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

“Oh, yeah? Then how?”

“Well, compared to the English ones I attended. Compared to the Ethical Culture School I went to for a few months here. You’re a good example of what’s missing in our English courses. I don’t mean to be funny. There’s no sense of the contemporary in any course I’ve taken in DeWitt Clinton. That’s the problem with teachers like Dr. Pickens. Know what I mean? There’s a clean break between what’s gone before and now. You get the idea? I’m not trying to be superior. Or highbrow. But it’s going on. Just what you said. The only time I had that sense of timeliness here was at Ethical Culture. They made sure you got a sense of relevance with everyday life. Know what I mean? Maybe we’ll get a chance at something like it in the last term of our senior year. You know you have a choice of your preference? Mine’s going to be modern drama. What about you? What’s yours?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it. But you act like you’re living right with ’em. I think that’s what I mean.” Ira scratched an itch in a wrinkle on his brow, then a more imperious one in the convolute of his ear.

Ira felt suddenly under strain. It was like an avalanche of newness, all this modern poetry. Larry wrote poems. Larry understood, was initiated, belonged. He. . actually wrote something that was his own, about. . about. . experiences, no, about what he felt, no, not that either. They had the shape of what he felt. He did it by himself, for his own. . not, one couldn’t say, for his own good. . he did it for — no, not for a contest. Hey, Jesus, you could scratch all over, it was so unsettling, even a mere glimpse of that kind of purpose, just for the sake of doing, finding the shape that fit, that kind of a game.

Ira found himself wishing he hadn’t agreed to ride the Ninth Avenue El with Larry. So new an outlook would take a lot of time — and examining and dwelling on — a lot of ruminating to get used to — if you wanted to get used to it, to learn something about it, how it was done, what changed you.

Maybe he ought to disabuse Larry now, Ira thought. Sure, it was flattering to be with Larry; he imparted a sense of the rich and the glamorous. But Ira didn’t want to go on. That was it. He recognized in himself something unwillingly complementary, something receptive, nay, susceptible, to this — this strange new shedding of exteriors of everything, shedding of fixed panoramas, of used perceptions you could call it. But that was just what he had done with his own interior, torn away, not on purpose, but by mistake, torn away from the regular, the customary, the wonted, yeah. And now if he did the same with the external world, that contemporaneous world that Larry was exhibiting, Ira didn’t know what would happen; if he allowed himself to be exposed to that disquieting new process, that new relation to the outside world, one that changed the outside world. God, he could feel he was too susceptible, too beguiled by new departures in the perceived; given to forsaking the rote, gee, he’d have nothing left, be nobody. At least now, yeah, he was a crumb, all right? Humping his own sister, Minnie. But he was on the rifle team; he could go out with Billy in a canoe, paddle across the Hudson, accommodate to Billy’s world, hang on to Billy’s world, feel a little — a little bit better. American wholesomeness. Oh, hell, he couldn’t say.

They paused at the foot of the El stairs. Ira hoped Larry might loosen their previous agreement to ride on the Ninth Avenue El together, render it tentative, say something like “Are you coming up?”

Larry didn’t. Instead, he said as they neared the El steps, “Let’s not smoke. I got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re taking the El anyway. Let’s not stop. Let’s not stop riding together till 125th Street. Why don’t you come home and have supper with us.”

“Me?” Ira was startled into brusque bodily withdrawal.

“Yes. And take the Untermeyer anthology home with you afterward.”

“Yeah, but look at me! I didn’t even shave this morning.”

“You’re all right. You look fine. I’ll lend you my new Gillette, if that’s all that’s worrying you. It wouldn’t matter anyhow. We don’t stand on ceremony. We don’t dress for dinner and that sort of thing.” He smiled winningly.

“Oh, no. Oh, Jesus!”

“Here we go again. Why not?” This time his brown eyes were merry instead of disappointed. “My mother would love to have me bring home a guest. I never do. She’d be delighted. She keeps complaining that I don’t have any friends. And I don’t. I didn’t in Bermuda either. I simply haven’t found anybody interesting.”

“Yeah, me!”

The heavy irony in Ira’s voice seemed to startle Larry. “What’s wrong with that? I mean, why not you? I can choose my friends.”

“Well, I like—” Ira let gesture indicate his meaning. “But I—”

“But what? You don’t have an inferiority complex, do you? Or something like that?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I do,” Ira insisted. “I know it in myself.”

“Why should you have an inferiority complex? I don’t see why. What did you do to get it?” Larry was unconvinced, but diverted.

“What did I do? You remember Hamlet: about filling up the porches of you ear? I could clutter ’em up. But I ain’t a-gonna,” he clowned verbally. “Nah, it isn’t that.” Ira decided to change tack. “It’s Friday. Gefilte -fish-and-chicken-soup night. I didn’t tell Mom.” It was a deliberate subterfuge. Mom had long ago been alerted that on Fridays he might go off with Billy: not to be alarmed about her son’s absence on Shabbes bay nakht .

They reached the stairs, and as they climbed up to the platform, Larry said, “I know it’s short notice. Here, I’ve got two nickels. No, that’s all right”—he declined Ira’s proffered coin, and followed him through the turnstile. “Is your family religious?”

“Religious?” Ira shrugged. “No. My mother only lights candles on Friday. You know, she holds her hands in front of her face and prays.”

“Yes?”

“You never saw it?”

“No.”

“No? Maybe I ought to invite you to our house so you could. I would, if we didn’t live in such a dump.”

“You needn’t feel so apologetic about it,” Larry appealed. “It doesn’t matter. Really. As a matter of fact, I’d be glad to go to your home. I have so little experience — contact — with any kind of Jewish Orthodoxy. I don’t want to brag — I can have all kinds of Jewish friends, liberal, rich — oh, my. I mean, the wealth of their families makes mine look — very modest in comparison.”

“Yeah?”

Larry’s thick eyebrows neared each other in sign of distaste. “But talk about bores! I can almost predict what they’re going to talk about. Dances. Dates. Cars. Fraternities. Beside, they fawn, and I hate that.”

“Yeah?” Ira snickered. “You know, that’s funny. I never invited anybody to my house — I mean, the way you just did. In all my life, I can’t remember once. Maybe it’s their accents, I don’t know.” From being odd, it became something to wonder about as he strolled next to Larry over the gray, weathered planks along the airy platform. “We don’t — we don’t do things that way.”

“No?”

“A relative maybe. Once in a blue moon. Your family — I mean, they’re all Jewish?”

“Yes, but we’re all agnostics.”

“Oh.”

“It’s like saying we don’t know.”

“Yeah. I know what it means.” With each step he took along the platform, the spear of light advanced on the tracks below: agnostic. “You know, when I was fourteen, I told my mother and father I didn’t believe in God. My father called me an apikoros , an Epicurean. That Greek name actually came into the Yiddish. Can you imagine? Apikoros .”