Another Country (23 page)

“Ida, I swear that isn’t true. I swear that isn’t true.” He dropped to one knee beside the bed and tried to take her hands in his. She turned her face away. “Honey, I’m in love with you. I got scared and I got jealous, but I swear I didn’t mean what you thought I meant, I didn’t, I couldn’t, I love you. Ida, please believe me. I love you.”

Her body kept shaking and he felt her tears on his hands. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. He tried to look into her face, but she kept her face turned away. “Ida. Ida, please.”

“I don’t know any of these people,” she said, “I don’t care about them. They think I’m just another colored girl, and they trying to be nice, but they don’t care. They don’t want to talk to me. I only stayed because you asked me, and you’ve been so nice, and I was so proud of you, and now you’ve spoiled it all.”

“Ida,” he said, “if I’ve spoiled things between you and me, I don’t know how I’m going to live. You can’t say that. You’ve got to take it back, you’ve got to forgive me and give me another chance. Ida.” He put one hand to her face and slowly turned it toward him. “Ida, I love you, I do, more than anything in this world. You’ve got to believe me. I’d rather die than hurt you.” She was silent. “I was jealous and I was scared and that was a very dumb thing I said. But I was just afraid you didn’t care about me. That’s all. I didn’t mean anything bad about you.”

She sighed and reached for her purse. He gave her a handkerchief. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. She looked very tired and helpless.

He moved and sat beside her on the bed. She avoided looking at him but she did not move.

“Ida—” and he was shocked by the sound of his voice, it contained such misery. It did not seem to be his voice, it did not seem to be under his control. “I told you, I love you. Do you care about me?” She rose and walked to the mirror. He watched her. “Please tell me.”

She looked into the mirror, then picked up her handbag from the bed. She opened it, closed it, then looked in the mirror again. Then she looked at him, “Yes,” she said, helplessly, “yes, I do.”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her. At first she did not answer him, seemed merely to be enduring him, seemed suspended, hanging, waiting. She was trembling and he tried to control her trembling with the force of his arms and hands. Then something seemed to bend in her, to give, and she put her arms around him, clinging to him. Finally, he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”

“Yes,” she said, after a moment, “I guess it’s time to go.” But she did not step out of his arms at once. She looked at him and she said, “I’m sorry I was so silly. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I’m sorry, too. I’m just a jealous, no-good bastard, I can’t help it, I’m crazy about you.”

And he kissed her again.

“—leaving so soon!” said Miss Wales. “And we never got a chance to talk!”

“Vivaldo,” said Cass, “I’ll call you this week. Ida, I can’t call you, will you call me? Let’s get together.”

“I’m waiting for a script from you, you bum,” said Ellis, “just as soon as you climb down out of that makeshift ivory tower. Nice meeting you, Miss Scott.”

“He means it,” said Mrs. Ellis. “He really means it.”

“I was happy to meet you both,” said Ingram, “very happy. Good luck with your novel.”

Richard walked them to the door. “Are we still friends?”

“Are you kidding? Of course, we’re still friends.”

But he wondered if they were.

The door closed behind them and they stood in the corridor, staring at each other.

“Shall we go home?” he asked.

She watched him, her eyes very large and dark. “You got anything to eat down there?”

“No. But the stores are still open. We can get something.”

She took his arm and they walked to the elevator. He rang the bell. He stared at her as though he could not believe his eyes.

“Good,” she said. “We’ll get something and I’ll cook you a decent supper.”

“I’m not very hungry,” he said.

They heard the elevator door slam beneath them and the elevator began to rise.

The smell of the chicken she had fried the night before still hung in the room, and the dishes were still in the sink. The wishbone lay drying on the table, surrounded by the sticky glasses out of which they had drunk beer, and by their sticky coffee cups. Her clothes were thrown over a chair, his were mainly on the floor. He had awakened, she was asleep. She slept on her side, her dark head turned away from him, making no sound.

