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

The kitchen doorway opened brightly. .

Casting her shadow into the living room, the kitchen doorway darkened with her short, unhurried presence, and a moment later, framed her deliberate, casual exit from the others in the kitchen. . darkening behind her as she shut it, stepping into the penumbra of the living room: Stella. For Chrissake. How old was she? Fourteen? Was he crazy or was he right? She was coming nearer. He could feel himself inflame: willing prey? Knowing prey? What? He marked something in her dim, wavering step. Innocent approach? No, innocuous approach, that was it, a possibility, a potential, feasible and farfetched at the same time: Mamie’s older daughter, fourteen years old now, for Chrissake, short, plump, blond, blue-eyed, simple, but for all that, pudgy, tubby, unformed as she was, already wafting carnal tiding, diffusing nubile compliance. If he could only get her alone. Boy, she was like a lascivious cordial to his gluttony, cordial to satiation. Wow. Why the hell was she dawdling? Why didn’t she come over to where he was? Oh, no, she was clever, dissembling; she knew what she was doing. Aimlessly arriving, on oblique tack, yes, yes. And here she was. Oh, he was right, he was right. All ploy, all surreptitious, like a noncommittal complement to her dissembling. He smiled cautiously without incentive.

She was very blond as she passed from penumbra into the deeper shadow of the withdrawn sunroom, drawled something banal, banal utterance of the obvious. “It’s dark, and you’re sitting alone.”

And standing tubby, standing in front of him, in front of Ira, burning now in predatory rut, in lecherous fury that he felt would kill him, if he didn’t gratify it on her. “Why don’tcha sit down.” He beckoned innocently at the twin seat at his back. “It’s nice here. Quiet.”

And in vapid collusion she complied.

Sitting opposite, his eyes fixed watchfully on the kitchen door, he tilted his head sideways, sought her mouth. She converged. She parted her lips for his tongue to delve — to plumb. Oh, yes, Jesus Christ, no doubt, discreet, ready, expectant. Where could he try? Boyoboy, his blazing passion could kill this little, oh, fat little heifer, supine, submissive, inviting murderous sacrifice. Jesus. But where? Where freedom for rut to erupt, where a minute of privacy, innocent-seeming privacy? Think. Upstairs. Possibly. Try.

The signaling tip of his head when he stood up was superfluous. She followed, tractable as if on a leash. “Let’s look at the rooms upstairs.”

“Upstairs is Uncle Morris’s and Ida’s,” she meshed with him in dissembling. “Uncle Morris is by the cash register tonight.”

“Yeah?” Preceding her, he had climbed to the landing on top of the stairs. “And Ida? Do you know?”

“I don’t know. Mama said she went to play cards.”

He tried the doorknob. Fixed. Locked. “They’re not home.” But no good. Christ, get caught here on the landing as obvious as a placard, their ploy. What the hell would he be doing up here but to screw her? They came down again.

Throbbing, he felt as if he were treading on a surface without a floor beneath him in fierce, foiled quest. Chrissake, where? They went outdoors: stood a few seconds inspecting the narrow lane between duplicate houses. Cold the dark, and betraying. No good. Locked anyway. By Max who lived there. They’d be in the doorway, should anybody come along. And where were they, should Mom or Mamie ask? No good, no good, no good. Jesus, he’d go crazy. He led the way back into the house: kitchen light under the closed doorway, sound of utensils, voices. They’d be finished in another few minutes, probably, putting away the last of the dishes, silverware. Finished they. And so would he be. Somebody would pop out the door, and then. Goddamn. Ever hear of such a goddamn. . such a goddamn. . Here she was at his elbow, waiting — simpering, her blond head at his shoulder—

Hey, wait a minute. The cellar!

The cellar! The new concrete-floored, concrete-walled cellar that Saul had showed off so proudly to his guests — when Max had bragged about his. . Should he lead her there, to Max’s darkened house, search for an entrance across the narrow lane? Go out again? Nah. Jesus, no time. Right here. Take a goddamn chance.

Ira beckoned with his head. She followed, as if bereft of independence, a puppet utterly guided by the sovereign depravity of will. Dummy. Hell, no. She wore a dummy disguise. Boy, that made it a lot safer. No blabbing. .

This way, yes, to the cellar. Fitting they should make exploratory excursion toward the cellar door, plausible to swing it ajar, tip switch up, and peer down into blank whiteness, emphasize surprise. Close door behind, descend. . half-dozen wooden steps to the glaring new cement floor under the stark, unshaded light bulb. Sharp and solid shadow of furnace, hot water heater, laundry tub, displacing the glare of wall.

“Quick.” Ira lifted her dress.

She pulled aside the skimpy sling of her teddy to reveal elemental, adolescent fuzz. Already out with it, his charger, ready, brute in the van, hauling creature after it, mind and body. “Ever do it before?” he asked.

She hesitated a moment, reluctant to confess, and yet not to forgo, to miss by being remiss: “The painter.”

“The painter?” he approached.

“After we moved in. The new rooms.” Her shallow blue eyes glazed—“Oh!”—glazed, unblinking. . at his penetration, unblinking, shallow blue eyes accomplice of his perpetration. Minnie closed her hazel eyes, but not Stella, shallow, blue stare, gone vacuous, gone void. It was working, working, it was working, working. Look at her eyes, shallow, blue, stupefied: stultified inanity fixed on him, his prey, accessory to his violation, Jesus Christ, intrinsic to his spraddling her. Destroy her, ah-h, straddling him — slump, mum larva, squash her dumbstruck trance with guy-geyser brutish he — fucking her. Ai-i. Get out! Get away! Aoh, just when—

It was over.

“Upstairs,” he commanded. And as she climbed back up the wooden steps, “You think you look all right?”

Her juvenile blond head nodded.

“Sure? Good. All right. Out.”

He watched her juvenile round butt pause a second longer above him at the door, pause, her hands smoothing skirt. She went out, left the door a crack ajar. He loitered. . to break nexus, quietly smearing ejaculate underfoot, as Jews smeared phlegm underfoot in synagogue, as the mohel had mashed the infant’s foreskin underfoot after stamping on it. Dry up soon. Then tiptoed up the stairs, switched off the light as he eased out of the cellar door, sneaked back to the love seat, dropped quietly down, and sitting back, surrendered to last, vestigial panting.

— So you did it.

Yes, I did. And relived it too. Many a time.

— Why?

To alert the world to the menace of housepainters.

— Dispense with the levity. Why?

Good question, Ecclesias. I don’t know why. Not at the moment. The answer may suggest itself later on, take shape into coherence, but for the moment I’m at a loss. Certes , I’m not engaged in a sociological tract, but a rendering, excuse me, or attempt at holistic rendering of my lamentable past. But even so, I suppose I’m open to the charge of appealing to the prurient interest. On the other hand, Ecclesias, I feel bound not to mitigate the behavior of this literary scamp, bound to present him as despicable as he was. Of course, as I say, I could have done so — in general terms, clinically.

— And chose not to. Why is the reliving so important to you, an old man edging closer to eighty this mid-August than seventy-nine?

Tough again. I mean to find an answer. Have I overstepped the boundary from the erotic into the pornographic? Is this the fumarole manifestation of the well-nigh extinct libido? Likely as not. Let the psychiatric specialist decide. There will be more of the same, by the way, and I must admit that I come to life, so to speak, leap into an orbit of higher energy, when in the grip of the sexual escapade or episode. Again why? Animal impetus, elemental instinct of an individual, alas, in whom the seismic wrench of sexuality brought libido into abnormal salience above reason.