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

“Go through with what?” God, his mouth was wet enough, he had to run the back of his hand over his lips.

“Have the child.”

“You would?”

“Oh, yes. Can you imagine the shock I’d give the head of the English department? Can’t you just see Professor Watt’s face when I became unmistakably pregnant — walked into our faculty office, big with child!” She was jesting, something she almost never did, deliberately breaking out of her patina of solemnity with witticism of her own making. “In some societies one could. I’m sure I could have my own child if I so wished in modern-day Russia, without benefit of a marriage license. But alas, it’s our own sanctimonious America, and I’ll have to have an abortion, and an illegal one too, as if even a legal one were fun. And I’ll have to find the money to pay for it. And that’s going to be a great, great nuisance, to say the least. And I’ll have to find an abortionist. I don’t know any. And I’ll have to turn to Lewlyn. It is his child.”

Ira felt as if all his past worries, worries and anxieties — and memories of anguish — effectively dammed the flow of even simpleminded inference. “So if it is?”

“I think I know exactly the day. I thought it was one of my safe ones.” Her little hands, locked negligently in her lap, tightened. “Oh, I understand. I don’t have the money. Can you imagine what would happen if I didn’t have an abortion — in the impossible event I didn’t? Lewlyn would regard that as willful, deliberate entrapment, do you understand, Ira? As if I were compelling him to marry me. I wouldn’t stoop to that, it goes without saying.” Her brown eyes held steady in determination, and she added: “I no longer want him to marry me.”

“No? I didn’t think of it that way.” How could he tell her in what way he thought of these things? What these things were to him that she dwelled on so freely, things that to him were snarled into such knots and tangles of wrongdoing he could never hope to loosen them. So she was pregnant. Pregnancy pointed toward abortion, abortion to abortionist, abortionist to his fee, to money. That was how it went. He frowned with downcast eyes at the stylized corn symbol on the gray Navajo blanket at his feet. That was how it went, how it ought to go, diagrammatic, honest. His mind felt so caught in its own coils — no, struggling with its own coils, trying to free itself, to see, see what? Objectively, no, more than that: see himself oppositely, from the woman’s point of view — Edith’s view — his mirror image in his own head. “Does Lewlyn know?” he groped.

“Not yet.”

“No?”

“I wasn’t certain myself until I wrote you.”

“No.” Again, Ira felt compelled to resort to the back of his hand against his moist lips. “I don’t know how it goes. I just feel scared.”

“You’re very sweet,” she said. Voice and feature combined in endearment. “I knew I could turn to you. No, it’s not all that dangerous,” she reassured. “There’s always a chance of infection, of course. And bleeding. The nastiest thing is the illegality of the whole business. And that’s not very comforting. But most people walk out of the doctor’s office after a few hours’ rest not too much the worse for the experience. I suppose because I’ve never had an abortion I’m less fearful about it than perhaps I should be. What worries me most at the moment is the financial aspect of it. As I say, Lewlyn will have to take financial responsibility for that, or part of it. I don’t expect there will be any trouble on that score. Marcia and her friends can undoubtedly put him in touch with a competent abortionist.” Seated on the gunnysack-cloth-covered couch, with her back to the wall as always, she tugged absently at the ash-gray hem of her skirt, toward trim, silk-smooth calves. And as absent as her act, her mien: “Irony is, I no longer care.”

“No? When we came back from the ship, last spring, I asked you, why did you have to do it? You explained. Love was that way. You wouldn’t be denied the beauty of its ending. Something like that. You said you were — you weren’t wise.” Ira gesticulated. “So why did you begin again?”

“I can’t resist another’s need.” She smiled placatingly.

“But everybody needs.”

“I do too. I need to be reassured in my insecurity with men. I mentioned Louise Bogan to you, I remember. I have a feeling of inadequacy with the typical masculine male, the kind of thing she doesn’t have. I have to shore up the feeling that haunts me of not being entirely — not being properly a woman.”

The perplexity on Ira’s countenance must have been graphic; her delicate lips formed into tender sympathy. “I don’t suppose I make too much sense.”

“Not yet, but that’s probably me.”

She laughed outright.

“No, I don’t mean that,” Ira hastened to amend. “I mean, I’ll think about it. That’s how I figure things out. I go over what somebody said. Over and over. And then there’s a kind of message comes out of it.”

“I know. You’re remarkable. I’m going to tell you something,” she said after a brief pause. “Something I’ve never told anyone else. It’s something in the nature of a confession. It’s the other side of what I just said about not being able to resist another’s need. It needs to be said, so you won’t think I’m all magnanimity, I’m all altruism. In other words, I have my wicked side.”

“You? You have a wicked side, Edith?”

“Why did I begin again? It’s my secret way of evening scores. With Marcia, with Cecilia. I guess Marcia would see it in her typically anthropological way. We’re all apes, you know. It’s a female’s way of evening scores, and not a very nice one. I’m going to have to pay for it too.”

“I just hope it comes out all right.”

“Yes. But I’m much tougher than I seem.”

“I hope so, Edith. I hope I can help, but I don’t know how.”

“You have already. A great deal. As long as you don’t become impatient with me.”

“No. Gee.”

“You’ll call me? Often. Do you have enough money?”

“Enough? A whole nickel?”

“I don’t want you to go without. Ira, you’re very dear to me.” She slid forward, and pretty above the knees too, stood up.

Ira did too.

“I guess I’ll go.”

“I won’t let you go unless you let me help you — for all the help you’ve given me.”

He was all too familiar with the maneuver. “I haven’t! I haven’t given you any help,” he protested — pro forma. “You’re gonna need the money yourself.”

“Not to that extent. I need you more. Please. I know how little allowance you get.” She extracted a five-dollar greenback from her purse, tendered it.

“You keep tempting me, Edith, and I can’t resist.”

“Don’t. You’ll hurt my feelings.”

She could look so winning at some moments, moments like these, the gleam on her olive skin, her brown eyes appealing, she’d get him started, when it was the furthest thing from his mind: maternal, that was it: she wanted to take care of him. Maybe because she was pregnant. He took the five dollars from her, guiltily, yet with a sense of sheepish inevitability. Rumors of the future could petrify you where you stood between the dark piano and the dark tapa on the door. “Thanks, Edith.”

“How are courses going, Ira?”

“Huh? ‘Orful,’ as Mom would say. The only thing I get anything out of is Milton.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. What vowels: Ophiucus huge . Makes you drool.”

“I may get to work on an anthology of modern poetry — after this is all over.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It’s Professor Watt’s idea, his and the publishers. They believe I ought to have a textbook for my course. You can see why.” She inclined her head pertly. “I’ll get very little out of it, either in money or glory. Do you think you’d care to help? I have a feeling I could use your help once it really begins to take shape.”