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

— You don’t? It seems to me you’re overlooking something much more important than that, important as that is. You’ve showed your hand.

Yes, the tale’s run away with me. Spell it howsoe’er you like.

— Once again, levity is out of place. You’re in most formidable difficulties.

Yes. I might as well confess to what has been all along a kind of spirit beneath the deep: Ira’s incestuous relations with his sister, Minnie.

— Confess it? It’s obvious. Has been that quite awhile. But now that you’ve introduced her as a character, what will you do with your planned treatment of the thing later on, the revelation, the frightful disclosure you held in reserve?

I don’t know. Perhaps I wish to curtail what comes later on. Leave off much nearer than that. Truncate. I could, you know.

— Yes. Or you could begin again: introduce the omitted character—

No. None of that. For one thing, it’s not reasonable for me to expect to live that long — or better said, to be able to draw on the necessary vitality to accomplish what you propose. I’m in mid-seventy-nine. I’ll ignore her again.

— That’s scarcely tenable.

Who makes the rules? It’s either that or collapse. He lives in two worlds, your client-friend Ira, the overt and covert, the inner and outer, the abysmal and the surface. Why not? Joyce divided himself into a flimsy Jew and an Irish super-intellectual. The one rarely stopped dwelling on his short arm, the other rarely stooped to dwell on it. He seemed immune to the prurient interest, but nevertheless, “before the play were played,” he frequented a whorehouse. From whence the sudden infusion of sensuality? Does anything better illustrate the artificiality of Joyce’s device, the cleaving in two of the person who was essentially one? And that individual was none other than Joyce himself. But however daring his innovations were, that innovation, that admission, he lacked the nerve to make. And therein lies what may be called the fatal flaw in the Ulysses . The guy masturbating at the sight of a seminaked limp leg, the guy shoving a carrot up his ass, the voyeur peeking up the statue’s hind end, the guy pseudo-suffering at the thought of his own cuckolding, but in all probability wishing he were there to behold the act, the guy polluting the liver, was Joyce himself. I’m not going to prolong my insights any further, beyond saying I think they’re apt and they’re honest. I’m so super-verbalist, super-designer of irrelevancies, super-scholastic. I’m just striving to restore one individual to himself. I’m not proclaiming that I go into the stithy or the smithy of the human soul for the thousandth time — and then recoiling at the threshold, as soon as he smelled the smother and stench of seared hooves, After you, M’sieu Bloom-Dedalus. . But why — I should refrain from asking, but can’t quit — did that sister of Jimmy’s who became a nun refuse to say a word about her renowned brother? “Answer me that, my Trinity scholard, out of your san-screed into our herian.” Beginning with the Pontiff Ellman, what all those erudite Jewish worshipers of the Master wouldn’t give to learn the answer to that one.

XII

Smugly he walked east on 119th Street toward Park Avenue, the recollected little spat of the other day summoning smirk to his lips. Oh, everything was under control nicely. He had even bought a fresh tin of brand-new ones that would obviate all caviling incurred by her suspicion of his parsimonious reuse. Trouble was he might have to wheedle again: wheedle, wheedle, little Yeedel. What a tempest’s in your needle? Hey, not bad: need, needle. Rotten bastard, Ira thought, you, you had to wake that bestial taloned talent in you. Perfidious, yeah, that would spread his predatory rut about her like a seine from which she couldn’t escape. And you know, the funny thing, pal, she said, “I love you so much, and you’re so lousy.” She loved him so much, and hee! Hee! He was so lousy. That’s why when it was right, just right, like the time before, once, then the dirty words suddenly stopped, and she, “Oooh, oooh, my dear brother, my dear brother!” It was, you know, the word flicked into his mind again: it was a snug enclave. Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho. Robert Louis Stevenson, and his little shadow: he had a little enclave that went in and out with him. Little enclave in the family.

Was it his fault? He stole the silver fountain pen, yes, that was his fault, but this just happened, didn’t it? No one could blame him. He stole the silver fountain pen after this happened, didn’t he? Yes, yes. So? They swiped his briefcase, they swiped his fountain pens. Till next Sunday morning. . Go over to Mt. Morris Park, he thought, and get into a game of association football.

That was what he would do, he resolved: forget about the same thing, same thing, same thing. Skip upstairs, lay down briefcase. Hurry up, while it was still light. Dunk a bulkie in sweet café au layhee, and off to Mt. Morris Park. .

The approaching figure planted itself squarely in front of Ira. Spongy purple old overcoat, though it wasn’t cold, and face purplish as if it were cold. Who? Challenging and hard-bitten, the other addressed Ira, “You’re a lucky sonofabitch!”

“Oh! It’s you, Collingway.” Ira recognized his accoster as his fellow conductor of this past summer. But he looked so lean, hunched over with vindictiveness, different from the guy who had mingled semi-feigned asperity with advice when the two worked together on the Grand Concourse bus line.

“What’s yer name again?” the other asked.

“Stigman. Ira. You remember. You know what? I didn’t recognize you at first. You looked all—” Ira drew in his shoulders, as if shrunken.

“No? I reco’nized you all right. You’re the Jew-kid I had to tell to draw off a couple o’ bucks every day, so’s you wouldn’t make the rest of us look bad.”

The brunt of rancor in his voice, the flinty spite uttered sideways by the purple-writhing lips, made Ira cringe. Guilty, superstitious almost, guilty of enjoying good fortune, of being bestowed with a superior, enviable lot: keyn ayin-horeh , he could just hear Pop, or Mom too, say in Yiddish. Avert the evil eye! To be free of work, as he was, free of worry too, going to high school, while the other had to stand on the platform of a jouncing, beat-up bus — and soon to be winter — collecting fares, fretting over slow, decrepit passengers, and maybe like himself when he worked there, that awful time the boss’s car trailed and he thought he was caught, sure, always anxious for fear some spotter might nab him — no wonder the guy eyed him up and down so full of hate.

“Talk about luck,” Collingway continued. “Jesus, you got it by de shitload. You’ll never have to worry about nutt’n wit’ de kind o’ breaks you git.”

“You mean this?” Ira raised his briefcase apologetically. “You mean I’m goin’ to high school?”

“Shit, no! Jesus Christ!” Collingway rasped, wagged his head in utter disgust. “Jesus H. Christ! Don’t ye read the fuckin’ papers?”

“Yeah, once in a while.” Ira hesitated, perplexed.

“Once in a while?” The other’s countenance sprouted veritable quills of contempt. “What the fuck do ye read dere? De funnies? You see any buses runnin’ on Fift’ Avenue lately?”

“No. . gee, that’s right. I didn’t. So what happened? What did you do? You lose your job?”

Collingway could only vent his despair with a soughing sound. And finally, “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch. I had to buy my way into dat fuckin’ job. What the hell chance have I got as old as I am? I had to buy my way in. An’ this punk—” he addressed an imaginary third party.

“So what happened?” Ira pleaded.