Another Country, Page 3

  He lay on his back, breathing hard. He heard music coming from the room inside, and a whistle on the river. He was frightened and his throat was dry. The air was chilly where he was wet.

  She touched him and he jumped. Then he forced himself to turn to her, looking into her eyes. Her eyes were wet still, deep and dark, her trembling lips curved slightly in a shy, triumphant smile. He pulled her to him, wishing he could rest. He hoped she would say nothing but, “It was so wonderful,” she said, and kissed him. And these words, though they caused him to feel no tenderness and did not take away his dull, mysterious dread, began to call desire back again.

  He sat up. “You’re a funny little cracker,” he said. He watched her. “I don’t know what you going to say to your husband when you come home with a little black baby.”

  “I ain’t going to be having no more babies,” she said, “you ain’t got to worry about that.” She said nothing more; but she had much more to say. “He beat that out of me, too,” she said finally.

  He wanted to hear her story. And he wanted to know nothing more about her.

  “Let’s go inside and wash up,” he said.

  She put her head against his chest. “I’m afraid to go in there now.”

  He laughed and stroked her hair. He began to feel affection for her again. “You ain’t fixing to stay here all night, are you?”

  “What are your friends going to think?”

  “Well, one thing, Leona, they ain’t going to call the law.” He kissed her. “They ain’t going to think nothing, honey.”

  “You coming in with me?”

  “Sure, I’m coming in with you.” He held her away from him. “All you got to do is sort of straighten your clothes”— he stroked her body, looking into her eyes— “and sort of run your hand through your hair, like this”— and he brushed her hair back from her forehead. She watched him. He heard himself ask, “Do you like me?”

  She swallowed. He watched the vein in her neck throb. She seemed very fragile. “Yes,” she said. She looked down. “Rufus,” she said, “I really do like you. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Why should I want to hurt you, Leona?” He stroked her neck with one hand, looking at her gravely. “What makes you think I want to hurt you?”

  “People do,” she said, finally, “hurt each other.”

  “Is somebody been hurting you, Leona?”

  She was silent, her face leaning into his palm. “My husband,” she said, faintly. “I thought he loved me, but he didn’t— oh, I knew he was rough but I didn’t think he was mean. And he couldn’t of loved me because he took away my kid, he’s off someplace where I can’t never see him.” She looked up at Rufus with her eyes full of tears. “He said I wasn’t a fit mother because— I— drank too much. I did drink too much, it was the only way I could stand living with him. But I would of died for my kid, I wouldn’t never of let anything happen to him.”

  He was silent. Her tears fell on his dark fist. “He’s still down there,” she said, “my husband, I mean. Him and my mother and my brother is as thick as thieves. They think I ain’t never been no good. Well, hell, if people keep telling you you ain’t no good”— she tried to laugh— “you bound to turn out pretty bad.”

  He pushed out of his mind all of the questions he wanted to ask her. It was beginning to be chilly on the balcony; he was hungry and he wanted a drink and he wanted to get home to bed. “Well,” he said, at last, “I ain’t going to hurt you,” and he rose, walking to the edge of the balcony. His shorts were like a rope between his legs, he pulled them up, and felt that he was glued inside them. He zipped up his fly, holding his legs wide apart. The sky had faded down to purple. The stars were gone and the lights on the Jersey shore were out. A coal barge traveled slowly down the river.

  “How do I look?” she asked him.

  “Fine,” he said, and she did. She looked like a tired child. “You want to come down to my place?”

  “If you want me to,” she said.

  “Well, yes, that’s what I want.” But he wondered why he was holding on to her.

  Vivaldo came by late the next afternoon to find Rufus still in bed and Leona in the kitchen making breakfast.

  It was Leona who opened the door. And Rufus watched with delight the slow shock on Vivaldo’s face as he looked from Leona, muffled in Rufus’ bathrobe, to Rufus, sitting up in bed, and naked except for the blankets.

  Let the liberal white bastard squirm, he thought.

