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

Over her cup of tea, held with daintiest of fingers, Edith related that there was a certain Indian tribe that had apparently vanished entirely from its abode among the forests of California. No one knew its language, no one had bothered to learn it, or study the anthropological relics of the tribe’s former existence, no one except a Dr. Wasserman, professor of anthropology, under whom Edith studied at Berkeley. But lo and behold, Edith told an enthralled Larry and Ira: one member of the tribe had survived into their century. His name was Zaru. In wretched state, emaciated and dying of starvation, he had given himself up, the last wild Indian in California. He was sure the white men were going to kill him, as they had killed the other members of his tribe. He begged his astonished “captors” to slay him at once, not to torture him. But no one understood his entreaties, no one understood anything of what he was saying, laymen and trained anthropologists alike, until Dr. Wasserman was called upon. He had acquired some rudiments of the language, acquired from fragmented though still extant remnants of California Indians. From these he had compiled an elementary dictionary. Aided by it, he succeeded in communicating with the terrified, miserable aborigine (who had refused all nourishment while in the county jail, in the belief he was held there to be fattened for sacrifice). Dr. Wasserman assured Zaru that no one was going to kill him — and by persistence and by slow degrees, he won the Indian’s trust, prevailed on him to take food and drink, take medications, learn something of white man’s customs with regard to sanitation, wear white man’s garments, and won him back a semblance of well-being, a modicum of confidence.

How had he managed to survive in such close proximity to civilized settlements? How had he succeeded in eluding detection in an area that was scarcely more than an enclave in the midst of the dreaded white man’s habitations? Edith enthralled her small audience, intentionally retarding the action of her story. Hunters in search of game traversed the terrain that was Zaru’s refuge, sportsmen, fishermen, campers, and forest rangers. Zaru and his sister, while she was alive, using all the ancient lore of their forefathers, had subsisted on fish and wild animals, by spearing fish, by trapping small animals, hunting wildfowl with snare and bow. Ever vigilant, ever on the alert to the presence of the white man, depending on every device of stealth and concealment that tribal childhood had inculcated in them, the two siblings had managed to evade detection and survive. Zaru had lost track of the moons and the years that had passed during his and his sister’s long, furtive, unobserved existence. .

Time, Ira thought, to break this exposition. Yes. He pressed the F7 key. Better try it out first, the change or insertion, try out whether it was appropriate, whether it blended with material before and afterward, and then if the interpolation appealed to him, he could move it into its proper place. If not, just delete. However, the insertion about Zaru, the new departure, did appeal to him. Such were the wonders of the age of computers. Ira pressed the F7 key again. In trying to describe the many advantages the device presented its user, he had said to others, without knowing exactly what he meant — just a general notion, or perhaps because it was a handy cliché—that the word processor added a new dimension to his writing. It summoned to the writer’s side a faithful and supportive friend, Ecclesias, for example. Ira smiled. Fact was, and again he invoked a semi-cliché, the device vouchsafed the writer a quantum leap in means of communication, in versatility. It enabled him to do things he could not have done otherwise, operations too formidable otherwise, beyond his skills, his patience, though he regarded himself as patient where writing was concerned, to accomplish things beyond his stamina.

Even when he was young — writing his first and only novel — he could not have done now, so reduced in vitality, what he could do then, without the assistance of this marvel of electronic technology. Panegyric was furthest from his mind when he set out to make his remarks, but if anything ever came of this long, long opus, anything worthwhile, it would be owing in large part to the work of multitudes of men and women who, without fanfare, matter-of-factly, had perfected and assembled this instrument (and continued to improve it). They were liberators of the mind. .

“It’s really true?” Larry asked. “It seems utterly fantastic.”

“Oh, no.” Edith smiled fondly at her young lover. “It really did happen. In 1912. Wasserman wrote a book about it later — called Zaru . I think the NYU library may have a copy. It ought to, anyway.”

“How long did they live that way?”

“The brother and sister? Years, I imagine. As I told you, Zaru told Wasserman he lost track of the moons. The only way he could have counted them would have been to make a mark on a stick, or something of the sort, and I don’t think he was interested. Survival was the main thing.”

“I was thinking,” Larry said diffidently. “They call them Indians, and they’re not Indians.”

“No, of course not.” Edith regarded him indulgently. “Anthropologists have tried many other names. ‘Aborigine’ is one. But there’s been an objection to that. On the part of the Indians themselves in some cases, yes. It makes them feel as if they were considered some kind of wild creature. And of course they’re anything but that. They have — or had — a highly developed culture. ‘Native’ is a good term, probably the best, certainly the most legitimate. But our one hundred percent Americans, fourth- or fifth-generation super-patriots, object. They consider themselves the only native Americans. Which is absurd. ‘Amerind’ is one term that’s been tried.”

