by Philip Roth
“Don’t you read history in your school? Don’t you study anything?” Asher demanded. He ran his sleeve roughly under his nose so that the whole ungristled last inch of it moved back toward his face. The amazing thing was that Asher Buckner seemed to be angry. He swallowed; he looked as though he’d been weeping and wailing for an hour. “Listen to Uncle Shmuck, will you? Things come and go, and you have got to be a receptacle, let them pass right through. Otherwise death will be a misery for you, boy; I’d hate to see it. What are you going to grow up to be, a canner of experience? You going to stick plugs in at either end of your life? Let it flow, let it go. Wait and accept and learn to pull the hand away. Don’t clutch! What is marriage, what is it but a pissy form of greed, a terrible, disgusting ambitiousness. Do you know what I do now, Paulie, for a living? I paint gangsters, petty thieves, the lousiest of rats, way way up there in the unions and the garment trade. They come in with their henchmen and they spit tangerine pits on my floor and they make fun of me while I paint the boss. They’re rich and lord it over whole precincts, and I’m a sloppy-ass bohemian. They’re the big shots and I’m the nothing. All right, I take it. I accept. The boss’s got warts, I lop them off. He’s got murder in his eyes, I put doves instead. He sends his wife, and I fill up her brassiere for her. I take out scowls, boils, wrinkles, bags, pores—everything goes. I give out only peaches and cream. Please, I don’t want to be the greatest painter in the world. I don’t want to be a maker of beauty, a religious personage. I don’t bottle experience. I’m interested in the flow. I’ll take the shape the world gives me. Fuck the rest. Let me buy you a drink. It’s a hell of a day for a walk. You could freeze.”
In the bar, a no man’s land where Madison Avenue and the Bowery met and embraced, a drunken youngster in a tight suit and tight hair had his arm draped around a seventy-year-old alcoholic—somebody’s mother. “Nothing in the world is irretrievable,” said the young man to the old woman, his head lolling down on his shirt front. “Nothing. If you’d just go back to County Cork and start all over again you’d be amazed—”
The woman was shaking her head. “Ah, you just don’t know what it’s like, having to take all that crap day in and day out …”
The uncle and the nephew sipped whiskey and said nothing; Asher looked at his watch, then began to whistle to himself between his teeth. He didn’t look much less ravaged to Paul than the old lady next to him. So was this girl friend of his a dream? Asher had bad breath—wouldn’t a twenty-five-year-old girl mind? Had there ever really been a Chinese who had drawn with her lips at that skin of his, wrinkly like a dying old flower? Asher was a total surprise, not at all the kind of monk Paul had imagined. All his renunciations—family, children, food, clothes—hadn’t been for his art at all. He had no art left. He was a tube with no plugs at either end. A receptacle. And that was what—courage or cowardice?
Paul was serious beyond his twenty-one years, and once an idea had been planted he could not easily discard it. He could not help asking himself if it made any sense at all to let Libby go. He was too purposive a young man—applying always in January for scholarships in September had given him a strong sense of consequence—to be casual about his decisions. However, his plan to marry was, he knew, no simple revolt against family, no simple sexual bite. As an adolescent busing tables in mountain resorts, he had been well enough tipped by vacationing housewives and lonely widows; from beneath him they had stroked his hair: “Oh, how nice and serious. You’ll be something in life. I’m not worried about your future.” As for the family, there was no sense talking about revolutions at this point; he had revolted at birth and lived a separate life under his own flag from infancy on. His kind of independence had not even allowed for the usual complaints; nobody had to stand and shout at him to get into his bedroom and study—he had always gotten A’s and never once in his life had he been in trouble. If his father was prickled by his own failures, it was not because his son had insulted him by bringing them up. Something had tipped off the boy early not to expect anything of the man, and he had gone ahead to respect his father, if only on the strength of his office. When he had not known the spelling of a word, he had taken down the dictionary—this at age seven. His mother claimed it made her proud, though secretly it gave her the shivers. She was a normal-school graduate, a major in arithmetic, and she could have helped him with his long division. But he did everything himself, even fractions. When he was between the years one and four his father had failed in haberdashery; four to six it was hardware; six to eleven real estate; and then eleven to twelve—the blinding, total crash—he lost his shirt in quick-frozen foods. One day, creditors calling at every door, he got into the cab of a truckful of his frozen rhubarb and took a ride out to Long Island to think; the refrigeration failed just beyond Mineola, and by the time he got home his life was a zero, a ruined man. Now, in his reclining years, he got up once in a while to collect rents for an old friend.
