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

Sobs. Broken, stifled cries. A spate of tears swamping the glimmering little square of handkerchief she tried to staunch it with.

“Here. Take this one.” Ira yanked his own handkerchief, which Mom had just laundered, out of his pocket. “It’s clean. C’mon, calm down, Edith. You hear what I’m saying? That’s enough!”

“I’ll try. I’ll try.” For the first time coherent words mingled with her sobs. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“You’ll be a wreck, that’s what’ll happen.”

“I know it. I know it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does. What d’ye mean, it doesn’t matter? You’ve got classes tomorrow.”

“I can call them off.”

“All right, so you’ll call ’em off. But there’s yourself, you can’t go on this way.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Ira. Putting you through this. Oh, mercy!”

“That’s nothing. I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I’ve been such a damned ninny. I’ve been such an unspeakable fool.”

“Why? What did you do? I don’t know — oh, you dropped it.” He stooped to pick up her handkerchief from the floor of the cab. “I don’t know everything about this. I mean”—he said vehemently—“you know what I mean. I don’t see that you did anything wrong. What did you do that was wrong?”

“I deluded myself. Just deluded myself. Clung to wish fulfillment. I’ve been such a damned fool. How could I have been such a damned fool? Oh, God! A woman my age just plain sacrificing herself to schoolgirl daydreams!”

“About what? About Lewlyn?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“He’s coming back, isn’t he? You said yourself he was just going to England to make up his mind.”

“He’s not. His mind is made up. No matter what he says. And even if he comes back empty-handed, who knows what he’ll do?”

Perplexity gathered like a turbulence in the mind. “What d’you mean? How d’you know?”

“It’s only too clear, Ira. Lord!” A sob shook her. “I know when I’ve lost. I knew when I had lost, but did I do anything about it? No! Can you imagine such a perfect fool?”

“Did he say? Did he tell you it was over? I only heard his telling you not to — gee!” All he could do was lean forward in the bounding vehicle and gesticulate against swiftly changing slash of light and shadow. “What? Like don’t give up. He hasn’t decided, made up his mind. No?”

“Ira, dear, he’d been planning this trip to England for months. They’ve been writing back and forth. He’s been telling me what she said. And I’ve been conspiring with him to delude myself all this time.” She wept softly into the handkerchief against her face. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. It’s like knowing someone will die, and now you have to face the fact.”

He tried to catch a glimpse of the street sign. They must be close to destination. He felt an irresistible urge to scratch under his hat band. “Gee, I didn’t know.”

“You must think I’m a hopeless idiot to go along with this charade.”

“No. I don’t.”

“You’d have a perfect right to. I have no one to blame but myself.”

Wordless. They sat back on the cushioned seats, as the streetlamps passed. Silent, solitary, eerie, all of it: the driver steering his cab, his face in profile as impassive in the intermittent light as if cut out of sheet metal, the dark kind, hot rolled steel it was called, the frying-pan kind — oh, boy, was he nutty. Swirling thought seeking respite. . The driver steered his curved way along Hudson Street; the cab throbbed south — only a couple of blocks from that same river where he had once thought of killing himself, where the Cunarder now was moored. Or was it? Had it already cast off? The ship moving south toward the harbor’s mouth, Sandy Hook, while they moved south between desolate, unlit tenements. . they were being driven on an excavated street of a buried city. . by an expressionless driver who never turned his head, an Egyptian charioteer, through a necropolis with streetlights on the corners. . Edith continued to weep softly.

“Listen, Edith,” Ira tried to assuage. “You’re an English professor. I mean, you know literature. You’ve come to this situation a hundred times reading about it.” He fumbled, opened his hands to the dark. “You know what I mean?”

“You mean I ought to have been better prepared, and I’m not.”

“Something like that.”

“You’re perfectly right. I ought to have been better prepared. Better prepared by every minute I was with him. But you see I’m not. I wasn’t. Will I be any better prepared when he returns in a few weeks? He’s coming back, as you said. Oh, yes, he has to. With the same needs as before.” She shook her head hopelessly while she let it sink in. “Another’s need becomes my need. Isn’t it ridiculous?”

“Two more blocks,” Ira leaned forward to speak to the driver. “The one after this one, Morton Street.”

“I know it.”

Jesus, did he have that five bucks? Ira felt in his right-hand pocket. Yeah. Hell, he didn’t need it anyway. He had a few bucks of his own, really of hers anyway. Did the driver think he was the culprit? Who the hell knew? “Here it is. Sixty-four is the middle of the block.”

The driver nodded, rounded the corner.

“Right there.”

The cab drew up to the curb. And no sooner did it come to a stop than, unassisted, Edith sprang from car to the sidewalk, and eyes streaming anew, crossed the sidewalk to the house door and disappeared inside.

“What is it, eighty-five cents?” Ira peered at the meter.

“Right.”

“Here’s a dollar. Sorry. . you know.”

“Okay, pal. T’anks.” Curtly spoken as the greenback was pocketed. Up went the meter flag. Ira made for the door. The cab, its engine churning loudly in the empty street, the reeking exhaust visible under the nearby streetlight, squeaked a tire against the curb, rolling away toward the dark bend before Seventh Avenue.

VI

She was stretched out on the gunnysack-covered couch weeping when he entered the floor-lamp-illuminated apartment. She sat up when he came in. And uncertain how to comfort her further, to bring her to quiescence, except by his presence, he dropped into the wicker armchair opposite. His damp handkerchief lay crumpled on top of the chest of drawers — the upper drawer was open, and two or three of her dainty handkerchiefs lay on the couch beside her. “I’ve made a proper fool of myself,” she said. “In all ways. Will you ever forgive me?”

His mind thick with the late hour, he could find little soothing to say: “Oh, sure. Gee. But don’t you give him any credit?”

For once she laughed — shortly: “For helping make me one?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that!” Jesus, he’d better wake up. “I mean, you’re so sure he’ll never change his mind?”

“Oh, no. That would be more of the same wishful thinking I’ve been guilty of all along, that I’ve been silly enough to indulge in all along. You can be certain that if there is any hope in that direction — and I know there isn’t — Marcia will be here to see that he doesn’t change his mind. As I say, even if he wanted to. And I’m sure he doesn’t. You’re an angel to stand by anyone so stupidly redundant.”

Checked, he’d better shut up. What did he have to offer to people older, smarter, more sophisticated? What did he know about their lives? Only something about Edith’s life: a little something: her affair with Larry, her affair with Lewlyn. He had seen this evening the beautiful, the dramatic parting on board ship. Lucky he hadn’t put his foot in it so far, had gotten by with least betrayal of gaucheness. If she were Stella he’d know what to do. So, say, Stella — what a cinch. Alone, boy. All he had to offer now was a sigh. A forked-tongue sigh: sympathy for her plight — sympathy that melted into contemptible self-satisfaction, because she had lost. A triple-tongued sigh, maybe: that he felt he could take advantage of her plight, as he could have of Minnie, as he easily could of Stella, but now didn’t dare. . Different world, class, everything else different. A grown-up woman. Same old story. How the hell did Larry have the nerve? Now wait a minute. Don’t give up altogether: forlorn, drooping havoc-aftermath, you call it? Small, defeated by perjury: Minnie with a Ph.D., if you made changes — in her, in himself.