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

“Please, let’s have no misunderstanding on that point,” Mr. Osborne said. “We’re here to protect all the students. To protect Ira as well.”

“No, no, I understent. I understent good.”

“Then I can only repeat: as of this hour Ira is no longer a student of Stuyvesant High School. In a word — and a very harsh word it is indeed, Mr. Stigman, I’m sorry — he’s expelled.”

Ira sobbed.

“However, let me say this.” Mr. Osborne rocked the blotter holder on his desk, studied the green underside incuriously. “In order that there be nothing against his record of this disgrace — because of the kind of boy he is — obviously not wicked — and the father he has — I’ve asked that his record card be removed from the files, and destroyed. He’ll have no record of shame to live with. He’s only been here two months, fortunately, and we can wipe the slate clean — with very little loss — with respect to time spent here at his studies.”

“Yeh. Yeh. I see you a — you a kindly man.” Pop bobbed in grievous praise. “T’enks. He should — ah!” he despaired of Ira. “ Aza lebn af dir!” he flung at him.

“You can start anew in any high school of your choice,” Mr. Osborne mediated. “You need never mention Stuyvesant High School.” He stood up, jotted soberly on a pad, tore off a slip of paper, tendered it to Ira. “Give that to the monitor at the door.” Then he extended his hand to Pop, who had also gotten to his feet. “I don’t need to repeat how painful this has been — for me as well as you.”

“Yeh. T’enks. More I don’t got — I don’t hev to say. I’m sorry I make you so much trouble. I’m sorry I got such a son.” Pop nodded brusquely. “I’m, I’m — just a vaiter. A vaiter in a restaurant. On my tips I try to send him to high school. You see how it helps.”

“Don’t give up hope, Mr. Stigman. We’re not dealing with a habitual delinquent here. Your son isn’t a criminal. Misguided, yes, but not a criminal.” Mr. Osborne spoke as all three moved toward the door. “The way the entire thing came to light proves it. Actually, it’s a rather incredible thing.” He stopped at the door. “Goodbye, young man. I suggest in the future you try to control your impulses. Do you understand what I mean when I say ‘control your impulses’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve already caused your parents immense suffering. And yourself as well. I hope you profit by this lesson.”

“Yes, sir.”

They left the building. . walked in utter silence west, almost as if they were strangers; their common unhappiness, the son’s blame and shame, the father’s wrath and contempt, served as repulsion against the weak bond of their kinship. . They walked until they came to the small park, Stuyvesant Square Park, on Second Avenue, where there they parted. Pop’s restaurant was located farther downtown. Ira’s destination nowhere, for the time being.

“Thanks, Pop,” Ira quavered.

“T’enks it would be indeed,” Pop answered in stony Yiddish, “were I to see you buried.”

The ultimate, the epitome of rejection, Pop turned his back and walked off: the short, slight man in his black overcoat strode away, neither deigning nor able to communicate anything except his utter estrangement.

Alone, this terrible ordeal having ended, the outcome settled, Ira felt his constricted spirit expand again. He sat down on one of the park benches to assay his release, to scan the landscape of his dishonorable freedom. It seemed boundless, and equally shapeless. All he could discern about it at the moment was its sensation. The air was cool, variable, sunlit, terminally March. Overhead, tattered clouds jostled silently under luminous blue serenity. And under them, buildings, windows, and on the ground, people, pedestrians and vehicles, figures in motion or at rest.

Some kind of stage in his life had ended; that much he was sure of, but who could define it? He couldn’t. Ended. Ended, as if a perverse destiny were fulfilling itself. Yesterday was mortal, yesterday, at the Hudson River’s edge, had come to an end. He perceived something was in store, an earnest outcome for this anguish. But what? How was it that others’ lives, Maxie’s, Sid’s, moved along in predictable, in sensible ways, toward a future with a label? His didn’t, and he didn’t know how to make it move that way.

Impulse. What had Mr. Osborne said? Self-control. He didn’t know how to make his life happen in a self-controlled, sensible manner. And he paid for it. He hadn’t wanted to go to junior high school, but he had listened to Mr. O’Reilly, and stayed in P.S. 24—and met Farley. And he hadn’t wanted to go to Stuyvesant; he’d wanted to take a general course, like that given by DeWitt Clinton — but he had followed Farley. He didn’t know what he wanted, that was the trouble.

Others knew what they wanted. Most wanted to make money, to be a success. He didn’t. The other Jewish guys on the block were ambitious; he wasn’t. That was the trouble: something had zigzagged within him, caused an irreparable quirk, made him a lemekh , a bungler, a freak. And now he had to find out how to deal with that kind of quirk, take it into account, try to fit life together again, if it could possibly be fitted together. Sometimes he had a feeling he stood in a large, clean, airy room where marvelous, nameless, intricate machinery was working out his destiny — in secrecy.

Under the opposite benches, sheltered by the green slats of the seats, small, grimy mounds of melting snow still lingered. Last refuge of winter, they seemed, crouching under the green benches, grim-sprinkled winter brought to bay by the spring thaw. The matted lawn on the other side of the pipe fence back of the benches glistened sodden; the trees were feathery with buds; the breeze felt cool and rinsed. All footprints of pedestrians from wet to dry on the paved walk. Bark of trees so damp and swarthy, and building rooflines stretched tight. That was springtime. And this was he, Ira Stigman, sitting here, kicked out of high school. He felt an urge to commemorate the date in his small homework assignment book. He drew it out of his breast pocket, along with an indelible pencil. No fountain pen on his person today. He touched the point with the tip of his tongue, and wrote in purple letters. March 23, 1921: “The Devil laughed today.”

And now, he’d better get up and leave the park, he counseled himself, leave, before somebody early on his way to the second session recognized him. He had promised Mom he would come home right away, as soon as the calamity came to an end, and it had come to an end. He stood up. He began walking toward the 14th Street subway station.

For whom had he suffered? And to what end? Jesus, that was strange: to think you had suffered toward some end. He knew he had suffered — because he was a sap. Wasn’t that enough reason? No. It wasn’t enough. That was river’s message, gray river saying the same thing with a million choppy tongues all the way to the Palisades below the Domino Sugar clock — saying the thing that saved his life on the diving rock on the Hudson. It wasn’t reason enough. He didn’t suffer just because he was a sap. He made life live inside him. Only he could weave among a thousand people window-shopping, drift past the store windows, coats and hats and dummies, among living people, jabber-jabber, shuffle-scrape, in coats and hats like dummies too in living flesh and skirts that moved, and toot-toot and honk-honk and ding-dong auto and trolley din, and to him it meant something. That was the answer. Because he was alive, different.

Alive, different, all the way to the angle corner of Broadway, Union Square Park, where the cop blew his whistle, and whipped traffic through with his arms; alive, different, until he reached the dark kiosk, and went down the stairs with the horde. He’d never really figure it out, dope. But that was the answer. Vile and rotten and different. Why? Look at the way his mind could stretch out in all directions — in every direction away from himself, and bring it all back, and bring it to life inside him. Who else could do that who just got kicked out of Stuyvesant High School?