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

He turned his head to look up at the pyramidal belfry atop the Consolidated Edison Building off 14th Street, just as a matching chime, playing Haydn, like an echo, sounded from a similar pinnacle uptown, the Metropolitan Life Tower, or whose? Quarter past one, the ponderous iron hands read. Forty-five minutes to go. He didn’t need to have cut his ed class, but hell, he was too nervous. As it was, the damned combination lock on his locker when he went to get his coat and hat had proved refractory, always did when he became keyed up, keyed up, pun. He’d have gone wild if he had only a few minutes to spare. Better this way with lots of time to collect his wits. Such as they were, damn horse’s ass, what was he doing here? Waiting on a little tub he’d screwed and knocked up. Jesus, can you imagine that? In a frumpy, blue-balls little building across the street where the wheeled traffic and pedestrians flowed and flowed. Din, din. Honk, honk. Dong, dong, from here to the 14th Street trolleys. People and wheels. Shuffle and squeal. Glitter and gleam of windshield and hubcap. And sickly sweet blue gasoline fume, and next to him, the hot dog cart, under whose umbrella the proprietor sat reading, redolence wafted — of the kishkelikh , Mom called them. He saw himself for a moment as if formed and forged by a million, billion impacts of his surroundings. Jesus Christ, and go break the worthy eidolon of self you presented to someone who admired you, was fond of you, oh, oh, a wax face such as he had seen in a movie once, wax features that someone bashed with his fist, fractured and fell off, revealing the gruesome horror of hideous nothingness. . So, you, trailing into Edith’s apartment the little kewpie doll you pratted, the wax mask dropping off you: Edith, this is Stella. And like one who came breathless out of the sea, said Dante, you look back at the storm-tossed waves of what’s to happen. You gotta harden yourself, that’s all. God! Orestes, meet Oedipus. This is all I have to say to thee, and no word more forever. Ay, ay, Jocasta. Boy.

Turmoil, turmoil. Uptown, downtown, on the avenue, on the street, fretting, fretting, everything. . shoppers and window shoppers and vehicles, movement everywhere, to the right, to the left, in Union Square Park behind him, where voices squabbled, and he could distinctly hear words spoken in foreign accent, Russian Jewish, “de right-vingers. . Piss-voik. . Ladies gomments. . Mittings fom de union.” And now someone taunting — Ira turned to look. “Hey, Mistah Faschistah,” someone from a group seated on a bench mocked a man hurrying by. “Vere you ronning?” Unrest, Jesus. There must have been a more quiet time, once. That narrow, white building, which overlooked the business school, must have been built in a quieter time, difficult as it was to imagine, a more leisurely time that could afford dispensations like that single coy marble balcony high up on about the twelfth or fifteenth story, the arched windows, and the overhanging eaves like mortarboards with dovetails in them. A quieter time — what was it like? — and what would he have been like? He wouldn’t be waiting here to make amends, mortified at having to take the little klutz he was screwing to Edith to get him out of a scrape. The spectacle he was going to make of himself! Oh, nuts, better than having no one to take her to. He felt his restlessness within himself mount. Get moving. Goddamn it, this was the last time he’d go to Mamie’s.

Should he walk all the way around Union Square? No, no, it made him uneasy to lose sight of that damned doorway. Even though he had plenty of time — how much? — almost twenty minutes. But that was all he had to do was miss her. As far as the bandstand at the north end of the park, say hello to Mr. Abe Lincoln, honest Abe, standing under the bare trees in his crumpled bronze clothes on his pedestal, and looking downtown. A few steps more — all he would allow himself — around the corner where the cars were parked on 16th, “Socialism is inevitable” was scrawled in large letters in back of the bandstand shell at the end of the park — and somebody had crossed out “Socialism” and written “Communism” above it. Far enough; Ira turned back.

Damn. He seemed to need more air. Like those pitchers — Pennock, Sad Sam Jones — he had seen coming on the mound when he hustled soda pop in the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. They hadn’t pitched a ball and were already short of breath. Excitement, yeah. C’mon, ye goddamn little twat. He rammed his hand in his overcoat pocket, groping for pipe, changed briefcase to his other hand and rummaged, found the briar. But he didn’t feel like smoking, just clenching the stem between his teeth was enough. Keep an eye out. Don’t forget, for Christ’s sake. He passed abreast of the school doorway, on his way downtown. Some guys would be cool about it. How many times did he have to tell himself that? What d’ye mean, cruel about it? “Oh, shit, I didn’t say cruel,” he protested aloud. Oh, nuts, calm down, ye cold-wet-under-armpits coward. Nuts to you. What comfort there was in the thought that some guys could be cool about it. Go on, act the part: be cool about it. What relief. Jesus, he’d gone over that role too, but still, what respite.

If only he were different. So he knocked her up. So what? Oh, to have the gall to say to Mamie: “Look, your daughter and I, vir hutzikh tsegekhapt , ye know?” Funny goddamn Yiddish expression: it’s natcherel. We grappled. No, not quite. Hooked into each other. That’s closer. Clasped. Got fouled in each other. You weren’t on the lookout, Mamie, you were loafing on the job, Mamie. It’s partly your fault. Heh. Heh. Joke’s on you we fouled into each other. You gotta foot the bill, Mamie. Fooled ya. Or she has a kid. Allee samee me. It’s your baby. Heh. Heh. You want me to marry her? Sure, plunk down ten G. I’ll yentz her day and night, and get a Ph.D. Pah. But just to finish the thought, what a father he’d make. What the hell would it be like to be a father? Goo-goo, ga-a-ga-a, da-da. Hail Columbia, happy land, baby shit in Pap’s hand — Hey, what time was it? Ten minutes to three.

He had reached George Washington in bronze at the other end of the square — and facing south too, dauntlessly fronting the clangor of 14th Street. Why did both presidents face south? Ira prompted himself to worry, worry rather than wonder. Why south, and not each other? Because Washington, D.C., lay in that direction? Was that the reason? Like Moslems facing Mecca? No, that couldn’t be it. At Washington Square, the marble statues of Washington looked north. Oh, balls. When the hell would they start coming out of that school? LINDY WINS MEDAL, one of the headlines on the corner newsstand read. All engrossed with himself, Ira drew closer: AL SMITH FOR CHANGE IN VOLSTEAD. . NO. AGAIN NO SAYS COOLIDGE.

“Paper, Mister?” the wind-blown, blocky newsstand owner suggested pointedly. “Woddaya read?”

But stung, Ira blurted out an offended “No!”

“A’right.”

There was no mistaking the meaning of the way he jingled the coins in the little apron around the blue pea jacket in which he was stuffed. Nor the jerk of his stubbly jowls. The man did not tolerate loiterers.

Bastard. Ira backed away. Giving him the bum’s rush. Fuck you, he wanted to say: fuck you and your papers. God, everything got under his nerves; anything could throw him into a fury. Jesus, that was all he had to do: get into a battle with a barrel for ears. Hell. He looked anxiously at the business-school door. Empty. Damn. Christ. When?

“Atta boy, Garrity, lessee ye nail him dis time.” The newsstand owner might have been talking to himself, so barely tinged was his gruff voice with sour approval. He couched wrist in weathered hand expectantly.