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

Secondly, and probably of great import, her doctor has suggested that Jane enter a psychiatric hospital “for a rest, a bed and decent meals.” One can make too much of this, or it may be no less than one makes of it: the girl needs psychiatric help. Her opposition to the doctor’s suggestions, based on two counts, was adamant, almost irrationally inflexible: No, she was not going to leave the place she now lodges in, with her “batty” roommate, from whom it would seem any normal person would flee, no matter where (Is it that her cat keeps her there?). She is also disallowed unemployment support, or a dole, because presumably she is cohabiting with the room-owner, or partner.

The doctor’s suggestion, to return to that, which was also accompanied by the explanation that she could not be admitted to a “normal” or general hospital because her physical condition didn’t warrant ordinary medical care, the doctor’s suggestion may have been a way of buffering the alarm, dissipating the stigma of staying in a mental institution. She resisted the suggestion, because she would then be segregated with mental cases — though I assured her as one who had spent four years as a psychiatric aide that she would be safe enough and need have no fear, less perhaps than sharing living quarters with somebody who raved dementedly at her.

No. She was not to be budged. Not an iota of consideration would she give the idea. Employed in the Augusta State Hospital thirty-five years ago, I invented the mnemonic, CIO, the initials of the words for the signs whose absence indicates psychosis in a patient: Contact. Insight. Orientation. And it begins to appear, say a strong hint anyway, that Jane lacks the second of the three mainstays of normalcy. What a shattering intimation!

VII

Harvey and Ira passed each other on the stairs, as Ira climbed up from cellar to store level. Lavishly electric-lit and yet mellowed by spreading stained-glass lampshades, the store looked rich and reserved. Though it was near closing time, a surprising number of customers still sat on the stools in front of the counters, mostly men. Perhaps they were businessmen picking up some article on the way home. Clerks in tan jackets behind the dark counters respectfully jotted down orders on pads, held up an item for a customer’s approval. How dignified, polite — Ira tried not to stare. Or sniff too overtly. What was that square tin the clerk was displaying? Supreme Olive Oil. And the other clerk — that was Walt — saying, “Capers, yes, sir.” What were those? Mr. Stiles was absent from his central podium. Mr. MacAlaney was the assistant manager, Mr. Klein had told Ira, and was the one who made up the steamer baskets. A bronze-blond, curly-haired man who wore gold-rimmed glasses looked up from his pad on the counter, saw what Ira was carrying, and squinted strictly.

“Only half a day today?” The dignified, white-haired clerk in the wing-collar inquired from his station behind the tobacco counter.

“Huh? I’m still workin’. I got this, this basket I gotta deliver.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right. Where to?”

“Here in Harlem. 124th Street.”

“Mr. Klein let you off early?”

Ira looked at the large store clock on the wall above the shelves of obviously select tobacco in jars and cans. The time was twenty minutes to six. “I don’t know.”

“He’s a good fellow that way, Mr. Klein. And sharp. You two ought to get along fine.”

“I gotta go.”

“That’s right. You’ve got to go there still. Is the basket heavy?”

By now, Ira sensed something ulterior in the stately old clerk’s queries, ulterior and unkind, quizzical. Meant to delay him? Make sport of him? You two ought to get along fine . Crafty ascendancy had to have its butt, especially if it was a Jewish one. “No, sir. It’s not heavy.” He made for the door.

“It’s just a feather.”

A smarting laugh followed him as he opened it. Fuckin’ old bastard, what’d I do to him? He merged with the home-going crowd on Lenox Avenue, heaved into the street from the darkly crammed subway kiosk at 125th Street. His first day on the job — elation took the sting out of resentment: He did that dirty, lousy work, cleaned out under the elevator — what’d he call it? Sump. Some sump. And wait’ll Mom saw his blue knee-pants. Ooh, ooh, pants from his nearly new Bar Mitzvah suit. Oy, yoy, yoy . Wait till he told her he weighed out sugar. Like gold, she’ll say. And Mr. Klein, gee, lucky he was Jewish. You two ought to get along fine , the old bastard — but Mom would say, Azoy? She’d say, Tockin gliklikh. Lucky. Tockin . And this basket. Wait till he told her about that. What fruits and jellies. You should see. More than Mr. Klein’s wages.

Ira waited for the cop on his high pedestal at the intersection of 125th and Lenox to pivot his Stop and Go signal-vanes, wave white-gloved hands and whistle. “I’m big now,” Ira told himself. . crossed to the south side of 125th.

They are all dead, they are all dead —the thought cleaved to him as he was about to press the “escape” key and “save” what he had done for the day. You hear, Ecclesias, they are all dead. If I was thirteen at the time, and the year was 1919, and am now seventy-nine, it is sixty-six years later. Surely, not one was less than five years older than I was — who can be alive? Not that pompous old roué of an ex-wine and fine liquor clerk, dust and skeleton. Not Mr. Stiles, not Mr. MacAlaney — oh, perhaps the youngest of them: Tommy perhaps, Quinn’s helper on the delivery truck. Still, there are some World War I veterans alive, quavering, ailing, feeble. Who knew them as World War I veterans then? They were just World War veterans, or Great War veterans. There would be no other, Woodrow Wilson promised, no other, no second Great War.

— And you?

Yes, and I. My stint is soon over, Ecclesias.

“It’s four o’clock,” says the dear and matter-of-fact voice of M, who has borne with me and sustained me these many years. “Want me to ring the curfew?”

“I’ll have to think of that. Is that the right term? Curfew? Or knell?”

VIII

With basket still delicately perched on hip, he walked along Lenox Avenue to the next block, and turned east into 124th Street. Night and new responsibility altered the appearance of the otherwise familiar route. Halfway toward Fifth Avenue, the rows of brownstones on either side of the dark, quiet street faced each other. But not after the short avenue called Mt. Morris Park West; that was the west boundary of Mt. Morris Park. After that, there was only a single row of brownstone houses, and instead of facing other brownstones, they faced the lamp-lit park. The library’s gray front still lay ahead. Anxiously he kept his eyes on the decreasing numbers above the transoms — what would he do if the number were wrong, if he couldn’t find the place? That was the thing he dreaded most, dreaded above all else, that dogged him all the time: his bungling of errands. “A hundert un taiteent Street,” the owner of the button shop had sent him to, and Ira had gone to 118th Street. And that time he waited for Pop on the wrong corner with his tuxedo-package for a banquet — never, never would he forget his joy at seeing a man approaching: Pop, at last! In every way it was Pop — Ira ran to meet him — and it wasn’t! And waiting for the Madison Avenue trolley car with Pop’s meal. . and daydreaming, until Pop yelled at him from the trolley platform.

Oh, no! He’d have to hurry back to the store if he were wrong. Would it still be open? What a disgrace! Or horrible alternative: He’d have to carry the basket home to 119th Street — the beautiful basket through ugly 119th Street — and up the ugly stairs. And Mom saying, Vus i’ dis? and Pop saying, Uhuh! Er hut shoyn ufgeteen . He did it again. And of course, the manager would fire him. The first day. No, maybe he could run back in the morning before school. Even if he was late: “I’ll go, I’ll go, Mr. Klein. Please tell me where.” But maybe all the fruit wouldn’t be fresh anymore — Ah! here it was: 27 in shining gold numbers, and with automobiles in front of it.