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

Look how serene Barrow Street is, how retiring Commerce Street next. Coign within the great city, recess within the everlasting clamor, within the havoc of the heart. Young trees rise from the sidewalk, bare of leaves now, and prettier for being so, in a way, appropriate to the day and the season: slender branches caressing bare sky. . opposite them the remodeled townhouses, haphazard and habitable, ah, so many shades of weathered masonry you never could imagine, soft and umber with age, set with dormer windows and topped with attic slopes — oh, Attic shape. This was that world he dreamt was elsewhere, like Coriolanus, when he stood as a kid on a certain Harlem street corner on the West Side, beatified, euphoric. But you’ve screwed it up now. And in deed. What do the barkers in Coney Island yell to get you to fork up a quarter to pitch a couple of baseballs at a hole in the wall? Sock it in, and get a baby doll. How true. Gone is the enclave in turmoil for you, forever.

The owner of the little service station at the foot of Morton Street, muscular, limber Italian, sloshed water from a garden watering can with sprinkler removed on a small puddle of gasoline on the asphalt next to the pump stands, looked up at Ira as he passed. Curious, how recognitions became implicit, without need to reside in specific acquaintance. Morton Street — Ira rounded it — felt as if it were here the Village tapered off. The dwellings were mostly remodeled, reclaimed from townhouse and tenement, DE LUX, as the TO LET signs read; still two decidedly slummy tenements remained side by side across the street from where Edith had moved this fall, slummy tenements still occupied by Italians, whilom immigrants, of Pop’s and Mom’s steerage-vintage, matrons in window’s weeds, and others on the twin stoops, still accompanying their native speech with twirly gesture of hub and spoke of digits. Joe lived there too. Ferret-eyed, anarchist janitor of Edith’s house, he believed in finishing off the richa bosses with a banga-banga, and brought Edith the bootleg gin for her cocktail parties. Ah, respite: meandering reverie as crisis drew near, like the last meal of the condemned.

The street curved slightly in the middle, but passing the bight, 61 Morton came into view, and spying the stoop, Ira quickened gait — grimly and scared. Eager to cross the Styx, like one of the damned souls in the Inferno . Fear turned into desire — wasn’t that what Dante said? Odd, he should suddenly recall that short Italian footnote at the bottom of the page: Come augel a la sua richiamo . He didn’t need old Charon, the ferryman, to smack him with an oar. He pressed the doorbell, bucked the door open at the peevish buzzer’s insistence, entered the foyer, and mounted the carpeted stairs. As usual, Edith had come out of the apartment and was awaiting him above at the banister.

“You’re like a ministering angel up there.” He kept his eyes down on the carpet under his feet as he climbed.

“That’s very sweet of you,” she said — and paused, then met him with outstretched hand and a smile, when he reached the floor level where she stood. “Also a little alarming. Come in, Ira.”

“Thanks.” He preceded her with embarrassed shamble into the apartment.

“Whatever is the matter? I’ve been cudgeling my wits trying to guess what’s wrong. I know something very much is.”

“Yes.” He removed his coat with the slowness of despond.

“What is it, lad?” More comfort and solicitude could not have been compressed into such faint compass of smile.

“That’s new.” He gazed admiringly at the short jet-black silk kimono she was wearing. “Is it Japanese?”

“Oh, yes, it’s a great extravagance. And black shows the dust so. I’m afraid I’ve splurged.”

“Yeah?”

“You can see why.” She half-turned.

“Wow.” His eyes dazzled at the gold-embroidered sunburst that covered the entire back of the garment.

“It gives me the illusion of warmth. Actually, silk is warm.”

He headed uncertainly for a wicker armchair, and sat down at her invitation, traced the course of the interwoven wicker, while she seated herself opposite him on the new black-velvet-covered couch. Black kimono, black couch cover, taupe silk stockings over trim calves projecting at the right angles, ending in tiny black pumps. How often had he and Edith sat that way, her large brown eyes solemn and solicitous. His right sideburn itched; he scratched it. Poetry books in a bookcase against one wall, her desk between backyard windows on the other. And on the desk, her massive Underwood typewriter rising from a welter of blue examination booklets. She turned a pensive face from him to the oval mirror above the bookcase, and back.

“I’ll tell you what’s on my mind in a minute,” he said.

She smiled, winning and meek in her tenderness: “Whenever you’re ready. That mess you see on the other side of my Underwood is only a few of the many candidates for the Urban Almanac .”

“Your anthology?”

“Yes. The trouble is that good poems by good poets are expensive. And the less royalties the publishers have to pay, the more profit they make. And friends and colleagues who fancy themselves poets, and will let you publish their poems for the privilege, aren’t worth publishing — John Vernon, for example, imagines himself a second Walt Whitman, and of course he isn’t. But I’ll have to include at least one of his poems, as a matter of policy, and they’re all so long-winded. And of course there’s Harriet Monroe, and oh Lord have mercy, what makes her think her long catalogs of things are poems. They’re excruciating. But she’s Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine. And I’ve got to include poets who are really passé, Sandburg and Bynner. Oh, I’ve just been scrambling around, doing the best I can on a very limited budget. Very limited. I had to be quite strenuous with Dr. Watt to convince him that an anthology of modern poetry has to have a fair sampling of Eliot and Stevens and Pound and Williams. Cummings too. They know the name Edna St. Vincent Millay, and that’s about all. Again, I don’t think she’s indicative of the modern trend any longer — I’ve decided to leave out Amy Lowell altogether, and spend a little more on Elinor Wylie.”

“Yeah?”

“Fortunately I’ve been able to include fairly good poems by relative unknowns who are good poets at very little cost. Roberta Holloway and Taggard. Greenhood. I’m afraid it’s a hodgepodge, and a profit-making scheme on the part of Dr. Watt and the publishers at the expense of the students in the modern poetry courses, but I’ve agreed to do it.” She paused, waited a few seconds, and when he said nothing, smiled archly, to help allay his tension. “Oh, yes, I’m including a poem by Marcia. It’s what you’d expect of her, a clever little sermon.”

“I didn’t know she wrote poetry.”

“She doesn’t.” She raised her eyes to the oval mirror.

“You mean you’re being altruistic?”

“Oh, no.”

“You’re not being altruistic?”

“Definitely not.”

“I see. I wish I could hide in your class, so I could learn something.”

“You already know more than I could teach you.”

“I mean about poetry. Modern poetry. . Well.” He frowned. What was the use of stalling any longer? He was only wasting time, his, hers being considerate of him. “I. .” His lips clamped closed.

“Ira, dear, you’re so obviously troubled,” she pleaded.

“Yeah. I’m troubled, all right. I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t like to hear trouble.” He tried to mitigate bluntness by a humorous glance, failed. “You’re so interested in other people’s troubles.”

“I suppose I am. It’s my way of keeping in contact with other human beings and avoiding getting wrapped up in myself. It’s not everyone’s troubles I’m interested in. Only certain people, interesting people. People like Ira Stigman.”