Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  There it began to appear that perhaps in his new job lay his salvation. His students were generous and responsive—they knew nothing about him—and in the classroom he found pleasure once again in his own voice, in instruction; he could be intelligent, he could be frank, he could even be witty. He had gone off to staff meetings with a genuine desire to open up communication again with the outside world. He had thrown something off—new faces made him feel less ashamed. But one of the new faces turned into John Spigliano’s. And that bastard right off threatened him more than he should have. So what if he lost his job? So plenty! He should have forced himself to stop arguing with the stupid ass—only the dispute was not simply with Spigliano. All that talk about humanity. Feeling! Who but himself was he arguing with?

  Across the table from him there was not only Spigliano but Wallach too, whose new face resolved very quickly into that old and familiar face. A man who by all rights he should like, old or new; who by all rights should be his friend! Who was his friend! That evening they had sat in the light snowfall outside of Cobb, joking with one another, he had felt inside him a kind of unloosening. Relaxation. Remembering friendship, remembering in fact his old pal, Mush Horvitz, he had remembered that there were still the pleasures of social contact. If he and Libby could turn out to others—stop turning in to pick at one another’s guts—they might rebuild marriage on a new foundation; they might not have to lean so heavily on each other. After all why was he so unhappy? When one considered unhappiness from all angles, it was ridiculous. Didn’t he have a will? Couldn’t he make up his mind and cease being dissatisfied? Used properly the will could set just about anything right; this he still believed. An intelligent man, certainly a young, intelligent man, could most assuredly alter the pattern of his life; the mistake was to think of it as a pattern. He had walked with Gabe Wallach down to Goodspeed, and he had even been conscious of the sympathy flowing between them; he had felt that Wallach had respect for him, and to that he could not help but respond. If Wallach had kissed Libby long ago, it was because Libby was a kissable girl. Besides, he knew that it was he himself whom Libby loved. So beneath his wife’s office window he had called out to her, as years before he had called out from beneath her window in Clara Dickson Hall. In part he was trying to impress his companion: they were going to be all right, they were okay on their own now, and no longer in need of help. His singing to Libby was a kind of present to Wallach. But it was a gift to himself too, a gift of nostalgia and sentimentality. Many years had passed since he had made his girl passionate about Shakespeare, about anything. And after all they had been through together … “Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon—”

  And following the sentimental moment, the bottom had fallen out. His wife had informed his friend, his brand new friend, that her husband could give her plenty of babies, thank you, and like a man whose lawyer bends the truth to get him off the hook, he felt weakness, confusion, and then contempt, first for himself and then for the lawyer. From that moment on he was more willing to admit that all control over his life had gone out of his hands; perhaps he was more willing for it to be so.

  Now there was a baby coming his way, and out of no real decision on his part. Events and others had decided for him: Wallach’s suggestion, and Jaffe’s assistance, and Libby’s pounding need—and so he went along from day to day, making phone calls, paying bills, and soon would come little Nahum. Tomorrow or the next day he would have to pack his bag and go down Asher’s dank stairway and step back onto the moving platform that he saw that moment as his own particular emblem. He would have to go back to what awaited him in Chicago; at the very least he had a job to return to. But why? There, in fact, was one more thing he did not have to go back to. He did not have to go to his father’s sickbed; he did not have to comfort his mother; he did not have to return to Libby; he did not have to go back to his job. Anything else?

  “What else is there?” he asked aloud.

  Ah yes. Himself. He could take off his wedding ring (which he had not yet been quite able to do); he could leave the University. But how to divest himself of himself … Stretched out on Asher’s sofa, fatigue helped to direct his thoughts to the precise issue at hand, self-divestment. In his drowsy state he was able to think of himself as something to be peeled back, layer after layer, until what gleamed through was some primary substance. Peeling, peeling, until what was locked up inside was out in the open. What? His Paulness. His Herzness. What he was! Or perhaps nothing. To unpeel all day and all night and wind up empty-handed. To find that all he had rid himself of was all there was. And that? Here his body trembled, as bodies will, overcome with grief or revelation—that he was Libby, was his job, was his mother and father, that all that had happened was all there was. Or? At the very moment that he plunged down into sleep, he soared too above all the demands and concerns he had known, beyond what he had taken for expectation, beyond what he had interpreted as need and understood as pity and love. He nearly glimpsed for himself a new and glorious possibility. But whether there was no glorious possibility, or whether sleep separated him at that moment from some truth about life’s giving and taking, was impossible to say. He felt himself hovering at the edge of something; since it was sleep he next experienced, perhaps it was only that.