And during all this, through all the bank notes and bewilderment, Paul had learned to read and write and reason, and above all to use his will. He had even willed Libby Herz herself into a seriousness she had not possessed when he had first met her. So complete a job had he done, in fact, that it had been she who had first suggested marriage. Though it was none of Asher’s business, it was nevertheless so. How could she go back to the other boys after Paul?
His own decision was not, however, out of anything so simple, so unemotional, as obligation. If there was a sense of obligation it was to himself; he would unite with her not to make Libby a better woman, but to make himself a better man. He would place a constant demand upon his spirit, solidify his finest intentions by keeping beside him this mixture of frailty, gravity, spontaneity, and passion. He would serve another with the same sense of worthiness he served himself. Surely that was love, where duty and passion (and lust too, to swallow Asher’s argument) mingled.
“Paulie, I have to leave,” said Asher. “First let me go to the toilet.” In a few minutes he came out of the men’s room wiping his hands on his coat. “Look, how about you come back with me? I want Patricia Ann and you to meet. She’ll make some tea. I won’t say anything more. You’re too smart for me to flood you with my personal philosophy. Just come back for an hour or two. I’m past fifty, nearing the end. Every emotion you’ve felt, multiply it by a thousand and that’s how often I felt it. It gives me a little edge, don’t it, Paulie? Till forty you think you’ve got bad emotions, you know, real killers—and then you find out they’re only little flowers compared with what’s coming. I’m not going to bombard you with any more wisdom of the aged. I only say you shouldn’t consider yourself a special case. Look at the hag next to you—her mistakes,” he said, not lowering his voice, “crawling over her like bugs. I’m not selling you my life, Paulie. Just maybe you should wait.”
Asher paid for the both of them on the bus they took downtown. He dropped thirty pennies into the driver’s hand. “What’s your problem, buddy, a wise guy?” the driver said. “Pennies are money,” Asher said. “Shut your ass and drive.” He seemed in a very depressed state.
After Asher’s mother had died, her son had taken all of her potted plants to live with him in Manhattan. For the two years she was ill he had gone over to Brooklyn every other day to water them; the old lady claimed that the day nurse was an anti-Semite and would either drown her plants, or leave them to dry up and crack. Some of them were now higher than Asher himself, and the pots, spread around three of his walls, weighed up to seventy-five pounds. What furniture there was in the room was beyond description. Before a row of tall windows at the front of the studio stood Asher’s easel, and outside was the El. They had walked up to the building past a row of bars, all of them full of bums.
When Paul and his uncle entered the room, Patricia Ann was wiping the leaves of the plants with an old piece of her lover’s undershorts; she immediately stuffed the dustrag under a pillow on the sofa.
“It’s all right,” Asher told her. “Patricia Ann K
eller—my nephew, Paul Herz.”
She shook Paul’s hand. “I never think of Asher having relatives. What do you call him? Uncle Asher?” The laugh this produced in her seemed to have directly to do with her very small bones—as though a wind had blown through them. She was not really very much taller or heavier than Libby. Her gold ballet slippers had an inward, tomboyish turn, and her skirt and sweater left no doubt as to how high and how round were her various parts. Where run-of-the-mill people have the small of their back, she carried a little cannonball of a behind. Her breasts too, packed up nearly on a line with her shoulders, had the suggestion of small metallic spheres. Her face was a not very arresting, meager thing, pretty on the style of high school baton twirlers: the mouth a bow, the chin a point, the eyes blue beads, the nose hardly big enough to support its freckles. Her hair fell onto her shoulders in ringlets, naturally curly.
Asher ran a finger over a philodendron leaf and then dropped into a ratty leather club chair, where he proceeded to kick off his shoes. He dropped his glasses into his left shoe and rolled his thumb and forefinger deep into his closed eyes. His mouth was open and Paul could see his tongue. “Make a little tea, dearie,” he said, very weary.
