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

From Edith he learned that Marcia had definitely made up her mind to sue Lewlyn for divorce. Proceedings began apace, and Lewlyn refused to contest the suit. And though it was all much too complex, too involved and unfamiliar, for Ira to grasp in all but haziest fashion, he gathered that Lewlyn was suffering acutely: from the ultimate rejection by his wife, from the disapproval of his bishop in the church for declining to contest the divorce, from his own renunciation of holy orders, the collapse of his religious beliefs and aspirations, and especially from the negative mood about life that had overwhelmed him of late. Life had become empty of almost everything worthwhile, empty of everything except sensation — how did Edith phrase it? Love had become glandular relief. He was profoundly disenchanted and pessimistic. How could she not help but comfort a man so dejected? She had, and, of course, intimacies had followed. She refused to assign undue importance to the body, Edith asserted, and both understood that physical intimacy was a consummation of friendship between man and woman — without binding commitment. And now even more than before, Lewlyn’s affections were torn between Edith as a potential permanent mate and the woman he had met in England, Cecilia. The question of who was going to win out was the predominant issue in Ira’s mind — it was simplistic, but he knew no other way of formulating it; and he was sure that, brought down to simplest terms, that would have been the way Edith would finally have expressed it. What other way was there? That was the paramount question: Ira could sense it: through all of Edith’s altruistic, objective presentation of the triangle, within all the restrictions of cultivated behavior, all the restraints of propriety and fairness, she wanted to win, she wanted Lewlyn to marry her. Well, he had been through all that before, Ira mused, heard all those circular, subdued hopes before. . and had so little to offer by way of practical response, by way of anything except sympathy, sympathy and attentiveness, until the subject became so attenuated it floated off beyond him. Yet even so, inadequate though he felt his response to be, Edith seemed to hunger for it, cleaved to it, sought for more. In fondest, most earnest terms she besought him to telephone at the earliest, to call. Twice she pressed a five-dollar greenback on him. She now had the utmost faith in his discretion.

It was encouraging to Ira that the body didn’t mean too much to Edith, that she felt — aside from necessary physiological precautions, for the sake of health — like eating cooked fresh vegetables and other smooth bulk — the body deserved no special consideration. All the fuss made about it, preserving its “purity,” chastity, was nonsense, nothing but a ridiculous carryover from stuffy Victorianism. No modern person would abide by such, or could abide such silly prudery. No emancipated woman would, certainly not after Freud had shown the grave emotional disorders puritanical repressions brought on. It was too tenuous for Ira — not entirely, but most of it, grazing him like a mist, and drifting off. Two clouds of thought interpenetrated within his mind though — the solution to the oft-posed problem (his wits roamed out of contact, mooning on the irrelevant): answer to the oft-posed problem: what happens when an irresistible force meets the immovable body: they interpenetrate — two clouds of thought all but fused inseparably, solipsistically, and in customary fogginess. Was he an example of a repressed person? If he screwed Stella whenever he got a chance, even though she was a kid cousin, true, not such a kid now: he was twenty-one; from that minus four left seventeen. Did that indicate repression? Of course, he couldn’t ask Edith, that was the worst of it. He might fantasize as usual by telling her, describing the “first-floor” apartment, with its gewgaw onyx electric lamp in the parlor front room, the lamp Jonas got by opening a savings account with the Harlem Savings Bank, so heavy that as tart Hannah said, you could get a hernia lifting it. And the new Stromberg Carlson Heterodyne radio pouring out Black Bottom or Charleston music, anything to drown out the act, but boy, did your ears have to be honed for the least sound — no, no, it was a fantasy-urge to tell her. But was that repression? He felt like a felon, no, like a falcon, successful, fierce, the osprey rising with the live fish in his talons. Now there again, that sense if only he had the nerve during those few walks with Edith, if he told her his intimations, but he didn’t, and maybe because he didn’t the mind kept coming back to it. Did all that indicate repression? Of course he was repressed. Look at Leo, he even offered Ira a chance at the coffee-dispensing divorced friend of his mother, a regular hunky yenta , with eyeglasses and big tits and a box like the tunnel of love in Coney Island. Of course he was repressed. Leo with his fat nose and thick lips wasn’t. He was always making jokes about it, pretending he was laying one of those hallway whores: Ow! Ow! Take your quarter back! Of course he was repressed. Why did he prey first on Minnie, and now on Stella in his aunt’s house? Why didn’t he go hunt up a piece of ass like a man?

No. . all right. If she didn’t propose to accord the body undue consideration, as she said, why was she so careful about her skirts, about the way she sat, so primly, hem down well below knees, always decent, never gave him a chance to look up, why? He didn’t know, but that was how she was reared, inbred modesty, as they said, but it didn’t give him much encouragement. Anyway, most of the time he’d be afraid to try to raise a hard-on with her. What would she think of him, although once or twice — was he crazy? — he could have sworn her large, steady, noncommittal eyes rested on his fly, as if appraising, as if appraising the bulge next to his crotch were the most natural thing in the world. He could have bet a dollar, but maybe it was just absentmindedness. Jesus, the things he was keeping from Larry these days, things like that, things he had learned: surmises and confidences. And only yesterday, it seemed, Larry was standing on the fine green carpet in the living room of the empty apartment by the crank of the Victrola, saying with a shining tear in his eye: I’m in love with her, with Edith, my English instructor. And the world toppled. But now he, Ira, was miles ahead of Larry in confidences, in revelations, maybe in chances too, if he ever got the breaks. Jesus. . goddamn it, he had the rawest, unfettered sense of humor — that was the worst of it; how the hell did it get away from him, range at will with no trammel? He could — in imagination — ask Larry the filthiest questions: Hey, Larry, did you ever try back-scuttling Edith? I have to back-scuttle my kid cousin Stella most of the time — she’s so short, you know? I never did with Minnie, didn’t have to, across the bed on weekdays and along the bed Sunday, you know what I mean: regular. Who’s Minnie? he might ask. You don’t know? My sister. What about you and Edith? Ask him for advice. Ad-Vice. Ha, ha, ha! Absent thee from felicity awhile , said Hamlet. So what do you do? And why did she nearly jump out of her skin in Woodstock when the cat brushed her leg? Come on. Come clean. I’ll swap you smut: no holds barred. Not what did you do; what didn’t you do? Ha, ha, ha.

You bastard. Le poète est semblable au prince des nuées , Iz could quote from Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal . Prince de nuts, Ira could quote from Stigman. .

If only Marcia would keep her hands off the affair, it might develop into something permanent, a life together, Edith told Ira for the ninth time: a life together. She and Lewlyn had so much in common, love of nature, love of beauty, love of poetry. He was so sensitive to loveliness of flower and leaf and country road. And now that he had taken up living in the Village, they saw so much more of each other, had dinner together, breakfast on the weekdays. And he was so gentle, so very gentle and considerate of her; even though he knew all the tricks of sex, and they tried every kind of play, his hands were so gentle. They were strong, but gentle. And he was so steady, for all the terrible suffering Marcia was putting him through, and the crisis he was going through in reordering his life. If only Marcia would stay out of it, if she didn’t interfere, their friendship could ripen into a permanent relationship.