) by her male roommate, who insulted her, inveighed against her on all sorts of grounds, which she construes as arising from his own frustrated love affair with some infidelitous woman. “Mapped,” as it were, or translated into the temperament of the other individual, his tirade has a disquieting similarity to Jess’s aspersions, figurative attribution of demons. In both cases the accusations seemed to arise from the same cause: Jane’s aberrant state or eccentric behavior. To label her conduct eccentric would put the most charitable construction on her actions: Less charitably, they smack of paranoia.