Another Country (11 page)

Vivaldo looked away, down into his drink, and lit a cigarette. Richard suddenly looked very tired.

A tall girl, very pretty, carefully dressed— she looked like an uptown model— came into the room, looked about her, peered sharply at their table. She paused, then started out.

“I wish you were looking for me?” Vivaldo called.

She turned and laughed. “You’re lucky I’m
not
looking for you!” She had a very attractive laugh and a slight Southern accent. Rufus turned to watch her move daintily up the steps and disappear into the crowded bar.

“Well, you scored, old buddy,” Rufus said, “go get her.”

“No,” said Vivaldo, smiling, “better leave well enough alone.” He stared at the door where the girl had vanished. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” he said partly to himself, partly to the table. He looked at the door again, shifting slightly in his seat, then threw down the last of his drink.

Rufus wanted to say,
Don’t let me stop you, man,
but he said nothing. He felt black, filthy, foolish. He wished he were miles away, or dead. He kept thinking of Leona; it came in waves, like the pain of a toothache or a festering wound.

Cass left her seat and came over and sat beside him. She stared at him and he was frightened by the sympathy on her face. He wondered why she should look like that, what her memories or experience could be. She could only look at him this way because she knew things he had never imagined a girl like Cass could know.

“How is Leona?” she asked. “Where is she now?” and did not take her eyes from his face.

He did not want to answer. He did not want to talk about Leona— and yet there was nothing else that he could possibly talk about. For a moment he almost hated Cass; and then he said:

“She’s in a home— down South somewhere. They come and took her out of Bellevue. I don’t even know where she is.

She said nothing. She offered him a cigarette, lit it, and lit one for herself.

“I saw her brother once. I had to see him, I made him see me. He spit in my face, he said he would have killed me had we been down home.”

He wiped his face now with the handkerchief Vivaldo had lent him.

“But I felt like I was already dead. They wouldn’t let me see her. I wasn’t a relative, I didn’t have no right to see her.”

There was silence. He remembered the walls of the hospital: white; and the uniforms and the faces of the doctors and nurses, white on white. And the face of Leona’s brother, white, with the blood beneath it rushing thickly, bitterly, to the skin’s surface, summoned by his mortal enemy. Had they been down home, his blood and the blood of his enemy would have rushed out to mingle together over the uncaring earth, under the uncaring sky.

“At least,” Cass said, finally, “you didn’t have any children. Thank God for that.”

“She did,” he said, “down South. They took the kid away from her.” He added, “That’s why she come North.” And he thought of the night they had met.

“She was a nice girl,” Cass said. “I liked her.”

He said nothing. He heard Vivaldo say, “— but I never know what to do when I’m
not
working.”

“You know what to do, all right. You just don’t have anybody to do it with.”

He listened to their laughter, which seemed to shake him as though it were a drill.

“Just the same,” said Richard, in a preoccupied tone, “nobody can work all the time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rufus watched him stabbing the table with his stir-stick.

“I hope,” Cass said, “that you won’t sit around blaming yourself too much. Or too long. That won’t undo anything.” She put her hand on his. He stared at her. She smiled. “When you’re older you’ll see, I think, that we all commit our crimes. The thing is not to lie about them— to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it.” She leaned closer to him, her brown eyes popping and her blonde hair, in the heat, in the gloom, forming a damp fringe about her brow. “That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That’s very important. If you don’t forgive yourself you’ll never be able to forgive anybody else and you’ll go on committing the same crimes forever.”

“I know,” Rufus muttered, not looking at her, bent over the table with his fists clenched together. From far away, from the juke box, he heard a melody he had often played. He thought of Leona. Her face would not leave him. “I know,” he repeated, though in fact he did not know. He did not know why this woman was talking to him as she was, what she was trying to tell him.

“What,” she asked him, carefully, “are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to try to pull myself together,” he said, “and get back to work.”

But he found it unimaginable that he would ever work again, that he would ever play drums again.

“Have you seen your family? I think Vivaldo’s seen your sister a couple of times. She’s very worried about you.”

