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

“What?”

“I mean don’t count on it.” And in answer to Larry’s questioning look, “I’m sure I’m gonna be tied up this weekend.” He frowned, as much to convey his preoccupation as to discourage further exploration of the topic. “Maybe I’ll try.”

“What about we bum around a day together? Wilma is married. We’ve got room. Any night you want to stay over, my mother is adjustable. She loved having Iven stay with us.”

“Yeah? Hey, there goes the bell. I’ll see.”

They both stood up.

“Which way you going?” Ira asked.

“Sociology.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Ira kept his tone neutral.

“I registered for it before my relations with Edith broke up.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Or else I wouldn’t. But it’s all right. I don’t care anymore.” And Larry added: “He’s a good lecturer.” And appended: “He’s a nice guy. I don’t hold it against him.”

“No. What life is like.”

They joined the students beginning to swarm through the dim midway dividing the two sections of class alcoves.

“You know, Edith had an abortion.” It was the first time Larry had mentioned the fact.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Joke was on the subject of birth control last time. In his last lecture.”

“Yeah? Boyoboy.”

“You could see he had to be discreet,” Larry said as they climbed the stairs to the administration floor. “The examples he gave were from English and Continental practice. We knew where he stood just the same.”

“Yeh? I think I remember Edith saying that the church gave him a grant to study that and juvenile delinquency in England. Jesus, that’s a combination.”

“What do you mean?” Larry paused momentarily on the next flight.

“Nothing special. Juvenile delinquency, birth control. He goes to England to study that while his wife, Marcia, is out in Samoa some place studying adolescents and their sexuality. 1925 they set out. In the fall. And they both fall out of love. Coincidence, huh?”

“I see what you mean. We waited in a tent in your uncle’s place. And I got a telegram. Which way?”

“I got an ed class.”

“Tell me one thing.” Larry held Ira’s arm lightly. “Does she still see him — Lewlyn?”

“No, that’s over and done with.”

“I thought so, the way he acts in class.”

“See you later.”

“Try to make it over Thanxy.”

“Okay.”

XVI

Manhattan Street was the name of the street along which he had hobbled for his abbreviated afternoon constitutional walks when M was still alive. Manhattan Avenue, of all the ironies, was also the name of the street on which a tall woven-wire fence enclosed one side of a slovenly mobile home court. The very trees of the court, he allowed himself to imagine, recoiled in affront at the clamorous squalor below them — or shrank away, as if maternally protecting their newly budding branches from the noisy mess perpetrated by the humans on the ground beneath. While high in azure overhead, above the court, above the troubled trees, the cranes flew warbling by, like petals of aureate rose against the blue, the cranes flew warbling balm. Old hat (Ira gazed unseeing at the black connectors of his word processor plugged into the long aluminum box of the electric strip), old hat, this contrasting of natural loveliness with man-made unsightliness and tumult. E come i gru van cantando lor lai —Dante had written that line some six, almost seven centuries ago. Like cranes singing in formation, so flew the damned to their eternal torment: e come i gru van . . To the east, the snow on the Sandias was radiant as a cloud resting there, the Sandias where the labs for atomic research were situated. What can you do? Resignation was a comfort at his age.

He wondered where his musings would have led him if he hadn’t stopped for a cup of Zinger tea, where, and how far. And wondering, he had gotten up to take an Awake, a caffeine tablet against his drowsiness. And on his way to the bathroom door he had stubbed his toe against the caster of the table, which was usually at his back. And were it not for the little shelf on top of the table, with its IBM manual on it, he very likely would have fallen. “You’ll break your goddamn leg,” he swore at himself. He was sure that would be his end — like old Bernard Shaw breaking his hip, at age ninety or so, and saying it would be a miracle if he recovered from this one. He ought to have a cane nearby, Ira told himself, to steady himself that first second or two after getting up. He ought not get around without a cane, but canes were a damned nuisance. And when he returned, after taking the tablet, he thought he ought to begin the paragraph with: Ira tapped the tab key cautiously. But didn’t. It would clog the paragraph’s opening, make it too busy, as they said. Seated again, he tried to recall the thought a moment after he had sworn at himself.

Not that he had more than the foggiest notion of where to resume his narrative (nothing new there), but as usual, the compulsion to clear away the debris of existence before resuming his narrative took precedence. Life was full of chaotic fragments, discreet, in the mathematical sense, disparate, often dull and banal, but often fiercely engrossing, disparate but often desperate. And as often unexpected and unforeseen.

Unable to face his narrative again, pick up where he had left off, lacking the resolve, he had gone back to bed after breakfast, slept another hour; and even then, he stalled fifteen minutes, during which he located with indelible pencil the spot on his lower denture that was irritating his gum — then with the aid of a small metal burr in his electric drill he gouged out a hollow in the hard plastic of the denture that he hoped would relieve the pressure, the point of chafing on the gum. You goofiest of all scriveners, he told himself: always you opt for last things first. .

XVII

He had called Mamie’s home Tuesday, according to the schedule he had set himself, called from the college phone booth, but got no answer, although he continued stubbornly ringing until the operator told him that the party didn’t answer — and sent his jitney clinking down the coin-return chute. Classes over, he left campus, took the trolley home, and at 125th Street entered the waiting room of the New York Central station, and carefully arranging two layers of his handkerchief over the mouthpiece, he called again. This time Hannah answered. And between evasions of self-identification and message, he was told Stella was at the library, and wouldn’t be home until later. She was at the library — Ira frowned speculatively. He knew the public library at 115th Street, just as he knew every library in Harlem, had frequented every one of them during boyhood in search of new fairy tales and legends and myths. He was on 125th and Park Avenue, ten blocks to go to 115th, and a half-dozen long blocks west. Well, nothing unusual about that.

He was already on his way, envisaging finding her in an ideal place to talk, to learn how lucky he was. The smirk of wicked conniving he felt on his face reminded him of Death’s ghoulish grin in Paradise Lost when he heard of the multitude of souls that would be his to devour once Satan exited Hell. “I had not thought Death had undone so many,” said Eliot in The Waste Land , quoting Dante. Only trouble was there was no place in the library — hell, her monthlies wouldn’t bother him. He strode on, trying to imagine some coign, retreat, where he could lead her, as once he had led her down to the glary basement of Max’s new home on the occasion of the infant’s bris . Jesus, there wasn’t a single place in Harlem — except the Park, Central Park. Why of course. If she was okay, why of course. There would be light enough — and dark enough: around the lake, up the paved path above the granite outcrop, among the grove of trees where he had wandered (with Psyche my soul), and sipped of that rill — ugh — when Baba and Zaida came to America. How could he be such a dope to drink that water of Central Park’s rocks and rills? That was the place to lay her. Against a tree, in the shade, in the glade, it wasn’t too cold — if only she had had her monthlies — he strode doggedly to the inner beat: had her monthlies, had her monthlies.