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

The half tablet of Percocet works, Ecclesias, revives; perhaps until the combined agency of the daily dose of Cortisone and Imuran (whatever that is) exert their efficacy—“take a’holt,” as my good, kind and gentle friend in Maine, old Gene Perry, was wont to say. So old age sums up life: with a sigh and shake of the head. . But how soon these artificial highs flag, Ecclesias, these minimal stimulations of a spot of coffee and a half tablet of Percocet. But rather the Keatsian drowsy numbness than the pain.

Farley’s father was an undertaker; perhaps he was the undertaker for the parish, little as the term meant to Ira. Little as the word “sexton” meant to him too, the word on a plaque next to the door of the front entrance of the brownstone house on Madison Avenue where the Hewin Funeral Parlor was located — and where the Hewins lived: on 129th Street, exactly midway between the parochial school Farley had left and the public school he now attended. .

Ah, yes, Ira reflected, reverting with new insight into the dispute between Farley and his Jesuit headmaster, the matter must have become intense, the pressure intense, with so much at stake, a runner of Farley’s exceptional potential. Disagreement must have reached an extreme pitch of rancor to have warranted his parents’ acquiescence in their son’s quitting the parochial school before graduation, lopping off so abruptly the last months of attendance. The cleric must have exceeded all reasonable bounds in his importunings (probably spurred on by the track coach at St. Pius): threatened the boy with Hell’s fire, for all Ira knew. Just a jot too much brimstone, Ira mused: the parents became indignant, and who could blame them? So the young schoolboy suddenly appeared on Ira’s horizon.

Fate. Overtones of Inquisition, of Stephen Dedalus in the toils of sacerdotal authority. And lingering grudge though he bore against the Church — Ira nodded at his own words in amber on the monitor—“And with damn good historic reason too,” he muttered. Would God, Joyce the necromancer himself and Ira’s erstwhile literary liege, have succumbed to priestly persuasion, and taken holy orders himself? How old one had to become, one like himself, slow and phlegmatic, to begin to apprehend a little of institutionalized material interests, of the motivations of the seasoned manipulator, the casuist. .

It was queer at first, even a little dismaying, to have a friend who lived in a funeral parlor, the Hewin Funeral Parlor. But friendship had a way of quickly overcoming hesitations and misgivings, and making the friend’s ambience a natural one. Ira soon became accustomed to seeing the ebony, glassed-in hearse beside the curb in front of the house, often with its retinue of two or three black limousines behind it. A little less frequently, when Ira arrived at Farley’s home as his father, assisted by Farley’s older brother, James, directed the movement of pallbearers down the flight of stairs from the funeral parlor to the hearse, it was a difficult matter to make a show of respectful detachment.

Upstairs, above the funeral parlor, were the sleeping quarters of the family, the parental bedroom and those of Farley’s siblings, those still unmarried and living at home (James was married, so too was an even older sister, Margaret). Two younger sisters occupied a common bedroom, and Farley his own. It was there the two chums spent much of their time together when not traversing the streets; it was there that later, months later, when both attended Stuyvesant High School, they did their homework together. Below the funeral parlor, in the basement, were dining room and kitchen — and many a snack did Ira consume there, as Farley’s guest, waited on by his mother, a low-spoken, nunlike woman with hirsute upper lip and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Cold mutton sandwiches, fresh pork, and strange, un-Jewish, square slabs of corned beef between slices of Ward’s Tip-Top packaged bread spread with salt butter.

It was then that Farley’s father might come downstairs from mortuary duties in the parlor above to wash his hands at the kitchen sink. A robust, vigorous and serious man with a brushy brown mustache and blue eyes like Farley’s, he was also a man of few words. He rarely wasted them on the two friends; he would march to the kitchen sink, wash his hands, dry them and leave, with scarcely a glance at those present, and without greeting. It was only when mourners or friends of the deceased gathered in the kitchen, that he might be drawn into conversation, become voluble, and once or twice, even vehement: When someone brought up the subject of Ireland, when talk veered to the subject of Irish freedom. “The Irish will never be free!” he declared emphatically as he dried his hands on a towel. “They haven’t got brains enough to be free. Will you tell me how any people that keeps fightin’ each other will ever be free?”

“Aw, come on, Tim. They’ve got the British lion on the run this time. He’s tired o’ bein’ pelted with grenades. It’s only a question o’time Ireland’ll be free.”

“Free to pelt each other with grenades, and that’s what they’re doin’ now!”

Rich scent of liquor from somewhere among the bereaved, as Ira munched his cold sandwich — and marveled at his being so taken for granted in this Irish-Catholic milieu. Farley would wink at him, deprecatingly, which Ira interpreted as reassurance, his cue to act as Farley did: noncommittally, as one accustomed to this sort of disagreement, the way Farley’s two younger sisters moved with total unconcern through the midst of it, from kitchen to backyard, their little iron jacks and ball and skipping rope in hand.

It was there in Farley’s kitchen, at moments like these, that Ira for the first time glimpsed a certain similarity of condition, of oppression between the Irish and the Jews, something that had never occurred to him before on 119th Street, under the domination of the pugnacious and ascendent Irish: “He’s Oirish,” Mom would mimic them, her throat swelling up with extravagant pride. “The mayor is Oirish. Jack Dempsey is Oirish. Everyone of note is Oirish. Is it true?” she would ask. “Are they all Irish?” It seemed true; it seemed as if they had come from a long line of masters, of wielders of authority. But now for the first time, he realized, and not in words so much as in feeling, that they had come from a background of oppression and deprivation and subjection.

But once here, they menaced and Jew-baited Jews cruelly, who had also come from oppression and deprivation and subjection. Why? Wherein lay the difference? Because they already spoke English when they came here? Or because the Irish had come from a land of their own that held them together, in spite of everything, and the Jews had not, but came from Galitzia or Poland or Russia, where they were still Jews. If only Uncle Louie were around to ask. How different that made the two peoples, if that was where the difference lay. The one came from the “ould sod;” the word rolled off their tongues, “the ould counthry,” said the people with black armbands down in the kitchen. Was that made them witty and scrappy and defiant, and so likeable? Whereas Jews came from everywhere, Rumania, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, all laden with cares and anxieties, woebegone so often and commiserative in their woe — and scheming and scheming, against the other’s carefree and resilient existence. If only Uncle Louie were around. Still, what did the Irish always jab you with when they wanted to mock you? “You got the map o’ Jerusalem all over your puss.” And no one he knew ever came from there.

The funeral parlor was sometimes unoccupied: No casket rested on the black-draped stand; not in use, that too had been removed. It was then that the funeral parlor reverted to a large, sandy-carpeted living room: a place for Farley and his chum to loll at ease among the crucifixes and the religious pictures — and wind up and play the phonograph, something that gave Ira the greatest pleasure. He fell in love with John McCormack’s angelic tenor; it captivated Ira to the point of memorizing every song McCormack sang — and reproducing it with nearly impeccable brogue: “Oh, Mavourneen, Mavourneen, I still hear you callin’. .” And, “There’s a weddin’ in the garden, dear, I can tell it by the flowers. .” And, “A little bit of heaven fell from out the sky one day. .” Farley grinned at his chum’s rapturous infatuation.