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

Bob was elated. To have discovered a promising rookie in such unpromising circumstances, a lackadaisical, myopic denizen of a cold-water flat on slummy 119th Street — that was abundant cause for congratulation! Moreover, Bob, who was team manager, was due to graduate from DeWitt Clinton this summer, as was the team captain and another two seasoned veterans of the team. It was imperative that adequate replacements be found as soon as possible. Bob kept the miniature target card to show to the team captain. On the strength of Ira’s performance with the mock.22, he was invited to show what he could do with a real firearm, one that fired live ammunition. He accompanied the team to the downtown armory in whose tunneled basement the firing range was located. No faculty adviser accompanied them. The team seemed to be completely on its own — as if part of a confraternity of others on the firing range: men in plain clothes, men in army uniforms, in police uniforms, men who fired revolvers and automatic pistols in nearby shooting ranges.

Ira was given a half-dozen.22 Long Rifle cartridges to fire — at the regulation target, with a ten-ring the size of a dime, and at the regulation distance, twenty-five yards — and he fired two rounds prone, two kneeling, and two offhand. His score was sufficiently impressive so that he was inducted as a permanent alternate member of the team, a substitute.

Weekly practice sessions followed in the basement of the armory. His scores fluctuated from commendable to mediocre. .

His scores did, did they? Ira drifted off in tangential reverie. Didn’t your performance depend more and more on where you stood, in what quarter of mood and moon you stood, in comparative repose or frantic agitation, after fitful sleep or sound one? He shrugged at himself: who the hell could correlate the one with the other? Only that there were the two planes the adolescent was living on: the wholesome overt, the abysmal hidden. What terrible torsion — or distortion — the two wrought between them, alternately, a charged field or an inert one: between plates of a condenser, between leaves of a Leyden jar — Leyden, yes, leydn in Yiddish meant suffering.

Ira suffered after the taboo — in spite of all, frenzied with wild accessions of desire because of the taboo, infusing him with vile ecstasy. It affected even Minnie, despite her previous disavowals; her demurrals gave way, moaned into surrenders. He suborned her, subverted her. Ah, better than in Pop and Mom’s bed on a Sunday morning were those rare, swift, hurried minutes of unexpected afternoon furor, when they were alone together. Those green, blistery kitchen walls visibly swayed with frantic evil, triggered by her passion’s fierce onslaught—“So all right, come on.” Oh, that trailing at her heels to the bedroom, rolling on two condoms to assure her, a quarter’s worth at once! Ecstasy of the iniquitous. Double condom coupling, yeah, to slow him down, be safe, sure, but pump that “o-oh, my darling brother” out of her. .

Double-sheathed, but he was safe. He was safe, and she was safe. Still he worried, couldn’t help it — even if she was only a day late, couldn’t help it. Balance the wild ecstasy with wild panic: immediately the rift within him widened. Common sense was impotent against it. Fuckin’ your own sister, fuckin’ your own sister — he couldn’t say it to himself any other way. Boy, if she got a big belly, boy, if she got a big belly, a bouncing baby boy, if she got a big belly. Some joke! And again and again, he would think: try to reflect, conjure away his cage, like the rifle cage down in the gym, yeah, cage and rifle: he saw the connection: why, that slum kid on the high school rifle team, by himself, unperverted — had it only been by himself as he was supposed to be, might have been, would have been nothing but another example of the happy success story that America stood for. Here he was, ex-immigrant Jewish kid mingling with regular and mostly non-Jewish Americans: Bonnar with his bewitching Southern accent, and of course Billy Green wrinkling his nub of a nose, immune to be coming rattled, incapable of losing his temper. He was the son of an engineer. Corey Valens was the son of a judge. What well-bred, gentile, tolerant teammates they were: friends, decent, yes, normal, levelheaded — that was the word — well. . actually it was the fact that they were normal that made his awareness of the hideous torque within him, his deviation, all the more unbearable. .

