Petey and Yotsee and Mario
ROTH, HENRY
Petey and Yotsee and Mario HENRY BOTH In 1956, Henry Roth became disillusioned with Communism and left the Communist party. It was in that year that he published "Petey and Yotsee and Mario"...
...I'm all right," I gasped when they reached me...
...I don't know...
...They came splashing toward me, all three of them—Petey and Yotsee and Mario...
...Like in the store...
...You were afraid ihey wouldn't like Jewish cake...
...I could feel hands under me as I labored forward...
...Those three...
...The rest of the gang converged on them...
...What kind of people would they be if they didn't like Jewish cake...
...To the west was the Madison Avenue turn bridge, and across the river were the freight yards and a large lumberyard...
...What were you afraid of...
...Petey said...
...Will you give it lo them or not...
...I sat panting on the dock while they climbed, too...
...Hey, whai about a hunk...
...You wasn't drownin...
...Why didn't you look back...
...In "Petey and Yotsee and Mario," his interior landscape has shifted...
...Tip-Top...
...You— If I could talk better," she said, "I would tell you...
...They understood...
...Don't bake them no cake...
...Below us, the big bucket of a coal company crane pounded monotonously into the hold of a scow and issued dripping lumps of coal...
...I'm going to bake them a cake...
...Yes...
...Come...
...They understand...
...Look...
...Yotsce Hunt...
...He was just tryin' to dive to the bottom and run like hell for the shore...
...And what is the other's name...
...Blessed Gentile children to save you...
...One day, I swam out into the river...
...Sometime you ask them, they'll explain you...
...1940...
...We sat on the torrid, splintery dock and slipped into our trunks—tights, we called them—and dived off...
...She was already clearing a space on the covered washtubs for her earthenware mixing bowl...
...That's nolhin'," Yotsee said...
...You should be blessed for saving my son...
...But if I was gaining on the dock, it wasn't apparent...
...May the Almighty bestow on them that joy they bestow on me...
...Still munching, Mario pointed us out...
...Aw, Mom," 1 said...
...said my mother...
...When I got home, I told my mother and my sister what had happened...
...And once saved, Roth has Fat learn that it is all right to be Jewish, that open-hearted Jews can reach out to compassionate Christians...
...Don't be a fool," said my mother...
...Then come with me...
...Aw, you bake Jewish cakes...
...It was embossed with walnuts, dark with crystallized honey, and full of raisins—our typical holiday spicecake...
...Aw, Mom, they don't understand cakes like that...
...What...
...I trailed her across the street...
...Who needs to be ashamed of this...
...I had just learned to swim that summer, and was already considered a fair swimmer, though nothing in comparison with Petey and Yotsee and Mario, who were there from my block...
...She slipped the cake carefully into a paper bag, and I followed her reluctantly down the stairs and into the street...
...And you...
...Oh," Peley said...
...It looked inviting...
...Are they in the street...
...he baked them a spicecake...
...They swam with a special Sunday stroke, an overhand that slapped the water with a kind of strict flip of the wrist, and they kept their chests above the surface...
...They look it from her—Petcy took it...
...There, There's Pctey—with the handball...
...Mario is by the cellar...
...You're a dope to go out so far," said my sister...
...It's Jewish...
...The cake was broken and divided and eaten with gusto...
...Oh, you know...
...the trestle of the railroad crossed the river only a short distance from where we swam...
...You, Petcy...
...It's for you...
...1 followed her back to the stoop, and there we stood a little while, watching them...
...Though Fat is Jewish, he is from the street—he is one of the gang...
...it seemed in motion itself, away from me...
...We went in when the tide was high...
...Where are they...
...The three boys were lolling in front of the candy store, just east of the corner...
...Diane Levenberg This story recently appeared in Shifting Landscape, published by the Jewish Publication Society, and was reprinted by permission from The New Torker Magazine, Inc...
...said Yotsee...
...Ward's...
...I hadn't mastered that yet...
...I'll bake them a spicecake...
...Aw, we won't tell 'em...
...However, the story, a miniature masterpiece, is mature Roth...
...And then they gave me a final shove toward the slimy piles and I climbed up the makeshift ladder...
...They towed me in toward the dock, swimming on their backs and screaming with laughter...
...He wasn't drownin'," said Mario...
...And now the rebound from the original wave slapped me in the face, and I was really beginning to flounder...
...Thanks," he said...
...And whether the changing tide pulled me out farther than I realized or I allowed myself to be lured out farther, I don't know, but when I turned back, I found myself at a considerable distance from the dock, and also found that I was tired...
...The three boys who rescue him from the Harlem river are not anti-Semitic monsters—they are his saviors...
...she said, and went into the house...
...I didn't know I was out that far," I protested...
...A big one...
...You're welcome," my mother said...
...Fat's— I mean, he's from the block...
...Hey, Weasel...
...I know," said my mother...
...I'm going to bake them a cake...
...My mother nodded in acknowledgment...
...You, Mario," she said, and ihey lifted their lough lean faces...
...I could hear their laughter...
...Consciousness became an alternation between glimpses of sunlight on weathered dock and somewhat longer glimpses of pale green water...
...I tried to regulate my breathing again and move those leaden arms...
...For us...
...Tugs wallowed by, solitary sometimes, or towing barges, their bow mats like brown mustaches over foam...
...Like that," "Go, go," she said...
...It was in that year that he published "Petey and Yotsee and Mario" the short story that pushed aside his writing block and marked his reemergence as a professional writer...
...And just as she did in Call It Sleep, Roth's wise and loving fictional mother leads him to this transcendent vision...
...She turned lo me...
...Gall It Sleep ends with a brilliant lyrical homage to the proletariat...
...Gee, I must have been drowning," I said...
...This story, in an important sense, picks up where Call It Sleep leaves off—the proletariat, in which Roth still believes, takes care of its own...
...Would they have even saved you...
...the water looked cleaner then and covered the mud flats...
...You all got mamas...
...And, overcome with mirth, they bellywhopped off the deck...
...What's the difference...
...You could hear their avid cries: "What about us...
...Well," she said, exhibiting it when it had cooled...
...Peley asked...
...Why not...
...And what kind of cakes are not Jewish cakes...
...That ain'i what—" I couldn't express it...
...Roth finally comes to terms with his dislocating move from the safety of the Lower East Side ghetto to ethnically mixed Harlem...
...You should remember...
...Copyrights duly renewed TChere was a dock that stretched out into the Harlem River at about 130th Street, a few blocks north of the New York Central and New Haven station...
...And then the inevitable unforeseen happened: a passing tug sent a following wave over me that left me gasping and gagging...
...There's Yotsec...
...You was just fetchin' way down," Yotsee said...
...Thank God...
...They stared at her...
...Mario sent his finger through a curve of explanation...
...You musta been...
...Here's from me a cake...
...I heard the cry go up from the dock: "Hey, Fat's drowning...
...he deserves fair treatment...
...she asked, turning to me...
...It is fascinating that more than 20 years after Call It Sleep, Roth returned to a similar ambience and related themes—New York City, the terrors of childhood, the desire for acceptance by one's peers, a doting mother...
...Golden Queen...
...Pctey was brandishing the cake aloft...
...You see...
Vol. 13 • April 1988 • No. 2