“I’m going up there,” he said. “I haven’t wanted to go— looking this way.”

“They don’t care how you look,” she said, shortly. “
I
don’t care how you look. I’m just glad to see you’re all right— and I’m not even related to you.”

He thought, with a great deal of wonder, That’s true, and turned to stare at her again, smiling a little and very close to tears.

“I’ve always thought of you,” she said, “as a very nice person.” She gave his arm a little tap and pushed a crumpled bill into his hand. “It might help if you thought of yourself that way.”

“Hey, old lady,” Richard called, “want to make it in?”

“I guess so,” she said, and yawned. “I suppose we’ve celebrated enough for one night, one book.”

She rose and returned to her side of the table and began to gather her things together. Rufus was suddenly afraid to see her go.

“Can I come to see you soon?” he asked, with a smile.

She stared at him across the width of the table. “Please do,” she said. “Soon.”

Richard knocked his pipe out and put it in his pocket, looking around for the waiter. Vivaldo was staring at something, at someone, just behind Rufus and suddenly seemed about to spring out of his seat. “Well,” he said, faintly, “here’s Jane,” and Jane walked over to the table. Her short, graying hair was carefully combed, which was unusual, and she was wearing a dark dress, which was also unusual. Perhaps Vivaldo was the only person there who had ever seen her out of blue jeans and sweaters. “Hi, everybody,” she said, and smiled her bright, hostile smile. She sat down. “Haven’t seen any of you for months.”

“Still painting?” Cass asked. “Or have you given that up?”

“I’ve been working like a dog,” Jane said, continuing to look around her and avoiding Vivaldo’s eyes.

“Seems to suit you,” Cass muttered, and put on her coat.

Jane looked at Rufus, beginning, it seemed, to recover her self-possession. “How’ve you been, Rufus?”

“Just fine,” he said.

“We’ve all been dissipating,” said Richard, “but you look like you’ve been being a good girl and getting your beauty sleep every night.”

“You look great,” said Vivaldo, briefly.

For the first time she looked directly at him. “Do I? I guess I’ve been feeling pretty well. I’ve cut down on my drinking,” and she laughed a little too loudly and looked down. Richard was paying the waiter and had stood up, his trench coat over his arm. “Are you all leaving?”

“We’ve got to,” said Cass, “we’re just dull, untalented, old married people.”

Cass glanced over at Rufus, saying, “Be good now: get some rest.” She smiled at him. He longed to do something to prolong that smile, that moment, but he did not smile back, only nodded his head. She turned to Jane and Vivaldo. “So long, kids. See you soon.”

“Sure,” Jane said.

“I’ll be over tomorrow,” said Vivaldo.

“I’m expecting you,” Richard said, “don’t fail me. So long, Jane.”

“So long.”

“So long.”

Everyone was gone except Jane and Rufus and Vivaldo.

I wouldn’t mind being in jail but I’ve got to stay there so long
….

The seats the others had occupied were like a chasm now between Rufus and the white boy and the white girl.

“Let’s have another drink,” Vivaldo said.

So long
….

“Let me buy,” Jane said. “I sold a painting.”

“Did you now? For a lot of money?”

“Quite a lot of money. That’s probably why I was in such a stinking mood the last time you saw me— it wasn’t going well.”

“You were in a stinking mood, all right.”

Wouldn’t mind being in jail
….

“What’re you having, Rufus?”

“I’ll stick to Scotch, I guess.”

But I’ve got to stay there
….

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know what makes me such a bitch.”

“You drink too much. Let’s just have one drink here. Then I’ll walk you home.”

They both looked quickly at Rufus.

So long
….

“I’m going to the head,” Rufus said. “Order me a Scotch with water.”

He walked out of the back room into the roaring bar. He stood at the door for a moment, watching the boys and girls, men and women, their wet mouths opening and closing, their faces damp and pale, their hands grim on the glass or the bottle or clutching a sleeve, an elbow, clutching the air. Small flames flared incessantly here and there and they moved through shifting layers of smoke. The cash register rang and rang. One enormous bouncer stood at the door, watching everything, and another moved about, clearing tables and rearranging chairs. Two boys, one Spanish-looking in a red shirt, one Danish-looking in brown, stood at the juke box, talking about Frank Sinatra.

