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

“Then why’re you to blame?”

“I’ve said. For encouraging him to do what he’s not capable of. I think I encouraged him to overtax himself.” She paused, moistened her lips. “Of course, I didn’t know how serious it might be — how serious the consequences might be. But as I look back on it, I just know when the real heartbreak happened. Do you remember those last few days — or nights — in Woodstock when he would sit by candlelight trying to create the mood for a lyric, and couldn’t?”

“I remember he said once that the lyric he was writing wouldn’t go anywhere.” Even as Ira spoke, inarticulate perception hummed in the background: how calamitous she was.

The dimness of the room accentuated the gravity of her features. “It’s too late to do anything about that now. I’ve got to bring this thing to an end without his hurting himself any further. I’d never forgive myself if he did. I know I’m straining your loyalty to Larry, but you can see why, I’m sure. I’m deathly afraid of anything happening to him.”

“I don’t think anything will.”

“You won’t say anything, please?”

“Oh, no. I understand what you’re saying. But I don’t think you are — you’re anywhere near as guilty — I mean as responsible as you, uh—” Ira tried a pejorative frown. “As you say. And holy smoke, you’re accusing yourself of being responsible for just guesswork.”

“I hope you’re right.” She paused. “Oh, dear.” She seemed to encounter her anxiety in the window on the sidewalk. “You’re sweet to bear with me.”

“I don’t mind. I mean, I’m glad. I don’t know what good I am.” He shrugged. “Anyway, nobody can tell. How can you tell? His father had a heart attack last year. And this is a year later that Larry fell on the sidewalk. So even if what you say is true, I don’t see how you — you can blame yourself.”

“I probably wouldn’t, if John Vernon hadn’t been in the picture. I might have acted a little more maturely. I was much too concerned, and needlessly.” She raised a tiny hand to the back of her head as she spoke, absently fingered the bun of braided, glinting, dark hair, and brought a hairpin into view. “No use shifting the blame to John. I was just plain silly.” She applied the round of the hairpin to the inside of her ear. “It’s all water over the dam anyway.”

Ira watched, fascinated. When she had apparently relieved the itch, she pressed the round of the hairpin between her lips—

“Gee!” Ira exclaimed, jerked his knees together.

She regarded him in surprise.

“How can you do that?”

“Do you mean what I just did?” She held the hairpin suspended.

“Yeah. I never saw anybody do that before.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing it either.” She bent her head placatingly.

“Doesn’t it have a taste?”

“Oh, no. It’s just a bad habit.” She restored the hairpin to its place in the bun behind her head. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

“It’s all right.”

“It isn’t, really.” She patted the back of her head. “Does it bother you?”

“Oh, no, no. I was just—” He shrugged.

She smiled. “I wish Larry had more of your directness.”

Embarrassed, Ira was silent. To him, the incident had a peculiar metaphysical quality, a permanence transcending the transience and confusion of her preparations for departure, the shadowy walls, darkened by street dust, the open suitcase beside which she was sitting, on top of the mussed black couch cover. Reality seemed of another order, seemed condensed, the novelty of his being alone with Edith, here in her 8th Street apartment below the sidewalk. Her thoughts had apparently reverted to the difficulties of her situation.

“I’d thought even before Larry got this position of entertainer at the summer resort where he is now, that was where he was headed, and when he did get it, I was sure our relationship would come to a natural end. He was maturing so differently from what I expected. We were moving in such different directions. You must have noticed it.”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Now I’m not at all sure how things will end, especially with his fainting so unaccountably, and this hint of heart trouble he’s shown. I can no longer be direct with him, you see, at least not as direct as I might have been otherwise. And of course there’s no turning back for either one of us, undoing what’s been done. All I can do is hope and pray that some adoring young female at that summer resort will worship him to the point of diverting his attention away from me. From me, and all I represent. It’s a rather slim hope, but it’s all I have to go on. His weakness for adoration for its own sake.”

“I know. He told me once.”

“Oh, he did?” Edith looked at him questioningly.

“Something about wanting a woman to get down on her knees and worship him. I thought that was funny.”

“I’m not at all surprised. Then you understand what I mean. I’m past that stage. I can’t imagine how I could have been such a ninny in the first place. But I was. . I don’t suppose you know what it means to be a woman turning thirty, and someone as beautiful as Larry coming into her ken. Such an extraordinary Adonis comes into her life — so worldly, so cosmopolitan — in love with you.”

“I was crazy about him too — that way, at first. He was wonderful.”

“Yes. . and I don’t want to spoil your feeling for each other either. It’s a very beautiful relationship.”

A kind of rhythm went through Ira’s head, as of a poem whose words he had forgotten. The two sat quietly looking at each other for a few seconds without saying anything. How could Ira tell her, he felt sorry for the guy, but it has to be? Tell her: It isn’t her fault at all. It’s his . He’s up against a will that’s so inexorable, he doesn’t even have to exert it, a will that compels him. How did he know he hadn’t overborne him step by step, overcome him? As if he had become some kind of elemental, insensate force, and Larry was somebody humane and mild and good. Tell her that he was like that hungry fighter you read about; you can’t beat him. Not Jack London’s hungry fighter either. But he said: “You want some help with those satchels tomorrow? I don’t go to Loft’s till three-thirty tomorrow.”

“No. You’re very sweet to offer. I’m going to telephone for a cab. Then I’ll get a porter at Grand Central. There’s no trouble in getting one, and they’re always very accommodating. Do you work the same hours at Loft’s in the summer?” She crossed her legs, so trim under the discreetly low hemline of the bronze overlay-patterned skirt. “You’ve given me a great deal of comfort just being here.”

Ira tried to look away, find distraction in passersby outside the window. “Well. About Loft’s, yeah. But I’m going to take a French course this summer. Every day, two hours a day. I didn’t take enough credits, and I lost nearly a credit with the D’s I got; I gotta start making up credits.”

She shook her head wonderingly. “You’re such a strange mixture. It would seem you would have no trouble at all getting good grades. You got an A in Composition this semester. That wasn’t even your original interest.”

“That was just my luck. Mr. Kieley’s course was devoted to descriptive writing. You’ve told me yourself I’m good at that. Overall, I’m slow.” Lowering eyes brought into view sleek ankles, calves. “Slow as molasses. And college. . I daydream instead of paying attention. I can’t keep up.”

They meditated differently from men, women did, or at least Edith did. She seemed lenient, but was she really? “I’m going to have an early dinner with a colleague, Boris, you’ve met him. And I’m going to bed early afterward. Probably my last good night’s sleep for the next two or three nights.”