“Tamarind,” Larry chuckled. “Tamarind is a tree, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think so. I don’t know what kind.”

“A wooden Indian,” Larry quipped.

“And about as awkward as ‘Amerind,’” said Edith. “I don’t believe the name will last. Do you have a name to suggest, Ira?”

“No,” he said, with lingering bashfulness. “But I was thinking of ‘Indigen.’”

“‘Indigenous’ or ‘indigent’?” Larry bantered.

“It could be both.”

“As in fact most Indians are,” Edith commented. “It’s not a bad term. Is there such a word, Ira?”

“‘Indigen’? Oh I doubt it ‘Injun.’ ‘Aborigine.’ Something like that.” With the same finger that he pointed, Ira scratched his temple.

Larry smiled at him. “Ira is like a pack rat with words. I read once how they stow away every shiny trinket in their nests.”

“I’m sorry.” Ira grinned in abnegation. “It happens to be true about me and words. It’s a habit.”

“It’s not a bad one. Your feeling for words is remarkable. I’ve noticed that,” Edith said.

“If I could only remember important things the same way that I remember words. You know, practical things, useful matters, the way Larry does. But I don’t.”

“His sister died,” Larry prompted. “I suppose it was sheer loneliness that drove him out of hiding.”

“And hunger. Imagine the terrible ordeal of trying to survive, survive and hide, in a constantly shrinking living space. Oh, I’m sure he wanted to die.”

“I wonder how long he had been alone.”

“Many moons. Again many moons. Just as he said he and his sister had been together.”

“Is that so.”

Many moons, Ira meditated. Zaru and his sister had apparently lived a number of years together evading the white man. .

And at night, with Minnie beside him, the listening Ira became grim with fantasy, fantasy so close to his reality — and who knew, similar to that of the primitive siblings — they wouldn’t dare build a campfire in their woodland covert, but he would have reached out and felt for her cunt. And she would have understood. It was the only pleasure they had. What else were they going to do? He’d slap her if she didn’t submit. To whom was she going to complain? The white man? Besides, that was her only pleasure, too. Maybe she’d ask for it, the way Minnie did sometimes when she was younger: stick out her round white ass from under the covers — only Zaru’s sister’s would be brown. But what if he knocked her up? Jesus, you couldn’t just leave the kid bawling in the woods. Poor naked little bastard. Who the hell would have had the heart to abandon the newborn infant? And somebody might find it, too. Then you’d have to kill it, bury it? Jesus, no. Maybe they knew native contraceptives, native scumbags. Or just get out a second before you came, left some of that “white stuff,” Minnie called it, semen, and gave her a kid. Still, the goddamn Canaanites killed their kids, their firstborn. Lucky Edith and Larry didn’t know what he was thinking about; how could they? Every night a chance to fuck your sister. Would you ever get tired of it? Among the trees in the forest, all quiet and bosky, only “O-o-h, o-o-h,” beneath the green boughs, “I’m getting that good feeling! W-o-o-h!” crescendoing the first time she got it. And ear cocked, always cocked for that sonofabitch white man tramping through the woods, maybe just when you were coming — or she was. Jesus Christ, it wouldn’t be so different, would it? As when he humped Minnie, always in dread of Mom or Pop; or if the airshaft window was open, afraid the two might be heard upstairs or downstairs? Yes. Or panic of Mamie in the kitchen, Mamie just around the hall when he was dandling Stella on his dick — oh, poor Mom; telling Uncle Louis she yearned and burned at three o’clock in the morning for Moe, Moe and his pillar of meat—“Look what I’ve got here, Leah”—alone with him, while Pop was making his rounds delivering milk. Husky Moe snoring, Mom yearning, “ Es hot mir gefelte libe ,” while little Pop, all by himself, crossed the low walls between tenement roofs at night, low walls topped by brown, glazed ceramic hoods. Oh, Ira knew rooftops well. . Sacrifice a newborn infant, but you can’t screw your sister. Sinful, sinful. But he had broken through that barrier, broken through religion or taboo, or whatever it was. Before he knew it, he had broken through it. And paid, and paid, and — cut it out. Listen to what she was telling them, listen attentively, the way Larry did. Get everything else out of your mind. Ask her if Zaru and his sister ever cooked anything. .