“That’s yours.”
“It’s so heinous?”
“I won’t go into that. It’s yours.”
“But she had to splash you with it. What have you to say? Tell.”
“Leave him alone!” Mom intervened.
“I demand to know.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Pop, all you did was, well—” Ira shrugged, denigrated. “It was just human, all right? Can I go now?”
“Tell her.” Pop pointed to his wife. “A man is left alone with a toy. What she’s doing here I don’t know. But a comely little toy she is. So what terrible thing has he done? Noo? He played with her. A pretty young plaything yields to a man’s caresses. He toys with her, and such a little toy. Does he merit the gibbet for that? I have such a dear and loving wife that I’m not tempted, tell me? Such a doting wife—”
“Gey mir in der erd,” Mom cut in stonily.
“Uh! That answer she has ready.”
“All right, let’s cut it out. Please.” Ira looked toward the door.
“And how many times need I hear about her brother’s prowess? She knows about her brother’s prowess. How?”
“Indeed. Moe would have suited me.”
“You see?”
“Mom, cut it out!” Ira snapped. “Let’s forget it! Jeez, I’ve got no argument, Pop. It’s one of those things. Please! As far as I’m concerned, I may be as much to blame as anybody.”
“How are you to blame?” Mom demanded.
“Maybe everybody is, and nobody is.” Ira wished to Christ he hadn’t lingered. He could have been gone and out of it. “Mom said you wanted to take her to a movie: Pola Negri. Why don’tcha both go. Make up for this damn foolishness. Come back in time for Shabbes—a little later. What d’ye say, Mom? Please!” She remained obdurately silent, contemptuous. “Please, you’re always complaining he doesn’t take you with him to see a movie,” Ira beseeched. “It’s soon Friday eve.”
“And if you don’t agree to go soon, the matinee prices will be over.” Pop pleaded.
“Please, Mom. Go this once, will you.”
“My spendthrift,” Mom said scornfully. “My prodigal.”
“Cut it out, I said!” Ira raised his voice. “Will you go? I’m going. I’m going to leave you.”
“I have a choice,” said Mom. “My liberal sport. I’ll go put on another garment.” She made for the bedroom.
“Makh shnel,” Pop ordered. “This will be a Friday.”
“Only because it’s Pola Negri. Your kind of sad actress.”
“Write Minnie a message. She can eat, or wait.”
“I’ll write, I’ll write. Go. Hurry with your shmattas.” Mom disappeared into the bedroom. “Till she moves,” said Pop. He pulled a stub of pencil out of his pocket. “You have a scrap of paper?”
“Yeah.” Ira tore a sheet of loose-leaf out of his small notebook.
“Okay.” Still in hat and coat, Pop sat down at the table and began scribbling a note.
“So long, Pop.” Ira hooked his fingers in the strings of the carton.
“So long, so long,” Pop replied curtly.
“I already said goodbye to Mom.” Ira opened the door.
“Well, let her get dressed.”
“Say goodbye for me to Minnie.”
“Goodbye, goodbye.” Pop scarcely looked up.
Corridor debouched into hall, hall led downstairs. Stairs thirteen years long, to ground floor, and ground floor to stone stoop, and stoop to sidewalk in front of 108 East 119th Street. All familiar, the expected number of kids and people for a cold day between the forsaken tenement facades. Dark veil of the Third Avenue El beyond Lexington to the east, and the gray Grand Central overpass — the Cut — at the west corner. A few cars parked against the curb, and fewer passing; a cat darting across the street; an elderly matron lifting heavy blue shawl to mouth, as she led a wizened poodle out of the cluttered midblock grocery. He walked west, crossed shadowy Park Avenue under the trestle. The strings cut off circulation, made his fingers cold. He wedged the carton under his arm, continued on toward Madison Avenue, westward along the abject block between graystone P.S. 103, stout oak doors locked, and cutout paper pumpkins and turkeys in the windows, cutout Pilgrims in high hats, and carrying blunderbusses. They came to America to be free. He was free. He was going to live with Edith, with a shiksa, and nobody to stop him. He was Edith’s lover now. That was what she called him: “Wait for me, lover.” That wasn’t what he would have called it with his cock inside her.
He’d have to try and relearn everything — like a veneer on everything he was. With an old shiksa, as Pop jeered, the old bastard. Ira couldn’t have done that in Galitzia. But neither could Pop have taken Mom to a movie to see Pola Negri at this time on Friday in Galitzia either, under the stern gaze of the old boy wearing his peyoth, his sidelocks in the portrait in the front room. It was Chaos. Old man Chaos who showed Satan the way out.
He was tormented for good. Ira shook his head. The fact that he could think of Minnie and Stella en route to Edith, and think of her the way he did, showed he wasn’t free, Pilgrims or no Pilgrims. He was still a prisoner: quiescent flame was banked in the mind: ever ready to awake at a puff of air, ever hopeful it would kindle a ruby jewel under thatch. See how his mind ran. He was lucky, that was all.
He was protean, he was capable of anything, he wasn’t sure of anything. Only that he was lucky that he had a goal that kept him walking west to Lenox Avenue, to the West Side subway station at 116th Street. Oh, it was just luck, just luck — stop.
And he did halt in midstride. Supposing he was sure beyond a doubt, the way he was always a hundred percent sure about Stella, that if there was the slimmest chance, she’d let him prat her some way some where. Would he go back? Turn, turn, Sir Richard Washington. Would he? Oh, Jesus, he couldn’t get over the cravings. He couldn’t get over it. He could only get away from it; that was all.
And what the hell was the matter with him, anyway? He had Edith, now — that was the difference. She had opened up for him — oh, cut out the smut at long last — a vibrant, new vision, vision of liberation, of independence, vision consummating the aureate promise he had experienced one summer afternoon on a busy West Harlem avenue. She kindled pride, self-esteem. She had faith, she said, in his literary potential. He had to develop more, but she was sure he would get there in his time.
And Fifth Avenue opened before him. Another long block to Lenox? Or should he turn now and take the three short blocks to 116th? Either course would get him to the subway.
He cut south, avoiding the monotonous façade of the 119th Street tenements, preferring the holiday smells of the clangorous avenue before him. Turn back? God no. He could only get away, that was all. He switched the parcel from right to left, the only evidence of Harlem past lying in that motley carton. Ira peeled down steps of subway station. As luck would have it, the express shrieked to a halt. Ira boarded the train, his cold fingers still aching, and strait was the route, and strait the rails — the IRT swerved, squealing on the tracks of the long curve westward as it repaired downtown and the hell out of Harlem.
EDITOR’S AFTERWORD
I spoke with Henry Roth for the last time on Monday, the ninth of October, 1995. Having been unable to reach him at his home, a ramshackle former funeral parlor that he had purchased after the death of his wife, Muriel, I surmised that he might be in the hospital. I checked an ever-expanding list of Albuquerque hospital numbers that I kept in my address book, and was able to track him down that evening, shortly after I had come home from work. Despite the frailty of his condition and the excruciating severity of his pain, he sounded even jolly, his voice lilting and upbeat. Handed the receiver by a nurse, he was pleased to hear from me, his editor, his occasional analyst, but mostly, his friend of nearly four years.