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

Thoughts unreeled against the passing countryside, trailed past buses and meadows, slipped over houses, floated against the clouds beyond the trees at the margins of hayfields.

As if he were eavesdropping, Ira remained silent, trying to assess the implications of his friend’s merriment — and the implications they would have for himself — for potentialities, the advantages. Meanwhile, Larry entertained the Jewish poultryman. And he — Asher was his name — never lost his smile of contentment. He beamed as he drove. Even as they approached the city, and traffic began to hem them in, he steered through it with a smile, with the look of a man getting the better of a bargain, the bargain of Larry’s anecdotes, Larry’s mirthful borscht-circuit tidbits, acted out with infectious enthusiasm, with all the vigor of a seasoned showman. If the resolution of last night’s conflict with himself had liberated Larry from dilemma, his release showed itself in something Ira had only seen traces of before, never seen exhibited with such verve and aplomb as Larry demonstrated, seated beside the beguiled poultry-man in the cab of the rolling truck: it was Larry as the performer, Larry enjoying his role as performer.

They entered the city, reached the last station on the elevated subway line. When the two offered to alight, Asher told them to sit still, and then he generously drove them all the way through the Bronx. At length he drew up to the curb under the platform of the station after which he would have to branch off from the subway line, stopped, extended his hand, invited them to drop in at his farm not far from Spring Valley. “Asher’s Shady Brook, everybody knows it. You wanna see good farmerettes, like they called them when the war was on? My four girls. And they’re all pictures too.”

Assuring him they would try to avail themselves of his hospitality, the two set off, with much laughter. Ira, too, felt himself suddenly possessed by a vivacity he could scarcely recognize, that didn’t belong to him. And indeed, there was something inebriate about it all, blithe, the spell of Larry’s release. No, he was all wrong — Ira felt a fleeting giddiness, as though he were displaced from himself. This was the way to be. Stop scheming, stop calculating, furtively nourishing fancies he ought never spawn. Larry’s choice was the right one. Who the hell was he to think he had any part in the matter, could conceivably benefit one way or the other, no matter what Larry decided? Who the hell was he ? Nobody. He was a shlemiel . So get back to being one.

They dashed up the stairs at the rumble of an approaching train, jabbed coins in the slot of the turnstile, and charged into the train, cheating the closing doors. . panted, grinned in private frolic, hung on to straps and stood, although there were empty seats interspersed among sitting passengers.

After a two-station ride, they separated; Larry got off the train. “Call me in a couple of days. Call up. Day after tomorrow! I’ll be home.” Moving along the platform, Larry shouted through the partly open window, loud enough for the whole car to hear, and Ira, secure in his induced excitement, felt no embarrassment, but shouted in return:

“Right!”

The train went on, it left Larry behind, but for a second, the window through which Ira last saw him seemed to trail after it the lover’s face, blissful, radiant with happiness and anticipation.

What a splendid, exciting span of time, of existence, so heady, so vicarious, spent in another’s enamored, ardent state, vicarious and ephemeral. It had been great. Like the difference between a completed drawbridge and a single cantilever, open, himself, yeah, what he was. . Let’s see. He could sketch a little strategy while he rode, serve up a pretty little core within the racket the train made traveling, traveling over the rails downtown. Do a little planning on the banging din, Gunga Din, let’s see, as he swayed, train- davening toward the 96th Street and Broadway exchange that would take him back uptown to Lenox Avenue and Harlem. Then let’s see how lucky he was: if he was lucky, no explanations were needed. Catch Stella in a favorable moment, home now from a month at the beach. Easy as pie. Oh, maybe bestow on her, and Mamie, and Hannah, if they were home, a few bits about his trip with Larry, like sprinkles on a cake, to improve the tedium of temporizing while he waited his chance. Oh, he was cunning, he congratulated himself, versatile and devious. In that department, nobody could beat him; he knew the most ingenious moves. But if he wasn’t lucky, if he wasn’t lucky. It happened often — he suppressed a shrug — if he wasn’t lucky, then tough luck, tough luck. He couldn’t fall back on Minnie on Sunday mornings any longer. Jesus, that goy with the car, he got his licks in these days on Saturday night, after work. He laid her first, humped her in the back of the car, sure as hell. Dished him out of his whack on Sunday morning, the way the Irish kids said, dished him out of his turn at bat. It was over. She spurned him, that was all. He’d be wheedling; they’d be arguing, till Mom got back from shopping. Stella was his only bet.

He cast his gaze down from knees across the aisle to shoes on the cement subway floor. He reduced exposure of prurient maunderings that way, with his head down, as if examining trampled tabloid headlines beneath his own feet: SCOPES TRIAL BATTLE LOST BUT NOT WAR: DARROW; FRANCE DEMANDS DEMILITARIZED RHINELAND. Only trouble was, it made him drowsy when he tried to read the smaller type. And drowsy he might well be, after last night’s wakeful excitement, Larry sputtering away, like a fuse, wasn’t he? And e-e-e, the whine of mosquitoes, and then suddenly, boom, the telegram: looky, looky, looky, here comes nooky. And Uncle Louis, what a pathetic wreck, what a difference between him and the lean sinewy guy in prestigious postman’s blue who tried to lay Mom — only about seven or eight years ago. She should have let him.

What the hell are you gonna do? Suddenly surly with himself, he rebuffed his internal thoughts, his self-esteem, with its hated sneer. Who the hell was he to tell him ? Did he get a fancy, dainty Ph.D. to lay, like Larry? No. So quit yapping, goddamn you. Get a job after school, spend two bucks for a lay, like other guys. Yeah — his demurral dripped with skepticism: lazy bastard. Broke. Get a dose maybe. Excuses: he was shy, he was timid. Hell, why could Larry go to a nice, clean, white apartment in a house on St. Mark’s Place, with that pretty view outside the window in the late, late afternoon, when all four came back from that excursion up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain? And back of the house, what a pretty yard down below, the sculpture on the lawn, the trees, the shrubs. Like a landscape framed in the window. All the time in the world to enjoy each other, stroke each other smooth, and shmooze and smooch and smooch and shmooze . Minnie wouldn’t even let him kiss her anymore, and Stella half the time exhaled onions, canned salmon and onions. And never a word to say, just cover-up gab. But with Larry and Edith, they mingled kisses with talk about Beauty, Beauty, Beauty, like Edna Millay, talking about Euclid alone. While he? Yeah. At Mamie’s, he knew all too well, he would — with the dance band blaring — drive it into her with a front-room straddle of an evening by the Stromberg Carlson Superheterodyne radio.

They were passing the 110th Street station. . just passed. . 103rd next. Next 96th. And he, he got a couple o’ crumbs out of it, out of Larry’s romance. Like the khumitz Pop used to brush up with a feather the morning before the first Passover night, crumbs of unleavened bread. Went into a wooden spoon. Tied up with a rag. And burned in the street — Ira snorted silently, sourly, joke. Who bothered today? You could really make it funny on 119th Street: hey Mickey, hey Feeney, hey Maloney, you know what this is? It’s khumitz , a few dry bread crumbs. So they’ll say, Yeah? Waddaye do wit’ it? And you’ll say, Burn it in the street. And they’ll say, Go ahead, we’ll piss on it. You Jews are nuts. .