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

“Is that so?” Again Larry seemed eager to learn. “ Apikoros . I wish I knew a little more Yiddish. I told you, only my brother-in-law, Sam, can speak a few words of Yiddish. He’s the lawyer. Mitzvah . There, I remembered another one. Sam knows some of the prayers in Hebrew — he’s the one I told you went to CCNY.”

“Still, you teach Sunday school, you said. In that temple on Fifth Avenue. But you don’t know any Hebrew?”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“No?”

“I love the stories, as I told you. They stimulate me. Just the other day I couldn’t help daydreaming about Absalom escaping. Would his father, King David, finally forgive him? Or would he be an exile all his life? You know what I mean?”

“I see. . You think about others, other things, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t think about yourself. What you would do?”

“I express what I would do through them. Is that what you mean?”

“I think so.”

Larry stopped in stride. “You know, I don’t think I quite followed you that time: not thinking about myself.”

They turned to retrace their steps. “I can’t think about anything but myself,” Ira admitted. “Half the time I hardly hear anybody else. Honest. That makes me so dumb.” Perhaps that would put a brake on Larry’s cultivation of literary matters way over Ira’s head; it might curb the friendship as well.

His remarks seemed to have the opposite effect. “I don’t believe you don’t listen. No. I think you listen all the time, I think you don’t listen to things that don’t interest you. I wish I could do that. It’s really a kind of polite waste of time. I get enough of that.”

“Yeah?”

“Too much. And most of it doesn’t matter. I don’t know whether you listen or not. What makes you interesting is that you never parrot anybody. Everything comes out of your own experience.” His large hands delivered his meaning with an expressive trajectory. “Everything comes from the inside.”

Ira’s facetious “Yeah? Where else?” brought a smile to Larry’s face. “No, I wish I could. I can’t. You can get away from yourself: Absalom, King Saul, Custer. Not me.”

“Then seriously, I think you ought to try to write. I’m sure you’d come up with something pretty good. Have you never tried to write?”

“Me? Compositions in English. What d’you mean? I’m gonna be a bugologist,” Ira said.

“Well, I don’t see that should keep you from trying to write. I wish you’d come over to our place and let me read you two or three of my poems. Or you read them yourself. You’d get the idea of expressing — of giving form to your feelings. I can’t explain it — just by example: of what I do. I’d love to hear your comments too.”

“Hey. How would I know what to say?”

“Simply whether you liked the piece or not.”

“That’s all?”

“Just as you did a few minutes ago.”

“All I said was ‘wow.’”

“That’s enough,” Larry glowed with good humor. “‘Wow’ is good enough.” He canted his face to show his affectionate appreciation. “Beside, I don’t consider myself on the same level as the poets I quoted from the anthology. They’re mature poets, most of them. I’m at the beginning stage, but I still think I have something to say.”

Something to say? Ira could only wonder — and keep silent.

“I’ve got another idea,” said Larry. “Next Friday night. Have supper with us, and stay overnight.”

“Wha’?”

“I’m putting in a bid right now for next Friday night.”

“Not overnight. Say. Even if there’s no rifle match—”

“Can’t you arrange it? You said you wrote the invitations.”

“Yeah, but I work at the football games Saturday. Till Thanksgiving. This one’s going to be at Yankee Stadium.”

“The new stadium? You can practically walk there!” Larry urged triumphantly. “It’s so close by, you can see it from the end of our street. You can shower before bedtime. We’ve got two baths. I’ll lend you a set of pajamas. We’ll have breakfast together.”

“Two baths. .”

“All right? Let’s make it definite.”

“No.”

“No? But this time you can tell your mother in advance where you’ll be. You’ll be in safe hands. I know how mothers can be.”

“No. I’ll come Friday night for supper, but that’s all. That’s enough.”

“You’re not going to inconvenience anybody. You’ll be perfectly welcome. My parents have been hearing me talk about you for some time. So they won’t be surprised. I’ve got an extra couch in my room. You’ll be comfortable. And we’re all completely informal, you know. My parents. Irma may be there, my older sister. My brother Irving — and of course, Mary, our maid—”

“I’ll come for supper,” Ira said stubbornly, aware he was being stubborn. “Nothing else, no. That’ll be enough.”

“Enough?” Larry was amused at Ira’s strenuous reluctance. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m sure.”

The platform began to quiver before the approach of a train.

“Okay.” Not the least vexed, Larry leaned forward to view the square-nosed wooden train noisily devouring the track as it approached the platform. “Honestly,” he said, raising his voice, “why don’t you want to stay overnight? I’ve got a big full-sized bed. You can have that if you prefer. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No. I said no.”

“Are you just plain shy?”

“No. I wet my bed,” Ira replied gruffly. “It’s called pisher in Yiddish. I’m a pisher .”

Larry burst into a spontaneous, hearty laugh. “That’s a new one I’ve just learned. Pisher .”

“Yeah?”

“And now I just remembered another word Sam uses sometimes: minyan for a group of ten. . Oh, megillah , yes! Megillah , that’s another. Megillah. Pisher and minyan .”

“Boy, you’re gonna build up a vocabulary.”

They waited for the train to come rattling to a stop. The blue-uniformed guard, with gloved hands on lever handles, dull bars connecting with the gates shiny with leather buffing where grabbed, clanked open the low steel gates to the train. .

XVII

Dissatisfied, Ira let his arms hang down beside him, fingers of arthritic hands painfully opposing his flexing. Even as he typed, he was aware of minuscule notions darting about in his mind — and vanishing as if sifting through the same neurons that engendered them. And some were probably important, but what the hell, every prose writer experienced that. Some are coming, some are wenting, said dear old fuddy-duddy Longfellow, do not try to snatch ’em all. No. But there was much more to it than mere volatile fancies, conceits. Ah, there went one! As if he had to throw a body block at the idea to stop it before it dodged by him. He had to get back to himself. That was the important thing. Like Antaeus, the giant, to his own Mother Earth. Too inflated a metaphor maybe, but it conveyed the central thought, the nub, the imperative. He had to get back to himself. It was a primal necessity. This matter of juggling the devastating business of his incestuous “relations” with Minnie, never originally intended to be revealed, in the first place, and now a determining, nay, the determining force in Ira’s thoughts and behavior. Like that of a dark binary star on a visible one, it had altered the entire universe. His task now was to juggle, to wield a preponderant, unintended element that he had introduced into the rendering of his portrayal of why his central character opted for the future he did, why he stumbled upon a literary career, brief though it may have been; he would have to incorporate that new element in the total design — somehow.