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

He recalled two taxi rides, and in one, the Jewish hackie recognized the great seeress, and treated her with all the deference that Jews reserved for the learned and the intellectually endowed (and financially also didn’t hurt). Surely, a weighty matter or two had been discussed on the way, broached and enlarged on; the gathering itself required extra chairs, he recalled, since she had been a famous poet, and many significant associates, including William Who, the editor of The New Yorker , clean-cut gentleman, running the show, looked fittingly grieved and gravely concerned.

Most telling was the inescapable fact that, while Léonie Adams read Louise Bogan’s poems, Marcia slept off her steak tartare and two martinis, specks of lip skin — or was it crumbs of steak tartare? — stirring like tiny hackles to the current of her breath. There was Marcia snoozing away, while Léonie read Bogan’s poems. “You wretch!” Léonie denounced Ira the following day when, seeing her off on the train to Connecticut, he told her that Marcia had slept through her reading of Bogan. (Hell, Bogan never stirred either.) And then Léonie went on to lament the fact that a once fetching huskiness had disappeared from her voice, ever since she had given up smoking. Fancy that! The service provided other memorable insights, not the least of which was when the celebrated poet W. H. Auden, sitting in the window seat of the chapel in the back, tapped Marcia’s shoulder and said, “Hello.” At which she was looking very pleased. And you sat there like a goddamn block looking up at Auden, glaring up at Auden, neither standing up nor seeking introduction. Why? Because the bastard had published, had allowed to be published in some late and unlamented ephemeral magazine, a piece of disgusting erotica, or homosexuality, of fellatio in clever rhyme. Talk about pubic smells and phallic sights unholy. So you glared up at him, never made a move to rise, introduce yourself, shake hands.

— Do you conveniently forget your own incestuous excesses, those acts of carnal behavior you have rendered so? Have you not eschewed the interactions of the polite world, as well?

Treat, Ecclesias, but not drooling about it in an amatory paean.

“We were quite good friends until this.” Edith pulled a hairpin out of the tight bun in the back of her head and probed her ear delicately with the round end, licking the wax off in her unbelievable habit. She probed the bun with hairpin again. “But now I know she disapproves. Very. Her antagonism is evident in every word of hers Lewlyn repeats to me.”

“Yeah?”

“Especially, do I resent”—the channel of brown dress between thighs narrowed, and Edith tossed her head with unusual abruptness—“her constant reference to my negativism. My negativism. I’m no more negative than she is, if I were happy. She makes it seem as if I’m incapable of anything but a destructive tendency toward life. That shows how stunted, really stunted, her sympathy is — no matter what she says. Or prates. Or pretends. She simply doesn’t know what I’m about. I wonder if she knows what anybody is about? She paints me as being in love with defeat. It happens that I think Man is ultimately defeated. And I’m not alone either. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like people, I don’t sympathize, I don’t enjoy the simple things of life, that I shun happiness. It infuriates me.”

“Yeah.” Something was coming through to him beyond the tepid roil of slackness and his lasciviousness, something about Edith’s plight, Edith’s longings, her endearing traits too: a glimpse. Something more than Stella, a woman, a person, a complexity with a mind, and above all with feelings, capacity for suffering. Vast matrix of synapses: mind, reflection, trying, worriedly trying, to peer into the future. The realization was sobering: not whether she’d slip him five bucks, as she did before he got a job, not whether that carnal opportunity would ever come. But Edith, the troubled woman, existing with her dilemmas apart from himself, in her own right. How rarely he felt that; how often others, sensible people, seemed to — and he ought to.

“I was just thinking I couldn’t do anything for you,” he informed her, penitently.

“I don’t expect you to do more than you’re doing. You’re very dear to me, Ira, just by bearing with me.”

“I know. You told me that. But it’s funny.” He shook his head, and suddenly caught his breath. “I just got an idea: what can you do? Intervene!” The word made him jerk, thrust his legs out spasmodically. “That’s what I mean. You’ve been good to me—” Like bilge he felt, putrescence; it suddenly silenced him, and he lost hold of the thread of the idea, sought to stimulate it with fingers stroking temple: “Good to me. I mean what can I do? Is there anything I can do? Gee, I feel as if—” He hefted fate in half-closed hand. “If I could do something it would make all the difference. But what? I’ll get a regular aura in a minute, like Prince Mishkin, or somebody.”

With tiny hands in her lap, she listened — so receptive, solemn, as if deliberating. “I don’t think anyone can do anything, change anything — I’m not fatalistic, or am I? I can’t change myself. Neither can I change Marcia, certainly not Marcia, any more than a juggernaut. Cecilia is far away in England — not that I would hope to change her. The key is Lewlyn, his will, his character, his decision — his character, to say it all over again. He’s the one going through a very critical phase, and it will all depend in the end what he decides is best for him.”

“But still you talk about Marcia’s influence on him.”

“That may just tip the balance. She’s a very strong person.”

“Still, he’s here with you. Somebody else would have told her beans. I mean, wouldn’t have told her.”

“We, Marcia, Lewlyn, and I, have friends in common. He’s spoken to all of them about his treatment by Marcia. They all know about it, and of course they’re friends of hers — primarily. It’s a big joke among them. They give him tea and sympathy. Léonie said.”

“Only you.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Boy. I don’t know.” Ira drew arm against the hand gripping his wrist in awkward stretch of skepticism. “Everybody’s got someone to fall back on but you.”

“Wouldn’t common sense indicate that a woman closer to his own age would be a better mate than one ten years older?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He shrugged.

And the tiny hands remained quietly locked in her lap, and there seemed to be a kind of drooping in her demeanor, something akin to resignation — no, more than that: it registered with no more than blurred observation: she had a kind of lien on defeat — what a crazy idea! Something within her ran contrary to winning, even if she wanted to. She fed on it. No wonder Marcia charged her with negativism. Oh, no, oh, no, he could hear within himself: oh, no, she’s gonna lose. She’s got to lose. Well, for Christ’s sake. His hand fell from his lip to his thigh. Be goddamned. Which came first? That he’d have that trim body there for his? Or was sorry for her defeat? It was written as clearly as she sat there. Yeah. All he needed was Prince Mishkin’s aura. The way the whole thing was building up. Ira squirmed around in the wicker armchair. Look, the way he was being drawn in here, as if preordained. Look. Look. And could you change it? Never come here again. Disappear. Larry might invite you, but too busy, pal. Or any goddamn thing. Would that make a difference? Who knew? He was forcing destiny. Drop out of sight, drop out of college, go over to the steamship companies on the Hudson River, the way Mannie Levine did on 118th Street, when Ira went with him: bedbugs on the mattress under the blanket on his bunk, but he got a job, pot walloper. Get a job as oiler, anything. Disappear. Do something decent in your life, quit pratting Stella, forget about Minnie — would that make a difference in Edith’s life? Would she win, despite herself? He was making her lose, helping to prepare her to lose, so he could gain. Jesus Christ, did you ever see such a cuckoo?