What a sloppy man, thought Paul. What an unattractive played-out old lecher. How many dearies over the years had dusted his leaves, carried him his tea? Why did they come, what enticed them—the greenery? When they left on Wednesday evenings, what feelings washed up from Asher’s chest into his throat and mouth?
Patricia Ann brought Paul his cup. “You go to college?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I have a stepbrother—Virgil,” she called over to Asher. Then to Paul, “Virgil Cooper—he used to play basketball for City.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah, but that’s about ten years ago already. Even more.” She carried a cup to Asher. He directed her to put it at his feet and leave him be. “You have a headache, Puss?” she asked him.
“Uh-uh.”
“The plants really got all dusty,” she told him.
“Okay.”
“It’s from the windows being open,” she said to Paul.
“I gotta breathe,” Asher said, more sleepy than rude, and the girl left his side.
A long silence followed.
“Excuse me for being informal.” She pointed to her slippers. “It’s for comfort around the house.” She sat down on a stool beside Asher’s easel and lifted a pair of pumps from the floor. “Would you care for me to put these on?”
“No,” Paul said. “That’s fine.”
“Well,” she said, sighing.
Asher mumbled. Then he mumbled again, in sleep. The day grew darker and darker, and across the room the man’s outline became less distinct.
“It’s cold out,” Patricia Ann said. “You can feel it right through the window. Is it still cold out?”
“Very,” Paul said.
“What college?” she asked.
“Cornell.”
“Oh. In California.”
“No. New York,” Paul said.
“Really?”
“New York State.”
“Oh.” She broke out laughing again, high, anxious, joyless.
Paul couldn’t believe it. He was nervous for himself and ashamed for his uncle and overcome with pathos for the girl. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, she examined and re-examined her nails, and finally she shrugged, as though resigning herself to some tragedy having to do with her cuticles. The El train made five trips down below the window, and in that time nobody spoke. Paul’s curiosity finally went dead under his disbelief. What—what had Asher wanted him to see? Was he missing something? Was this happiness, saintliness, the serenity of which men dream? Was he witnessing a rejection of the baser things, the ambitions, the quests, the greeds? Look, was this or was this not human waste?
It was. And, curiously, the sight of his uncle’s condition brought palpitations to Paul’s heart. The messiness surrounding him, the indignity of it all, suddenly shook his own faith in himself. He experienced dread at the thought of his own life going wrong. He actually allowed himself to wonder if there might not be a less stern path he might take … for just a little while longer. Could he not chase butterflies again in Prospect Park, catch them fluttering in his cheesecloth and coat hanger? Couldn’t he wait outside the showers at Ebbets Field for a glimpse of Pee Wee Reese? Couldn’t he rise and fall, just for a while again, over those sun-tanned ladies in South Fallsburg, New York? Diligent Paul, hopeful Paul, penniless Paul—couldn’t he sit alone in his room composing one thousand heartfelt words for the scholarship committee, promising that he would be a good boy, that he would study if awarded the eight hundred dollars? No! Absolutely not! He was fed up with being a boy. That’s why Asher looked so pathetic; fifty and bald and still wearing his Eton suit. Asher could not confront the world a full-sized man; he could never take a wife, accept the burden. He mistook the gifts for the penalties, the penalties for the gifts, and backed away from life—so life backed away from him. And now look: a receptacle all right, a garbage can, full of dirty talk and volcanic regrets. Paul could not believe in Asher not having regrets; to do so upset his picture of the world.
A light went on. Patricia Ann looked at her watch and then at her Asher, and gave out a soft moan. She tried to turn a smile on the nephew but only revealed impatience and loss. Her Wednesday afternoon was going, going—
“Do you have the time?” she asked.
His kindness went out to her. “I think I’ll leave,” Paul said.
Almost instantly she was at the door.
“It was nice meeting you,” Paul said. “Don’t wake him.”
“I never met a person from Asher’s family before,” she whispered, and then gave the crumpled-up, sleeping figure across the room a loving glance. “It’s very nice,” she said, and took Paul’s hand to shake it. “Asher’s a terrific painter. He’s the most wonderful person I ever met. He’s not like anybody.”
