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

Much love, darling, and kisses for the beautiful black eyes, and go on a tear with a lady or a lamb or a man or a wolf now and then. Just don’t get bit or hurt.

So. . there she was, a trace of her. Echo, an echo. He stared at the pale keys until they swam, and he became melancholy with brooding about a past he strove so valiantly to re-create, about a past that he could feel, but that he could not resurrect from the dead.

Ira turned the doorknob, eased the doorknob, eased the door ajar, as he prepared to leave. “Gee, these glacial departures,” he muttered.

Edith laughed lightly. “What did you say?”

“I said these glacial departures. In the hallway already.”

“That’s what I thought,” she smiled. “Good night, lad.” She lifted her face to Larry’s, as he put on his coat as well.

“Good night, Edith.” Larry kissed her lips. “I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

“Good night, Ira.” Smiling fondly, she extended her hand.

“Good night, Edith. Thanks for all that toasted raisin bread and cinnamon.”

She followed them as far as the street door, contracted when they opened it, caught her breath and shrank back. “Isn’t it cold! Good night.”

“Good night, Edith. You’d better get back inside,” Larry called out.

They closed the door behind them, entered upon wintry, incandescent, hurrying, shifting forms on 8th Street: turned toward the Sixth Avenue El, amid the frigid stridor, frigid commotion of the crosstown trolley car, passing voices — and the ding-dong of the Christmas bell, shaken by the well-padded Salvation Army Santa Claus on the corner, tending the black iron pot hanging between the legs of the tripod.

“Oh, boy, it’s sure snappy out.” Ira quickened his gait, to keep abreast of the longer-striding Larry.

They forged ahead toward the musky dusk until the illuminated frosted-glass sides of the Christopher Street subway kiosk came into view.

“I wish you’d reconsider coming over to the house and having some of that lovely goulash with us,” Larry urged.

For a moment Ira hesitated. “Gee, wouldn’t I like to. But my poor old grandfather. It’s long past time I paid the old boy a visit. Mom’s been after me. You know how it is. I bet I’m missing something good.”

“You are, believe me. I’ve told you, my mother makes the finest goulash this side of Hungary.”

“What tough luck.” Ira shook his head regretfully. It would still be early evening when he got off at the 110th Street station, early enough to make a homey call at Mamie’s. Stella would surely be home by now. “I really mean it. Boy.”

Larry pulled off a fur-lined glove to get at a coin in his pocket. “Next Monday, okay?”

“That’s a far-sure as Pop would say.”

J’ai fait la magique etude que nul n’élude . Was that approximately the way Rimbaud’s line ran? He understood now. What was it he understood? The encompassing realization that he had slipped into his mind of its own accord some pages back, and been deferred. Edith would say, when he revealed his sorry history, first with Stella, then, as if torn from him, with Minnie, “I thought you were unawakened. I thought you were maternally directed, and still uninterested in sexual relations.” She thought right, in the right direction, but not far enough. How could she? It had taken him a lifetime for the truth about himself to coalesce into the simple fact that stared him in the face, single fact with multifacets: that answered such questions as: why was he invited to accompany Larry and Edith on their tryst in Woodstock? His first conjecture had been that he was invited in order to play a diversionary role (actually, had they been discovered by people who knew Edith, they might easily have come to absurdly erroneous conclusions regarding her appetites). But the true answer, he now felt, went deeper than that.

He had been invited to Woodstock first, and later, with Edith’s consent and apparent approval, he was invited to assist at those sculpture-cum-lovemaking sessions, because of what he was. Had he, Ira, been other than what he was, someone with developed masculinity, or with developed libido corresponding to his age, Larry would certainly have discerned it, certainly have avoided competition. Was Larry too wanting in that respect? Of course he was. As if it were a formula by which a number of seemingly diverse problems were solved. Turn where he would, the same fact stared him in the face from a score of directions. Even that — what did Edith say in her letter to him of which he had excerpted a part: “. . though your youth makes you immature in knowing how people live and are, often. You’d better have more personal life soon, or you’re going to need it badly. . ”

Ira put the letter back in the file.

Ironic as hell! Two waves intersecting so casually: “your youth makes you immature. .” and “You’d better have more personal life.” Two waves that originated from the same source, two waves propagated at different times. For when he did seek that more personal life she spoke about, strove to break free of that which she called immaturity (merely immaturity!), there was hell to pay: Edith turned into a Fury. But what was this all leading up to? What was the underlying cause of this unifying fact that stared him in the face, that synthesized his diverse manifestations of behavior into a comprehensive realization, into a Joycean epiphany? Nothing other than his continued, his prolonged infantilism . It was that that made him a safe confederate at his friend’s wooings, such as they were; it was that that had accounted for his own acts with Minnie and kid cousin Stella. Why the hell hadn’t he seen that before — and chided Ecclesias for not revealing it? Why the hell? His infantilism. Safe as a child — ostensibly — safe as an “unawakened” juvenile. His puerility lulled everybody into trust, his own family, his shrewd aunt Mamie, predisposing Larry, perceptive Edith. Only the almost clairvoyant, mercilessly unequivocal Vivian, with whom he was to fall in love, saw through him at once: “You kiss like a baby.”

You might swing around in your swivel chair, my friend, and ask, Why? Ask why of your mentor, Ecclesias. Oh, it wasn’t necessary, Ira thought: he knew why, knew why without asking. He had been fixed in infantilism as deep as a bronze boundary marker was fixed in the ground, deep as a utility pole. A few genes might have been predisposing factors, a few of Pop’s genes. But no use going into that now, Ira checked himself. Enough that he had abstracted at last the key to his behavior, a conception of the driving force of behavior he loathed — and in the end, had to counteract.

I

The joy Ira had felt when Larry transferred from NYU to CCNY, the joy of having his closest friend in the same college, the same class, sharing the same alcove with him, had worn off by the time the spring term of 1926 began. Relationships had altered, and no longer was Larry the unquestioned, the well-nigh anointed guide he once seemed in realms of art, letters, and poetry, Ira his shy, abashed follower. It was not only that Ira had published a piece in The Lavender and Larry had stopped writing that changed attitudes and roles, but Ira had learned much from Edith, in the very presence of Larry, by whose wish he was present. He had learned much from Edith by merest hints and intimations, inklings, almost, of judgment, reflecting without doubt her changed feelings about Larry. Barely perceptible changes of mien transmitted all manner of subtle information concerning true feeling under a beguiling exterior. Whether Edith knew it or not, or Larry either, Ira’s presence at these sessions enhanced awareness, capacity for perception; it increased his explicit evaluation too. All at once, as if stemming from early subordination to Larry, incipient rivalry grew, and then domination. Edith knew it. Larry knew it. His creativity seemed in retrograde remorselessly. He gave up sculpting, dropped out of the School of Design. The clay bust of Edith, the stand, and the modeling instruments disappeared. His enthusiastic descanting on Brancusi and Maillol shifted to talk about the theater, about the stage. Acting was nothing to look down upon, he declared. Many a well-known playwright had begun as an actor, and he intended to begin that way himself. He was sure he was endowed with a natural talent for the stage. Dramaturgy might well follow. A single term in a school for acting would be all he needed. He intended to apply for a bit part at the Provincetown Playhouse that spring, and if none was forthcoming, then a bit part the next fall when the theater opened with a new play.