Job by Joseph Roth

Author:Joseph Roth [Roth, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 9781935744351
Google: tAayCFxh4FEC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 16566621
Publisher: Archipelago
Published: 1930-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Part Two

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A few hundred years earlier an ancestor of Mendel Singer had probably come from Spain to Volhynia. He had a more fortunate, more ordinary, in any case less noticed fate than did his descendant, and as a result we don’t know whether it took him many or few years to settle into the strange land. But of Mendel Singer we know that he was at home in New York after a few months.

Yes, he was almost at home in America! He already knew that “old chap” meant father in American and “old fool” mother, or the other way around. He knew a few businessmen from the Bowery with whom his son associated, Essex Street, where he lived, and Houston Street, where his son’s department store was, his son Sam. He knew that Sam was already an “American boy,” that one said “goodbye,” “how do you do” and “please,” if one was a refined man, that a merchant from Grand Street could demand respect and sometimes might live on the river, on that river for which Shemariah too yearned. He had been told that America was “God’s own country,” as Palestine once had been, and New York actually “the miracle city,” as Jerusalem once had been. Praying, however, was called “service,” and so was charity. Sam’s small son, born scarcely a week after his grandfather’s arrival, is named nothing less than MacLincoln and in some years, whoosh goes the time in America, will be a “college boy.” “My dear boy,” the daughter-in-law calls the little one these days. She is still named Vega, strangely enough. She’s blond and gentle, with blue eyes that reveal to Mendel Singer more goodness than intelligence. Let her be dumb! Women need no intellect, God help her, amen! Between twelve and two it’s time to eat “lunch,” and between six and eight “dinner.” Mendel doesn’t observe these times. He eats at three in the afternoon and at ten at night, as at home, even though it’s actually day at home when he sits down to his evening meal, or perhaps early morning, who knows. “All right” means agreed, and to give assent one says “yes!” If one wants to wish someone something good, one wishes him not happiness and health, but “prosperity.” In the near future Sam already intends to rent a new apartment, on the river, with a “parlor.” He already owns a gramophone, Miriam borrows it sometimes from her sister-in-law and carries it in faithful arms through the streets, as if it were a sick child. The gramophone can play many waltzes, but also Kol Nidre. Sam washes twice a day; the suit he sometimes wears in the evening he calls “dress.” Deborah has already been to the movies ten times and to the theater three times. She has a dark gray silk dress. Sam gave it to her. She wears a great golden necklace around her neck, she’s reminiscent of one of the women of pleasure who are sometimes mentioned in the holy scriptures.

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