  “Hi, baby,” he called, “come on in. You just in time for breakfast.”

  “I’ve had my breakfast,” Vivaldo said, “but you people aren’t even decent yet. I’ll come back later.”

  “Shit, man, come on in. That’s Leona. Leona, this here’s a friend of mine, Vivaldo. For short. His real name is Daniel Vivaldo Moore. He’s an Irish wop.”

  “Rufus is just full of prejudice against everybody,” said Leona, and smiled. “Come on in.”

  Vivaldo closed the door behind him awkwardly and sat down on the edge of the bed. Whenever he was uncomfortable— which was often— his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them only a few moments before.

  “I hope you can eat something,” Leona said. “There’s plenty and it’ll be ready in just a second.”

  “I’ll have a cup of coffee with you,” Vivaldo said, “unless you happen to have some beer.” Then he looked over at Rufus. “I guess it was quite a party.”

  Rufus grinned. “Not bad, not had.”

  Leona opened some beer and poured it into a tumbler and brought it to Vivaldo. He took it, looking up at her with his quick, gypsy smile, and spilled some on one foot.

  “You want some, Rufus?”

  “No, honey, not yet. I’ll eat first.”

  Leona walked back into the kitchen.

  “Ain’t she a splendid specimen of Southern womanhood?” Rufus asked. “Down yonder, they teach their womenfolks to serve.”

  From the kitchen came Leona’s laugh. “They sure don’t teach us nothing else.”

  “Honey, as long as you know how to make a man as happy as you making me, you don’t need to know nothing else.”

  Rufus and Vivaldo looked at each other a moment. Then Vivaldo grinned. “How about it, Rufus. You going to get your ass up out of that bed?”

  Rufus threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. He raised his arms high and yawned and stretched.

  “You’re giving quite a show this afternoon,” Vivaldo said, and threw him a pair of shorts.

  Rufus put on the shorts and an old pair of gray slacks and a faded green sport shirt. “You should have made it to that party,” he said, “after all. There was some pot on the scene that wouldn’t wait.”

  “Well. I had my troubles last night.”

  “You and Jane? As usual?”

  “Oh, she got drunk and pulled some shit. You know. She’s sick, she can’t help it.”

  “I know she’s sick. But what’s wrong with you?”

  “I guess I just like to get beaten over the head.” They walked to the table. “This your first time in the Village, Leona?”

  “No, I’ve walked around here some. But you don’t really know a place unless you know some of the people.”

  “You know us now,” said Vivaldo, “and between us we must know everybody else. We’ll show you around.”

  Something in the way Vivaldo said this irritated Rufus. His buoyancy evaporated; sour suspicions filled him. He stole a look at Vivaldo, who was sipping his beer and watching Leona with an impenetrable smile— impenetrable exactly because it seemed so open and good-natured. He looked at Leona, who, this afternoon anyway, drowning in his bathrobe, her hair piled on top of her head and her face innocent of make-up, couldn’t really be called a pretty girl. Perhaps Vivaldo was contemptuous of her because she was so plain— which meant that Vivaldo was contemptuous of him. Or perhaps he was flirting with her because she seemed so simp
le and available: the proof of her availability being her presence in Rufus’ house.

  Then Leona looked across the table and smiled at him. His heart and his bowels shook; he remembered their violence and their tenderness together; and he thought, To hell with Vivaldo. He had something Vivaldo would never be able to touch.

  He leaned across the table and kissed her.

  “Can I have some more beer?” asked Vivaldo, smiling.

  “You know where it is,” Rufus said.

  Leona took his glass and went to the kitchen. Rufus stuck out his tongue at Vivaldo, who was watching him with a faintly quizzical frown.

  Leona returned and set a fresh beer before Vivaldo and said, “You boys finish up now, I’m going to get dressed.” She gathered her clothes together and vanished into the bathroom.

  There was silence at the table for a moment.

