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

She knew about it. “So you got one o’ those?” she asked.

“Yeah.” His head began to reel.

She knew. She knew. “So is it a good one?” White-and-pink cheeks had she, somewhat a severe face, cold, unresponsive, even for a fourteen-year-old kid, translucent hazel eyes. She wrinkled her nose skeptically under wavy red bangs. “Is it brand-new? It’s clean?”

“Brand-new,” he protested, and more vehemently, “What d’you think? I’ll use a secondhand one? I’ll show it to you. Look.”

And almost as if against her will, but consumed with need, want, heat, his pitiless aphrodisiac wheedling, she stood up, from homework table, green-oilcloth-covered — she made for the closed bedroom door, closed, now that the other rooms were cold, and only the kitchen gas-heated. “So come on.”

What delirium, surprise and dividend, even though she was so peremptory, serious; yet the green-painted blistery kitchen walls did a jig, a veritable jig — still, she didn’t notice anything, he everything: the walls dimpled, the walls jigged, they rippled to and fro as the little brass nipple loosed the tongue-plunk of the lock, close sesame, magic-charm plunk that freed the walls from being walls, changed them to shimmering, rich green drapes. Freed them and him and everybody, liberated, when you were really going to do it to her, sink it inside your sister, really into Minnie. She was letting him into her. What luck he’d bought the little tin, after — after Theodora. Yip silently with joy. Yip, yip, yahoo. Look at those walls doing a Highland fling in ecstasy, a lilt in kilts. Yippee.

Delirious he, so prosaic she, as if begrudging a needed item, a staple of oestrus. But what the hell, begrudging or not, his, his to have, to have, to fuck her on edge of bed, his bed, first bedroom, on his bed athwart, just two feet away hardly from airshaft window, and the cold no longer felt. Don’t lose a second before Mom came home. For a minute into Minnie, sink it in her, sin it in her. Quick, go. O-o-oh, look at her: carmine between lifted thighs. Quick! Roll it on, pale sheath over fiery shaft.

“Okay?” Ira asked when they came back out of the bedroom into the kitchen. He’d been super-lucky: the second time this week. The first time was in Mom and Pop’s bed Sunday — that was good. He had used his last condom, but was it ever good! She made so much noise he was nearly afraid. So early in the morning. And on Sunday. All the neighbors home. Jesus, if they ever guessed he was doing it to his own sister. He fucks his sister, the micks would say. Hey. How about us gittin’ a piece of her ass, too? He knew them.

“Okay?” Ira repeated when Minnie didn’t answer — though he suspected it wasn’t.

“Oh, don’t ask me. It was all right.” She sounded none too ravished, as she followed him into the kitchen. “Sometimes you get bigger at the end,” she complained. She yanked at her stocking.

“I had to hurry,” he conciliated. Actually, he felt sheepish, because the surprising opportunity had caught him unprepared. It had overaroused his ardor with wild, evil greed of transgression, the dire joy of perpetration. The flood of the heinous had been too much for him to withstand. He had barely synchronized with her. “You wanna try again?” he offered belatedly. “I can wash the rubber again.”

“No, I don’t wanna.” She cut off further allusion sharply. “Don’t wash it again. Don’t do me no favors” She halted abruptly. “What d’you mean, again? Wasn’t it a new one? You said it was brand-new.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” he lied vehemently. He had washed it once.

“Then I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah? So okay. Okay,” he snapped at her. Hell with her. Main concern was to get back to the kitchen table speedily. Roll back the tongue of the lock fast. Compose everything back to normal. Get to the toilet with the squishy condom. . He opened the toilet door, exited from the kitchen, dropped the rubber in round mini-whirlpool, flushed it down in noisy maelstrom, out of sight of the dingy white enamel.

And back in the kitchen again, he sat down to his textbooks, features engrossed, maybe even hostile, as he often was, when she asked him a question in English, and he shook her off or derided her. Easy to be surly this time, complemented by her glowering. Gave authenticity to what they were ostensibly engrossed in doing: studying high school homework, ignoring each other. So it wasn’t so good. So she didn’t plead, Fuck me, fuck me good. So she didn’t animal-yearn, O-o-wah, o-owah. He had laid her. Got his. Settle down now. Safe.

“Is it all right?” she asked, guarded, darkly.

“What?”

“When you went in the toilet.”

“Oh, sure,” he blustered, then contemptuously, “Jesus! What d’ye think?”

“Aw, you stink,” she said.

“Oh, yeah? Just because of this once.” She was belittling his prowess. He could tell she meant he had gotten more out of it than she had. “I told you I was in a hurry.”

“No more! That’s all. If it’s such a hurry.”

“But Sunday in the morning was—”

“Not even Sunday. No more.”

“All right, no more,” he agreed cynically. He could get around that one — next time.

“ Briderl. You stink, if you wanna know.”

“Aw, go to hell. Waddaye want? So once I got too excited.” And then it suddenly occurred to him that he might have cause for concern. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Whatsa matter?”

He stood up. Had he pulled that chain long enough? Swirled the damned thing down? Really down for good, not just out of sight? He stepped hastily toward the bathroom door.

“I hear Mom,” said Minnie.

Flop down again, or else Mom might think — might think he was dodging. Flop down to chair, bend over book.

And in came Mom, bringing fresh, cold air with her, as if in the container of her coat, breathless from the climb, her short, heavy self toting handbag; and at once, down on the table with it — and right for the bathroom!

Oh, Jesus Christ, oh, Jesus Christ. If he didn’t, if he didn’t! Minnie was right: never again, never again! Go to Theo, Theodora, Theotorah, Theowhorah. Anything. He still knew the way. Go to anybody, take a chance, get a dose, anything — Ira shut his eyes, waited. No. No. The toilet flushed and gurgled. No. No. It was all right. Got away with it. Of course. What the hell was he so scared about?

Mom came back into the kitchen. “ Noo, kinderlekh . You must be hungry by now. No? When Mamie goes to buy a corset, she’s a worse kushenirke than even I am. What am I? I’m a lady by comparison. If she didn’t torture that shopkeeper on 116th Street to prostration with ‘Ah, it’s so dear; you make too much money on it, it’s outrageous, it’s exorbitant. What is it? Is it made of gold? It’s only a corset. From cloth, from bone.’ She has a nerve of brass.”

“Oh, is that where you were?” Minnie asked. “I wondered. So did she buy it?”

“Indeed. Finally. ‘ Ai, vey, vey,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘ Frau , you should wear it in good health. To earn what I have just earned cost me a parcel of health.’ ‘One has to look well about you before loosening purse strings,’ she said. ‘Heh, heh, heh,’ he laughed. A clever Jew he was. ‘Look well about you. That’s a shred of comfort. About you indeed. May you rejoice in the wearing of it about you too.’ Then I hurried home as fast as I could. A little coffee and milk and a bulkie?”

XI

Oh, Ecclesias, would that I had been spared the need to mention these painful events. Could they have believed that no sister ever existed? No. The story cannot continue without this admission. And I damn near don’t give a hoot about the literary quality, friend Ecclesias.