He leaned up a little and watched her face. Her face would now be, forever, more mysterious and impenetrable than the face of any stranger. Strangers’ faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

She slept. He felt that she was sleeping partly in order to avoid him. He fell back on his pillow, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. She was in his bed but she was far from him; she was with him and yet she was not with him. In some deep, secret place she watched herself, she held herself in check, she fought him. He felt that she had decided, long ago, precisely where the limits were, how much she could afford to give, and he had not been able to make her give a penny more. She made love to him as though it were a technique of pacification, a means to some other end. However she might wish to delight him, she seemed principally to wish to exhaust him; and to remain, above all, herself on the banks of pleasure the while she labored mightily to drown him in the tide.
His
pleasure was enough for her, she seemed to say, his pleasure was hers. But he wanted her pleasure to be his, for them to drown in the tide together.

He had slept, but badly, aware of Ida’s body next to his, and aware of a failure more subtle than any he had known before.

And his mind was troubled with questions which he had not before permitted to enter but whose hour, now, had struck. He wondered who had been with her before him; how many, how often, how long; what he, or they before him, had meant to her; and he wondered if her lover, or lovers, had been white or black. What difference does it make? he asked himself. What difference does any of it make? One or more, white or black— she would tell him one of these days. They would learn everything about each other, they had time, she would tell him. Would she? Or would she merely accept his secrets as she accepted his body, happy to be the vehicle of his relief? While offering in return (for she knew the rules) revelations intended to pacify and also intended to frustrate him; to frustrate, that is, any attempt on his part to strike deeper into that incredible country in which, like the princess of fairy tales, sealed in a high tower and guarded by beasts, bewitched and exiled, she paced her secret round of secret days.

It was early in the morning, around seven, and there was no sound anywhere. The girl beside him stirred silently in her sleep and threw one hand up, as though she had been frightened. The scarlet eye on her little finger flashed. Her heavy hair was wild and tangled and the face she wore in sleep was not the face she wore when awake. She had taken off all her make-up, so that she had scarcely any eyebrows, and her unpainted lips were softer now, and defenseless. Her skin was darker than it was in the daytime and the round, rather high forehead held a dull, mahogany sheen. She looked like a little girl as she slept, but she was not a very trusting little girl; one hand half-covered her face and the other was hidden between her thighs. It made him think, somehow, of all the sleeping children of the poor. He touched her forehead lightly with his lips, then eased himself quietly out of bed and went into the bathroom. When he came out he stood staring for a moment at the kitchen, then lit a cigarette, and brought an ashtray back to the bed with him. He lay on his belly, smoking, his long arms dangling to the floor, where he had placed the ashtray.

“What time is it?”

He leaned up, smiling, “I didn’t know you were awake.” And, strangely, he suddenly felt terribly shy, as though this was his first time to awaken, naked, next to a naked girl.

“Oh,” she said, “I like to watch people when they think I’m asleep.”

“That’s good to know. How long have you been watching me?”

“Not long. Just when you came out of the bathroom. I saw your face and I wondered what you were thinking about.”

“I was thinking about you.” Then he kissed her. “Good morning. It’s seven-thirty.”

“My Lord. Do you always wake up so early?” And she yawned and grinned.

“No. But I guess I couldn’t wait to see you again.”

“Now, I’m going to remember that,” she said, “when you start waking up at noon and even later and act like you don’t want to get up out of the bed.”

“Well, I may not be so anxious to jump right out of
bed
.” She motioned for his cigarette and he held it for her while she took a drag or two. Then he put the cigarette out in the ashtray. He leaned over her. “How about you?”

“You’re sweet,” she said, and, after a moment, “you’re a deep-sea diver.” Each of them blushed. He put his hands on her breasts, which were heavy and wide apart, with reddish-brown nipples. Her large shoulders quivered a little, a pulse beat in her neck. She watched him with a face at once troubled and detached, calm, and, at the same time, frightened.

“Love me,” he said. “I want you to love me.”

She caught one of his hands as it moved along her belly.

“You think I’m one of those just-love-to-love girls.”