  “She going to stay here with you?” Vivaldo asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Nothing’s been decided yet. But I think she wants to—”

  “Oh, that’s obvious. But isn’t this place a little small for two?”

  “Maybe we’ll find a bigger place. Anyway— you know— I’m not home a hell of a lot.”

  Vivaldo seemed to consider this. Then, “I hope you know what you’re doing, baby. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

  Rufus looked at him. “Don’t you like her?”

  “Sure, I like her. She’s a sweet girl.” He took a swallow of his beer. “The question is— how much do you like her?”

  “Can’t you tell?” And Rufus grinned.

  “Well, no, frankly— I can’t. I mean, sure you like her. But— oh, I don’t know.”

  There was silence again. Vivaldo dropped his eyes.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” said Rufus. “I’m a big boy, you know.”

  Vivaldo raised his eyes and said, “It’s a pretty big world, too, baby. I hope you’ve thought of that.”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “Trouble is, I feel too paternal towards you, you son of a bitch.”

  “That’s the trouble with all you white bastards.”

  * * *

  They encountered the big world when they went out into the Sunday streets. It stared unsympathetically out at them from the eyes of the passing people; and Rufus realized that he had not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy. He had not thought at all about his future with Leona, for the reason that he had never considered that they had one. Yet, here she was, clearly intending to stay if he would have her. But the price was high: trouble with the landlord, with the neighbors, with all the adolescents in the Village and all those who descended during the week ends. And his family would have a fit. It didn’t matter so very much about his father and mother— their fit, having lasted a lifetime, was now not much more than reflex action. But he knew that Ida would instantly hate Leona. She had always expected a great deal from Rufus, and she was very race-conscious. She would say, You’d never even have looked at that girl, Rufus, if she’d been black. But you’ll pick up any white trash just because she’s white. What’s the matter— you ashamed of being black?

  Then, for the first time in his life, he wondered about that— or, rather, the question bumped against his mind for an instant and then speedily, apologetically, withdrew. He looked sideways at Leona. Now she was quite pretty. She had plaited her hair and pinned the braids up, so that she looked very old-fashioned and much younger than her age.

  A young couple came toward them, carrying the Sunday papers. Rufus watched the eyes of the man as the man looked at Leona; and then both the man and the woman looked swiftly from Vivaldo to Rufus as though to decide which of the two was her lover. And, since this was the Village— the place of liberation— Rufus guessed, from the swift, nearly sheepish glance the man gave them as they passed, that he had decided that Rufus and Leona formed the couple. The face of his wife, however, simply closed tight, like a gate.

  They reached the park. Old, slatternly women from the slums and from the East Side sat on benches, usually alone, sometimes sitting with gray-haired, matchstick men. Ladies from the big apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, vaguely and desperately elegant, were also in the park, walking their dogs; and Negro nursemaids, turning a stony face on the grown-up world, crooned anxiously into baby carriages. The Italian laborers and small-business men strolled with their families or sat beneath the trees, talking to each other; some played chess or read L’Espresso. The other Villagers sat on benches, reading— Kierkegaard was the name shouting from the paper-covered volume held by a short-cropped girl in blue jeans— or talking distractedly of abstract matters, or gossiping or laughing; or sitting still, either with an immense, invisible effort which all but shattered the benches and the trees, or else with a limpness which indicated that they would never move again.

  Rufus and Vivaldo— but especially Vivaldo— had known or been intimate with many of these people, so long ago, it now seemed, that it might have occurred in another life. There was something frightening about the aspect of old friends, old lovers, who had, mysteriously, come to nothing. It argued the presence of some cancer which had been operating in them, invisibly, all along and which might, now, be operating in oneself. Many people had vanished, of course, had returned to the havens from which they had fled. But many others were still visible, had turned into lushes or junkies or had embarked on a nerve-rattling pursuit of the perfect psychiatrist; were vindictively married and progenitive and fat; were dreaming the same dreams they had dreamed ten years before, clothed these in the same arguments, quoted the same masters; and dispensed, as they hideously imagined, the same charm they had possessed before their teeth began to fail and their hair began to fall. They were more hostile now than they had been, this was the loud, inescapable change in their tone and the only vitality left in their eyes.

