So that was how it went: from the little red crack and the petzel, it grew up to be lyupka: Louis pleading with Mom, “Satisfy me.” And how would it be done? The way he dreamt with that strange welling up when he rubbed against Mom. That was how it went. That rusty, lanky bum didn’t need ladies — and then he did it himself against a tree. And if Mom had said, yes, instead of “I won’t submit.” If Mom had said, yes, would Louis have become his father? Pretend you were sleepy, then what would they do? “Look what I have, Leah,” said Morris. Oh, if she would only go to St. Louis—
“I’ll have to go into Biolov’s tomorrow and buy a two-cent stamp,” Mom said. “I wrote him in Yiddish. You think you can write on the envelope in English?”
“I think so. What do I write?”
“The address he left on this slip of paper.”
“I can write that.” Ira studied Pop’s handwriting. “The first is Hyman Stigman.”
“Then write.” Mom moved the envelope toward him. “Put aside the book a minute.”
“You’re not going?”
“Who listens to him?” she transferred pen and ink. “Here. Be careful.”
VI
He had no choice, Ira thought. He recalled nothing of the momentous declarations that Woodrow Wilson made as the United States was drawn ever closer to entering the Great War. The declarations, charges, countercharges. 1917 was almost seventy years ago. (He sat gazing at years so jammed together they seemed opaque.) What could be said, said that was genuinely remembered? Surely he must have heard mention over and over again of how vast was the slaughter in Europe, of the growing crisis in U.S.-German relations, of the sinking of the Lusitania, the death of Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary—“Franz Yussel,” the Jews humorously dubbed him. Once again Ira felt course through him that pang of lost opportunity: Ah, in 1934, when he had finished his first novel, when he was only twenty-eight years old, when he was a full half-century closer in memory to those events and still could turn to people who remembered them, who could refresh his own memory of those critical days leading up to America’s entry into the Great War. Alas, a kid’s memory, that was all he had, the battle of Verdun reenacted on a vaudeville stage, a spectacle that perhaps his Uncle Max had taken him to: Sparks flew from gutted buildings, burning walls toppled, distant artillery thudded. .
He had long passed his three score and ten. Who had time now to research the historic events of his eleventh year, to recreate 1917 in 1980? Still, something, however brief, was needed to provide a bygone setting. What? At the moment, he had no other alternative than to consult the nearest thing at hand, the microscopically compressed synopsis of the most important events of 1917, according to The World Almanac of 1972. 1917, the year Pop went to St. Louis, and Uncle Louie tried to woo Mom. Fateful year for Ira, when he rubbed against Mom in dream, and felt that strange welling up — and shame. Fateful year for Ira, when he was beginning to get a glimmering of what Uncle Louie desired, and Mom wouldn’t grant. And his own ambivalence afterward, fantasizing: What if Mom had said yes to Louie — lean Uncle Louie and plump Mom. Pretend to sleep and listen. . and imagine. . sanction what never happened.
Why? Ira asked himself: Why was he so crazy? Interlarding the bomb blast at the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade of the year before, and the death sentence imposed on the innocent labor leaders, Mooney and Billings, with Louie’s furor and Mom’s rapture. Why? Abnormally, precociously attuned to Mom’s deprivation, probably. That was it, his deprived mother consumed at the sight of Moe’s phallus, Ai, vot my mannikin gevesen zoi vie, Moishe: “One needs a horse for you. A horse for you.” Verbrent, from two in the morning, when he left for his milk-wagon, alone I flamed, with a stout brother snoring in the next room. “Oy, gevald.” Fateful year for Ira: Even if she had said yes to Pop, and they would have moved to St. Louis, how different life would have been.
1917—U.S. ENTERS WAR
When Germany began unrestricted submarine war, the U.S. Feb. 3, broke relations, refused negotiations until the (German) order was rescinded. Wilson Feb. 26, asked Congress to order arming of merchant ships; when Senate refused, Wilson armed them by executive order Mar. 12. An intercepted note of German Foreign Sec. Zimmerman to German minister in Mexico suggested Mexico be asked to enter war to recover U.S. Southwest Feb. 28. U.S. declared war on Germany Apr. 6, adopted selective conscription May 18, registered men 21–30 June 5. .
Soon after he returned from his trip to St. Louis, as Mom foresaw he would, Pop was notified he had to go into war-essential work — otherwise he faced imprisonment or draft into the armed services. “You are required to present evidence of employment to your local draft board before the 30th instant,” Ira helped Pop translate the document into Yiddish for Mom’s benefit. The document had come in a large, daunting envelope, and bore the bold black heading: WAR LABOR RESOURCES BOARD. “Below you will find a partial listing of essential work. If you have any questions with regard to whether the work you are presently engaged in is essential to the war effort, inquire at your local draft board in person or by telephone. You are hereby advised to do so at once.”
“Noo, read. Let us hear what is needful labor,” said Pop.
Ira ran his eye over the columns of occupations listed below: “Cons — Construction. That means they build,” Ira read aloud and translated each category as best he could. “Dock worker, Farmer, Food Processor, Fisherman, Highway Maintenance, Machinist, Welder, Transport Worker, i.e., Trainman, Conductor, Motorman, Track Maintenance, et cetera—”
“Vus heist ‘tsetra’?” asked Mom.
“You don’t understand?” Pop said patronizingly. “Ten years in America, and she knows nothing!”
“Then you’re the clever one,” Mom retorted. “Where am I to learn? Over the pots and pans, or among the Yiddish pushcart peddlers?”
“Then learn now. ‘Tsetra’ means other things.”
“Can’t you say so without making a ceremony of it?”
“Shah!” Pop stalled her indignation. And to Ira: “Food Protzess, what does that mean again?”
“Like salami,” Ira ventured. “Or all kinds of goyish things to eat. You know: like ketchup in the restaurant. I think.”
“Then perhaps they defer cooks?” Mom suggested.
“Go,” Pop scoffed. “Cooks! If they defer cooks, they’ll defer noodle-porters too.”
“Then what?”
“I’ve found a remedy.”
“Indeed? So soon?”
“A trolley-car conductor. Read again, Ira, from that tsetra.” Ira reread the list of transport workers.
“That would stop their mouths — a trolley-car conductor,” said Pop.
“Do you know how? What do you know about trolley cars?” Mom asked.
“What is there to learn? If a thick Irisher can learn, I can learn. They drop a nickel in the glass pishkeh. You grind it until it falls into a little tray at the bottom. You pull a cord. You give out a transfer. They’ll teach me the other things. I’ll go find out where to apply.”
“But the streets,” Mom reminded. “Such a frightful myriad of streets! You’ll have to learn them too. Gevald!”
“The woman gabbles!” Pop dismissed her fears with a practiced gesture. “In New York I have nothing to worry about. How did I learn the streets as a milkman? I learned. Shoyn. And I had to drive a horse and wagon through them too.”