“Baby,” he said, “I sure hope so; we’re going to be great, let me tell you. We haven’t even started yet.” His voice had dropped to a whisper and their two hands knotted together in a teasing tug of war.

She smiled. “How many times have you said
that
?”

He paused, looking over her head at the blinds which held back the morning. “I don’t believe I’ve ever said it. I’ve never felt this way before.” He looked down at her again and kissed her again. “Never.”

After a moment she said, “Neither have I.” She said it quickly, as though she had just popped a pill into her mouth and were surprised at its taste and apprehensive about its effects.

He looked into her eyes. “Is that true?”

“Yes.” Then she dropped her eyes. “I’ve got to watch my step with you.”

“Why? Don’t you trust me?”

“It’s maybe that I don’t trust myself.”

“Maybe you’ve never loved a man before,” he said.

“I’ve never loved a white man, that’s the truth.”

“Oh, well,” he said, smiling, trying to empty his mind of the doubts and fears which filled it, “be my guest.” He kissed her again, a little drunk with her heat, her taste, her smell. “Never,” he said, gravely, “never anyone like you.” Her hand relaxed a little and he guided it down. He kissed her neck and shoulders. “I love your colors. You’re so many different, crazy colors.”

“Lord,” she said, and laughed, sharply, nervously, and tried to move her hand away but he held it: the tug of war began again. “I’m the same old color all over.”

“You can’t see yourself all over. But I can. Part of you is honey, part of you is copper, some of you is gold—”

“Lord. What’re we going to do with you this morning?”

“I’ll show you. Part of you is black, too, like the entrance to a tunnel—”

“Vivaldo.” Her head hit the pillow from side to side in a kind of torment which had nothing to do with him, but for which, just the same, he was responsible. He put his hand on her forehead, already beginning to be damp, and was struck by the way she then looked at him; looked at him as though she were, indeed, a virgin, promised at her birth to him, the bridegroom; whose face she now saw for the first time, in the darkened bridal chamber, after all the wedding guests had gone. There was no sound of revelry anywhere, only silence, no help anywhere if not in this bed, violation by the bridegroom’s body her only hope. Yet she tried to smile. “I’ve never met a man like you before.” She said this in a low voice, in a tone that mixed hostility with wonder.

“Well, I told you— I’ve never met a girl like you before, either.” But he wondered what kind of men she
had
known. Gently, he forced her thighs open; she allowed him to place her hand on his sex. He felt that, for the first time, his body presented itself to her as a mystery and that, immediately, therefore, he, Vivaldo, became totally mysterious in her eyes. She touched him for the first time with wonder and terror, realizing that she did not know how to caress him. It was being borne in on her that he wanted
her
: this meant that she no longer knew what he wanted. “You’ve slept with lots of girls like me before, haven’t you? With colored girls.”

“I’ve slept with lots of all kinds of girls.” There was no laughter between them now; they whispered, and the heat between them rose. Her odor rose to meet him, it mingled with his own, sharper sweat. He was between her thighs and in her hands, her eyes stared fearfully into his.

“But with colored girls, too?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause, she sighed a long, shuddering sigh. She arched her head upward, away from him. “Were they friends of my brother’s?”

“No. No. I paid them.”

“Oh.” Her head dropped, she closed her eyes, she brought her thighs together, then opened them. The covers were in his way and he threw them off and then for a moment, half-kneeling, he stared at the honey and the copper and the gold and the black of her. Her breath came in short, sharp, trembling gasps. He wanted her to turn her face to him and open her eyes.

“Ida. Look at me.”

She made a sound, a kind of moan, and turned her face toward him but kept her eyes closed. He took her hand again.

“Come on. Help me.”

Her eyes opened for a second, veiled, but she smiled. He lowered himself down upon her, slowly, allowing her hands to guide him, and kissed her on the mouth. They locked together, shaking, her hands fluttered upward and settled on his back.
I paid them
. She sighed again, a different sigh, long and surrendering, and the struggle began.