  Then Vivaldo was stopped on the path by a large, good-natured girl, who was not sober. Rufus and Leona paused, waiting for him.

  “Your friend’s real nice,” said Leona. “He’s real natural. I feel like we known each other for years.”

  Without Vivaldo, there was a difference in the eyes which watched them. Villagers, both bound and free, looked them over as though where they stood were an auction block or a stud farm. The pale spring sun seemed very hot on the back of his neck and on his forehead. Leona gleamed before him and seemed to be oblivious of everything and everyone but him. And if there had been any doubt concerning their relationship, her eyes were enough to dispel it. Then he thought, If she could take it so calmly, if she noticed nothing, what was the matter with him? Maybe he was making it all up, maybe nobody gave a damn. Then he raised his eyes and met the eyes of an Italian adolescent. The boy was splashed by the sun falling through the trees. The boy looked at him with hatred; his glance flicked over Leona as though she were a whore; he dropped his eyes slowly and swaggered on— having registered his protest, his backside seemed to snarl, having made his point.

  “Cock sucker,” Rufus muttered.

  Then Leona surprised him. “You talking about that boy? He’s just bored and lonely, don’t know no better. You could probably make friends with him real easy if you tried.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, that’s what’s the matter with most people,” Leona insisted, plaintively, “ain’t got nobody to be with. That’s what makes them so evil. I’m telling you, boy, I know.”

  “Don’t call me boy,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, looking startled, “I didn’t mean nothing by it, honey.” She took his arm and they turned to look for Vivaldo. The large girl had him by the collar and he was struggling to get away, and laughing.

  “That Vivaldo,” said Rufus, amused, “he has more trouble with women.”

  “He’s sure enjoying it,” Leona said. “Look like she’s enjoying it, too.”

  For now the large girl had let him go and seemed about to collapse on the path with laughter. People, with a tolerant
smile, looked up from the benches or the grass or their books, recognizing two Village characters.

  Then Rufus resented all of them. He wondered if he and Leona would dare to make such a scene in public, if such a day could ever come for them. No one dared to look at Vivaldo, out with any girl whatever, the way they looked at Rufus now; nor would they ever look at the girl the way they looked at Leona. The lowest whore in Manhattan would be protected as long as she had Vivaldo on her arm. This was because Vivaldo was white.

  He remembered a rainy night last winter, when he had just come in from a gig in Boston, and he and Vivaldo had gone out with Jane. He had never really understood what Vivaldo saw in Jane, who was too old for him, and combative and dirty; her gray hair was never combed, her sweaters, of which she seemed to possess thousands, were all equally raveled and shapeless; and her blue jeans were baggy and covered with paint. “She dresses like a goddamn bull dagger,” Rufus had told Vivaldo once, and then laughed at Vivaldo’s horrified expression. His face had puckered as though someone had just cracked a rotten egg. But he had never really hated Jane until this rainy night.

  It had been a terrible night, with rain pouring down like great tin buckets, filling the air with a roaring, whining clatter, and making lights and streets and buildings as fluid as itself. It battered and streamed against the windows of the fetid, poor-man’s bar Jane had brought them to, a bar where they knew no one. It was filled with shapeless, filthy women with whom Jane drank, apparently, sometimes, during the day; and pale, untidy, sullen men, who worked on the docks, and resented seeing him there. He wanted to go, but he was trying to wait for the rain to let up a little. He was bored speechless with Jane’s chatter about her paintings, and he was ashamed of Vivaldo for putting up with it. How had the fight begun? He had always blamed it on Jane. Finally, in order not to go to sleep, he had begun to tease Jane a little; but this teasing revealed, of course, how he really felt about her, and she was not slow to realize it. Vivaldo watched them with a faint, wary smile. He, too, was bored, and found Jane’s pretensions intolerable.