Rufus stared at a small blonde girl who was wearing a striped open blouse and a wide skirt with a big leather belt and a bright brass buckle. She wore low shoes and black knee socks. Her blouse was low enough for him to see the beginnings of her breasts; his eye followed the line down to the full nipples, which pushed aggressively forward; his hand encircled her waist, caressed the belly button and slowly forced the thighs apart. She was talking to another girl. She felt his eyes on her and looked his way. Their eyes met. He turned and walked into the head.

It smelled of thousands of travelers, oceans of piss, tons of bile and vomit and shit. He added his stream to the ocean, holding that most despised part of himself loosely between two fingers of one hand.
But I’ve got to stay there so long
…. He looked at the horrible history splashed furiously on the walls— telephone numbers, cocks, breasts, balls, cunts, etched into these walls with hatred.
Suck my cock. I like to get whipped. I want a hot stiff prick up my ass. Down with Jews. Kill the niggers. I suck cocks.

He washed his hands very carefully and dried them on the filthy roller towel and walked out into the bar. The two boys were still at the juke box, the girl with the striped blouse was still talking to her friend. He walked through the bar to the door and into the street. Only then did he reach in his pocket to see what Cass had pushed into his palm.

Five dollars. Well, that would take care of him until morning. He would get a room at the Y.

He crossed Sheridan Square and walked slowly along West Fourth Street. The bars were beginning to close. People stood before bar doors, trying vainly to get in, or simply delaying going home; and in spite of the cold there were loiterers under street lamps. He felt as removed from them, as he walked slowly along, as he might have felt from a fence, a farmhouse, a tree, seen from a train window: coming closer and closer, the details changing every instant as the eye picked them out; then pressing against the window with the urgency of a messenger or a child; then dropping away, diminishing, vanished, gone forever.
That fence is falling down,
he might have thought as the train rushed toward it, or
That house needs paint,
or
The tree is dead
. In an instant, gone in an instant— it was not his fence, his farmhouse, or his tree. As now, passing, he recognized faces, bodies, postures, and thought.
That’s Ruth. Or There’s old Lennie. Son of a bitch is stoned again
. It was very silent.

He passed Cornelia Street. Eric had once lived there. He saw again the apartment, the lamplight in the corners, Eric under the light, books falling over everything, and the bed unmade. Eric— and he was on Sixth Avenue, traffic lights and the lights of taxis blazing around him. Two girls and two boys, white, stood on the opposite corner, waiting for the lights to change. Half a dozen men, in a heavy gleaming car, rolled by and shouted at them. Then there was someone at his shoulder, a young white boy in a vaguely military cap and a black leather jacket. He looked at Rufus with the greatest hostility, then started slowly down the Avenue away from him, waving his rump like a flag. He looked back, stopped beneath the marquee of a movie theater. The lights changed. Rufus and the two couples started toward each other, came abreast in the middle of the avenue, passed— only, one of the girls looked at him with a kind of pitying wonder in her eyes.
All right, bitch
. He started toward Eighth Street, for no reason; he was simply putting off his subway ride.

Then he stood at the subway steps, looking down. For a wonder, especially at this hour, there was no one on the steps, the steps were empty. He wondered if the man in the booth would change his five-dollar bill. He started down.

Then, as the man gave him change and he moved toward the turnstile, other people came, rushing and loud, pushing past him as though they were swimmers and he nothing but an upright pole in the water. Then something began to awaken in him, something new; it increased his distance; it increased his pain. They were rushing— to the platform, to the tracks. Something he had not thought of for many years, something he had never ceased to think of, came back to him as he walked behind the crowd. The subway platform was a dangerous place— so he had always thought; it sloped downward toward the waiting tracks; and when he had been a little boy and stood on the platform beside his mother he had not dared let go her hand. He stood on the platform now, alone with all these people, who were each of them alone, and waited in acquired calmness, for the train.