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

I become mute here, Ecclesias, I become inert, suspended and still. For I am transported backward in time a total of sixty years. And though I now think I know what to do, what to expect, to recognize signal and interpret message, in a word, how to behave, time has long since embalmed the one who would have profited by all this.

— You bear within you a sort of edified mummy, is that what you’re saying? Aren’t all your memories that? Even those of a quarter of an hour ago?

I suppose so. Some I bear within me, blithely, some few. This is one of them.

— Most, it would seem, rather than bear within you, you have to bear. True. In this instance it would seem we chose the right place to picnic.

— My felicitations.

Mom had prepared sandwiches early that morning for Ira to take along as his contribution to the spread — sandwiches, by the way, that in a flush of boldness — or rashness — of audacious gustatory sortie, he had himself asked Mom to buy the ingredients for the previous night, and to make early the next morning: fine Jewish salami, thickly sliced, to be sandwiched between fresh bulkies. She had obliged; she understood, and was impressed, as was Minnie, by how splendid and special the occasion was. Mom had everything in readiness even before Ira was awake. She packed the sandwiches in a brown paper bag while he had breakfast; they were waiting for him on the oilcloth-covered washtub lids when he kissed Mom goodbye and took his leave. With four bulkies, sandwiches in a brown paper bag, he skipped down the shabby stairs, spryly traversed the drab hallway, past the dented letter boxes, to the stoop. Into the quiet, grubby street. And with resilient, youthful stride, he hurried to the subway.

Redolence of salami, garlic redolence, in the subway train, garlic redolence trailing downtown from station to station, until he got off, got off, climbed up, with nascent dubiety, to the street. Redolence of salami, garlic redolence, environed him as he walked west to the Hudson River. And stronger and stronger, as the morning grew warmer — or he imagined — the nearer he approached the rendezvous, garlic redolence. The more he sniffed the paper bag, the more worried he became, the more the contents assaulted and alarmed his nostrils. Jewish immigrant boor, he was certain to be judged, slum, Jewish boor. He had blatantly violated the most elementary rules of etiquette: no one but a gross numskull, an ignorant chump, would outrage the delicate palates of two such well-bred ladies by offering them food that reeked of garlic to high heaven. Fortunately, he arrived at the dockside before the others. That gave him his chance, his one and only chance. As swiftly as he could, he hurried toward one side of the pier, found open water between pier and bow of the excursion steamer, and tossed bag and contents into the river. Gone was the garlic, gone the redolence. What a relief!

Tell me, is this the place for regrets, Ecclesias?

— You might say it’s the place for everything: regrets, confessions, confusions, despondence, and elation.

Because it occurred to me, Ecclesias, and not for the first time, occurred to me in my pusillanimity, that as Larry lay outstretched beside his love, why should not the incipient symmetry prevail, and I lie at ease likewise beside Iola?

— In the first place, it doesn’t work that way. And in the second place, even if the example of your chum and Edith transmitted the same kind of prompting for Iola as it did for you, say, to the level of acquiescence, what then? You were already disabled.

It’s very kind of you to be so explicit.

— No trouble at all, old chap. You were already incapacitated as far as passing encounters with mature women were concerned. Is that the truth or not? With women like Iola, for example. You lived, or comported yourself, in a fantasy world with respect to them, and were incapable of realizing your fantasies. And why? Because you were incapacitated, as I say: frightened, timid, puerile. I venture to surmise that your imaginary scenario, as they term it today, might indeed have had some basis in fact: that, acting on the incentive Iola seemed to proffer, the hints of inducement she seemed to waft your way, in all likelihood because of your puerility, had you not been so disabled, had you been another type of individual — masculine, virile, self-confident — your guess would have proved right, fancy might have materialized into event. Offer to stroll with her along the path through the woods round about (a velleity that guttered in your mind, and guttered out, all but stillborn). I imagine that because as she perceived you, you offered no threat, she would have accepted your invitation. It’s a matter of intuition, of course, of surmise. Nevertheless it coincides with yours. And not so farfetched, considering she was a woman, a human being, who had taken no vows of celibacy, a young woman of thirty, who had foregone sex for over a year, if not much longer, and was living with a woman who was enjoying its pleasures, or seeming to. Pretend you had the courage you lacked; summon up lost directness, conceive of yourself as the young Steve V, of later acquaintance: “Iola, let’s leave these two lovers to themselves, and stroll among the leafy groves.”

— So what if the other two had guessed your motives? There was nothing unnatural about them; nor would the guess necessarily have predicted the outcome: an innocent stroll was all that might have eventuated. . But, say that while strolling you took her hand. That was enough to tell you. And what would you have done had she returned the pressure of your hand in kind? What should you have done? Oh, you know now, you know now, decades and generations later. What would she have done with that narrow straw hat with the jade lining, uncovering the flaxen braids? Your jacket, the oaten one that had been Larry’s, worn so much now, the creases on the inner side of the arm, creases opposite the elbow, had become permanent — Larry’s jacket your improvised couch. But you didn’t do anything of the sort, did you?

No, I didn’t. I didn’t come back from the walk, with the reverse of the well-known limerick, of the lady inside the tiger, that is, I having been inside the lady, come back with the leaves and weeds brushed from my kasha jacket, and looking bland and introspective, as if I had encountered only the vines and brambles of a hillside. No, I did not.

— Impeccable, slum Prufrock, conforming outwardly, and so faultlessly, to the correct, the virtuous paragon.

The conformation was pathetic; it was all that was left me, and you know it.

— Well, granted. So you’re marooned on barren strands of fancy: desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope. Too bad: Your de rigueur was mortis .

Indeed. How often I’ve thought, had it been Stella, had it been Minnie, the merest suggestion, an unspoken sign, had been sufficient. I did the same thing with another woman later. .

— We waste our time. You cast the salami and bulkies into the river, and they come back to you, not after many days, but in a few hours. During picnic time, still remorseful at the enormity of your throwing away good food, compounded by a new sense of how wrong, how distorted, was your view of refinement, as if politeness were shorn of naturalness, shorn of appetite, eschewed variety, piquancy, you confessed to the deed. And how roundly you were reproved by the others, were you not? By Iola in particular. She was terribly fond of Jewish salami, she said. She loved the savor and the consistency; it was so pungent and substantial. Oh, why had you done it!

Yes, why?

— Unkind of me to say so, I suppose, but sometimes your yearning to undo the done becomes very wearing. What it all amounts to is that had you been a man, you might have copulated with her—