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

Why? Why had he departed from the script, from the first draft he had typewritten — in ’79? Was that the reason? The first draft had been written five, no, it was now six years ago; had he changed that much? The first draft had stressed, crudely but more to the point, predictably, black-white confrontation, predictably, almost stereotypically. This latest, committed to the computer, had indicated reconciliation.

Why? To avoid the stereotype? Perhaps. But he didn’t write that way as a rule, that consciously, cerebrally. He wrote subject to consonance with emotion, in phase with it, like the key and that piano-tuner’s fork (it occurred to him). So why the departure? Was it any better? Who knew? Did it reflect an increased maturity, an increased understanding? Again who could say? Increased understanding, perhaps; but increased maturity at age seventy-nine sounded a little ludicrous. Gratifying to think so — if it was so. But if so, it was achieved at the cost of painting himself into a corner, a cul-de-sac, blind alley — you name it, Ecclesias. Things as they were changed upon the computer.

— Heaven and Wallace Stevens forgive you. My advice is: Proceed as if you hadn’t departed from your original course, or not too much, and resume the track, the incidents you felt necessary to provide unity to your initial envisaging. The thing’s a fake anyway; I don’t mean in the sense that it’s a deliberate deception. You spoke of painting yourself into a corner. You long ago painted yourself into a corner; your very premisses, not to pun, virtually hemmed you into a corner. So what is this you speak of, this present admission, recognition? A double encompassing: a circle within a corner. Nevertheless, round it out, round it out.

It’s all so far away, Ecclesias. I hadn’t dreamt when I began in ’79, as late as ’79, in the seventy-third year de mon âge quand tous mes hontes j’ai bu, long ago, how desiccated, to quote Baudelaire, it would all become in a few years, not unimportant, but not that important, shamefully, crushingly important. Is that the word I mean: un-important?

— It soon won’t matter, these existential considerations will soon be consigned to dust.

I agree, and disagree, Ecclesias. Beyond the limit, nothing matters; the human condition no longer matters. But this side of the limit, everything matters: Israel, the sense of a folk; Mario, surrogate son, Italian — Florentine translator of my one novel — arriving in Albuquerque in a few days; poor Jane, who if anyone loved not wisely but too well, she did: my son. And pays for it now — I hope they are withdrawal symptoms — beyond all measure; has paid. . I could sit back and dream. With that imagination with which I was endowed, churned up by or further churned up by — how the one thing ties into another! — I could conceive, I do conceive, the wildest, most erotic, wacky, and yet fully sustainable, plausible novelistic situations. I hope she herself can use her own traumas eventually in a literary way, without my, alas, dominating behest, use her woe to win plaudits, material rewards, other derivative consolations.

XXIX

A few minutes before six o’clock, Mr. Klein dismissed Ira, reminded him to get his books, and sent him on his way before the store closed: out the side entrance into the early autumn’s near-sunset: Lying on curb, sidewalk, gutter, partly in the glow athwart the corner from the lights on humming Lenox Avenue, partly in ebbing twilight’s lengthening shadows lay tufts and shreds of the day’s activities, testimonies to Prohibition: chiefly antic stalks of straw in which the wine bottles had come wrapped that had somehow sifted through the boxes. He should have taken a leak before he left, he told himself, was on the point of going to the toilet but was distracted from his purpose by Mr. Klein’s peremptory generosity in excusing him the last few minutes, perhaps to prevent him from going near the bottle still hidden there, Harvey’s trove. Well, there was the park: Cut across from Fifth to Madison at the foot of the hill and duck into the Comfort Station.

So he thought. But when he reached the Comfort Station, hurriedly turned the knob of the GENTS door, it was locked. Six P.M. The need to urinate became more urgent, now that the way was barred and he kept thinking about it. He hadn’t gone to the toilet since midafternoon, he realized, not since he had eaten the Lorna Doones, drunk water at the utility sink at around. . when? Jesus, if it only were a little later: dark. He was too big to take a leak in the park. People passing, ladies — he couldn’t see a cop, but maybe. Better make it snappy. Gee, that French seltzer, too. It was a big bottle, and Mr. Klein had finally persuaded him to take another swig. Cost so much. Get going. What did they say? Your teeth were floating, they said. His teeth were floating. Books tucked under arms, he began to jog. Jack and Jill climbed up the hill to fetch a pail of water — Oh, no!

Think of something else, he panted. As soon as he would get to 119th Street, duck down into a cellar, anybody’s cellar: Take a leak. Between Madison and Park. Owoo. Jack and Jill went up the hill — No! Yes. That made it easier. Jill was Jack’s sister. So up he got and home did trot. Yeah, yeah. He got into bed, he got into bed, he got into bed; my poor brother, she said, my poor brother, she said. . So. . My poor brother, she said. Hurry up before. . Where was their mother? Where was their father? So hurry up before: working in the delicatessen store. Puffing, he reached 119th Street. Get home. Just a little more. That holds it back. Get home before. Gee, a kid, when you could stand on the curb and pee. But now that sticking out; but even without. Hurry up! Park Avenue, yeah. Park Avenue, yeah. Under the Cut.

He was running full tilt when he reached Park Avenue, dashed under the trestle, past the cross-braced pillars: Right here; peed a hundred times here— But suddenly he had to dodge a car speeding toward him out of uptown shadows, a shadow itself without lights. He was duly cursed at by the driver — and afforded respite by his own start of fear, his own scare. Chest still heaving, he slowed his gait to a walk. All right. Nearly home.

Against the background of twilight to the east, indigo above the black band of the Third Avenue El, Weasel stood in front of the tenement stoop whirling a tin can on a loop of wire, flames spurting from vents in the bottom. Odor of woodsmoke conjured up sadly a lost state, past autumns when he’d done the same.

“I seen you runnin’ in front o’ the auto. You wanna look out,” Weasel said. Weasel himself walked with a limp; he had tried jumping from the stoop stairs to the cellar floor, and broken his foot.

“Yeah, the bastid didn’t have any lights till just before. I didn’t even see him,” Ira said.

“What wuz you runnin’ for?”

“I had to take a leak.” Ira raised his hand in parting.

“Go down the cellar,” said Weasel. “Why don’tcha go down the cellar?”

“Nah, I’m nearly up to my house already.”

“Go on down the cellar,” said Weasel. “It’s faster. Come on, I’m goin’ down, too.” He set his little improvised oven on the curb.

And suddenly the urgency returned — imperiously. Ira shoved the wrought-iron gate open before him, ran down the cellar steps, tore open his fly, and began urinating against the wooden, battered cellar door. Weasel followed.

XXX

I would like to finish that, Ecclesias. I have so much to do: puttering mostly: a new window fan to install; a knob to affix to the copper teakettle lid, which my darling M forgot and left empty on top of a high-gas flame (the copper looks as if it had smallpox now); and some sort of shelf beneath the stand on which I’ve set the printer, a shelf that would hold the box of fanfold paper. Such things. And I have already spent part of the morning — of April 17, ’85, a Wednesday — at Entre, the shop where I bought the IBM PC jr., on which I learned to use the word processor. In another hour from now I leave, or rather, M will drive me in the car to Dr. David B, my rheumatologist, for a general checkup and the renewal of a few prescriptions, Percodan, mainly, a strong analgesic, which requires a new prescription each time renewed. So the day is and is about to be spent, and I shall scarcely have to get done with this disagreeable incident, alas, more than disagreeable: odious.