Supposing none of this, no return to high school after that first disaster, the expulsion from Stuyvesant, just menial, ordinary non-skilled or semiskilled work, being part of the mass, then what? Probably that would have forestalled the other. Or if not, and yet only too likely, given the amorphous lump he was — become the sloven loafer — what then? Outcast, sooner or later, depraved, since he had the propensity. Perhaps dragging Minnie with him, having knocked her up. Awful to think about — made the saliva, full to brimming the well of his mouth, too unpalatable to swallow. .

The team’s first match since Ira’s joining them was against the rifle team of Morris High in the Bronx. And who but the best marksman of the team, Granshaw himself, a senior, rocky, aggressive, relentless-eyed Granshaw, was unable to attend. As permanent alternate, Ira was called on to take the other’s place. It was an afternoon when he felt easy, and he had reason to, his mind free of anxiety, a Friday afternoon when he felt free, felt all but negligent, with a weekend beginning. He fired the required number of rounds in the compulsory positions. And the result? The DeWitt Clinton High School newspaper ran a banner headline on its front page next week:

ROOKIE RIFLEMAN RACKS UP SENSATIONAL SCORE!

And below the headline, the subheadline:

IRA STIGMAN SCORES HIGHEST IN TEAM.

And in the text below, the first paragraph began:

Leading the DeWitt Clinton marksmen to a crushing defeat over Morris High in their invitational match Friday, rookie rifleman Ira Stigman fired a 188 out of a possible 210. The steady-nerved rookie had no difficulty finding the ten-ring again and again. And so little did the strain of his first competition faze him, he was heard to chuckle frequently when reloading. .

Never was he able to equal that score again. In fact, in the interscholastic rifle match, in which all the high schools of greater New York participated the following year, when he was already a veteran marksman, had his marksmanship been no better than average, even mediocre, let alone the “sensational” shooting of his debut the previous spring, the team would have won gold or silver medals. But his performance was wretched, poorer than that of the rookie just recently recruited and regarded as a tyro.

In his previously written first-person account, he most certainly had spared the reader the details of this episode with his sister and the rifle team, Ira reflected. And just as well. It was always easier to talk about Farley, about footraces. But no exorcism could be achieved talking of the 100-yard dash.

Following the near-orgy he had enforced on her the Thursday before, with the luxury of privacy till almost midnight, when Pop and Mom, with Zaida, Baba, and most of the tribe, attended the benefit play for the Galitzianer Verein, she wept, for other reasons than safety or dissatisfaction: “You’re gonna ruin me for somebody else,” she sobbed.

And his cynical, exultant, feral jibe: “Aw, c’mon, we don’t even kiss. All we do is what you say, ‘Fuck me, fuck me good,’” and then he snickered at her.

“Aw, shut up, you louse.”

He had had no condom the second time, exited in time, he thought. But he scarcely needed specific cause for the gnawing to begin, no longer belatedness to incite worry. The plies of self — or so they felt — once parted, as they had, near the close of that demented fear of a year ago, were ever disposed to become so again, and he obsessively undone with them. Even if he thought he was safe, ought to be safe, had no reason to think otherwise (hell, for Chrissake, you’re all right. You’re crazy), the plies of self unraveled, and whatever courage, carefreedom, was woven in them dispelled. Supposing he no longer — supposing he didn’t live at home, moved away, out of range of this, this recurring opportunity, away, away, would the fear (fear of what? Worry, just call it worry, peculiar invading sadness, despond, despond) haunt him anyway? No, it wouldn’t, would it? How could it? It always had to be some reason, that reason. Trigger, like that of the target rifle. Springe: what a beautiful old word, not a spring, but a snare. Had to be that, like the pedal of a steel trap. The crushing weight on top of a figure 4 that baited the rabbit. How many ways were there to say it? Or was fear built into it by now? Built into him, built into the act? Try somebody else. Find out. Does Theodora live in the same place? If not, so somebody else. Find out. Ask. Nah. Who else?