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

“We’re not considering money.” Larry transmitted his insistence across the dim interval. “Would you leave your mother at this point? Yes or no?”

“No.” He had committed it, the ultimate in transgression, betrayal.

“That’s what I want to know. . Why?”

“In your case, or my case?”

“In my case.”

“You told me yourself why.”

“Does it seem like a good reason to you?”

“No.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

“I can’t help it. It’s just too tough for me.” Ira raised his voice. “Christ’s sake!” He swatted at the thin fine sting of proboscis penetration. “Bastard. I think I got him. But I’d have to get out into the light to see if there’s any smear of blood. But — aw, nuts, if I got out into the light, they’d eat me alive. I’m sorry I dragged you into this place, adventure or no adventure. We could have hitchhiked right home.”

“It’s all right. I told you I have no complaint,” Larry insisted strongly. “As a matter of fact, it’s paid off better than hitchhiking home. I mean, talking to you clarifies a few things in myself. I can’t leave my mother. I’ll have to work this thing out some other way. If I could just talk to Edith, and get her opinion. But then again, I know what she’d say. Stay home. Get my degree. Do the sensible thing. All that. But we’re both in the same situation. She’s uncertain too. I would have to do the thing that would make her certain. Do you follow me? It would depend on my action. Am I certain? Am I ruthless for her sake? And so I go right around in a circle again.”

Silence once more. Something else to talk about, to distract. It was too taxing, all they had been discussing; it was too fateful. Jesus, he was caging himself into a future as well as Larry, a possible future. If he was instrumental in excluding Larry from occupying the space, there it was. That didn’t mean it was automatically his, of course, but maybe a step closer. Oh, hell, what was he thinking of? He couldn’t’ stand anything so strict as behaving the way Edith expected. He wasn’t built that way, no matter what kind of insidious perceptions pricked his mind. Aw, bull.

“I was telling you we lived in the same house as Uncle Louis in Brownsville,” Ira said to change the subject. “We shared a flock of chickens. Mom told me that all the chickens were stolen one night. Including the marvelous rooster. Disappeared.”

Larry seemed not to have heard, not to be listening.

His attempt at diversion scarcely glanced off the brooding Larry. Ira pondered. How the hell was he going to get the guy off the subject of their destinies? He had to get off it. Jesus. Get off it, and away from his sense of guilt. “Mom told me that the reason we moved away — to the East Side — and how different everything would have been if we hadn’t — was that Pop, as usual, got into one helluva row with Uncle Louis, his nephew. They called each other all kinds of terrible names, cursed each other. Ze vun sikch balt geshlugen tsim toit .” And expecting as always Larry’s “What does that mean?” he prefaced translation with remarks about the Yiddish tendency toward horrendous invective. “‘Drop dead’ is the mildest of them,” Ira tried to humor his friend. “‘Be burned to death, be slaughtered.’ ‘Be drawn and quartered.’ Hey, I’m rhyming,” he added comically.

No acknowledgment came from the outstretched, discernible figure on the cot on the other side of the tent.

“I think maybe it’s what Jews may have seen or suffered over the centuries.” Ira spoke more slowly. He was becoming discouraged, as though he had no audience. Surely, Larry’s silence wasn’t owing to Ira’s counsel, which Larry perhaps perceived as false, as treacherous. Nah. “I have a hunch that’s it,” he continued, paused, received no confirmation of being heard. “Funny thing is they never swear by genitals. Know what I mean? Wops’ll say ‘yer mudder’s ass,’ or ‘yer fodder’s hairy balls. .’” His voice trailed off. No use. The best thing to do was to turn over on the cot, forget the whole damn thing, wait, sleep if he could, till morning. Jesus, Larry was in a bad way. Larry was in a bad way, or he himself was in bad . Boy. Ira bent forward to reach for the rough blanket at the end of the cot. “My father had better hoss blankets than this,” he grumbled, barely audibly.

“You know, I’ve never asked you,” Larry said, almost abruptly. “Have you ever been in love?”

The ground had shifted. In the ambiguous gloom under the sloping walls of an army tent, a bell tower reared up from the summit of Mt. Morris Park hill. “Well, I told you about Rosie, my uncle’s daughter,” Ira stalled.

“Oh, no, that’s just kids investigating. Have you ever — well — it’s personal. Do you mind?”

“Oh, no. God, after you telling me all your — all the private things about yourself.”

“All right, I’ve told you. Have you ever been with a woman? Or a girl? I realize I’ve volunteered information. But asking is different. So—”

“Oh, no.”

Larry let a few seconds of silence go by. “I have a reason for asking. I’m not just prying.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Have you ever gotten so excited you came too fast? You got a premature orgasm?”

“Oh, is that it?” Ira debated, foresaw consequences — in every answer, save one: profession of complete ignorance. What was the next best choice to outright lying? “Oh, maybe once or twice.” Ira still felt secure behind seeming casual curiosity. The locus of concern was within Larry’s province.

“Once or twice. But not usually?” He rolled about to face Ira. “I seem to have run into some sort of trouble that way. It really bothers me. I don’t know how to get over it.”

“Yeah? Maybe you ought to see a doctor.”

“I may have to. I’m sure there are any number of men who’ve run into the same thing. You didn’t do anything special about it?”

“Me! Oh, no.” It was gratifying how little truth it took to deflect, to stopper up the genie within the vase.

“Then I can be frank about the whole business. I didn’t think you’d had any experience. You never mentioned it.”

“Mentioned what?”

“Sexual intercourse.”

“Oh.” The scrawny colored woman who had replaced the comely Pearl of the ladies’ rest room atop Yankee Stadium? Scrawny Theodora, apparition in the doorway opening on a stuffy ground floor, shmatta -draped room. Jesus, you couldn’t mention that. “Well,” Ira began, had to clear his throat to dispel reluctance. “Nothing to be proud of.”

“Oh, sure. I wasn’t interested in romantic adventure. I was just interested in whether it was usual, that’s all. You said once or twice. I guess that answers it.”

A boxer hung on the ropes in Madison Square Garden. Strands in his own brain shuttled back and forth, twisting to a cable of last refuge: I used to lay my sister. Try and say that. All right, make Stella older: I lay my cousin a lot. I still lay my cousin every chance I get. Jesus, he’d been afraid of that, afraid at the very moment when Larry proposed the trip. Lucky it wasn’t a whole week, as Larry had suggested, a suggestion he had shrunk from in advance, within his own mind. Lucky. The urge to unburden, to claw at the toils of the net holding the pent-up self. Boy, if he ever got started, there was no telling where he’d end. Older cousin, older than what, than he was, than she was? “I. .” he began. “It isn’t very nice. But you know, sometimes the damn thing runs away with you.”

“Sometimes?” Larry echoed mirthlessly. “That’s the understatement for today. Runs away with you is right. If I wasn’t keeping faith with Edith, listen, I’m no prude, you know? I made up my mind.”