Ruined. . what a shame. .
Plain flat intrinsic state, you could look at it clear-eyed sometimes. . no self-pity, no pyrotechnics. He would rather have that wicked rapture back than any delight forward. He would rather be mired down in the sordid ecstasy of the past than proceed to the decent sanity of the future. Something like that. Those combinations and modulations of fear and furtiveness, cunning, guilt — an incest cocktaiclass="underline" break the word in half, and you had it. He composed his features, returned his concentrated gaze to Milton — if only he had concentrated so intently in the filthy cheder of his youth:
But his doom
Reserved him for more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate:
Lost in Satan’s throes, Ira continued to read, until he paused a moment, reflecting somberly. He heard Mom ask:
“Are you going to work tomorrow, Chaim?”
And heard Pop reply: “I’ll go to the union hall. I’ll see what they have to offer. If it’s something promising,” Pop drawled rabbinically, “I’ll work. If not, I’ll take Shabbes off. I’ll be a devout Yiddle like Jonas. I’ll rest. Sunday I have a benket anyway.”
“In Cunyilant?”
“In Rockaway. No tips. Every table has a service charge. You rush your kishkehs out, but you make a few dollars.”
“A toiler’s life, what else,” said Mom.
“What else? Mazel. One needs mazel. Where to find mazel? A lucky man can balk the Devil himself.”
Mom listened with noncommittal patience. She raised an eyebrow in forbearance, sighed.
“No?” Pop demanded.
“You believe in mazel?” Mom asked.
“I just told you I did.”
“And what would mazel have brought you?” Mom smiled, teasing, knowing. “Something you don’t have.”
“Mazel would have brought me a clever wife, speaking of something I don’t have.”
“You chose her. She pleased you, no?”
“Well, lost and gone.” Pop prolonged uneasy raillery. “A colt, don’t you know. Later, he gets horse sense.”
“Would a clever woman have married you? She would have sought cleverness to match, no? She would have sought shrewdness, judgment, prudence—”
“Aha, here she comes once more.”
“Let’s not begin that again!” Ira interjected testily. “I’ve got to do a little studying for an exam. Please. I hardly got started.”
“Your father has just eaten a fine Shabbes meal on the pittance he doles out to me for my weekly allowance — on which he’s still owing, mind you — and he tells me I’m not a clever wife.”
“I heard him. He didn’t say you weren’t clever.”
“What else does not being a clever wife mean?”
“You know what he means. He means not clever in business,” Ira rejoined impatiently. “You don’t have to pick him up on everything he says.”
“Who incites these spats?”
“You do.” Ira meant to be facetious. His levity was taken amiss. Mom twisted her countenance in wry grimace, and said something in Polish that sounded like ya bem tvoiyoo motch.
“Okay. ‘Full fathom five my father lies,’” Ira orated. “Now can I read my book?”
“Go, read your book. A good son you are too.”
“You see?” Pop tested a precarious truce. “Immediately she becomes excited. I was at Ella’s this afternoon—”
“Oh, that’s the business prospects you were appraising.”
“Noo? I can’t go to see your sister?”
“You were so late, I thought you were skulking in some movim pickcheh.”
“I was late because I went to Ella’s. I may not go there?”
“Go. Go. A good place for business prospects. She condones a pinch or a pat, my sister, with her husband in the insane asylum?”
“Well, what else? She’s a mule like you?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“Do me a favor.” Pop wagged his head at Ira. “Spare us your fahr Crite secks. It’s a Jewish home here. It’s Friday night. The candles are still burning.”
“Yeah.” Ira’s chest filled. “I see. I thought they were out.”
Strange, how the mind rummaged about for a literary quotation to solace itself with, something noble and universal. And Troy went up in one high funeral gleam. Larry had quoted that. Supposing he himself had gone on studying khumish in the cheder on 9th Street, could he have said to himself in Hebrew: “Though they forget Thee, yet will not I forget Thee. Behold, I have graven Thee upon the palms of my hands”? Ah, how beautiful that was. He looked down on the open pages of blank verse. Hopeless to read against their everlasting bickering.
“With a wife like Ella,” Pop meditated aloud, “I could have thrived. With a wife like Ella, one can get something done. She’s lively, quick to see where a dollar can be made. And how deft she is and apt, ah!” Mom’s face was turned away, lips curling. “She can jest. She’s full of savor. And she can weigh and deliberate—yi, yi, yi. How many blocks — to the step! — you need to go from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 116th Street, from her house, to the nearest store with thread and ribbons and thimbles and things a woman needs to sew. A store like that on the corner of 116th Street can make a dollar. I venture to say she would soon learn how to treat a customer in a luncheonette. And ah, such a welcome as her children give me! ‘It’s Uncle Hymie! It’s Uncle Hymie!’ they shout — as soon as I appear. Even the youngest of the three prances about me. ‘Uncle Hymie, tell us how you drive a horse. Uncle Hymie, make the noise a horse makes. Uncle Hymie, make a noise to giddap.’ I come into her house, and I skim bliss.”
“Well, go live there,” Mom invited, her short throat flushing. “Skim bliss. Who bars your way?”
“Uh! Look at her. The truth chokes her.”
“The truth is, Chaim, my sister is careless. She has a husband in the asylum, she’s careless. I don’t know it?”
“Uh!” Pop derided. “Find what you seek, but pray let me be. Bist mishugeh?”
“Ov toit,” Mom said pointedly. “Mad to death.”