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

Let’s see. He didn’t know anything about pregnancy. He knew names. That’s all he knew about everything: parturition, gestation. Names stuck to him like — yeah, like that goddamn thing is stuck to her. Now, wait a minute. What did Edith say? She tried hot baths. That didn’t work. What else? Castor oil. Didn’t work. What the hell was the name of that drug? Ergot. Erg is from physics, quantity of work. Ergo, it didn’t work. What did Mom do? Picked up Morris with her arms and belly. .

He had slowed down to a plod, trying to think, and beginning to feel cold. C’mon, get up a little steam. He quickened gait. Look, Edith turned to you when she needed — when she needed bolstering. . consoling, yes? This is so shameful, screwing your sixteen-year-old kid cousin. You’d have to tell her everything, if she said: how long? From the time she was only thirteen. And if she asked about anybody else. Who-o-ow. Tell her about Minnie, pratting her when you were only twelve yourself; she was only ten. Smash the mask you wear, the pretty gentile mask she’d painted over your twisted Harlem face: pristine innocence; impersonal, nice guy, chaste, noble. Reveal. Reveal. Confess.

Call her up tomorrow — no, wait. Call up Stella first, you dope. What if she says, I’m all right? I’m all right. Oh, boy! But what if not? Then call up Edith, that’s all. Call up Edith, and tell her you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble. You need a favor. Advice. She ain’t perfect, right? She double-crossed Larry with Lewlyn. And when you took those walks with her in Woodstock — if you hadn’t been so scared because all you’d ever screwed was kids—

At 116th Street, he wheeled east, traveled between the few remaining lighted stores and the accompanying glint of trolley tracks. How will you say it? You impregnated your cousin. You inseminated her. Nah, you donkey, who do you think you are? Milton? Oh, Jesus, Milton he had just barely looked at. If he’d stayed home and read, he wouldn’t have known a damn thing about any of this. And maybe Stella would have got over it after a while by herself. All right, you call up Edith, and you ask to come over. All right, so you can’t say you think you knocked up your cousin. You had intercourse, all right? Maybe she’s pregnant; she hasn’t had her period — menstruated, menstruated — four days — it would be five tomorrow. Maybe you don’t have to mention Minnie. Why should you? Stella was bad enough. Don’t even have to tell Edith when you started. Stella’s sixteen now, going on seventeen. That’s old enough. So. . you’re waiting for Mamie to come home, and maybe give you a dollar. Edith knows that. So Stella comes over and puts her arms around you. .

Just within hearing distance on Park Avenue, and seemingly at eye level ahead, the trestle level above the rise of ground, a New York Central coach glided by, the lighted windows of the train like the luminescence of a deep-sea creature. Dubito, cogito, ergo sum . Yeah. Ergo. No fancy Latin is going to talk the kid out of her belly, as Mom would say. Just tell Edith you’re stuck, and why.

He turned north again. What the hell happened to that moon?

They must have just gone to bed when he unlocked the kitchen door, switched on the light, and entered — because Mom, Mom spoke to him softly, when he opened the door to the freezing bedroom, and hung up coat and hat on the wall hooks at the foot of his bed. She always fell asleep last, slowly, like himself, while Pop fell asleep at once, slept hard for a few hours, then lightly the rest of the night; and Minnie in her folding cot beside the bed did very much the same.

“Ira?” Mom said.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“You won’t stay up too late.”

“No.”

“And turn off the gas stove before you go to bed.”

“Okay.” He shut the door to the cold, dark bedrooms. No point in holding a long conversation. He’d tell Mom about Mamie’s proposed trip to Flushing tomorrow. Time enough. What the hell was the Hebrew word? Biyah ? Beer, he had wisecracked. By this act. . of my copulating with you. .

He pulled out the black looseleaf notebook with the blue-bound copy of Milton’s poems on it from the pantry shelf under the china closet, took them to the green-oilcloth-topped kitchen table, and sat down. How the hell could a guy stay as pure as Milton did? Jesus, angelic, and looked it. Traveled all over Italy. Must’ve been plenty of cash around.

Ira opened the book to where he had left off. Never mind the dreaming. He’d have to skim like hell. And tomorrow, Jesus, yes, he’d have to call Edith — no, Stella first, you boob. Get lost in your book, for Christ’s sake. Maybe coffee later. He read, skimmed, held steady on a line, forgot the burden of his troubles in its beauty. Boy, look at that about Satan’s shield: Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb/Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views . . Galileo, Tuscan artist. . If you could only have gone up to Galileo, and said: Hey, listen, Gallo, old boy. Instead of wasting your time trying to find out the speed of light from one mountaintop to another, keep your eye on one of those moons of Jupiter. Notice how long it takes before you see it again as the earth moves round the sun.

What a discovery. Trickle. Trickle. Gurgle. Gurgle. Leaky toilet flush valve in the box over the stool. Not a roach in sight. Scan me out that in iambic pentameter. Trickle, trickle, leaky flush — that’s a dactyl, hoople-head.

The way Mom picked up Morris, leaning way back like those ivory figurines of Mary holding baby Jesus to conform to the shape of the tusk — ah, the tusk again.

Read, will you?. . Ira leafed through pages, flattened the text. Man, what that guy knows. What did Mott say? In between studying Hebrew and Chaldean, you were supposed to pick up Italian on the side. Pages passed. The tenement creaked. The blue fringe of gas flame along the bar in the open gas stove hissed quietly.

Remember Belial’s argument. How did Milton say it? Counseled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth . Who opposes him? Beelzebub. With what rebuttal? Get at God via Man. Right? Seduce them to our party, that their God/May prove their foe . Okay. Belial versus Beelzebub. What time is it? Getting on twelve. A light wind had come up, driveled in colloquy with washlines in the backyard, seeped through the kitchen window, ever so slightly swayed the window shade. How long would he study? How long would his eyes last reading a blind poet? Ira allowed himself the luxury of letting the printed lines swim out of focus.

No, he couldn’t ask Mom to lend him money out of what she was saving for a Persian lamb coat. He’d have to tell her what it was for, even if he could find out who did abortions (without asking Edith who did hers).

“ Oy, gevald ,” he could just hear Mom cry out. “How could you bring yourself to do such a thing!” And he: “I could, that’s all.” She’d forgive him, she’d forgive him even if she knew he used to screw Minnie.

There were some things you couldn’t understand: motherhood: she had conceived him, gestated him, just as maybe Stella had conceived by him and was gestating part of him, changing him from son to father. Couldn’t you just hear Mom and Mamie haggling over what share of the midwife’s bill or doctor’s bill each ought to pay? Nah. Better ask Leo. He wouldn’t have to say whom he knocked up. Just knocked up a jane.

The irony of it all. A short while ago, Edith had had her uterus scraped, or what the hell ever they do. They go into the cunt somehow: vagina — those fancy goddamn words — with that kind of light on a mirror, parabolic, spherical, with a peephole in it. Open wider. Say a-a-h. Which one of those nimble, little, flagellant, little, spermy, little, protozoan bastards got to her. Christ, he thought he had a bag on; he could have sworn he had a bag on. Next time wear two — if there is a next time. Call him Houdini, if he gets out. You and your stale jokes.