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

“Otherwise the forms are much the same,” Lewlyn continued. “And of course so is the ritual appeal. I’m on the inactive list at the moment.”

“Oh.” Ira felt completely out of his element. “Because you’re gonna teach?”

“No, for other reasons, I’m afraid.” Again, Lewlyn failed to chuckle. “I’m no longer sure of my mission, to tell the truth.”

“Oh.” The distance between their worlds made Ira feel a little dizzy, and yet Lewlyn seemed unaware of it, as if Ira shared his background, or was conversant with it.

“I think the twenties have much to do with it,” Lewlyn went on in his dry, unaware fashion, this time interspersing remarks with a chuckle. “No other decade has seen such an upheaval of accepted ideas. In all fields. Anthropology, social science, psychology, the physical sciences. In the arts. Innovations are taking place on every side. No other decade in recent history has seen so many. We’re really fortunate to be alive at this time, aren’t we?”

“Huh? Yeah.” Ira was glad to see Larry threading his way toward them. It was too much to cope with, generalizations of that kind, too much was expected of him, by way of knowledge and thought, to hold his own with a practiced mind, accustomed to forming generalizations.

“Edith just told me you’re going to begin teaching this summer, Professor Craddock,” Larry said.

“Lewlyn,” the other corrected. “Yes, I am. Not a moment too soon, either, before I’ll be reduced to borrowing.”

Larry joined him in chuckle. “Are you going to be teaching an elementary course? I mean Sociology 1?”

“Yes, indeed. A new instructor could scarcely escape Sociology 1.”

“That’s fine. You wouldn’t mind if I took your course this summer?”

“By all means. Glad to have you. I just hope you think it’s worth your while.”

“I’ve got to make up credits.” Larry caught himself and smiled apologetically. “I didn’t mean that. I meant I’m sure it will. Is there a standard text for the course? I might as well get it now.”

“No, I intend to mimeograph leading ideas. The course is compressed. I feel I ought to keep it as open as possible, and a standard text won’t do. Besides, concepts are changing so rapidly, standard texts are becoming outmoded. You might find it useful to go through Abernathy’s Social Institutions , if you have time. It’s easy on statistics, doesn’t stress measurements as much as some of the other texts, and makes good reading. Again, a little outmoded. I think — they say there’s a revision due out soon. You might want to wait—”

“I’ve gotta make up a pile o’ credits myself,” Ira chipped in — and then noticed Edith was staring at him fixedly. Did she want to speak to him? She made a motion with her arm, and he realized that all this time she had been holding something in her free hand that looked like a strip of cloth. He made his way toward her.

“I don’t think you’ve seen this before, Ira, have you?” She displayed the coffee-colored, foot-wide strip, on which there seemed imprinted a dark green, flowerlike design.

“It looks like tree bark,” he said. “What is it?”

She was looking at him intently. “It is. It’s made from the bark of a tree, a mulberry tree I think Marcia said. It’s called tapa.”

“Tapa?” Ira scratched his ear.

“Marcia brought it from Samoa.”

“Oh. What do you do with it?”

“Tack it on the wall.” And with fixed smile, “Or the door.” Then with altered voice, “Do you think you could come over alone sometime during the week?”

“Alone?” He knew she didn’t mean for him to tack the thing up.

She actually turned slightly toward the apartment door. “Can I trust you to say nothing to Larry?”

“Sure.”

“Some evening.”

“I’ll come right over after supper, if you want. When?”

“Monday, if you’re free. Tuesday.”

“I can come Monday.”

“I’ll expect you then.” She displayed the tapa again for Ira’s appraisal.

It had all the makings of the plot of a mystery story, except that it wasn’t. Ira felt elated that Edith wanted to talk to him alone, but she already had before once or twice. It was something personal; it was probably about Larry again. He knew how she felt about Larry, and he had delved in his mind for mature suggestions he might offer to her problem: how to end the affair without hurting Larry. Ever since Larry had lost consciousness and fallen, she had dreaded the consequence of wounding him. Ira had no ideas. Not even zany notions. How do you end a love affair, painlessly or otherwise, when you’ve never had one? Hey, wait a minute: suggest to Edith that she tell Larry she had had. . intimacies with Ira. What an idea! Oh, stop it, you cuckoo.

But things turned out to be utterly different from what he was prepared to hear when he came into Edith’s apartment. It was altogether different, a new development, a disappointing one too, imparting a mild chagrin, ruling him out for good, sap that he was, proving what he was for the n th time:

She was having an affair with Lewlyn.

“Oh.” And after recovering, Ira asked: “I thought — he’s married to Marcia, isn’t he?”

“Yes. I know you’ll be discreet.” Edith’s large, solemn brown eyes rested on him.

He felt almost disgruntled, thwarted, waited silently for her to explain. They were no longer happy together, Lewlyn and Marcia, and Lewlyn had taken his own apartment in the Village.

“No?”

“Marcia had become restless and dissatisfied with their marriage.”

“I didn’t know.”

“She believes their marriage was a student type of marriage, at a student level, and she could do much better, accomplish much more work, with a husband in the same field she’s in: someone in anthropology.”

“So how can that be?” Ira felt a certain grimness come over him, perhaps because he had lost all hope. “How d’you — I’ve never been in love. How do you pick somebody else out just like that?”

Edith laughed. “You’re priceless.”

“Yeah?” And now he felt shy.

Edith told him what had taken place. Instead of taking a ship directly to Marseilles where Lewlyn had agreed to come from England to meet her, because of a seamen’s strike, she had taken a ship to Australia, and aboard she had met a young and brilliant anthropologist, who had also been studying native customs in another part of Polynesia, and the two had fallen in love.

“Oh. That’s different then.”

He was of noble descent, could lay claim to a title if he chose, she went on.

Suddenly he was reminded of the fact that Edith had the nicest calves, and the smallest feet, such a trim figure, and she was even fond of him . Shucks. Trim figure, the way it was molded out from the waist to her bottom on the gunnysack material covering the bed on which she so habitually sat, like a vase with legs projecting. He was the natural pretender, wasn’t he, now that Larry was about finished? Natural heir apparent. Instead, Edith had gone and fallen for another man: a usurper. Nice guy, sure, Lewlyn. If only Edith didn’t have such an appetite, such a gusto for someone else’s hard luck, calamity. So it was the guy’s hard luck. But then she wouldn’t be Edith. And then he wouldn’t be here. Hell, no use looking sullen. Shine up sympathetically. Even if you didn’t like it, what the hell.

“How come Lewlyn’s a priest?” Ira snagged the question out of the air.

“I doubt he’ll remain one much longer.” Edith smiled.

“I think he said something like that, about becoming inactive. Why?”

Explanations followed, to which Ira listened restively, distracted by Lewlyn’s recurrent hum of disappointment. For one thing, Lewlyn had lost his faith in the efficacy of his priestly office — he saw no efficacy in prayer, in the mass, in any of the sacraments. Beauty, yes, often, but no efficacy, and hence no real meaning. Salvation was an illusion. And so was religion in general: a crutch. And on and on, about what a bunch of rigmaroles anybody should have known religion was, as Ira had learned when he was fourteen years old.