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

His political career a failure, his marriage also became one, Ira would subsequently learn. His wife, whom Edith described as a prudish Christian Scientist, wept when he approached her sexually. Her parents already had three children — the third was Edith’s brother — and they were frequently forced to listen to loud beratings by a demanding, inebriate father of his beseeching, sobbing wife. And then occurred the most incredible thing he had ever heard in his life: Edith’s father took a prostitute out of one of the local brothels, and with scarcely any attempt at concealment, provided a residence for her and installed her in it as his mistress. With that, his wife left him, sued for divorce, and being granted it, together with custody of the children and some alimony, moved to Berkeley, where she established herself as a piano teacher. Meanwhile Edith’s father’s health began to fail. His law practice fell off; he sank toward indigence. Faithful to him, though, through all this, was Mildred, the woman he had reclaimed from the brothel.

Edith had a brother and sister, both younger than herself. The brother, William Welles, Jr., went to work for a firm dealing in prefabricated aluminum siding as soon as he graduated from high school. The sister, Lenora, of whom Edith had no high opinion, because so totally impractical in financial matters, so very conventional and a Christian Scientist as well, was described by Edith as “very large. Lenora is huge.” She had been directed, by maternal decree, to apply herself to the violin — the instrument Edith wanted to play. But no, Mother thought Edith was better fitted for the piano (one had to keep these things, these antagonisms, well in mind). Edith thought her sister was insensitive musically, for all her practice; and that her sister’s ambitions, fostered by her mother, to become a concert artist, one who would make her debut in New York, were absurd. Edith herself relinquished the piano, not because she wasn’t musical, wasn’t sensitive in the extreme to musical nuance. Rather, she gave up the long, arduous practice that would have prepared her for concertizing because she decided her hands were simply too small to cope with the demands of professional concert performance.

She gave up all hope of being a concert performer — but then used her training at the instrument to play after school in movie houses, in the days of silent movies. And later, in company with other musicians of varying skills, at something she named — with a smile — shivarees. What things they did out West! Ira fixed on the word: shivaree. . It sounded wild and cowboy, wild and woolly: a corruption of the French word charivari , his Webster’s Collegiate informed him: a mock serenade of discordant noises. . From her earliest teens she had been self-supporting. Edith had disclosed, her determination unmistakable in the way she tilted her chin. Much to Ira’s secret embarrassment, that a slight young girl in her teens was already self-supporting, and he, big oaf, farleygt , as they said in Yiddish, burdening his parents. Lenora already had a child, and had custody of it, after her divorce. Mother and child also lived in Berkeley — precariously, according to Edith’s incisively stated opinion — on alimony that would have been sufficient, “if Lenora had any sense.” But she didn’t. She couldn’t manage anything; she was always in debt; and Mother, or more often Edith herself, was called on to help get her sister out of her monetary difficulties, which Edith did, at some sacrifice to her own welfare, indignant at her “ninny of a sister,” but coming to her aid for the sake of the child. .

Her musical career foreclosed, Edith had gotten her B.A. summa cum laude , Phi Beta Kappa, from Berkeley, which Ira took to be the name of the university, learning only later that it meant the University of California at Berkeley. Afterward, while supporting herself as before, she had gotten her doctorate there. It was the first interdisciplinary doctorate ever awarded by the university. Her doctorate linked the English department with that of anthropology. The subject matter of her thesis was an analysis of the rhythms and structure of Navajo songs and religious chants, their transliterations into Roman characters, with scrupulous indication of accent and syllabic pattern, and finally their rendering into English verse, not verbatim but by re-creation into English, faithfully equivalent to the spirit of the original Navajo. Out of this material, imbued with Southwestern light and sky, and evocative of the primeval bond between man and nature, Edith published two books of poems. They were well received; they were praised by critics for their successful capturing of the elevated moods and mystical communings of a tribal people whose culture had long been ignored, long despised, by those who had all but despoiled them of land and heritage.

The poems also came to the attention of another young anthropologist, one with a keen interest in poetry, the brilliant Marcia Meede — the same young woman with the energetic lip and restless glitter of eyeglasses whom Ira had seen together with her older, enigmatically smiling friend, ushered to their seats by a radiant Larry at the poetry recital. A correspondence between the two women, Edith and Marcia, had begun while Edith was still in Berkeley and became a bridge to acquaintance and friendship when Edith took up residence in New York to teach at NYU.

Edith divulged so much, and so freely, first to Larry and then to both of them, that for all his eagerness to imprint a composite of her on his mind — and to steep himself within the ambience of her temperament — Ira was sometimes embarrassed, even as Larry obviously was, by the frankness, the explicit particulars of her disclosures: that her mother believed sex ought to be terminated after five years of marriage; that Edith, out of sheer impulse of altruism, and in defiance of convention, had married one Kurt Finklepaugh (did anyone ever hear such a ludicrous Heinie name?), in order to provide him with time enough to stay in the country and obtain his doctorate. But after wedlock, he wanted more than had been agreed upon: he wanted her body, and this she had no inclination to yield.

“No inclination, no desire, no anything.” She laughed, and added by way of explanation that she had devoted herself so completely to her studies, she had not yet been “wakened.” So their matrimony came to a violent and disgraceful end: with mutual recrimination, and books — oh so academic — thrown at each other. Since consummation had never taken place, the marriage was legally annulled. Still, her account of their brief conjugal relation revised the picture of her in Ira’s mind, tinged it with plucky defiance and acrimony: like warning shadows cast over her apparent sweetness and gentleness. Dainty and petite person though she was, she didn’t flee, with eyes streaming tears, flee and seek refuge from her pursuer among friends and relatives. Oh, no, she stood her ground and fought back. Those large, sad eyes took aim, that tiny hand swung and hurled — a tome maybe, a dictionary, at her adversary. One ought to impress that on oneself: underneath the goodness and kindness was something akin to a coiled spring; it could be released, given sufficient provocation, and a spirited retaliation loosed. Yes, that tone of competitiveness, when she spoke of others being given books of poetry to review, not because of superior literary judgment, but because they were men — or because they were favorites of the editor of the book review section of the Tribune or the Times —that too was a trait that one had to take note of and be aware of. Under Edith’s winning generosity, under pleasing sufferance, lurked militance, feminine militance. Larry’s account of Edith’s censure of his levity with regard to her professional advancement within the English department took on new meaning. Be aware of that trait in her nature, and beware of ruffling her on that account. Be sympathetic. .