  He did not know how long the phone had been ringing. In that first uninsulated moment his only knowledge was that they had thrown the El back up. The room was half in darkness; the other half was neither dark nor light. But outside he saw the sky; when he had got his bearings he rose and answered the phone.

  “What?”

  “Maury.”

  “No—”

  “This is Maury. It’s Mush, Paul.”

  “Maury. Maury, I saw Doris—”

  “We called everywhere—your uncle—Paul, what’s happened to you?”

  “I’m at my uncle’s.”

  “When are you getting down here?”

  “Right down—”

  “You spoke to Doris, you got my telegram. Paul, are you still there?”

  “I don’t have the address, Maury. I walked off without the address.”

  “Take it down! Will you? Beth David. Ninth Floor. On Prospect—Paul, your father’s going. You better get down here—your mother’s in no shape to be alone.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Your father’s dying—”

  “Mush, all right—”

  “I’m in the lobby. I’ll wait in the lobby.”

  “All right, please—”

  Please. Let me alone. Let me be. He turned back toward the sofa; he seemed to have just discovered the pleasure of being out of it. Neither fat Maury nor hot Doris existed as much of a force in his life. Neither could hold a candle to dear old sleep, which, if it was not the glorious possibility he had failed to catch a glimpse of earlier, was doing nicely as a substitute. He had powers of his own; he could remove himself from the scene. You cannot frustrate or overwhelm a man who isn’t around. If he could drowse away the next few days … But, alas, this time he had the misfortune to dream, and to wake from the dream so suddenly as to believe that his symbols had been of some significance. Secrets! What’s the secret? He pulled Asher’s stool up to the drawing board and tacked on a clean white sheet. In thick black pencil strokes he wrote as fast as he could, not even bothering to snap on a bulb, afraid he would emerge from the dreamy spell and miss out on the truth.

  DREAM MY MOTHER TELLS ME TO PUT CHICKEN IN REFRIGERATOR. CHICKEN IS IN PIECES AND HOLEY (WHOLLY HOLY). THERE IS COMPANY. I SHOUT THAT I AM TIRED OF TAKING DIRECTIONS. MANY MEMBERS OF FAMILY IN AUDIENCE (COMPANY—MY LIFE A SPECTACLE—BEING WATCHED). MY MOTHER HURT, WOUNDED, FLABBERGASTED, BUT I WAS HAVING A GOOD TIME. WHY SHOULD SHE INTERRUPT ME AGAIN. I GO OFF TO OTHER ROOM, MY FATHER POLISHING HIS SHOES IN BED. THEN WE GO AWAY TO SCHOOL, WHERE AS RETURNING GRADUATE I TRY TO DRESS UP LIKE GYM CLASS BUT LOOK AWKWARD, CLOWNISH AND AM TOLD BY GYM TEACHER (SPIGLIANO) WHY DON’T I GO SWIMMING IN POOL OR BOX. BEFORE OR AFTER THIS I HAVE
A BROTHER (ME) AND HE AND I SEPARATE FROM COMPANY AND WE GO INTO GARAGE WHERE HE IS UPSET ABOUT WAY I HANDLED MY MOTHER. I TRY TO EXPLAIN WITH AID OF THIRD PARTY (WALLACE? WALLACH) THAT I MUST BE FREE OF HER. I AM TOO OLD. MY BROTHER CRIES. I READ (PLEAD) WITH HIM. THEN I GO UPSTAIRS WHERE I SEE MAURY AND SOME WOMAN AND MAURY’S WIFE, WHO IS LIBBY. SOME STRONG DUMB GUY STARTS TOSSING ABOUT GASOLINE (SPERM?) AND TRIES TO SET ME ON FIRE (SEX?). WHY AM I PRINTING? CHILD-EXPLAINING. DO I WANT À GOOD MARK FOR DREAM TOO? I RUN ACROSS ROOM TO PROTECT MYSELF. HE FINALLY (I THINK) DOES START FIRE. IN NEWSPAPER IT SAID HE HAD HISTORY OF POTENTIALITY FOR THIS. THIS KNOWLEDGE SOMEHOW COMFORTS ME.

