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

He climbed the outer flight of stairs — prayerfully. And just as he pressed the doorbell button, he felt a strong misgiving. Was he supposed to go upstairs? Wasn’t he was supposed to go downstairs, where the steel door was? He turned to skip down, but too late: The front door was already opening, and the courtly gentleman, smiling cordially and expectantly, with head lifted to greet an adult guest, looked down—

“I made a mistake,” Ira pleaded. “I–It’s—” He pointed downstairs, “It’s from Park and Tilford.”

“Oh? Really? Is it for Merrill?” The gentleman inquired urbanely.

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Merrill. 27 West.”

“Raymond, do let him in,” a woman’s voice called from the interior.

“Certainly, dear. Come in.” The courtly man laughed delightedly as Ira entered the hall, and in utter confusion, was guided to a spacious drawing room, where someone said, a seated lady said: “Not a Prohibition agent, thank Heavens!” And the laughter of everyone rolled over him like a billow.

And now he saw what he had done: Under the brilliant facets of the chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, ladies, displaying long ropes of pearls and beads and wearing small, clinging hats, sat on contoured velvety chairs smoking cigarettes in long cigarette holders. And attending them stood gentlemen in dark suits and narrow trousers, with small neckties knotted in high, starched collars and gold watch-chains suspended before their vests. Two women in small aprons and frilly caps, bearing trays laden with curiously shaped morsels of food, moved about among the gathering, offering the delicacies, more often declined than accepted. And a man in striped trousers and a swallow-tail jacket replenished the shallow bowls of long-stemmed glasses out of a bottle with a napkin around it. A bubbly wine winked at the rim of the glass, and there was a scent of wine even through the cigarette smoke. He had butted into a party.

Awkwardly holding out the basket, Ira pulled off his cap. “This is the basket,” he stammered.

Again laughter rolled toward him. With a kind smile, the gentleman who let him in relieved Ira of his burden with a “Thank you.” And glancing at the tag: “You, Myrtle!” he accused one of the ladies lightly. “Only you could have thought of this!”

“Gorgeous! What delectable fruit. Oh, look at those cunning little pots of jam!” The guests chorused, as he set the basket down on a round, veined, marble-topped table.

“I think we’d better open it now, don’t you, dear?” the courtly gentlemen asked one of the seated women in dark green dress with green involucres.

“I should think we’d better, while everyone’s here. We’ll never make an impression on it otherwise.” Everyone laughed. “Jenny, would you open it please? Thank you,” she spoke to one of the maids in the frilled caps. And to the other lady: “Myrtle, you have an absolute genius for creating an effect.”

The lady who was addressed had heavily rouged lips, purple-shadowed eyes and rings on most of the fingers on both hands. “I didn’t foresee I would have such a charming accomplice.” How arch her voice. Her eyes rested on the abashed Ira.

“I’ll show you out,” said the courteous gentleman.

“Thanks, mister,” Ira followed him only too eagerly.

“You can see your way down the stairs?”

“Yes, sir. Sure.”

“Here’s something for your trouble.”

“I didn’t—” Ira began to say, stopped when he felt the two coins in his hand, said fervently: “Thanks.”

“Thank you . Good night.” The door closed between the smiling gentleman and Ira.

He descended the steps to the street, with its line of automobiles at the curb, and as he turned east, noted that two or three of the vehicles had chauffeurs in them, black limousines with uniformed chauffeurs who eyed him as he passed. Rich. Gee. So high class. He examined the coins in the light of the library windows. Fifteen cents. Boy. Spending money.

Out of habit, he crossed the street, followed the course of the iron palings before the park until he reached the Fifth Avenue entrance, went in and skirted the base of the hill on the Madison Avenue side. Rich, so that was rich? That was being rich, that was — oh, he knew the word: taste. Taste. And manners. It made you dream: high ceiling and crystal chandelier and ladies with double ropes of pearls and holding bubbly wine glasses. And the mustached gentleman who lit the lady’s cigarette. Dotted gold and chocolate wallpaper with little ribs in it. Checkered floors. Rich. Was it just a lot of money that made you that? Ira could feel a kind of sinking of spirit as he walked toward 120th. No. It was what Uncle Louie said. . You had to be that way — not Jewish. Not just rich, but with that special luster, that style. Where was there a world like that for him? Where?

With the fifty-cent allowance each week that Mom accorded me out of my wage, I saved up enough to buy an Ingersoll dollar watch with a “radium” dial. You could hold the watch under the featherbed in the thickest gloom and the dial would cast a faint light within the tiny grotto, enough to illuminate it. What an enticement! Like the angler fish (See Webster’s Collegiate , definition 2). Would I have walked home that evening thinking those thoughts, already in that particular rut I was avid to deepen, as if I knew nothing more than my surrogate knew? Or not plotting, machinating, wheedling toward oh, that Sunday morning, with what I could contrive with fifteen cents?

— Obviously not.

What a burden, Ecclesias. One sometimes sits back, and tries physically, yes, physically, to clear away the cloudy placenta that encloses one, and tries to sense, by an effort of will, perceive, if only for a moment, what life would have been like without it. Would I not have been buoyant to the skies? Fifteen cents, yippee! A chocolate éclair bought with my own nickel in the corner bakery next to P.S. 24, or a flaky, custardy napoleon. What else, what else could a kid buy with his fifteen cents in the year 1919? Admission to a movie. An ice-cream soda for a dime. My lambikin at the other end of the mobile home, what would she have bought in the glorious, strict innocence of her girlhood? An Eskimo Pie? When Uncle Bub came to visit them in Chicago, rich Uncle Bub, and took the family out to dinner: Oh, baked Alaska she always ordered. But I—

— You saved up your money, and bought an Ingersoll watch.

I went spelunking.

IX

The Park & Tilford branch where I worked was on 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, and P.S. 24 was on 127th–128th Street between Madison and Fifth. A distance of only about three city blocks separated the two places, an easy distance to cover in the half-hour between the closing of the school day and the beginning of my stint at the store.

On weekdays, when not running errands, fetching some item from another P & T store, getting the assistant manager’s, Mr. MacAlaney’s, Gillette blades rehoned at the shop that performed that kind of service on Third Avenue, or delivering a sumptuous basket of fruit to someone’s home, I made myself useful about the store: I replenished the shelves down in the cellar, or refilled the coffee bins upstairs, or weighed out staples in brown paper bags on the scales on the expanse of the zinc-sheathed table downstairs. Most often, though, I spent my time assisting Mr. Klein, the shipping clerk. Stocky, spry and decisive, Mr. Klein was responsible for stowing grocery orders — with due regard to logistics — into the huge hampers that were loaded aboard the trucks every morning. Weekday afternoons I helped him pack the hampers to be ready for loading aboard the trucks the following morning. Saturdays, I was dispatched aboard one of the trucks myself.