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

An hour later, Ira trudged home. It was after dark, well after dark, and long after even a belated arrival from Stuyvesant’s second session might have warranted. A moment he stood in the hallway under the transom light, and then numbly opened the kitchen door: perceived the blank window shade drawn full-length down the window on the other side of the room; perceived the green oilcloth on the kitchen table, the silly, little-figured red apron hanging from the rim of the black iron sink; perceived the gas-stove burner on; green-painted icebox with alarm clock on it and box of household matches, green-painted icebox in the corner of green-painted blistered walls next to the bedroom door where the mop handle leaned. And Pop seated at the table, and partway through supper, his dog-brown, worried eyes lifted to Ira as he entered. Heard Mom exclaim in relieved Yiddish, berating, “A plague take you, Ira. Where have you been since school let out?”

Followed at once by Pop’s sardonic “Uh-huh! I can see by the crestfallen nose on his face something’s gone wrong for him again.”

Words clotted in Ira’s throat; speech jammed. He crossed the room, took the mop handle from the corner, and handed it to Pop.

“Are you crazy?” Pop turned pale.

Passage had to be forced, passage for confession, his covenant with the river: “I was caught stealing a fountain pen. Another boy’s fountain pen. The—” Ira hardened himself for retribution. “The assistant principal wants you to come to school with me tomorrow.”

But instead of retribution, Pop threw the mop handle down. He looked, he was — could it be? — stricken close to tears. He threw the mop handle down, and fled from the kitchen into the gloom of the bedroom. Strange, the merest mote of a revelation formed in Ira’s mind: Pop wasn’t as strong as he was. Pop couldn’t mete out what his son was ready to endure. Soft inside. So that was what he was?

“I think I’m going to get kicked out of school.” Ira spoke stolidly, stood stolidly. “They took away my books. They want me to bring the rest tomorrow.”

“ Oy, a brukh af dir! ” Mom drove the execration home with a fierce nod of her flushed, broad face. “Get buried, won’t you! For all the torment you cause us! Dolt! Clod!”

And as suddenly as he had fled, Pop was back. “I hope to see you dead!”

“They were stealing from me!” Ira broke into wailing lament. “They stole my new briefcase, all my fountain pens.”

“ Dummkopf! If you’re not smart enough to keep track of your own belongings? Whom are you deceiving?” Mom flung at him. “Others also have briefcases, have fountain pens. And who knows what else? And still they manage to keep them! Choke on your excuses!”

Pop heaped rage on rancor. “I hope you rot out of my sight! Rot! And this child I nourish? May flames char him to cinder. This thief I pamper?” He turned savagely on Mom. “It’s all your fault. It’s all your doing. You send him to high school. Hah! I would send him — you know where? To dig in the ground. To lay turf. For that he’s suited. And may he lie under it!”

“ Oy, vey, vey! ” Mom groaned, stooped, stooped to pick up the mop handle. “Blunderer! Great ox! Oh, you’re nothing to me but grief!”

“Send him to high school! She needs, she craves, a learned son. Nah! You have him: as learned as a canker. I told you!”

“You told me. Good.” Mom opposed Pop’s vindictiveness with her own anguish. “Can you say anything more than that? May a black year befall him. Oh, my grief!” And to Ira, “Yes, stand there like a post. Gott’s nar . Take off your hat and coat and sit down. How did they discover you were a thief?”

“I stole a silver fountain pen from a rich kid, from a rich kid’s pocket. And I gave it to Farley. He went around with it in the gym. You know: where we go — for exercise.” He lamented in English: “The gym. And the kid — he saw it. He wanted it back.”

“Then why didn’t you give it to him?”

“Don’t know. I told Farley it was mine. I gave it to him.”

“A fool,” said Pop. “You see? A fool ought never be born. A fool should be stomped on! You idiot! Why am I so cursed? With her for a mother, with him for a son.”

“ Gey mir in der erd .”

Ira sobbed.

“Weep! Now you weep?” Mom said bitterly. “It would have been better had your eyes fallen out, your hands fallen off, before you stole the pen. And what do they want of you now? The pen was returned, no?”

“Yeah, but I told you already. I told the assistant principal I stole it. He wants Pop to come to school.”

“ Ai , be torn to shreds!” Pop bared his teeth in a fresh outburst of tortured rage. “Only be torn into shreds! Ai, yi, yi , to shame me further! To tell me I have shit for a son. For this I have to take time off from work to learn what a wretched dolt I’ve raised?” He swept the saucer of compote away from him. “Here. Feed this to your next husband!”

“Why do you say that to me?” Mom’s throat mottled angrily. “I haven’t taught him the ways to righteousness a thousand times? How many times have I shown him how a good Jewish child behaves? If a demon possessed him, what do you want of me?”

“Go. Enough. Speak to the wall. He’s yours, and yours he remains. One thing he’ll soon learn: what it is to be a crude breadwinner. Every day, every day, to go to work, to a job, to a boss, to labor for a pittance. Let him fill his own craw. He doesn’t deserve anything better than that; he never has. You’ve fattened a gross sloth, and now you’ll both find it out. Who knows, with toil he may scratch up a seed of wisdom.”

Followed a long grievous silence, while Pop, grim-faced, taut, made an effort to peruse his Yiddish newspaper, sigh-groaned audibly, irregularly, again and again. .

“When did you eat last?” Mom asked.

“Me? I don’t know. Before I left for school. Ten o’clock. The bulkie you gave me.”

“I would feed him.” Pop flapped the newspaper. “Chopped sorrows.”

“What you would do I already know,” Mom retorted.

“I’m not hungry,” said Ira.

“No? I’m sure. Even your spectacles are stained. Go wash your unhappy countenance. I have pot roast and gravy on the stove. The noodles are already cold.” Tears came to her eyes. She snuffed, went to the sink and blew her nose. “ Noo? What are you waiting for?”

“I have to go to the toilet.”

“Then go.”

He entered the shadowy bathroom, held the door open until he located the dangling light pull, and as he tugged it, heard Mom say before he shut the door, “So he’s a fool. But a child of indigence he is too. And of sorrow. Even if it were a golden pen, it doesn’t matter. He’s my child.”

In the green-painted bathroom, against one shiny, uneven wall, stood a small chest of a dozen tiny drawers that Biolov had been about to discard, and Ira had retrieved; against the other wall stretched the long green-painted bathtub in its casket of matchboards. Ira lifted the chipped toilet seat, and was surprised at how little he had to urinate; after all, he had been weeping — the odd notion occurred to him — all those hours of roaming. He yanked at the toilet chain, tugged the light pull, and returned to the kitchen.

“And where were you straggling all this while?” Mom held the loaf of heavy rye bread against the flame-flowered cotton cloth of the mussed housedress covering her deep bosom, while she applied the gray carving knife with its tarnished concave blade toward herself through the thick crust. “All this time. When did you leave school?”

“I don’t know. Gym is the first period. That’s all I went to.” He could feel appetite revive. “Maybe nearly one o’clock.”