Henry Roth - An American Type: A Novel

At Times in Flight

I was courting a young woman , if the kind of brusque, uncertain, equivocal attentions I paid her might be called courting: it was for me at any rate, never having done it before.

I had met her at Yaddo, the artists colony, a place youve probably heard of, where writers, painters, and musicians were invited for the summer, or part of it, in the hope that, relieved of their usual pressures and preoccupations, and provided with abundant leisure, they would create. Unfortunately it didnt work that way, as youve probably also heard. Most of us needed pressure and preoccupation, since, once there, we loafed or spent a great deal of time in frivolity and idle chatter. It was during the time of the Spanish Civil War, in 1938 to be exact, and of course that formed a part of our conversation, the fact that the Loyalists seemed on the verge of victory and yet incapable of gaining it. There was also at that time a kind of projection of the Marxist mood among young intellectuals. I mention these things to recall the mood of the time as it seemed to me.

I was then engaged in writing a second novel, which I had agreed to complete for my publisher. I had already written quite a section, and this opening section had been accepted and extolled. It was only necessary for me to finish it. But it went badly from then on; in fact, it had gone badly before I reached YaddoI cant blame Yaddo for that: they provided me with the necessary environment to write in. It had gone badlyaims had become lost, purpose, momentum lost. A profound change seemed to be taking place within me in the way I viewed my craft, in my objectivity. It is difficult to say. I am, unfortunately, not analytical enough to be capable of isolating the trouble, though I dont know what good that would have done either.

That was the time, the general mood, the predicament out of which this story comes. The young woman I was courtingwe shall call her Mwas a very personable, tall, fair-haired young woman, a pianist and composer, a young woman with a world of patience, practicality, and self-discipline, bred and raised in the best traditions of New England and the Middle West, the most wholesome traditions. I was, at that time, sufficiently advanced and superior to be somewhat disdainful of those traditions. I wondered whether there was any reality to my courtship, any future, whether, in short, anything would come of it. I was so committed to being an artistin spite of anything.

The colony was close to Saratoga Springs, and I owned a Model A Ford, and in the early morning hours before breakfast I would drive down from Yaddo to the spa. There was a kind of public place there in those days, a place where paper cups could be bought for a penny, and a sort of fountain where the water bubbled through a slender pipe into a basinand I say bubbled because that was one of its attractions, the fact that it did bubble.

Ever since childhood I have regarded carbonated water as something of a treat, something not easily obtainable, in fact, only by purchase, remembering the seltzer-water man on the East Side laboring up the many flights of stairs with his dozen siphons in a box. And here it was free, and not only free but salutary. The water had a slightly musty or sulfurous flavor to go with its effervescence, but its properties were surpassingly benign.

I happened to mention the effectiveness and bracing qualities of the waters of the spring to a small group standing in front of the main building of Yaddo, and invited at large anyone who wished to accompany me in the morning. The response was almost universally negative. Drink that water? That stuff? was the tenor of their comments. Id sooner drink mud water, said one of the poets. But one person did reply in the affirmative. That was M. She liked the water; it shortly became apparent that she liked it as much as I did.

So we were soon driving together in the morning, from Yaddo to the spa, traversing the mile or so of highway that led past the racetrack under the morning trees. The racing season was about to begin, and as a kind of added incentive to the ride, we could see the preliminary training of the horseswhether this was on the track itself or a subsidiary one beside it, I no longer remember. But as we drove past in the early morning, we would see what I suppose was one of the usual sights at racetracks, but to us a novelty: the grooms or trainers bent low over their mounts and urging them on for a longer or shorter gallop. A horse is a beautiful thinga fleet, running horseand we would stop sometimes on our way and watch one course along the white railing. Enormously supple and swift, they seemed at times in flight. The dirt beneath them seemed less spurned by their hooves than drawn away in their magnificent stride.

The racing season opened. Neither of us had ever been to a horse race, and we decided it might be a worthwhile experience to attend one, especially since the track itself was so accessible, and as an additional inducement again, in view of the traditional impecuniousness of artists, free. The racetrack adjoined Yaddo at one side, and it was just a short walk through the woods of the estate before one came to a turn of the trackor so we had been told. What could be more pleasant to lovers, or quasi-lovers, than a walk through the forest on a summer day. We set out in the afternoon.

We more or less sensed the way, though I think as we approached we could hear a murmur through the woods, and so oriented ourselves. We arrived at a fairly steep embankment, which we climbed, and came to a halt before the iron palings of a fence. The track lay before usat a peculiar angle, one might say, to the normal. We were not in the grandstand or near it; we were far away from it. In fact, the grandstand with its throng was mostly a blur of color, and the horses being paraded in front of it were tiny and remote figures. Perhaps memory diminishes the scene. We seemed to be, as we virtually were, in some coign or niche where we could watch the excitement in a remote and almost secret way. I cant recall what we said there; I know we were both enchanted by the spectacle, miniature though it was, as if it were a racetrack in an Easter egg. There was an undercurrent of sound that reached us from the grandstandthe band playing, the mingled voicesa certain far-off animation and stir that even at this distance communicated itself.