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

The weeks passed. Indian summer gave way to full autumn. Classes became routine; college became routine, an unhappy routine divided into equal segments of time. His performance in his subjects varied erratically, without ostensible reason, without rational control. In chemistry he did A work — and scarcely understood why; in trigonometry his failure was already irreversible. In philosophy it was just necessary to coast along to pass. In French, after a laudable start, he was soon warned by the precise, pedantic head of department that his work was deteriorating. Sluggish, incompetent, discouraged was the way he felt most of the time, was the way life made him feel, as if a pall separated his mind from his studies. And it did: a pall that confined him within it, that he passively submitted to.

With a quarter in his pocket, he would leave the house on 119th Street and hike along Park Avenue in the shadow of the trestle of the New York Central to 125th Street. There, wait on the corner for the Third and Amsterdam Avenue trolley, board it, ride to 137th Street and Amsterdam, alight, walk east with fellow students past Lewisohn Stadium, cross the small campus-quadrangle surrounded by Gothic conformity of white and gray edifices, enter the main building — and if time permitted, lounge in the Class of ’28 alcove until time for class. Once or twice, in the morning, experimentally, he wore his Mili Sci uniform from home to college. He thought he would save time that way, by eliminating the change from civilian to military attire. But he found it embarrassing, coming out of the tenement onto the stoop into the slummy street on a bright fall morning, and then marching along grubby Park Avenue to 125th Street — all in World War scratchy, horse-blanket khaki breeches, puttees (which he could never roll on with any degree of neatness), rough woolen shirt and jacket that chafed the back of his neck. He would have to wear it all the rest of the day, until classes were over, and still in military uniform he rode home again. It didn’t pay.

Altogether that first semester constituted a formless, foggy time; how formless and foggy it was he scarcely realized, because he was too confused intellectually to realize. What little satisfactions he derived, whether of attainment, as in Chem 1, or of enjoyment in listening to Professor Overstreet, were riddled, infiltrated, by the ever-present, the obsessive yearning for the exultation, the exaltation of perpetrating an act of glorious abomination. What the hell were studies compared to that? All they did was contrast his mediocrity, his aimlessness and boredom, his inattention with his ferocious audacity, his resourceful assaults on Minnie. Contrast his passivity, his temporizing in his studies, in his flaccid pursuit of knowledge, with his ingeniousness in winning Minnie’s surrender. Ah, that was what mattered, that minute or two when he pumped the cry out of her of incestuous consummation.

Such was the nature of his attendance at college. Instead of imbuing him with aspiration and hope as it did his classmates, more often than not, it simply contrasted the ugly tenement facade and smelly hallway and four-room dump on 119th Street in which he and his family lived, his dingy little bedroom, transmogrified by evil refulgence that minute or two when Minnie lay athwart the bed, drawers hanging from one foot, like a white flag hoisted in capitulation contrasted with the staid, aloof, academic atmosphere of the halls of instruction within the Gothic exteriors of CCNY. Oh, bullshit. He was ruined, he was ruined, okay. So he was ruined. Fuck it. Yes, others endured even greater extremes between home and college than he did, but they hadn’t gotten snagged, snarled inextricably, the way he had.

Oh, sure, he was crazy; he knew it. He was crazy and he welcomed, he cultivated, the exacerbation of his craziness all the while. He should have frequented the piers on the North River, pestered the steamship chief steward or boatswain or mate for a job, any menial job that would take him away from home, deckhand, pot walloper, oil wiper, anything. But if he had been capable of that, had that necessary smidgeon of initiative, then he wouldn’t have been the one he was, wanted and didn’t want to be. At least, he could have gone with Billy to Cornell. .

Larry, meanwhile, in pursuance of the two-year academic prerequisite for entering dental school, his “predent,” as he humorously referred to it, had enrolled in the Washington Square extension of NYU. He had encountered no difficulty in registering for any course he chose, and was enjoying all of them, interested in all, doing well in all, and especially in his two courses in English, one in English composition, the other titled Outlines of English Literature. The former, the class in composition, was conducted by a young New Englander, a Mr. Vernon, who incidentally was a poet, a writer of free verse, and had already published a book of poems at his own expense.

The latter, the course in English literature, was conducted by a young woman, a native of New Mexico, a poet as well as a critic, with a background, or second discipline, in anthropology. A very stimulating instructor, she had already published two volumes of verse translations of Navajo Indian religious chants. The respect for and harmony with nature, which the white man continually disregarded, when not destroying it, she had rendered with great sensitivity and sympathy. The reviewers had all praised her for her skill and delicacy as a poet, and especially for awakening in the white reader a new understanding of the Indians’ unique reverence for all things in nature, and their awareness of its beauty, and above all, their unsuspected eloquence in rendering their feelings about these things. Her name was Edith Welles.

Both were recent appointees at the university, and both ranked as instructors. It was his instructor in Outlines of English Literature who captivated Larry’s fancy completely.

Edith Welles, as Larry described her, was extremely girlish in appearance, dainty and petite, with the tiniest hands and feet he had ever seen on a grown woman. No one looking at her would have guessed that she already had her doctorate — interdepartmentally, in two disciplines, as they were called, English and anthropology. She was so sensitive, so fine and discerning, it was really a shame, Larry said, that such an exceptional person should waste her energies lecturing on English literature to a bunch of premeds and predents, who didn’t give a damn about literature and about poetry. All they cared about — the majority in both Vernon’s class and Welles’s class — was getting a passing grade so they could go on to what they were really interested in: mastering a profession that would assure them a comfortable living.

“You never saw such a bunch of thick-skinned, fat-headed guys. Jewish, I’m ashamed to say.” Larry grimaced.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, there are some in the class, a few, really serious students of literature, who intend to go on to graduate school and get their doctorates, or are preparing themselves for a career in writing: you know, journalism, writing fiction, criticism, poetry too. Some already excel. Really. I’ve got to admit it. They’re not all interested in middle-class values, you know, becoming a doctor or a dentist with a good practice. They’re really aiming at becoming creative writers.”

“Yeah? You mean write their own stuff? Already? And only freshmen? Jesus, we don’t hear anything like that at CCNY.”

“Oh, I don’t mean there’s a lot of it here. But they tell me there’s a lot more than in that hoity-toity NYU up on the Hudson, where they hardly admit any Jews.”

“Yeah? I’m sure they would have admitted you if you wanted to go there.”

“I’m glad I’m not there. They say it’s dull as dishwater up there.”