Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Well, I’m not after sympathy, Asher. So never mind. I just ran into several bad breaks. The marriage hasn’t worked out. Let’s leave it at that.”

“But the girl is still ideal, huh?”

“I’m getting out, Asher, but I’m not kidding myself where the blame lies. I was young. Things came up. I made some terrible errors of judgment that threw a pall on the thing. I didn’t know a hell of a lot. And then there’s the matter of one’s constitution. I mean what you are; the facts about oneself.”

“I don’t like to tell a man over his breakfast coffee, Paul, but it’s your whole philosophy that stinks bad.”

“Please do me a favor, don’t feel you have to spend time cheering me up. I’ve arrived at my decision and I’ll take the consequence. This is the consequence,” he said, with a slight sense of discovery. “It hasn’t been very pleasant, believe me it hasn’t.”

Asher was no longer giving him all his attention; he had picked up Paul’s plate and was walking toward the kitchen, a frazzled outline in the sunlight. His hair needed cutting, his trousers a good pressing. “Love,” he said over his shoulder, “is unnatural. Most of the guilt in the world is from cockeyed thinking.” He disappeared around the flowered screen that cut off the sink from Paul’s sight.

“Asher, we see life as two different things. As I remember”—and he did, which compromised his position, and smothered him in gloom—“we went over this ground a long time ago. We disagree.”

“Paulie,” came back a voice, “I’m going to save you a couple thousand dollars and give you a fast college education, plus a psychoanalysis thrown in.” He stepped back into the light and began flicking a dish towel at the leaves of his plants.

There was the same old lack of seriousness in his uncle. He did not know if he was up to it. “You gave it to me already.”

“What can I do?” Asher asked. “You don’t listen.”

Paul rose from the couch, which was to have been his bed. What was there left for him to do but sweat it out in some cheap hotel? But in some cheap hotel, under a bare bulb, would he survive? Better to take all the money they had left in the bank, the money they would no longer be needing for a baby, and go uptown and get a nice room that looked out on Central Park. A little class, a little comfort, might get him through. However, one does not learn to spend money overnight … And suppose Libby should want the baby anyway? He sat down again, as though he had only been taking a stretch to aid digestion. “Is that a condition of staying here?” he asked with a smile on his face. “Paying attention?”

“Kiddo,” said Asher, “no conditions. That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t go in for conditions. I’m at one with life. Only guy I know.”

Paul couldn’t understand his uncle now any better than he had years ago. “And that little girl you had here, years and years ago—”

Asher looked up from across the room where he was watering his plants. Wasn’t there water shining in his eyes as well? “My little Patricia Ann?”

“She made you happy? That’s an example of oneness with life? Please, Asher, let’s not make light of each other’s problems.”

“Ah you, you don’t understand loss.”

“I thought you’ve been telling me you’re happy?”

“Putz, I’m miserable. What kind of issue is that? I thought we’re going to have a little talk about first principles.”

His suitcase wasn’t far from the door. Right downstairs, Third Avenue was lined with hotels — but none of them, he knew, would be too pleasant. Then spend a dollar, he told himself, you deserve it … However, on that last point there must have been some inner debate; immediately he was back to thinking of himself holed up in some sleazy hotel. It seemed appropriate, yet he knew he didn’t have the strength. He could get through, though, with just an ounce of companionship, someone to take a meal with and sit next to in a movie. Then, free! “Maybe later, Asher.”

Asher was unhooking his sports jacket from the back of the door. “Paul, I got a new girl friend who is right up your alley. A very nifty little number with a nice pair of sloe-eyes — Washington Park is stocked with them — but gradually I’m draining out of her head all the cotton candy. See, this is a new thing for me. I don’t go in for education. I prefer the thing in the pure state. You know what I’ve been up to for years, Paulie?” He had taken a tie from his inside pocket and was working it around his neck. “Can you take a guess? Getting the thing in its pure state. You follow me? I want to feel the precise quality of the shit against my skin. Do you get the picture? Your Uncle Asher is the child of the age. Ecce Asher!” His tie in place, he raised his arms. Behold! His shirt inched up out of his trousers. Realizing he was beltless, he went off toward the kitchen.

He likes being a slob, he prefers life outside the ordered world, Paul thought. One more attitude he did not share with his uncle. When he was sloppy it was because his mind was elsewhere. Then what did the two of them share? It was Asher he had chosen to seek out, after all; he had not even thought of Uncle Jerry and his big air-conditioned apartment. “Anyway,” Asher called back, “what troubles her is her interpersonal relationships. These are actual quotations I’m giving you: she is incapable of love. She is a destructive personality. She has never really communicated with another human being. I ask her, whatsa matter, you never lift up the phone when it rings? But she doesn’t get the truth in what I’m saying. She tells me nobody can love anybody because we are all of us living in the shadow of The Bomb, and also God is dead. I want you to meet this girl, Paulie, she’s got a very involved case of what you got, only you’re smarter.”

“I never worry about The Bomb, Asher.”

“I’m talking about the disgusting load you’re placing on the heart. Overworked. Misunderstood. Terrible.”

He was fully dressed now, standing over Paul. “I take it, Asher, that you’re in favor of emotional anarchy, separation, a withdrawal of people from people. A kind of moral isolationism.”

“Very inventive,” said Asher. “But what I’m in favor of is getting back in tune a little bit with nature. All this emphasis on charity and fucking. Disgusting.”

“But you’ve always had women, Asher. You told me that too, remember? A Chinese woman and so on. That’s all you talked about last time we met. You made it sound as though I was leaving a harem for marriage. Let’s be serious, if we’re going to have discussions.”

“You misunderstood. Ass is no panacea. Not even the highest quality.”

“Then why do you pursue it?”

“One, I got needs and prefer ladies to queers. Number two, I told you, I’m the child of the age. I want to understand what all the movies and billboards are about. Three, you still haven’t got what I’m talking about. I’m talking about taking a nice Oriental attitude for yourself. Pre-Chiang Kai-shek. Ungrasping. Undesperate. Tragic. Private. Proportioned. So on down the line. I only want to leave you with one thought, Paulie, because I’ve got to get out of here and I don’t want to find you dead when I get back. Nobody owes nobody nothing. That’s the slogan over the Garden of Eden. That’s what’s stamped on all our cells. Body cells, what makes us. There’s your nature of man. The first principle you should never forget.”

“To be irresponsible.”

“Don’t hand me that crap. I’m talking about rocks, about flowers—” He pointed across the room. “Potted plants.”

“Flowers are flowers, Asher. Men are men.”

“What you need is a real high enema to knock all that stuff out of you. You are the victim, my friend, of circumstantial thinking. Look at life, please, in universals. Try it. And don’t commit suicide, Paul. I have to see some teamster who wants me to paint him into a beautiful picture. You think its hypocritical? It’s no difference, either way. You won’t commit any suicide now, okay? That also is against nature. We’re on earth to take it. Hang around, you’re only in your twenties. You just got your first shock from yourself. Hang around, Paulie, and I’ll come back this afternoon and give you a definition of man.” He whisked a canvas from beside the door. “You want to sleep here a couple months,” he said, “that’s okay too.”