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

Brought in by Larry, a mass of clay on a modeling stand made its appearance, modeling tools, large wooden calipers, other instruments of the sculptor’s craft, an ample cloth throw as well. Edith was to be Larry’s model; a study of her face, a portrait or bust of her in clay, his first serious project. And while Larry sculpted the image of his lady love, Ira was left to his own devices, more or less . It seemed he was left to spend the evening in any way he pleased. But little by little, out of the vagueness of Ira’s mind, the realization began to coalesce that Larry needed, Larry craved, someone to admire him, to extol him, that he brought Ira along as audience. For a time, Ira played the role expected of him: he watched and praised, and for a while it was diverting to watch Larry at work. As he did everything else, he sculpted with a flair. Nor did he omit any item pertaining to his role as sculptor. He wore a smock, he wore a beret. He exclaimed in delight as he traced the contours of Edith’s features with his long white fingers. Praiseworthy and truly impressive was the facility with which he reproduced the contours of Edith’s features in clay, reproduced them with ever-growing verisimilitude. It was clear he had talent, just as it had been clear he had talent as a lyric poet.

Edith meanwhile sat silently with a manila file folder in her lap, reviewing her lectures for the next day, or sometimes conversing with Larry and Ira as she posed. Two or three hours of the evening would pass while Larry worked on the bust. When he was done, and the session over, all signs of his artistry were concealed: the cloth was carefully draped over his work, and the unfinished sculpture again stowed in a corner of the apartment, to be unveiled and brought out the next time, a Monday hence.

What a bore that must have been for her. .

With fingertips together, Ira sat reconstructing scanty vestiges of recollection.

You hear, Ecclesias, what a bore. That mature, increasingly sophisticated (and undoubtedly discontented) woman sitting there patiently, while her youthful lover exclaimed in delight when his scanning fingers discovered a new curve. . in the light of the floor lamps and table lamps of her small room. She should have posed bare-ass: the not-too-proper, risqué thought crossed an old mind. That would have been more fun, given the occasion more éclat and daring and reward, more exposure—

— Come along with you.

Mo’ diversion, at any rate — who knows — though not for Larry, of course. He was an honest, faithful, and conventional lover; and she, as Ira was to learn in time, most enterprisingly unconventional and demurely clandestine: the way she smuggled in the Ulysses , the way her sober gaze perched on his fly. More diversion, for everyone but Larry.

As things were, Ira sat there, many an evening, Larry’s inert retainer, wishing he were at Mamie’s and then remembering why he wasn’t: biding his time, biding his time in Edith’s apartment, especially at first, when lamplight would contract to merest points, as if he were in a trance, biding his time, in suspended animation, biding his time. So that even Larry’s sculpture phase seemed to add a listless increment to the doldrums of that sophomore year.

Still, there’s one thing to observe, Ecclesias, a trait of Edith’s, not too conspicuous, but noticeable: a subdued — should one say? — a well-bred narcissism. Or what else to call it? A covert seeking out of self in the mirror, a culling, as it were, of every new fold and wrinkle. (Others too had noticed the trait.) Perhaps that accounted not only for her numerous, passing, amorous episodes, but for the seeming passion she had for initiating youth, friends of mine and strangers. Would I had known it—

— You did, eventually.

No, no. I meant known it sooner. Even, as I have already indicated, as early as Woodstock.

— You still regret?

Yes, the undone. Not to do again, but the undone. It is the undone that exerts a stronger grasp on the soul than the done. She would have been avid to lay for us both, to be vulgar, lay with us both, to be Biblical. I know. All the more so, since she was indeed dissatisfied, unfulfilled, by Larry as a lover, as I surmised at the time, and ascertained later. But more than that, she was given to treating the body, her body, as a kind of counter, not contour but counter, an existential pawn subservient to curiosity or to policy. For example, out of sheer altruism, she and another woman both undertook to induct a famous homosexual poet — well, what the hell — Hart Crane — into the praxis of ordinary fornication. The guy puked—

— Gossipmonger.

No. It’s an illustration. We’ll all be dust in a couple of years, Ecclesias. I daresay I’m almost the sole survivor.

XI

At Loft’s, where in a surprisingly short time Ira became cloyed with even the choices of pecan “logs,” as they were called, not to mention chocolates, however exotic the filling, the company promoted the regular evening clerk-cashier to assistant manager, and transferred him to a different branch. As a result, the duties of the clerk-cashier, by order of Mr. Ryce, the manager of the store, devolved upon Ira. Another clerk was hired in Ira’s place, a young Southerner, lately come to New York. He was winning in person and manner, charming all and sundry with relaxed friendliness and native drawl. He and Ira worked well together; he was easy to get along with. He was a member of the Naval Reserve, to which he had to report for duty one weekend per month, and he filled Ira’s ears with all kinds of agreeable tales of the uses to which he and his mates put the launch that took them — and often female friends and visitors — to the training ship and back. How varied and interesting must have been his experiences aboard the man-of-war, his impressions and manifold memories of life in Alabama, which he told Ira during those many afternoons and evenings they worked together. Most notably, however, to the vulgarly, no, perversely inclined Ira, was that he frequently and humorously referred to the naval launch as a fuck-boat. How Ira envied him.

And well you might, Ira thought, well you might indeed: how pitifully contracted already was the scope of your libido, how atrophied the spirit of play, of sport.

Working the same shift, afternoon and evening, was the soda dispenser, soda jerk, a Briton by the name of Jeffrey, with a peculiarly orange complexion and a penchant for telling the most pointless and smutty jokes Ira had ever heard. One clung to Ira’s mind particularly — the attempted buggery by an English seaman of an Oriental shipmate. “Hey, me Chinaman,” the latter protested. To which the nautical sodomist made retort: “I don’t care if you’re a charabanc, I’m going to ride you anyway.” And then Jeffrey had to explain for the benefit of Bob, their Southern sidekick behind the candy counter, what a charabanc was. No gag deserved the name more than his.

Known to Jeffrey was a speakeasy two or three doors away from the store, and there at his invitation, Bob and Ira would repair Saturday nights, after the store closed, and quaff “needle beer,” and listen to more of orange-faced Jeffrey’s jokes. Oddest damn thing though: not so many years later, now a writer, and in the company of Edith, Ira met the same joker tending bar in a restaurant. Franklin Roosevelt was in office by then; Prohibition had been annulled; and there was Jeffrey behind the bar shaking up a cocktail. “Hi,” Ira said. “How are you? You and I worked together at Loft’s. Remember? You were a soda jerk there.”

Ira must have said all the wrong things in the world, all the things that belied everything he told his employers. He gave Ira the blankest stare an orange could give, and shook his head. And somewhat miffed, embarrassed too, and seeking to avoid further embarrassment, Ira returned to the table, sat down again next to Edith. “The so-and-so was a soda jerk at the same store I was at Loft’s,” Ira explained. “And now he doesn’t know me at all.”