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

Fortunately, Izzy, classmate and member of their small clique at the college, worked as a doorman at the Provincetown Playhouse, the famed little theater in Greenwich Village. Eugene O’Neill had made his debut as playwright there, and since it was the policy of the theater’s ruling committee to try out plays by new and often unknown dramatists, avant-garde plays were to be expected, and did occur. Because Izzy’s sister, who had gotten Izzy the job as doorman, was a combination cashier-bookkeeper and business manager for the theater, it would be a simple matter for Iz to keep Larry posted about new developments. Besides introducing Larry to Tom Wright, the stage director, Izzy could let Larry know when casting would begin. Flushed with hope of a new beginning, and the auspicious way expectations dovetailed with prospects, Larry already moved about like a seasoned actor treading a proscenium.

Edith and Ira applauded his new choice of artistic calling. Ira knew they both made the same appraisal of it, though Ira felt sure his was far less kind, far less generous, than hers. Ira’s contained an element of gloating — because, knowing Edith so much better now, if only intuitively, and striving to conform to her standards, her values, Ira could guess how she must be comparing Larry in his new avocation with the promising young lyric poet who had so romantically entered her life only a short year and a half ago. So he’d found his true level — that of a performer and nothing more; Ira knew she wondered how she could have been so mistaken. Conjecture, and unkind conjecture, was all Ira had to go on — at first. Fancy, given play, became a kind of thermocouple formed by her merest hints of tone of voice and features and his wish fulfillment. And yet, the more Ira tried to reflect objectively on what was taking place, the more inevitable became what he had foreseen, even when presented with the Ulysses by default the summer before. The present reverted to the past, but in a spiral. He and Larry walked again through 59th Street from DeWitt Clinton toward the chary shadow under the West Side El, in which the United Cigar store show window glared with incandescent beacons. How different the meaning in retrospect of Larry’s singing those snatches from The Pirates of Penzance in which he had a small part: “A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox—” The enchantment Ira felt then had its current analogue in Larry’s own bathetic parody: a pair o’ socks, a pair o’ socks, a most ingenious pair o’ socks.

In keeping with his new choice of artistic avocation, Larry applied for the position of assistant entertainment director at the prestigious Jewish summer resort Lemansky’s, in the Catskills, for the summer of 1926. He was granted an interview with the board of directors of the resort. Larry came away believing that he had made a very favorable impression, ad-libbing as stand-up comic, suggesting skits and partly performing them. A short time later he jubilantly announced that the board of directors had confirmed his appointment to the position of first assistant to chief of entertainment for the entire summer season. His summer, as he said, was taken care of. And not only this summer, but the next, and his prospects of a career on the stage greatly enhanced. For besides his functioning regularly as an emcee in the evening, he would have a hand in conceiving, writing, and staging all kinds of theatricals. True, it would be on a borscht-circuit level; still, it was a great chance to acquire professional knowledge of theater, from creating effects to scene-designing, costuming, and, of course, acting. Once again, Larry stressed, as if he were addressing himself to Ira’s unspoken reservations, that even the position of borscht-circuit entertainer offered valuable grounding for a career on the stage. He again cited instances.

And then something happened, momentary and sinister, an omen so ephemeral that only after many years was it recognized as a kind of preamble of a fateful warrant. During exam week, after which, and without waiting to ascertain grades, Larry had planned to pack at once and leave for the mountain resort, he suffered an unaccountable brief loss of consciousness. He had just stepped out of the doorway of the high-rise apartment house on West 110th Street “when all of a sudden I went blotto,” said Larry. The spell of unconsciousness must have lasted only a few seconds, for he recalled trying to pick himself up from the sidewalk just as passersby were extending a helping hand. He hadn’t suffered any ill effects to speak of, just a bruised shoulder and a swollen and lacerated ear. He was assured later by the family doctor the cause had probably been a small blood clot, nothing serious. Probably it would never happen again.

“He told me a little borscht would do me good,” Larry laughed when he met Ira in the ’28 alcove at noon between exams. “I just took the Mili Sci exam before, wouldn’t you know it. If I’d taken it with this bandaged ear I might have gotten an A-plus for the course. I got a battle wound.”

“Boy, all those bandages; that’s some knob. What’ll you tell ’em up there in the mountains?”

“Oh, I still got a day or two left. I’ll take it off. It’s just there against infection.” He tapped the top of the bandage with long, white forefinger. “They’d think it’s a gag anyway: a comedian with a cauliflower.”

He left the city without further incident.

Came the Tuesday following exam week. With Larry out of town, and at Lemansky’s, Ira took the opportunity to telephone Edith. She would be delighted to have him over, if Ira didn’t mind the mess. She was packing her suitcases, she was getting ready to leave New York and take the train for the three-day trip to New Mexico.

She was in the act of wrapping a pair of her tiny shoes in tissue paper when Ira entered the apartment. A couple of her dresses were still laid out on the bed. “It doesn’t look too much of a mess,” he commented, after greetings.

“The cleaning woman was here yesterday, so it looks halfway tidy,” she said. “Would you believe I’ve sublet it for the summer? I posted a notice on the college bulletin board, not expecting anyone would want it. It’s so dingy and noisy. And I told them about the dust they could expect in the summer. But that didn’t stop them in the least. They were simply starry-eyed at the prospect of living in the heart of Greenwich Village. It is near the university. I wish you might have seen the two very proper schoolteachers who rented it. They’re here from Waukegan, Illinois, to get credits in education.”

She invited Ira to sit down. No, she didn’t need any help. She could do this in her sleep, she had done it so often — and please forgive her for not stopping; she hoped he didn’t mind. “I loathe these ritual trips to the West,” she said. “The long boring train ride. I’m sure to get constipated. But I haven’t been there in two years. Last summer, of course, I went to Europe. It would break Papa’s heart if I didn’t appear. Mother could live. So could my sister, as long as I sent them a check regularly. But Papa is beginning to sound so old and defeated in his letters, it breaks my heart. I’m more attached to him than I realized. This daughter of his,” she tucked the shoes into a corner of the suitcase, “not one of whose ideas he approves of. Still, there’s a kind of unspoken affection that comes through despite our differences.”

“That’s how I feel about my mother. Not that she doesn’t approve. She doesn’t understand.”

“I know. Your face lights up when you speak of her.”

“Yeah? I guess you always love something you once loved,” Ira ventured.

She smiled. “Scarcely.”

“No?”