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

“Two or three nights,” Ira repeated, shook his head in sympathy. “That’s some trip. Then all the way back too?”

“Yes.” There was a wry curve on her lips. “People still ask me whether New Mexico is in the United States.”

He hemmed in appreciation, stood up.

“Please, don’t feel you have to leave.”

“No, I just—” He debated in himself an instant: he had employed the alibi only a short while ago. “I have to go and make my visit.” At least, by semi-quoting, he obviated repeating prevarication.

“Oh, yes.” She stood up also. Womanly figure, yet girlish. Bronze skirt bridged by neutral heathery sweater to olive skin. And after a glance at the mirror, “How is your grandfather?”

“My grandfather? He’s the same. He complains and complains. His eyes, his legs, his sides.”

Her charity was proof against Ira’s flippancy. She shook her head pityingly. “He lives with your aunt, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, my aunt Mamie. She’s getting so fat she can’t cross her legs.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” How different his world must seem in her view. “And right now he’s complaining about how loud the girls play the new radio.”

“Oh. I don’t think you ever mentioned them before.”

“My two kid cousins? Yeah.” Boy, that was a boner. He felt as if he carried a tremendous pack on the back of his brain: a pack-Jew carrying a skull crammed with ugly articles he couldn’t display. That would be a funny notion, if he could do something with it. But it had to be beautiful — to suit the goyim —yeah. They carried around beauty in the back of their heads—“What? I’m sorry.” He had heard the question she asked but needed more preparation to answer.

“How old are they?” So steady her large brown eyes in her curiosity.

“Oh, sixteen, twelve. Something like that. One’s blond, wants to be a manicurist, the other’s a redhead, wants to be a dancer.” Ira chuckled. “They’re both taking commercial courses.”

“Then they’re younger even than your sister.”

“Oh, yeah. Minnie’s about — two years older. Eighteen. She graduates from high school next term. In the winter.”

“I’m really sorry I have to make this trip, Ira. I think it’s time we knew each other better.”

“Yeah?”

“One more thing. Thank goodness I remembered.”

He waited, puzzled, watched her rummage in her sewing box. “This ought to do the trick. I just plain guessed Larry’s size, but your hand is so much smaller.” She came dangling a yellow seamstress’s tape. “Really, one ought to have those jeweler’s sizing circlets, but — which finger do you prefer to wear a ring on?”

“Oh.” Ira complied almost automatically. “This one.” Ira presented the third finger.

“I’ll try to measure as carefully as I can.” She looped the tape around his finger, tightened the band, read the divisions on the tape, loosened it, then read the divisions again. “You can always get it adjusted afterward.”

He tried to concentrate on what she was doing — to foil an incipient hard-on, first time ever in her presence. “You gonna get me one o’ those?” He frowned worriedly. “I mean, Indian rings?” Jesus, he was on the verge of disgracing himself. Hell of a way to show appreciation. “Gee. That’s gonna be nice. I mean thanks.”

And he wasn’t concealing the tumescence very well, wriggling in order to increase room of trouser. It was that encirclement of tape that did it. But what a bland way she had of observing one’s condition: unperturbed brown eyes impersonal, and toying with the yellow tape around her dainty finger. “Larry’s ring was very bold — to go with his big hand. I’ll have to find something right for you.”

“Thanks. We’ll be the only two people in City College with Navajo rings.” Ira sidled toward the door. That was the way to beat it: keep moving. “I just write the box number you gave me, and Silver City, New Mexico? Is that all I have to do? No street?”

“No. That’s all. And do please write often. You have no idea how much I enjoy your letters.” She followed Ira to the door.

“Yeah? I’m glad.” He felt the offending member sink into reverse. “I hope you have a good trip.”

“Oh, it won’t be. They never are.” So American, the way she opposed a cheerful demeanor against a disagreeable prospect. “I’ll be bored to death. There’s nothing more certain than that. And constipated, of course.” Her expression changed to one of serious affection. Her hands stretched up, and held Ira’s cheeks between them, drew his head down, and pressed her delicate lips against his, delicate yet firm. Ira could feel the cool shape of them. “You’re very dear to me, Ira.”

“Thanks.” It was strange to be oneself, no more, no less, just honestly be oneself. “I’ve learned so much from you, I can’t tell you.”

“I hope it’s a little more than the silly things I’ve done.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think you’ve been silly. Yeah, I know: you’re too generous. And you worry too much. You blame yourself too much. I do something like that too. But I’m not generous.”

“You’ve been that with me. All this time.”

“Yeah, just listening.”

She laughed. “Please take care of yourself, lad.”

“I’ll try.”

“Goodbye. And write often.”

“All right. And your letters mean a lot to me.” He took her extended small hand in his. “Goodbye, Edith.”

“Goodbye.”

II

Ira attended a daily two-hour French class in the early après-midi. Oui . The course, the second half of the second year of French, all Ira would ever take, was given by a Professor Girain, a native of Gascony (D’Artagnan’s country), a most astringent and delightful person. He bristled with gruff Gallic wit. Gallic wit it would be called — there was such a thing as Gallic wit, Ira reflected: no other people made those sudden reversals and ripostes (possibly the Irish). “I ask a man on ze corner where is Leo Nard Street, please. ‘Leo Nard Street.’ It is ze English langwahje wheech is crazy: you write Leo Nard, and pronounce it Lennard.”

Ira relished his professor’s jests and thrusts, relished them so, and was so receptive, he invariably caught their drift before anyone else in the class did, laughed before anyone else. And after a while Professor Girain’s glance would veer toward this most appreciative of his students, as if Ira were a sort of connoisseur of the quality of the humor being purveyed. There was also one other bond between them: Ira’s pronunciation of French. Out of the entire class, only two students consistently received a ten out of ten for pronunciation; one was Ira, and the other an upperclassman, Calvin Schick, who had spent the last six months in France on a scholarship.

Ira stopped typing. The damned memories of that college, the damned memories that college had branded on his mind, memories twined with his own folly, rashness, febrile sex as the New Masses reviewer, unwittingly euphemistic, called it — even now the damned past arrested its own recounting. It was that same Calvin Schick that Ira had tussled with when he obstinately insisted on staying in the registrar’s office until he was given his transcript, and the other, who now did part-time work there, tried to throw him out, physically. Ira resisted: the window in the office door was broken, and Ira’s wrist superficially cut. The women clerks, alarmed at the sight of Ira’s gore-smeared hand, quickly conceded. Ira received the object of his long trip uptown — his transcript — and exited the building shielding it from his bleeding wrist. Oh, hell, the memories that trooped back. It was Schick’s brother, classmate of Ira’s and with whom he had been on good terms, a goy , who upbraided Ira bitterly when he appeared in the very decimated ’28 alcove on Yom Kippur: “That’s your holiest day. Why don’t you respect it like the rest?”