  CHICKEN—TO BE PUT IN REFRIG. TO BE TURNED OFF SEXUALLY. CHICKEN=SHIKSE.

  1ST. WHERE MOMMAS HAVE POWER. FOOD.

  2ND. WET SLIMY COLD SEXUAL, LIKE A CUNT.

  SHOULDN’T CUNT BE WARM? TIRED OF BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO SO WON’T PUT CHICKEN IN REFRIG. BUT NOBODY EVER TOLD ME WHAT TO DO. ALWAYS ON OWN. RE-ENACTMENT OF EVERYBODY TELLING ME DON’T MARRY LIBBY. EVERYBODY RIGHT. EVERYBODY WRONG. THIS IS

  all beside the point. He put down Asher’s drawing pencil; his head dropped forward on the board. But now he was wide awake. Chicken equals shikse—so what? Someone is throwing gasoline around, so what? If he were to understand it all, right down to his father polishing his shoes in bed—what then? The problem, Libby, is not psychological. The problem is something else. Why did you have to go to that doctor? “Because I couldn’t take it any more.” “Why didn’t you at least talk it over with me? What about this bill?” He was shaking the day’s mail in her face. “Because we don’t talk anything over.” “We usually talk twenty-five dollars over.” “I didn’t know it was twenty-five dollars when I went. I didn’t do it again, did I?” “I don’t know, did you?” “No!” “What did you think an analyst was going to tell you?” “There’s something wrong with me, Paul.” “You’ve been sick—” “What makes me sick?” “Germs! Bugs! Viruses!” “You!” she cried. “Then divorce me! Let’s get it over with—” Five and a half years, and it was the first time that word had been uttered in their house. Libby’s face fell, and his own sense of failure was complete. They had all been right, Asher, his mother, his—Impossible! But he had said the word at last; it hurt very little to say it again. “Let’s get a divorce then.” “But you’re my husband,” Libby cried. “Maybe then that’s the trouble—” “It’s me!” She wept. “Stop crying, damn it, it’s not you.” “I don’t want a divorce, I want a regular normal life—” “Libby, it’s hopeless, it’s awful—” “That’s why I went to the doctor—”

  The phone rang, not back in Chicago, but in New York, three feet from where he sat. Even before he had raised it to his ear, he heard the voice starting in. He set it down. It started to ring again, and he did not bother to lift it this time, only pressed it down in its cradle. And that was how it went throughout the afternoon: what little light there was in the room slipped away, and the phone rang, and at Asher’s drawing board he held down the receiver as though it were a lid beneath which all the premises of his life were melting away.

  The next morning Asher had to empty an entire closet to get to an ironing board and an iron. He set up the board by the windows and pressed away at his suit; then he unearthed a clean white shirt and tied his black tie while looking in a mirror over the kitchen sink. Paul slid the breakfast dishes into a pan of water. Asher’s reflection showed a grave turn to the mouth, but Paul made no comment; he had been able to induce in himself something that resembled serenity, which would carry him the rest of the way. Perhaps it was a good thing that the turmoil of the day before had worn him down. He had made his decisions in bed with his last ounce of energy; now, so long as he kept his mouth shut and accepted the decisions without airing them to Asher, he could coast on through.

  But Asher asked, “What do you have on the agenda?”

  Now that his uncle had spoken, Paul realized all the irritation he had been feeling toward the man ever since he had opened his eyes that morning and looked across the room to see Asher sleeping in his bed. He felt the emotion, however, without fully understanding it. “I’ll read,” he said.

  “Maybe you ought to take in a movie. Keep your mind occupied.”

  “Reading occupies me.”

  “Go to the museums.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “You don’t like museums?”

  “Asher, you don’t have to be nervous about me.”

  Asher was back by the closet; he tugged and pulled and finally dove all the way in. Some tubes of paint rolled out across the floor, and Asher emerged beneath a dark hat, an honest-to-God mourner. Old man Herz was dead.

  “You feel all right?” he asked, snapping the brim.

  “I feel fine.”

  “You want to walk me to the subway? Get some fresh air? Why don’t you put on a jacket and stroll over?”

