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

“Don’t be a prick like Klein,” Tommy’s lips curled jaggedly, so Irish in crooked truculence. “Taste it. You ain’t a Jew like them others. Remember what I told you Christmas when we were deliverin’?”

“Ye’ll never git another chance,” Quinn rubbed his eyelids. “Not after today. Imported lager like that. Home brew’ll be all that’s around. Shnitz used to say it’s the only beer good enough for them thirty-six holy men that keeps the world goin’.”

“Hebrew an’ Homebrew,” Tommy quipped.

“Try it, Irey,” Quinn prodded.

Ira took a swallow, burbled lips in distaste, hurried off, their laughter trailing him. He climbed up the first steps, stopped short: on the top of the stairs, next to glinty-eyed Mr. MacAlaney waiting for his parcel, Mr. Stiles was talking to Harvey, who was leaning on the handle of his wide dry-mop. “No, I want you to do it this time,” Mr. Stiles was saying to Harvey. “Get the glass outta there. What is there? Three or four bottles broken. You can smell it all the way up to the store. There’s a law too about minors handling alcohol,” he concluded impatiently. “And with that elevator going up and down, he’ll forget to watch himself. You do it this time. I don’t want any trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be glad when the stuff’s out of here.” Frowning, Mr. Stiles turned away.

Only too keenly aware of his own yeasty breath, Ira kept his head lowered, held up the box of Camembert, wished it smelled more, and as soon as Mr. MacAlaney relieved him of it, retreated down the steps. “Hoo!” he sighed noisily, returning to the table.

“Oy, a shvartz yur!” Mr. Klein exploded. “What have you been drinking? You stink like a vershtinkeneh zoo!”

“Tommy gave me some beer.”

“You’re a minor. You’re a schoolboy. You could get everybody in trouble! I told you to stay away.”

“It was only a taste.”

“Mr. Stiles should catch you! He’d give you a taste. He’d fire you.”

“Tommy’s drinking. Everybody!” Ira flared up.

“It’s none of your business. You’re working with me. Eat another cracker. I should see this booze outta here already.”

Quinn came around and headed for the elevator: “Take it easy, Klein,” he grinned indulgently. “Don’t git your bowels in an uproar. We’ll be skidooin’ outta here soon. Oh, mademoiselle from gay Paree, parlez-vous. Oh, mademoiselle from gay Paree, what a hell o’ dose she gave to me, hinky, dinky, parlez-vous. Them fuckin’ snipers. How come Shnitzel took a drink an’ you don’t, Klein?” He grinned, made for the elevator pit. And reaching the wall, he lifted his hand to the wall-button: “Hey, up der! Ready for me to bring her down?”

“Hold ’er a second till I git the truck on,” came Murphy’s answering cry.

“Say when,” Quinn waited with upraised hand.

His displeasure smoldering on his dark features, Harvey came down the stairs, crossed in front of the table.

“You gonna go under the elevator?” Ira asked.

Harvey fixed Ira with an irritated glance, kept on his way.

“Gee, he’s sore,” Ira said under his breath. “He’s gotta do my job, I bet.”

“No, it’s whiskey bottles on the bottom,” Mr. Klein admonished sharply. “Pay attention. A peckage rusk. A peckage pralines. A whole Gouda—” he sniffed it. “It’s all right. We can peck it with the rest. It’s local. Haguda .” He handed the string-bound cheese to Ira. “You know from the haguda? Mah nishtanu he laila hazeh? ”

Harvey reappeared carrying the familiar bucket and flat shovel — as the cry came from the street: “Let ’er go, Quinn.”

“Ever see Senegalese troops, Major?” Murphy raised his voice above the creak of the elevator beginning its descent.

“Senegalese? You mean black Senegalese? I may have. I saw about every kind in France.”

“They look like monkeys in frog uniforms.”

Quinn tilted his head slowly in oblique look at Harvey.

“I don’t think I ever saw ’em in action?” Two pairs of knees came into view.

“Action. That’s a good one!” At hip-level, Murphy shifted the handtruck. His uproarious laugh crested the elevator’s drone. “Weren’t they corkers! We’d have ’em on our right, and as soon as the Heinies knew they had the Senegalese in front, they’d attack. You never heard such a squealin’ an’ scramblin’. They’d leave a hole big enough fer a regiment.”

“Is that right?”

“Maybe they’re runnin’ yet.” Murphy’s rocky face came into view under the elevator lintel. “They could be all the way to Africa—” He spied Harvey waiting with bucket and shovel — and cleared his throat with a peculiar sound, as if he were warning the major — who was already aware. For a moment or two only the elevator’s creak was heard in descent, and then when the platform was still inches from the cellar floor, Murphy shoved the handtruck forward. Steel wheels banged on concrete. “It’s okay, Harv. I was just talkin’.”

“You’re talkin’ about colored people. They just as brave as any white man.” Already annoyed by the prospect of his task, Harvey’s features became like basalt. The nails on his outspread fingers gleamed. “I’ve seen lots o’ whites shit in their pants when they come under fire. Don’t tell me about bein’ brave. The enemy fired at us. We fired at them.”

“All right,” said the major. “Harvey is your name? It’s all right, Harvey. It’s just one of those misunderstandings. But no point getting worked up about it. He didn’t mean to insult you. He didn’t know you were around.”

“I get sick of you white smart-asses like him.” Harvey still trained his ivory eyes on Murphy. “Makin’ fun of us, like we were yellow. I wore a U.S. uniform. I was infantry like you. Fourteenth Infantry Regiment. You never heard about us retreatin’ ’thout orders.”

“Who the hell wuz talkin’ about you!”

“You wuz talkin’ about colored.”

“I wuz talkin’ about Senegalese.”

“That’s colored!”

“The hell with you!” said Murphy. “What d’ye want me to do? Kiss yer ass?”

“The hell with you!” Harvey retorted.

Both men had raised their voices. “See? What’d I tell you?” Mr. Klein rasped. “Sit balt sein du a malkhumah.”

The two angry men could be heard throughout the cellar. The youthful, tow-haired agent in the vault with Tommy came forward, with Tommy trailing him, and the short-necked man on the stairs came partway down.

“Let’s cut it out,” the major said curtly. His voice was restrained, and his forefinger moved like a dial between the two adversaries. “Both of you. We’ll all be in hot water in a minute. You better watch the noise. The store is still open.”

“I don’t want to get in no hot water, Major. I just came over to do what Mr. Stiles told me: clean out the broken bottles down in de pit.”

“All right, it’s all yours.” The major put one foot on the elevator platform, raised his face to call up into the late-afternoon sky: “Everything okay up there, Ordwin?”

“Yes, sir,” came the response from the street.

“When’s that Model-T driver due back?” the Major spoke to Mr. Klein.

“Shea? He should be beck already. It’s efter five.”

“What’s keeping the man?” The major stepped aside to allow Harvey to press one of the elevator buttons, and frowning, watched the ascending elevator platform block off all view of the outdoors.

“ Gott sei dank, the trucks are upstairs in the street, not down here,” Mr. Klein said in a dry undertone.

“Down here? The trucks?” Ira repeated, sure of his wonder at the absurdity.