Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

And it was over so fast. Jesus, he just pumped a few times, and it was over; he just, and it was — but it was (and his eyes fixed anew in astonishment, a turbid astonishment at his ignorance — and the simplicity of the discovery). Oh, he had plans now as soon as — oh, it was a little squishy, but it would make it easy, once he tried, wheedled, and she succumbed. You heard the noise she made, wooo, wooo, wooo, as she did only that one time, woooah! Woooah! Wooo-a-a-ah! Now he’d tell her, the right way. That’s what you have to do. But now you’d have to, now that she got monthlies, now you’d have to. . yeah. Oh, Jesus, if he ever, Jesus, if he ever. Nah! But that was it. Jesus, you dope. You saw dogs — yeah, but that wasn’t the way it started — Jesus, you gotta try it. Soon as — tell her you found out it’s altogether different. Then maybe anytime. Don’t have to beg. Oh, gee. Anytime when any chance.

He quickened his pace, as if the opportunity were already present. Dark 119th Street, ahead of him, walking at a good clip toward the Cut, the dark trestle, the way she was on the bed — he smirked at himself — her twat licorice embedded in dusky chocolate.

He crossed Park Avenue, stepped up on the curb, before Yussel’s house, as they called the massive five-flight pile of grimy brick on the corner right next to the trestle, the home of Yussel, the landlord. Now wait a minute. What was it? In the winter, when he wasn’t hustling, and he was broke, and couldn’t buy a condom. . So he’d have to be careful. That was it. Just be real careful. Wait till he told her. Oh, he’d be careful. Yeah, yeah. But better keep up hustling even in the winter: the prizefights in Madison Square Garden, the wrestling matches, when they featured Zbysko. How much were they? You couldn’t say rubbers, scum bags, to a druggist. You had to say safeties, you had to say condoms — what was the name on that little tin he saw her take one out of? Name over the crested helmet? Trojans. Trojans. That was it. But why Trojans? They lost the war, didn’t they?

X

“

Absolute, absolute, ’solute,” Mr. Fay, Ira’s teacher in American history, would say when stressing a point. The Louisiana Purchase, Gadsden Compromise, Tippecanoe and Tyler too, about Henry Clay or the great Indian chief Tecumseh, about General Grant at Cold Harbor. Or old Thomas Jefferson lying on his deathbed at Monticello, where he could watch the American flag undulate on its staff, old Thomas Jefferson already haunted by premonitions of the impending disaster inherent in black slavery — Mr. Fay, with his gray mustache, so dignified, tall, spare, an American, conducting the class in American history.

“Hello, Mr. Fay,” grinning, embarrassed in his hustler’s white jacket and cap with the frankfurter menu card on it, while with both hands he held extended in front of him the handle of the long hot dog basket and rolls, Ira hailed his history teacher at the Princeton-Columbia football game. What a change took place in Mr. Fay when Ira greeted him. No longer encountering one of his students qua student, no longer juxtaposed by classroom polarity, but instead a football fan, there with his son, Ira guessed, a loyal supporter of his college football team at an Ivy League game, the teacher — and his student, a hot dog vendor. “How are you, Mr. Fay?”

“Is that you, Stigman? Why, yes, yes, it is! Business going briskly, eh?”

“Oh, so-so, Mr. Fay.”

“Good weather for it, I should think.”

“Yes, sir.” Cordiality and laughter.

It was now November, the first week of November, and fall’s thin, sharp edge — oh, one could feel it even in cities, even in New York streets — thin, honed edge shaving away the last of balmy Indian summer, slitting the last ties that bound one season to the next. That was the way autumn freed itself, Ira daydreamed, hiking home from the everlasting 116th Street and Lenox Avenue subway station. “Autumn” was a nicer word than “fall”—he glanced up at the windows of gray old P.S. 103. How long ago, how far away 6B, gee, when he was a kid. With the — oh, look at them, paper pumpkins in the window, and witches wearing cone hats riding broomsticks. And turkey gobblers in the taller windows, and more paper pumpkins with triangles for eyes and nose. Halloween over, and Thanksgiving coming in. Once, when he wore knee-pants, he and the other kids on 119th Street had socked one another with flour-filled — or ash-filled — long black stockings on Halloween. Goyish holiday Halloween was, but not Thanksgiving. No more. It could be Jewish, could be anyone’s holiday, “Tenksgeeve”; even Mom had learned to say it.

He was thinking, no what was he thinking? Autumn, with his razor-edged cutlass between his teeth, bandanna over his head boarding the good ship Summer: what kind of ship? Sloop or galleon, frigate, schooner, pinnace, boy, the names that ships once had; they were so beautiful. Brigantine. Caravel. Argosy , Antonio called his in The Merchant of Venice . . from the Greek Argonauts. .

Ira had continued to hustle, and not solely on Saturday football games, but on other occasions.

There was Madison Square Garden: the prizefights! “Lade-e-z and gentlemen.” Joe Humphreys, the announcer, in the middle of the ring, took off his straw kelly, and with it damped down the rowdy crowd. Stentorian (oh, he knew that word): “In this corner, wearing purple trunks, the worthy contender for the welterweight crown, Cyclone Mulligan, at one hundred and forty-three pounds and a hawf !” Oh, how that low-browed throng of spectators loved that hawf ; nearly everyone echoed it, Joe Humphreys’s fancy, high-toned, Bostonian Brahmin hawf . Hawking soda pop at the Garden, between rounds, then ducking down out of the fans’ way, squatting on the steps; they’d lynch you if you didn’t. But he was absolutely riveted by the spectacle anyway, watching Benny Leonard with his black hair slicked down, and never mussed, slipping a right hook, dodging a left. What muscles, how they glided under the skin, bunched and rippled. And then again, peddling “red hots” at football games: given a hot dog basket and hawking: “Get your red hots here!” And they weren’t any more red hot in their double containers, after a short while in the chilly grandstands, than — than your nose.

But if he bought a hot dog himself, at a football game, just as soon as he came out of the depot, it was still hot, and he could get three rolls with it. The checkers didn’t count rolls, only franks; so it made a meal: three rolls squashed around one hot dog, little bit of meat, mustard, plenty of free sauerkraut, and gobble — lurking in an out-of-the-way dugout — while he watched Kaw of Cornell make those wonderful broken-field runs. Or the Four Horsemen, they were called, Notre Dame’s backfield playing against West Point: the cadets in gray uniforms, like those worn in the War of 1812. West Point, that faded dream, and those beautiful girls, shiksas , and gentile people with the colorful pennants, all jumping up and down cheering in those puffed-up, cozy raccoon coats. But Ira knew too much; that was the trouble. He knew too much that was sad, that was wrong, blighting knowledge, yes.

Still Ira made a few bucks, at the same time that he went to high school, earned a few dollars once a week anyway, and maybe a weeknight at Madison Square Garden too, skimped on his homework assignment, unless it was a Friday, skipped downtown, and waited for Benny Lass at the main entrance. .

He was a junior, and not too good in any subject, save one. And in that he got A, A, A, every quiz, every test, every recitation: it was the second half of plane geometry, the concluding semester of a sophomore course, but he was retarded because he had lost a term when he was expelled from Stuyvesant. But, ah, for once Ira felt in command, for once he sensed the unity of the subject he studied, the coherence of every part of it: oh, gee, he hated to have the subject end.