  “Asher, I’m not going to jump out any windows.”

  “That,” said Asher, all dressed up and looking sinister and pathetic, “that would be a gross misunderstanding of what I’ve been saying.”

  “You didn’t influence me. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I got the feeling I talked you into something. You walk around here like a young fellow up to no good. Look, it all comes out of the nineteenth century, Paul. It starts in the eighteenth, in fact, way back when. Reason, social progress, reform, right up to the New Deal and Point Four—it all boils down to inordinate guilt about the other fellow—”

  “Please.”

  Asher gave up and started for the door. When he turned to face Paul again, he looked a hundred years old. “Do me a favor, will you? Stroll over with me to Astor Place, that’s all. Walk me to the subway. I don’t really feel all my strength this morning.” It did not seem like a ploy either.

  They walked north on Third Avenue toward the subway. There was a City Welfare Shelter on one of the cross streets, a brick building with barred windows; just as they passed, all the bums and cripples who had breakfasted there began to make their way out into the sunshine. It was such a brilliant day that some of the unfortunates seemed a little cowed by all the light. But the merciless sun also gave off merciful heat, and after squinting at it, they limped, shuffled, staggered, or trudged out the doorway; one way or another, they all headed uptown, where the money was, and the wine.

  In his dark hat and creased trousers Asher must have resembled a wage-earner, for two small men approached. While one assumed a variety of postures which he must have felt to be the attitudes of humility, the other, in a soft voice, made the pitch. “Sir, Mr. Burns and me have just got out of jail, and we’re a little nervous.” He smiled at Paul but bore down on Asher. “Could you give us a little something, sir, for a starter?”

  “Fuck off,” Asher told him.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you very much, sir.”

  “Let’s cross over,” Asher told Paul. Before they could reach the curb, they were accosted twice more. Mr. Burns himself, sagging in the knees, watering in the eyes, stepped forward and made a short speech dealing with his needs. Asher was filled with neither patience nor brotherly love. “Go jerk off. Get out of here you, before I get a cop.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir.”

  But as Asher stepped off the curb, Mr. Burns followed and—accidentally or on purpose—caught the heel of Asher’s shoe under the toe of his own. Asher turned on the bum, and pointed him wickedly down with one hand. “Where’s your self-respect, you dog? You’re a disgrace to the poor.” He tried to jam his foot back into his shoe. “Why don’t you take a bath? Why don’t you hide your face?”

  “Up your Jewish ass,” said Mr. Burns.

  Paul was instantly beside Asher, but his uncle pulled away before he could be reached or reasoned with. He had the bum by the collar, shaking him. And then there was a cop and a crowd. Asher’s fingers had to be pried loose from the bum by the policeman. The cop stepped on the bum’s foot, while Asher straightened his tie. Paul saw tears in his uncle’s eyes,
as though he were already at the funeral.

  “It’s nothing, officer,” Paul said, forcing his way forward. “It’s all right, thank you. Come on, Asher.”

  “I ought to press charges,” said Asher, breathing like a work horse.

  “No, no—come on—”

  Paul, Asher, the bum, and the cop were all standing inside a circle of rheumy eyes and miserable mouths. Mr. Burns’ colleagues seemed torn between staying to see what would happen and getting away before they all wound up in the police wagon. It was as it had been in Paul’s dream: he was surrounded by eyes. But he had to get out of this; he had to get started in doing what he was going to do, and in not doing what he wasn’t going to do.

  “Let’s go, Asher. It doesn’t matter—”

  “What happened?” the cop asked.

  “He was panhandling,” Asher said. “Begging in the streets without a license.”

  The bum took issue. “Since when can’t you ask for a light?”

  “He called me a dirty Jew,” Asher said. “The little son of a bitch. The filthy bastard.”

  “Sir,” the bum said, pleading for a little dignity out here under the broad blue sky. It got a rise from the crowd, and even the cop’s face relaxed.

  “Why don’t you apologize to the man?” the cop said.

  “I apologize, sir.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. “That’s fine, officer. That’s okay. Isn’t that all right, Asher?”

  “Oh yeah.” Asher slid his hat down so that Paul couldn’t see his face; he turned and the crowd made room. Just then a young bum with a bowl haircut came rushing up and asked, “What are they making, a movie?”