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

“Heavens, Ira!”

“Yeah. So I didn’t get my lay — of the last minstrel.” He sat bowed over, unable to face her.

“Gracious, child, your life was in danger. You were in serious danger.” No word of Stella, her danger too.

He couldn’t speak for a few seconds. “I guess she gets the credit — Stella — she gave me a shove. I gave them a shove. The door—” He gesticulated, scowled. “The catch went, and so did we — out to the fire escape.”

“Gracious!”

“I shouldn’t tell you.” He squeezed the wicker arms of the chair; they creaked. “Boy, I feel like I’m ripping it all outta myself. Jesus, was I scared. I’m scared now.” He could feel tears smarting at his eyes. “Jesus, down that fire escape. We could have broken our necks — mine and hers. No, but the worst thing is I felt like, I felt like murder.”

“Of whom? You mean the Negroes? That’s understandable.”

“No, her. In that toilet. For a second, you know. It wasn’t the first time either. I’m crazy. She’s like mush.” He blinked. “It wakens everything evil in me. You know, those black guys may have saved her life.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No? Everything starts to scintillate. I want. I’m greedy. I want to destroy the bold — much, much more than my sister, Minnie. I might as well tell you that too. I had my first orgasm with her when I was twelve. All right?”

“How old was Minnie?”

“About a year and a half younger. I told you you’d like me a lot less before I was done. I was kicked out of high school for stealing — fountain pens.” He began sighing uncontrollably.

“No, don’t!” She had been shaking her head, and now stood up from the edge of the couch and was crossing the room. He tried to fend her off. But silently, in utter gravity, she would not be denied. She slid past the card table, pushed his shoulders back to make room for herself on his knees, and sat down. Firm, trim buttocks palpable through bone, from thigh to thigh. He felt no desire, only need. He put his arm around her trim waist, and wept. She bent over and kissed him with small, delicate lips.

“I’m filthy after where I’ve been,” he said. “I’m filthy anyway. You shouldn’t do that.”

“I’m simply not going to let you mislead me another time.” As she spoke, she undid a button of his shirt, undid it with determination. “Poor lamb. You should have told me all this a long time ago. Did you think I’d be shocked?” She slipped a cool tiny hand into the opening she had made; her palm glided along the bare skin of his chest. “You seemed quite without interest in sex, as I said before. I took that to mean you hadn’t been awakened — since I hadn’t either until late. I told you how my German-born husband and I threw books at each other because he demanded his rights as husband. It’s only later that men seem to develop an overriding interest in sex. Do you still have sex relations with your sister?”

“No, she won’t let me anymore.” He tried to conceal errant stir of desire from Edith on his knees by leaning sideways to drag out his handkerchief.

“And doesn’t your Aunt Molly—”

“Mamie.”

“—guess why you come to her home?”

“She thinks I come for the dollar she gives me: indigent scholar. I imagine so. Ironic, isn’t it? I get a buck for a — I’m sorry. I—”

“Were you going to use the word ‘fuck’?” He felt the blood rush to his head — with a suddenness that made him feel faint. Those dainty lips to form that word! The very sound of it in her voice rendered him speechless. And yet she looked so calm, unruffled, ladylike. His arm slackened about her waist. She must have guessed why, but how impassive she was, drawing his arms about her again.

“I’ve told you. I’ve outgrown everyone I met. One at a time. I left them completely in the past, and done with. But you’re something I’ll never part with. You’re something that’s — that’s mine. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You’re outside of me and beyond, and at the same time you’re mine. I’m not going to let you go to waste, do you understand?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

“It was you I thought of when I had the abortion, not Lewlyn, but you. It was you I wanted near me. And thank heaven something drew you here at just the right moment.” She regarded him with unswerving brown eyes in dusky countenance.

“Yeah, but what am I supposed to feel?”

She laughed — merrily for her. “Whatever you do feel.”

“But it’s not the way Larry felt. I remember.”

“Larry felt something altogether romantic and ephemeral. He’d tell me he loved me, maybe two dozen times each time he saw me. Gratifying for a while, of course, to a woman just turned thirty. But only for a very short while. And then a bore and constricting besides. You let me be myself. That’s what I treasure about you. There’s no false idealism to hem me in.”

“Maybe I don’t know any better.” She laughed again, and they were silent: the woman on his knees, as if it were the most natural thing in the world — and inconceivable at the same time. She was an assistant professor of English literature, and he was — what? — a lout, a shlemiel , laying his sister, until he spoiled it — he hadn’t told Edith half the Jesus Christ Almighty awful details. But could there be anything further than Larry, than Lewlyn, than anybody? And yet here she was. Two things twisted about in his mind simultaneously, without his knowing which to give preference to: the sense of a stage, a new stage entered upon: a leap, a transformation, her lover — impossible — and yet here she sat contentedly on his knees, like the consummation of some kind of mopey plan he had willed — and so he had, he had. It was like that aureate promise to the kid on a street corner in Harlem long ago. And yet, here he was alone with a woman, all alone, private, in her big studio apartment, without dread, without furtiveness, like a friend, despite her sitting on his knees, her petite body close to his, and yielding — what was the word, what was the word? Normal. “Hmph!”

“What is it, precious?”

“You want me to be honest with you?”

“Of course, darling.”

“I feel like a friend.”

She smiled down at him indulgently: “We’ve been friends much too long, more’s the pity. I wish we had been more than friends long ago. And we will be.”

“Yeh?”

“Won’t we?”

“You won’t get mad?” He waited for tacit permission. “With Stella I told you most of the time I felt like a criminal. In that insecticide-perfume balcony, I told you, I could go out of my mind. That was bad enough. But when I was with Minnie — everything started to dazzle, the walls, the green-painted walls, when she said yes. The calendar on the wall, the furniture—” He gesticulated. “They lilted. So what am I going to do?”

“You’re going to stay here tonight.”

“I am? I told you. I’m filthy.”

“Oh, no you’re not. It’s nothing water won’t take off. Would you like a shower?”

“Yeah. But inside?”

The smile on her lips was small and tender, her brown eyes large and grave — and steady, her whole expression sober and reflective. “I’m not going to say, darling, that the kind of thing you’ve suffered won’t have its lasting effect. I’m not an analyst either. And perhaps you ought to see one to help you get over the worst of the effects—”

“Oh, no!”

“I thought not. I’m not inclined that way either, apart from the expense. They may help some. I’m not at all sure they help the artist. For all I know they may neutralize rather than help. And you’re so obviously the artist. But to return to the wounds, the neuroses, you’ll have to live with them, if you can. Do you think you can?”