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

So why shouldn’t Larry’s love affair be as beautiful as a romance conjured out of legend? It was pure — was that the right word? Sounded priggish; that wasn’t what he meant. Seemly, oh, hell, just decent, without peril, without guile or guilt, unharried, unhurried. Not like his — copulations, that’s all they were, depraved and abominable.

And the guy was so handsome, gifted, poised, charming, no sense of smirch about him, as Ira felt about himself, no sense of anything devious, ulterior. No wonder Larry’s parents beamed and laughed at the sight of their son. Ira himself stared, so captivated was he by Larry’s seraphic luster.

Oh, well, there could be no competition between them, no thought of competition in Ira’s mind (except in the chaotic writhings of wishful imagination). They inhabited different spheres of breeding, of outlook. Ira couldn’t name them yet, but he knew they were so different that Larry’s love affair with Edith was beyond coveting — or nearly beyond coveting — because beyond comparing, on the only level Ira knew: behaving with Edith as with Minnie, or Stella. It was unthinkable!

Nevertheless, still too awestruck to overcome his reluctance to attend the Arts Club poetry recital for which he had helped Larry write the notices, Ira reneged again on his promise to attend — and stayed away. He received a pained, vehement exhortation from Larry when they next met. He wanted Ira there, damn it! He was his guest, a guest of the secretary of the Arts Club. Ira even had a certain claim to being there: for services he had rendered writing the invitations.

“You promise to come, cross your heart?” Larry demanded a month later, at the next session of writing notices.

“Cross my fingers, I will.”

“No, none of that! I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay, okay.”

So wearing the English tweed jacket of Larry’s beneficence, a garment “that never grew on your soil,” as Mom reminded her son, wearing it a little self-consciously, with his secondhand chesterfield overcoat above, Ira set out to find the meeting place of the Arts Club. It was already dark. He followed the trolley tracks, as Larry had instructed him, from the Christopher Street subway kiosk through Eighth Street, splotchy with snow. Once past the lowering Sixth Avenue El, Eighth Street became active: animate with people, show window lights, delicatessens, bookstores, small art galleries. He turned right, to Waverly Place, and then along the west boundary of glimmering, snowy Washington Square Park, with its view of the Washington Square arch on Fifth Avenue, and the equestrian general himself, halfway toward the scattered lights of NYU’s converted loft building, and walked to MacDougal Street. The neighborhood was largely Italian, to all appearances — and sounds — typically ill-lit and grubby. But near the corner, the illuminated sign proclaimed in large letters: VILLAGE INN TEAHOUSE.

Helpless, dubious, Ira waited for someone else to enter, someone whom he could follow. And soon a small group of youthful coeds, bright plaid scarves showing, and jolly as they approached the tearoom, made their way in. Ira trailed them through the door, tarried near it inside while the newcomers paid their contribution for the evening’s entertainment, dropping their coins into the lidless cigar box on the counter. Behind the counter, in charge of proceedings, stood Larry — handsome, glowing, filling the part perfectly — exchanging mirthful greetings with the newly arrived guests. Ira had just time enough to glance about the large dining room, well filled with a murmuring audience sitting at round tables, each one softly lit by a candle in the center, the candle set in a dark bottle laced with wax drippings, the candle flames fluttering at each opening of the door, the unsteady light shedding bewitching gleam on the faces of the seated audience. Magic atmosphere, cigarette-smoke-filled, droning, shadowy ambience. So that was a poetry recital, that was how poets foregathered—

Larry’s cry of pleasure broke through Ira’s hesitant appraisals. In another moment, Larry strode from behind the counter, came face to face with the newcomer. “Ira! Am I glad to see you! You didn’t let me down after all. I was beginning to wonder.” He took hold of Ira’s arm.

“I’m kinda leery.” Ira grinned, tried to shrink comically within himself.

“What for?”

“What for? Hey.”

“I told you there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“They’re just undergraduates, most of them. Some seniors, some juniors. You helped me write the notices. What’s there to it? You sit and listen like the rest. Say, you’re wearing the tweed jacket.”

“Yeah. Hey, what’s that you’re wearing?” Ira pointed at the wide colored sash around Larry’s boyish waist.

“That’s called a cummerbund.”

“A what?”

“A cummerbund. I bought it in Bermuda. The English wear it in the evening. Like it? Elegant, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. Okay I sneak over there to that empty chair by the corner?”

“Oh, no. You’ve got to meet Edith first.”

“Oh, Jesus, Larry!” Grimacing fiercely to shake his friend’s resolve, Ira rubbed damp palms on the front of his chesterfield. “Why not afterward?”

“You’ll meet her afterward too. She’s been wanting to meet you for a long time. No excuses. Come on.” He feigned an adamant frown. “Follow me.”

“Ow, I knew it.” Hangdog, struggling stonily within himself, Ira trailed Larry amid tobacco smoke and hum of voices in candle-lit murk toward the further end of the tearoom. A low dais had been set at that end, in front of the audience, next to the rear wall. A lectern reared up on the dais. An unoccupied table stood close by, a tablet on it marked RESERVED. Close to the table, a woman seemed to be introducing another woman: to older people, faculty members maybe. And as she turned away, leaving the other woman engaged in conversation with the new acquaintances, Ira, in the self-conscious numbness of approach, even before Larry addressed her, recognized her.

By some kind of inevitability, he knew, knew that the petite olive-skinned woman, turning away with winning and receptive mien, smiling countenance, like a dark-hued source for rays of generosity, sympathy, smiling countenance with prominent, sad eyes, the woman with small earrings, bunching a minute handkerchief, toying with a thin gold necklace, was Edith Welles. Larry spoke her name, spoke Ira’s. She greeted him, fixed on him through the blur of his acute embarrassment her steady, large-brown-eyed and solicitous gaze. She gave him her dainty hand to hold — and of course he would drop his hat in his acute embarrassment. Was there a hint in her eyes of something appeasing — appeasing just in general, or because he knew about her affair with Larry? He couldn’t say. Something stirred the notion in his mind that because she imposed her trust in him, it was like an immediate, implicit bond between them, a bond which, at the same time as she appealed to it, was intended to reassure him. It did nothing, though, to dispel his abashed inarticulateness. Larry left them to go back to the counter when a party of young guests came in.

“Larry says you’re remarkably sensitive to literature, but you’ve made up your mind to be a biologist.” Her face brightened with encouragement. “Of course, there’s nothing mutually exclusive between the two.”

“No, ma’am. Yeah, I’ll be a biologist if I ever get a biology course. It’s so crowded.”

“So Larry told me. I think that’s a great pity.”

“Yeah. .”

“Larry has gotten a great deal from you.”

“I don’t know. I got a lot from Larry.”

“When did you develop your interest in literature?”