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

Silence separated the dark space between them, a solemn silence. As they lay there on their cots, Larry began again. “Only one thing matters,” Larry said, trying to convince himself more than Ira. “Edith. She’s the only person in the world that really matters to me. . Ah, to be able to solve that problem.” His words, so full of gravity, distributed themselves throughout the semigloom of the tent. “We’re back again to the crux of the problem — whether I should leave my family and marry Edith. I know that’s what you’re saying to yourself, Ira, that I should not care what anyone else thinks.”

“Oh, no, go ahead, go ahead.”

“Leave home now, with my father gone? It seems less possible — I seem less able to do it now than ever. It becomes more cruel. Really cruel. I’m at a crossroad. Up till, up till Papa died, I thought, if necessary, I had the — the necessary heartlessness. I thought I’d mustered up the courage while I was at Copake to carry out my resolution. The more some of these, you know, sex-hungry ones threw themselves at me, the more resolved I became. But Papa’s death was a cruel blow. More than the loss of a father. I mean, it shakes up everything I’ve made up my mind about.”

The time for bantering, for flightiness, was indeed over, at least for a while. Ira couldn’t fathom Larry’s world, that was all, he couldn’t fathom it. What the hell was he doing here with Larry in the first place? With Larry and his proper, decent problems. Problems of love, of solicitude about his mother, and still influenced by family judgment. Scruples, yeah. And he, Ira — talk of love, talk of family! No, all he could hope for, speculate about, was his slim chances of a quick screw with Stella in Mamie’s front room. Jesus. Yes, Larry’s solemnity affected him, but by the very incongruity of it all. As if the two were like clouds in the obscurity of the tent. What a place. What an interlocutor—

“All right, I know you don’t get along well with your father. The situation is — or I should say was—” Larry’s big hand moved in a pale arc through the shadow. “Was. Say you’re in my shoes. You’ve got no father. You’ve lost him, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Your mother is a widow. Oh, you’ve got family — but if she ever needs you, it’s now. Your sister is soon going to be married. You’re the last child. I’ve asked you something like this before. But now the question has really become sharp, intense.”

Two pale hands plowed the gloom. “Would you, if you could, go off and leave your mother? Get a room somewhere, a part-time job somewhere? Whatever. I know you’re attached to your mother — as I am to mine, maybe more. Would you leave her — to herself? Remember, your sister is gone. We’re going to sell the house, move to an apartment in Manhattan.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Would you?”

“Leave Mom?” Ira asked.

“Yes.”

“Where am I going?”

“I told you. Some one-room place in the Village maybe. Leave your mother and go to a rooming house. I don’t know. You get some kind of a job, part-time. Nights. You can’t afford an apartment.”

“What’s the aim?” Ira temporized.

“You know the aim. The same as it’s been. Break all the ties that I, you, have.”

“ I don’t have any, any like yours.”

“But that’s not relevant. Break all the deep, close family ties. Change your whole outlook. What’s dear to you. What you value, enjoy. You’ve got to undo what you were. All right? I’ve said all this before. I’m repeating myself, I know. Become a bohemian, toss out ambition, career, profession, live any old way,” Larry suddenly stressed. “Live just to write poetry, live to be a writer. Live I don’t know how.” He paused. “Well?”

Was the guy looking for a way out? The thought drilled through Ira’s mind. Nah. “Listen, pal, you’re practically asking me to decide your life.”

“In a way, yes.” Larry spoke as grimly as Ira had ever heard him. “Decide my life now.”

“Wow!”

Silence again in the space between the two cots. Decide my life now , Ira heard repeated in his own mind. Literally. It could be that. Then what did he want? Decide my life now . If he told Larry what he would do, if he told Larry the truth, about his own willfulness, callousness, self-centeredness, stemming from what he had become, yes, stemming from his own contemptible gratifications, his corroded character — in which the once resonant Lower East Side world, holistic, Jewish, with its cheder , reverence, fear of God, and all the rest, were all lost in the fog of himself, all turned to pulverized, floating sensations, impressions in a self devoid of integrity — hell, he had gone astray — in more ways than one.

Silence, presumably deliberative, meditative. Larry was waiting. Start again. If he told Larry the truth, the course of action he would have blindly pursued, blindly, instinctively, his course of action — he would have said: sure. He would leave Mom. With somebody like Edith the goal, the prize, that kind of future, or whatever to call it, option — and for himself, he knew damned well there was no other, no other avenue open to him. But hell, for Larry, a hundred avenues were open. A hundred twats too. Nah. Then he would have to lie. And if Larry took him seriously, if his answer counted seriously in forming Larry’s course of action, he was bending Larry’s destiny, he was consigning Larry to his fate. Unless he, Ira, was willing to play a subordinate role to Larry indefinitely, as he had told himself before, feed Larry with all his own wild imaginings, his agonies and capers, he was advancing his own future at Larry’s expense. It was like an envisaged sacrifice of Larry to his own aims. Ira imagined he could see his own face in the lamplit canvas overhead, see eyeglasses and all, leering at himself in knowing mockery at his imminent betrayal. Jesus, it wasn’t right. He tried to stall. One last opportunity to ward off perfidy: “‘Decide my life now,’” Ira finally said. “You mean if I were in your place?”

“No! You make the decision in your place. Not for me. For yourself.” Larry’s voice filled the tent with vehemence. “ Your mother.”

“My mother?” He was nailed to an answer — no, he was nailing Larry with his answer: “I guess I wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Leave Mom — all alone.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Well, with me it’s different. I don’t have that kind of family you have. We don’t have any of that kind of — well, affluence—”

“We’re not really all that affluent.”

“Compared to me, for Christ’s sake. And different life, background. Years in Bermuda. Culture. All right? So you don’t have to do as I say, as I advise. If I didn’t have a sister, I wouldn’t leave Mom alone, that’s all.”

“It makes my leaving home all the more difficult, judging from what you say.” A note of irritation at Ira’s manifest lack of logical coherence crept into Larry’s voice. “According to you, I have so many advantages; in other words, I have a dozen times more reason to stay at home with my mother than you have, and yet what I’m trying to tell you is those are the reasons I ought to leave.”

“Well, you asked me what I would do in my case,” Ira said forcibly. “It’s hard.” The argument made him feel less like a traitor. “I can’t do both, you know. Be poor as we are, and be well off as you are.”

“Would you stay home if you were well off? I mean, you lacked for nothing. All right? You’re making it seem that you would stay home because you don’t have anything. That’s not an issue.”

“But now you’re asking me to be as you are.”