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

“And all that time roaming. Go to the sink.”

“I didn’t want to come home.” Ira removed his glasses, smeared soap on his face, cupped hands under spouting cold water, wiped face on towel, wiped glasses. “I walked, that’s all.”

“And where?”

“Why are you asking stupid questions?” Pop interjected. “You’ll have to pay the cobbler for his shoes. Then you’ll know.”

“True. And his father is also a man of means.” Mom set the thick-hewn slice of bread before Ira, who began devouring it ravenously. “Wait, I’ll cut some meat.”

“I didn’t know where to go, that’s all.” Ira tore away a mouthful. “I walked by the river. On Riverside Drive.”

“And why Riverside Drive?”

“I don’t know. It was by the river.”

“Aha! I understent. You went by the water.”

“By the water,” Pop scoffed, brown eyes hard with animus. “Immediately he’s leaped in. How the woman submits to his contriving.”

“Chaim, let me be,” Mom said quietly. “I haven’t woe enough? And you haven’t fear? Whom are you deluding?” She met Pop’s set gaze with her own — until he looked away. And then she hacked at the meat in the pot, conveyed a chunk to the plate, tilted the pot to spoon gravy to cover the slab of meat, added noodles.

“Here. Eat.” She set the plate down before Ira — and again confronted Pop. “He’s my child. He may die for his golem ’s brain, and the suffering he’s causing me. And you as well. He gets it from you, after all. Let’s tell the truth,” she challenged him, “how did you steal out of Galitzia the first time?”

Pop put down his newspaper, thrust forward a startled, tense countenance toward Ira. “Look what she scratches out of the dirt! What has the one thing to do with the other?”

“I’m asking you.”

“ Gey mir in der erd! ”

“You filched the passage money to America. True or not?”

“Kiss my ass.”

“From your father. From his wallet.”

“Go drop into your tomb.”

“There!”

“She throws that up to me — how I quit Galitzia. How else was I going to leave? I had no money. My brothers were in St. Louis. I wanted to go, too.”

“Well?”

“Whose money was it? You horse’s head! My father’s, no?”

“But you did steal it.”

“ Gey mir vidder in der erd! How else was I to get it?”

“ Oy, vey ,” Mom sighed. “When you returned to Austria, were you hanged for your misdeed?”

Pop wagged his head at her irately. “Would God I had never returned! A demon sent me back to Galitzia. To her! To you! The devil sent me back. But what — if fortune fails you, what can you do?”

Mom seemed too spent for anger. “Believe me, if fortune failed you, it failed me.” She sat down, speaking calmly. “What would have been the harm if I hadn’t suited you? I would have been an old maid. Ben Zion would have married his other daughters under me. As if he had any other choice. Sooner or later the Lord would have sent me a fat, sleek Jew of a widower, with a fine beard and a great paunch and a houseful of children. What would I have lacked? Do you want some more noodles? My pitiful son.”

“I want some more bread.” Ira chomped.

Mom stood up. “And what time does your father have to be at the school tomorrow?”

“I think maybe ten o’clock. Mr. Osborne comes in. He’s the assistant principal.”

“I’ll have time to finish a breakfast serving,” said Pop. “I’ll slip away between breakfast and lunch.” He nodded, addressing Ira.

“Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

And Mom, bringing Ira another slice of bread, added, “Throw yourself at his feet. Implore his forgiveness. Tell him you’re the poor son of impoverished parents. You saw the silver pen. You snatched it. You couldn’t help yourself. Never again will you be guilty of such foolishness. You can speak English. Then speak. Plead.”

“He had to own a fountain pen.” Pop rested elbows on the open sheets of Yiddish newsprint on the table. “Haven’t I seen a hundred times yeshiva youth in the subways, pale, famished Talmud students going to the yeshiva near where I work? And what were they carrying in their hands? A plain bottle of ink. A steel pen in a wooden holder. Only this princeling had to have a fountain pen. Without it he couldn’t learn, he couldn’t record wisdom. And not only to have one fountain pen, but another to give away. You hear?”

“ Shoyn farfallen ,” said Mom. “Enough torment.” And to Ira, “If you’re not allowed back into the school, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll come home.”

Ira shook his head sullenly.

“You’ll come home,” she repeated. “No one need know. I don’t want you roaming the streets.” She sat down again, studied him with meditative eyes deep with sadness. “May God help you tomorrow with this assistant principal ”—she assayed the English words. “May He help you indeed. But if not, if you’re cast out of the school, that’s not the end of life, you hear? You’re a dolt, and you’ve learned a terrible lesson. Only don’t lose your will for your career.”

“Career,” Pop echoed. “Keep filling his head with nonsense. He needs a career like I need an abscess. You’ll see his career, and you’ll see your dead grandmother at the same time, Leah.”

“I can still hope,” Mom said. “What else can I do but hope? You’re his father. Do you wish to see him wholly destroyed? Nothing to become of him?”

“Ira has already given me good tokens, good signs of what to expect. Do I need more? And pray, spare me your questions.” He averted his face, drawn again with inner torment. “I can assure you he is a fool.”

“In truth. But who had the silver pen, and who didn’t? Would the other need to steal one?”

“You’re altogether clever. Would the other be the clod this one is? In his home tonight, fear not, the other’s parents are rejoicing. And well they might: not only have they recovered a treasure. Their son showed wit; he showed judgment. He wasn’t going to let the opportunity escape to recover what was his. There’s a son.”

“ Dolt ,” said Mom. “May your heart ache as mine does. A little compote? I know you’re fond of stewed pears.”

“Yeah. And another slice of bread.”

IV

Ira knew where he was at. He let the spate of memories flow through his mind: oh, those first years in rural Maine, in Montville with his family, his beautiful, young M, the two boys, in the latter half of the forties at the end of World War II. The ditch he dug in which to lay the copper tubing from the brimming, truly — how should one say — sylvan, precious pool of spring water on the hillside, to the kitchen sink. The half-stick of dynamite at the end of his pickax, half-stick of dynamite skewered harmlessly on the pickax point. Stop. Stop. The hardships, especially for M, the quasi-romantic impracticality of it all. But they had been together then, young relatively, though he was already forty by that time. But together! The hillside, crowned with stout rock maple trees, leafless at the close of winter, the sap gathering, the syrup making. Why did some things in the past become so much lovelier than they were, even as the ugly became hideous? One had to lower the sluice gate on the bygone somehow, or be swept away by the flood of reminiscence.

Ah, Ira hadn’t even slept well last night. He had admitted to his friend and rheumatologist, Dr. David B, that in order to overcome the pain and lethargy of rheumatoid arthritis he frequently had to resort to ingesting a half-tablet of the narcotic Percodan. Dr. B remarked that he resembled Algernon Charles Swinburne in that respect. Swinburne too had depended on drugs to sustain his muse. And of course there was De Quincy and there was Coleridge, both of whom became addicted to opium. The effect of the half-tablet, the “high,” the elevation of mood inspired thereby, was brief, but enough to overcome his inertia, and that was usually enough to enable him to proceed from that point on. The drowsiness that sometimes followed could be overcome by taking one or another of the proprietary caffeine tablets. The million vagaries, gestalts, that occurred to him during these times of lethargy were also valuable, Ira mused.