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

“Say? Nothin’ t’say, man,” the short youth said. “She blow you, she blow us.”

“You get outta the way.” A frightened Stella pushed at Ira’s shoulder, her voice rising. “Get outta the way. We wanna go.”

“Better get outta the way before the usher hears you,” Ira advised.

“We don’ want no trouble, Stella. Dat yo name?” The third youth — nearest the door — pulled it to behind him. All five locked in: ladies’ slate-partitioned toilet, dusty lavatory with rust ring.

“What’re you lockin’ us up for?” Stella’s voice rose in panic. “Open that door!”

“We jes’ want some fun, Stelly.”

“Right. Jes’ a little fun,” two voices blended. “Ev’body like a little fun. Don’t you like a little fun, Stella. A little fun neveh hurt nobody.”

“Sho thing, Stella, bebeh. You do us like yo do him.”

“C’mon, fellers,” Ira pleaded, his ineffectiveness a lead weight within him. “I tell you, you’re gonna get in trouble.”

“I’ll scream.” Stella drove to the fore of opposition. “You let us go!”

“Aw, Stella, bebeh, don’ go gittin’ yose’f all excited.” The tallest youth’s brown finger was curved around its own pale inner pad, hooked like a setting about something metallic, a Gem safety razor blade. “You tell her, man, we ain’ gone hurt her.” Stella shrank back. “Look, man, we don’ like messin’ aroun’.” A bright blade appeared, clicked open out of the pearl-handled knife, pale in the brown hand of the shorter youth.

Ira contracted to nothingness. “Waddaye want? I got three bucks.”

“We don’ wantcher money, man. We wan’ a little fun.”

“Nobody lookin’ t’cutcha up. We all have a little fun.”

“We all stay here, an’ everyone gone take a turn in de ladies’ booth.”

“Yah.” So apropos, persuasive, the shortest youth.

All three brown faces beamed. “Rotten niggers!” Stella screamed — and threw herself forward with flailing fist and manual. “Help! Lemme go!”

“Help!” Ira shouted, surged in tandem. “Goddamn you bastards! Git away from us!”

They gave ground. The door cracked open, flew around, and out they burst into gloom.

“Poleese!” Stella screamed, fleeing toward the stairs. “Help! Poleese!”

“Here! No! This way! Stella!” Ira plunged through the obscurity of the balcony, the movie foaming on the screen below. He hurled himself at the brass bar of the fire-escape door under the red exit light. He flung it open on daylight, with Stella behind him. Were they following? They were — and they weren’t. They lagged. Bluff hadn’t worked, or something like that. Past the edge of daylight, with Stella pressing bodily beside him, out on the fire escape the two charged. Ira led the way down: iron steps under skipping feet, and Stella keeping pace with hand sliding along black iron guardrail, as though gripping a pike, and bookkeeping manual raised like a shield, rushing frantically down by his side. As he ran free, he was surprised at her speed, the reckless patter of her feet in women’s shoes flickering from step to step to the first-balcony level.

“It’s closed. It’s locked. The doors.”

She stopped, perceived the dead end of fire escape, was about to hammer on the metal door.

“Ira, where you going?” she screamed after him.

“Don’t be afraid. Watch.” He felt — what? — a stirring of respect, camaraderie, never felt before. “I’ll show you.” He took hold of her arm, pressed it in encouragement. “Come on. Just walk out after me.” He led the way forward to the end of the cantilever staircase that jutted like a peninsula into empty space over the street, a gangway to nowhere—

“It’s moving!”

“I know. I did this already.” He felt solicitous: libido metamorphosed by stress: poor kid.

“Oh, it goes right to the sidewalk.”

“That’s the whole idea. We’ll be down in a second.” Across the street, windows in the warehouse wall rose above them as they descended — descended in the open air to the level of wooden packing crates beside doorways gathering afternoon shadow. Hardly anyone below paid any attention to them; the few pedestrians on 13th Street had their backs to them. Only the driver of a sedan spared a hasty stare, and was gone. Doors creaked open above them as he steadied her the last few feet of the sinking trammel. The blue-uniformed fireman about to enter the squat brick firehouse a few buildings east regarded them askance, as if tricksters inciting his reproach.

“Just easy. That’s it. Walk off.” Ira tightened his grip of her arm. “Now!” And they stepped onto the sidewalk.

A quick glance upward in the direction of the freed cantilever floating up again: “Hey, fellers. Downstairs, fellers. You ain’t suppose to be up there. That’s against the law.” The usher in plum uniform hanging partway out of the fire-exit door, with neck twisted and face skyward calling to three black visages above like a cluster of coconuts suddenly cracking open from grave witness, while higher still on the third balcony the projectionist in undershirt gaped down, at a loss. “Hey, what’re you doin’, wise guys?” he directed censure downward. “Yous can get locked up fer dat.”

The avenue, the avenue at last, the higher airs — he helped her with her coat, as she juggled her purse, plunged arms into his, as he juggled his briefcase, while all the time the two hurried toward the thronged avenue at the corner that meant safety, meant deliverance. Once there, they lost themselves among window shoppers and strollers and the hurrying, dodging ambitious individuals, holiday-homeward-bound, weaving with purpose. In seconds he and Stella were anonymous, in seconds blending with the crowd, liberated, noncommittal among the crowd walking briskly toward 14th Street.

Ira puffed with relief. “Wow!” She was breathless too, giggled, busy trying to rub grime from her hand — and still constrained to whisper. “Mama’s right, ye know, Ira. It’s just like what she keeps saying. That’s all the shvartze and the Portorickies think about. But I’ve never had a razor and a knife at me before. Was I scared.”

“Same here.”

“All I could think of was if Mama knew where I was — o-oh, what could have happened.”

“I know. And I took you up there.” He tried to make amends. “How the hell was I going to know one of those sonsofbitches saw me?”

“So where was the usher?”

“Yeah, where? Maybe they didged up the way we did. I don’t know.”

“A babbeh waked up for us, like Mama says in Jewish.”

“Yeah. That scream you let out helped too.”

“Was I scared. You think they all had a razor blade, a knife?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if they really meant it. When you called ’em niggers, I thought, oh, we’re lost.”

“I just couldn’t help it. And you know what, Ira? Now I wanna cry.”

“I don’t blame you. Go ahead. Want my handkerchief? You got one?”

“In my coat pocket.” She sniffled, plied the handkerchief while she leaned against him, walking. “First I laugh and then I cry.”

“It’s okay, Stella, it’s okay. We’re outta the woods.” He stroked her back soothingly.

“I told you,” she said without rancor, “let’s go into a telephone booth.” She suddenly laughed, wiped tears from her cheeks.

“I should have listened. I’ll never try that again.” What kind of new tenderness seemed to flow from the cloth of her coat, from the soft girlish shoulders beneath the coat through his hand, to his arm, his mind. Jesus, he had felt that only once before about her: when he had come so prodigiously the night he humped her, with Mamie snoring spasmodically nearby. He had kissed her that time — tenderly. No wonder the kid wanted to cry, after what he had put her through just now. No wonder. “You all right now?”