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

Around and around, over the same ground (it sounded like The Ancient Mariner ). “For me it would be leaving a dump; what do you mean? You’d be leaving — well, look at the place.”

“I’d be leaving a suffocating middle-class atmosphere!”

“A suffocating atmosphere?”

“Yes.” Larry turned around in eagerness from slicing bread on the breadboard. “Is French bread okay? I can’t stay here. My folks aren’t bad. You know that. But I’ve got to break away. Break my dependency, my connections. All that family feeling. God, it’s awful! I love my folks. Even Irma, though I may not sound that way. My brother Irving. My sisters. My niece. My brothers-in-law. The tears and the grief I’d cause. Do you realize the amount of pain this is going to cause everybody? And my father’s heart isn’t the best. Still, I think it’s the thing I ought to do. God, it would be cruel!”

How much older sheer strain made him appear, thin and drawn. Who would have guessed he was just a college freshman? One saw snapshots sometimes of a high school athlete in the very crux of competition — high school kids looking old as an adult.

“Yeah?”

“Edith thinks I ought to wait till the end of the term. I don’t. She thinks I ought to try to take everything possible into consideration. I can’t. I have the feeling I’m the kind of person, if I want to be a writer, then I have to create the situation for myself. Do you understand? Now, right now. Not next semester, three years from now, get my degree. No, no, no! Now. Committed.” He ladled out the rich brown goulash.

“Committed?” Ira’s mouth watered. “Wow, that smells good, looks, oh, boy. What makes Hungarian goulash Hungarian?”

“Paprika. That’s the national condiment.”

“Oh, yeah? Mind if I begin fressing? ”

“Go ahead. There’s more.”

“Committed. So what d’you mean, committed?” He heard the word echo within himself, reecho, as if it tried to extract meaning from his noisy mouthfuls.

“Yes. Not follow Edith’s advice. Follow my own instincts now! But then again, am I kidding myself? A few lyrics, a borrowed plot of a short story. What have I got to go on? I’m teetering on a knife edge. What if I’m wrong—” He reversed himself. “The Village wouldn’t be far enough away from my folks. Irma would be down there, my sisters, my mother certainly, urging me back, coaxing, imploring, my brothers-in-law arguing — can’t you just hear the pleas? I’d begin wavering. I couldn’t stand it. That’s the point I make. If I was going to break away, I’d have to go on the bum completely. Disappear like a hobo. Like a common seaman on a tramp steamer. And I can’t. I can’t break their hearts to that extent.”

“No? Do you mind slipping over more of that French bread?”

“Here, help yourself. Should I slice some more?”

“I think there’s enough. Boy, I like bread. We eat everything at home with bread. Sometimes even with Mom’s compote.”

“My family would go out of their minds if I disappeared,” Larry added in gloomy aside. “Talk about causing pain.” He lifted his fork with large trembling hand. “I can’t do anything. I’m stymied. I’m just beginning to realize that. I’m just beginning to see those things. No wonder Edith kept insisting, ‘Get your degree first.’”

“You better keep eating.”

“Yes.” He laid his fork down, pressed his eyelids shut, and when he opened them, reached for salad tongs. “I’ll have some salad. You?”

“No. We always eat it afterward.”

“Three years.” He meditated, chewed a leaf of lettuce, disconsolately. “With a maximum schedule of summer courses — at NYU. She’d be in Silver City in the summer. Or Berkeley. One or the other. Her mother and sister are there. I think both divorced. The sister has ambitions to be a violinist — but she has no talent. And do you know something? Edith helps support — pays the life insurance I think, for her mother. Even helps out her father — he’s a ruined politician — his health too. He drinks. I think I told you, the whole state of New Mexico went Republican in 1920. But it just breaks my heart. That tiny little thing, so generous, so devoted. I can’t help but want to support her. I know I could, too. I could protect her—”

“Protect her? Jeez, she’s got a job,” Ira interrupted. “She’s your instructor. I’m not trying to butt in,” he apologized. “Can I have another spoonful of stew?”

“Oh, sure. Mind helping yourself out of the pan?”

“Oh, no.” Ira arose to his feet. “I’m listening.”

“She has so many obligations, so many demands on her. That’s the point of my saying I want to help her. Make a financial contribution. To relieve the burden on her, the nervous strain. She’s hardly able to bear up under it. The nervous strain alone is causing all kinds of digestive upsets.”

“Yeah?”

“I could help guide her. I could contribute income. Commissions. Salary.”

“Yeah? I don’t see how, and get a degree in three years. I don’t think it’s possible.” He sat down again. His mind had already begun its unhearing contemplation. His eyes drifted away and back, to provide a semblance of listening while he ate. Protect her. Was that part of love? He had never wanted to protect anybody — only himself. Protect Minnie? Jesus, the only protection he offered was on his own behalf: spare himself the anxiety, no longer the same anguish now, but the anxiety, of thinking maybe he’d knocked her up. And the same thing with Stella. Hell, tell her to say somebody else laid her. He was wise to that subterfuge now. Some big guy — some big goy stuck it into her. Maybe forced her. Give her advice. But protect, protect? He just wanted to get in and get out.

So that was one thing that was wrong with him. And what did that mean — even if Larry was being foolish on the subject? You weren’t old enough, was that it? Yeah, that was it. Jesus, you could see the whole thing in a panorama: screwing your kid sister, Minnie, out of habit now — she wasn’t such a kid anymore — screwing your cousin Stella. It made a self-enclosed entity: you were checked, your development was arrested; you weren’t interested in adult problems, adult considerations. Boy, what a picture: of something clawing at an impalpable net — clawing and squalling, and never really trying to get out of it. And how the hell were you going to get out of it? O-o-oh, Sunday morning, o-o-h, get Stella straddling him on weekdays. Jesus, if he could ever get her alone. He was dying to back-scuttle the little bitch. Get it way up in her. So there you were. Almost at a rage with yourself, listening. “You know, you’re saying the same thing over.” Ira tried to keep the irritation out of his voice.

“I am?” Larry was taken aback.

“Not exactly.” Ira hastened to mitigate. “More or less round and round.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Larry became dejected.

“No, no. Go ahead, go ahead. I just happened to think about something else. I get into these — I don’t know whatcha call ’em: reveries.”

“I’ve noticed. Do you want me to stop?”

“No, no. Go ahead. I’m — I’m beset, I guess.”

“By what?”

He had to get out of that corner — fast: “All kinds of doubts — I mean about you, your fix,” Ira said. “Gee, you do a nice job with salad.” He helped himself.

“I don’t go in for that bought dressing. What you were saying is putting things mildly.”

“What d’you mean? Hey, have a little more to eat. You’ll fall away to a ton.”

“I mean the simplest solution is for Edith and me to get married. That would—” he brought his cutlery to a halt—“that would justify everything. My moving out. Transferring to CCNY. Be completely independent. I have to cause them pain. But that would be the least. Don’t you think so?”