He strode south; and thought of the kid exploring here a seeming thousand years ago, catapulted to Harlem from the Lower East Side just thirteen years ago, a thousand years ago, a geologic age. There were then pirates skulking in that railroad ramp, do you remember? Buccaneers with booty, wassailing with tankards and cutlass. Oh, jolly good ale and old they swigged. Stride, stride. There. It was a little easier, wasn’t it? By the shores o’ Gitchee Goomie, there I sat down and wept, remembering thee, O Zion. Keep goin’.
Heading south, ramp and ground intersect, the best-laid plans, and the best lays too gang aft agley, by-by, ol’ granity pal. O-o-o-h. Median strip, see? Full of grass and flowers and shrubs. Charming, ain’t it, when one was affluent? And resided in sedate townhouses on either side of wide, wide Park Avenue, with a butler or a footman visible through the glass door. Ah, hear ye, magnates, hear ye: how the trains down below rumbled softly through the vents among the marigolds, rumble obsequiously, w-o-o-o. Keep up the footwork, bud. Once more into the breech, O Peristalsis, and yet once more. Marvelous! It’s only a croquet ball now. .
He hadn’t seen Edith since that famous night when he escorted her with Lewlyn to the Hoboken pier, last spring, months ago now. He could have seen her last night, with her old loverboy Larry — but no, this was going to be so much better, total independence. And she liked his independence much better. Now heading west, further refreshed by his lightened load, he left the park and headed for Sixth Avenue under the El.
He could not wait to tell her about the orgy at Leo’s: three cooks, three plates of pasta, two loaves of Italian bread, bumpers of wine — if that wasn’t hilarious, despite the pain.
Quickening his steps, he reached Sixth Avenue in the fine shadow of a late Indian summer, passed under the El, followed familiar diagonal shortcuts to Seventh and Morton. Around the gas station, and under the leaves of sidewalk trees, he reached house number 64, got out the key to the house door — no, no, he’d better ring. He did. No buzzer sounded in return. Then she wasn’t home. Exactly the alternate contingency he had thought of. He could stretch out on that couch — just what his knees prayed for, answer to his knees’ needs — ah, a quarter hour, half hour, and if she came home meanwhile — so what if he fell asleep?
Up the two flights of carpeted stairs, silently ascended. And just to make doubly sure, and be doubly polite, he knocked on the door. . waited. No answer. Okay. He separated her apartment door key from the house door key, groped for the slot, inserted.
And as he did, he heard, he thought he heard, no, he heard the slightest commotion on the other side of the door, and he hesitated—
Just in time to hear Edith’s voice, unmistakably Edith’s, hurried: “Just a minute, Ira!”
Had she been asleep, had he wakened her? Oh, God! Ira withdrew the key.
A second later, two seconds later, the door swung open, and into the electric-lighted hall stepped Edith, pulling the door after her. “Ira,” she said. “I thought it was you.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” He retreated in utter confusion. “Excuse me! Gee, Edith. I rang the buzzer — I–I’m sorry!”
“I wasn’t in a position to receive callers.” The Professora’s eyes were bright, bright and roguish; and her voice high-pitched, on the verge of shrillness. “It’s quite all right, Ira.” She was wearing a new dark green bathrobe with black trefoils on it. Not merely wearing it, but by the way she held the garment at her throat, bunching the cloth together with tiny fist, by the intimate way her form swelled the cloth with contour, there could be no escaping the perception: the body her bathrobe enveloped was nude. “Ira, can you wait a few minutes? You can wait in my neighbor Amelia’s room. She’s gone for the weekend, and I have her keys. Please wait,” she appealed.
“Oh, no. What a dope I am. Gee.”
“I’m glad you came over. I’ll get her keys. Just one minute.”
“No, I was only walking. I’ll come again. It’s all right.”
“You’re sure? Will you call me?”
“Yeah, I just happened to eat too much macaroni — I mean pasta — and I—” Keys still in hand, Ira began making his way toward the stairs. “I was walking it off.”
“I’m so sorry,” Edith said. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, sure. It’s all eased up, shrunk.”
As he spoke, he took the first step down. Solicitously watching him descend, Edith opened the door behind her, and from deep inside the room, a dry, sandy chuckle emanated.
“You’ll call?” Edith’s voice followed Ira down the steps.
“Yeah. In a couple o’ days. All right?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s nothing. G’bye.”
“Goodbye, Ira.”
He heard the apartment door close above him. . walked carefully, deliberately down the stair treads, as if his doing so helped to obliterate his blunder, as if quiet would eliminate his mistake — as if it never happened. . What a sap. Hand slid on banister to newel post. He jingled the two keys on the ring; he could almost have flung them out into the gutter when he opened the house door, so great was his chagrin. He pocketed them instead, and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
What a dope! What an imbecile! He turned back toward Seventh Avenue. Yeah, but all those tears, all that sound and fury, storm and stress, that wracking taxi ride last spring with Edith so distraught, those floods of woe — they didn’t mean a thing; there she was in bed with Lewlyn again. The same guy she had renounced, denounced, heaped with scorn! Hey, wait a minute — and now his knees began to ache with renewed pang — couldn’t he get it through his thick head that ladies wanted to be laid? Yeah, ladies wanted to be laid, just like gentlemen wanted to lay them?
It was the same feeling of disappointment he had had six weeks before, just as his senior year of CCNY had begun, when, keeping pace with the scattering of fellow students traveling downhill, he had caught sight of Larry about a half block ahead: Larry accompanied by someone else: yes, sociology professor Lewlyn, still fleeing his unfaithful wife, Marcia Meede. . how operatic it all did sound. . had returned from England. Ira made no effort to catch up with the two, but kept his distance, until he saw them enter Wentworth Hall. Something to meditate on, watching the pair, the younger and the elder, instructor and student, Larry gesturing with large, white hands, Lewlyn listening benignly. Something to ponder on, with Edith the unseen despairing apex of the triangle. So much meaning inhered in it, so much meaning in this transient configuration, but what was it? Irony, irony was easy to discern — he was a mehvin of irony. But the immense, positive shape of meaning escaped him, the meaning that all this irony declared about human life. It was way beyond the mere sexual involvement of student and instructor with the same woman. What was human life striving after? If he could only discover that larger significance, that larger affirmation. Maybe there wasn’t any, though it seemed there was. He had thought he was then nothing but a big fool and a wretched sinner too.
The feeling persisted still, not a week after Yom Kippur, his unobservant atonements all for naught, as he rounded the small gas station at Seventh Avenue again. Maybe he was wrong. What the hell did he know about love? Maybe Lewlyn was now all finished with that British spinster he hoped would free him from Marcia’s net. Or maybe Lewlyn had come back to Edith again. No wonder she looked that way: droll, wanton, impish. “’Tis done, ’tis done, I’ve won, I’ve won, quoth she and whistles thrice. Yeah, but why had she wanted Ira to come over again, almost imploring him? No, he was wrong again. Nothing had changed. He could bet on that.