“I know,” Paul said. “I’m very fond of Asher.”
“Me too,” she said. “Are you interested in art very much?”
“Yes.”
“He’s doing me. You know? For—our anniversary. Do you really appreciate art?”
“Well, yes.”
“If you appreciate art, you wouldn’t be embarrassed …”
“I don’t understand.”
“Would you like to see it? Me. Our fifth anniversary.”
“If you think I should—”
On her toes she walked slowly to the corner behind the stool. “Here,” she said, motioning for him to follow. She flipped through several canvases piled against the wall and then reached in to take one out. First she only looked at it herself; then, somewhat uncertainly, she put it on the easel and twisted a bulb on above them.
“It’s not done,” she said immediately. Then she laughed. Then she shrugged. Then she was dead serious. “Like it?”
The idea was not original with Asher. The figure in the painting was reclining unclothed on a sofa, one arm back of her hair, the other down beside her. But, unlike other women who had been posed in the position, Patricia Ann was not a particularly languorous specimen. She looked as though she’d just heard a knock at the door and was about to fly up after her clothes. The hand at her side was rolled into a fist, and her knees were together, discouraging entrance. The Woman Who Gets and Gives No Pleasure.
“Is it finished?” These were the only words that seemed available to him.
“I think he has to do more coloring,” she said. But he had her shade already; Asher knew exactly the depth and tone of his mistress. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” the girl asked the college boy, and then did not wait for an answer. “My girl friends and me once made a record—singing?—and when we heard it, we were hysterical. I mean laughing. But after a while, you know, we started to think it was kind of good and we were even going to send it to some disc jockey, with a photograph of us. But at first it seemed just real fu
nny.”
“I know,” Paul said, hearing his uncle behind him release a desperate, froggy snore. “I’ve heard myself on a tape recorder. It’s a surprise.”
“It’s a surprise, all right … And,” she added gravely, “my husband Charlie, you know, don’t know anything about this. I had a whole picture painted, and Charlie don’t know. I even have a daughter, a little darling child.”
They both looked at the painting. At the door she smiled at him. “Good luck at Cordell.”
“Thank you.”
Pushing the door shut, she said, “Have a nice time at college.”
The stairs were unlit and he did not descend for a moment. He groped for a handrail, but there wasn’t any. Behind the door Paul heard, “Asher, Asher, oh wake up, pussy cat, it’s after five already.”
Uncle Jerry sent a note. If Paul felt inclined to, he could call Jerry at his office. If he chose to ignore the note, that was his prerogative as well.
“How are you holding up?” Jerry inquired when Paul telephoned.
“I think I’m all right. I’ve lost two pounds but I’ve got all my faculties.”
“How are things at home?”
“Just as you can imagine,” Paul said. “My mother keeps breaking down and my father keeps wanting to talk to me, but he gets all filled up too. I’ve explained several times, Jerry, but I’ve stopped. I’m not going to make a dent. They just say, Please don’t marry that girl. At least not now. At least put it off. And so forth, on and on and on. Honest to God, they’re going to make me hate them!”
He had not realized how menacing he had sounded until he heard Jerry protecting himself. “Paul, I feel obliged, you know—your father called me, he was in tears. I told him I would contact you. That’s why I dropped you the note. I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t want to advise you. I don’t believe in interfering.”
The intervention of Paul’s family in Jerry’s affairs lent a particular weightiness, a certain melancholy strain, to this remark. Paul felt a strong kinship with his uncle then—but it did not make him especially happy. It had not been his plan or his hope to line up, finally, against his family. He had decided to tell them about Libby in December so that their protests might wither with the months and they would come around to the idea of a wedding just after graduation. He had a sense of propriety about his parents, a realization of their responsibilities that perhaps they themselves had not. He had never given in, he thought, to any impulse to be cruel to them, and even if he had worked hard independently of them, it had been in part so as not to increase in any way their disappointments. He felt it now a filial duty to give them every chance; it humbled him not to, in the great world beyond the family to which he aspired, a world of order and decency, which, if he had not as yet experienced, he had fully imagined. Nevertheless, it began to appear that perhaps he had called Jerry for reasons no more elevated than those which had sent him on his walk with Asher: to be reassured.