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

“She said it would be folly if I didn’t go on and get my degree,” said Larry. “Get my B.A.”

“But if you left home — didn’t you say you’d leave home?”

“She’d help me.”

“So where do you go live?”

“That would have to be worked out. I’d go live in the Village. Somewhere near her. And if we married, I’d live with her, of course—”

“Married!” It just didn’t sound in the realm of the possible. “Do you have to marry? I mean—” Scratching frantically up and down his skewed neck was the only way he could end his question. “That isn’t what I mean. I mean, how can you marry?”

“It might not be convenient right away. She ought to wait till she had tenure. I ought to get my bachelor’s first.”

“Yeah? But Jesus, that’s three years off for you! Or what?”

“That’s nothing. I can easily earn enough to support myself, certainly to get by on while I’m taking courses. I can always sell. That I know. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t be dependent on her to make a living. She wouldn’t have to support me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t allow it anyway. I could pay my own way — and more. That wouldn’t stand in the way of marriage. I wouldn’t have to — to wait until I got my degree to get married. But tenure in her position, that’s something else. So until then, marriage might have to be sub rosa . At the very beginning, in other words. I told her we could get married at the end of the term, if she wanted to — secretly.” He pointed a large white finger at Ira. “I don’t have to go to NYU.”

“You don’t? What d’you mean?”

“I don’t have to go there any more than you do. I wouldn’t go there anyway if we were married.”

“Then to Columbia, you mean?”

“No! CCNY. Like you!” Larry exclaimed. “Of course. I’d switch to a free college. Get my bachelor’s there. Major in English.”

“Oh.”

“Write in my free time. That’s what I want to do most — write. That diploma, that damned silly piece of paper! God, didn’t we talk about that for hours! Suddenly you want to break all connections, everything that ties you to family, my family. Might as well say to the middle class. To conventions, respectability, all that you and I have talked about. Even to getting a degree. That’s where I differ from Edith. I don’t need a degree to write. I could get a job aboard an ocean liner: a steward’s job, an engine wiper, a deckhand, anything. Knock around. Jump ship. You know how many Americans — they call them expatriates now — are in France? I could be another one for a while. Why not? Once we were married, and we belonged to each other, I could feel free to separate for a while. Others have done it. Marriage doesn’t mean you’re both tied together in the same place. That’s the conventional view. That’s what I’m talking about. You ducked the Arts Club meeting last time. But if you go to the Arts Club meeting this Friday, you’re going to see Marcia Meede. She’s married to Luther. She went to Samoa to do her doctoral; he went to England on some kind of grant. For a year. You get it? Edith and I could marry, and I could do all that. Instead of being tied down, I’m — I’m practically released, freed from my middle-class conditioning, which is what I need. I have to slough it all off, all that I’ve been. You know what I was.” He hitched his shoulders almost violently. “A member of the comfortable, the smug, middle class. Supported by my family. Given an allowance. Coddled. A predent. What else was I?”

At odds with himself, agitation besetting him, transmitted even through the deep dusk of the living room, he stirred in his chair restlessly, aimlessly, uttered uneasy, subdued exclamations of protest. “To tell you the truth — you wouldn’t believe this — I think I could fall asleep right here right now. We slept almost not at all last night. But that isn’t it. I’m just worn out mulling over the thing, stewing about it. What’s the best thing to do, for me, for us? What’s the best thing to do right now? Announce I’m leaving NYU? I’m leaving the family? Go get a job? Here in New York? Or the kind I was talking about: ship out on a tramp steamer. Or an ocean liner. I know I can talk my way into a steward’s job. Do you follow me?” His harrowed eyes further darkened by quandary, in manifest crisis, he hunted for his pipe, found it, held it between both large hands in his lap. “I’ve really come to a significant crossroads in my life. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“It is, yeah. Jesus, I wish I could help you, Larry. But you know. .” Ira projected his helplessness by gesture and grimace. “It just doesn’t belong in my world. Or I don’t belong in it. And you’re so far ahead of me in what’s happening to you. I mean, who’d ever have thought that kind of a thing would happen, could happen, to a friend of mine just out of DeWitt Clinton? I can’t even find the words. Okay? So I’m no help.”

“And of course, the ones I might turn to — those close to me. Can you imagine?” He allowed himself a curt, derisive laugh. “Ask Irma, right? Ask any of my sisters. Ask any of my family.” He brooded, twiddled the pipe.

“I’ll tell you, I don’t know a thing about these things. I don’t know her. But she’s the one to ask.”

“Edith?”

“Yeah. In my opinion. Who else? Who else is there?”

“She doesn’t think I ought to do anything rash. I mean, you know, follow my impulses: cut all ties, cut loose.”

“No?”

“No. She wants me to get my degree. I told you, she said it would be folly not to.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“So what’re you gonna do?”

“Hm! We’re back where we began. What am I going to do?”

“All I can say is it’s up to you.” Ira gazed at the intricate vacancy the dark had begun to spin. “And that’s not saying much.”

Larry too seemed in the thrall of the same kind of vacancy. “I’d pretty nearly destroy them.”

“You mean your family?”

“Oh, yes, you can imagine if I tore up all ties. If I went on the bum. Disappeared. Something like that. Pampered baby of the family. Brought up in Bermuda. I allowed myself to be, I grant you. But they’d be distraught. And then too I want to be with her, with Edith. I’m really torn. Instinct tells me that right now a wild move, a wild plan, is the right one. What do you think?”

Ira held up his palms to fend off the question. He shook his head. “Don’t ask me. Boy!”

Larry rested his lips on his fingers, sucked silently on an unlit pipe. “Yes.” He seemed to be affirming that the moment was critical. He sighed. And after a few seconds shook his head in resignation. “I guess Edith is right.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m being rash. Romantic.”

“Yeah?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I’ll just stay put. I’m worn out thinking about it. Maybe I’ll get a better idea later.” He slumped slightly. “Status quo for the time being. That’s all. Status quo ante. You know what that means?”

“Do the sensible thing. The practical thing.”

“Sounds that way, but not quite. Continue what you’ve been doing.”

“Oh.”

“Carry on, the English say. What I want to do is much too soon. We ought to be with each other for a while. And of course I want to. I want nothing more than that. . And there are my folks. My parents. Sisters. They’re fine people, you know. Kind, generous. Just that — well, right now, I feel a world apart, and I think, well, you’ve got to do the surgical thing. Act! Once and for all.” He turned his head away, moaned, inarticulately frustrated, fidgeted again. “Well, we better switch the lights on, hadn’t we? I’m probably, you know, as they say, ready to go off the deep end.”