Another Country (25 page)

He sat in the old, vanished corner and watched his mother. The hair which had been brown was now of a chemical and improbably orange vitality. The figure which had been light was beginning to thicken and spread and sag. But her laugh remained, and she still seemed, in a kind of violent and joyless helplessness, to be seeking and fleeing the hands of men.

Eventually, she would come to his end of the bar.

“
Je t’offre quelque chose, M’sieu?
” With a bright, forced, wistful smile.

“
Un cognac, Madame
.” With a wry grin, and the sketch of a sardonic bow. When she was halfway down the bar, he yelled. “
Un double!
”

“
Ah! Bien sûr, M’sieu.
”

She brought him his drink and a small drink for herself, and watched him. They touched glasses.

“
A la vôtre, Madame.
”

“
A la vôtre, M’sieu.
”

But sometimes he said:

“
A nos amours.
”

And she repeated dryly:

“
A nos amours!
”

They drank in silence for a few seconds. Then she smiled.

“You look very well. You have become very handsome. I’m proud of you.”

“Why should you be proud of me? I am just a good-for-nothing, it is just as well that I am good-looking, that how I live.” And he watched her. “
Tu comprends, hein?
”

“If you talk that way, I want to know nothing, nothing, of your life!”

“Why not? It is just like yours, when you were young. Or maybe even now, how can I tell?”

She sipped her cognac and raised her chin. “Why don’t you come back? You can see for yourself how well the bar does, it would be a good situation for you.
Et puis
—”

“
Et puis quoi?
”

“I am no longer very, very young, it would be
un soulagement
if my son and I could be friends.”

And Yves laughed. “You need friends? Go dig up some of those that you buried in order to get this bar. Friends!
Je veut vivre, moi!
”

“Ah, you are ungrateful.” Sometimes, when she said this, she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Don’t bother me any more, you know what I think of you, go back to your clients.” And the last word was thrown at his mother, like a curse; sometimes, if he were drunk enough, there were tears in his eyes.

He would let his mother get halfway down the bar before he shouted.

“
Merci, pour le cognac, Madame!
”

And she turned, with a slight bow, saying,

“
De rien, M’sieu.
”

Eric had been there with him once, and had rather liked Yves’ mother, but they had never gone back. And they had scarcely ever spoken of it. There was something hidden in it which Yves did not want to see.

Now, Yves leapt over the low stone wall and entered the garden, grinning.

“You should have come in the water with me, it was wonderful. It would do wonders for your figure; do you know how fat you are getting?”

He flicked at Eric’s belly with his bikini and fell on the ground beside him. The kitten approached cautiously, sniffing Yves’ foot as though it were investigating some prehistoric monstrosity, and Yves grabbed it, holding it against his shoulder, and stroking it. The kitten closed its eyes and began to purr.

“You see how she loves me? It is a pity to leave her here, let us take her with us to New York.”

“Getting
you
into America is going to be hassle enough, baby, let’s not rock the boat. Besides, New York is full of alley cats. And alleys.” He said this with his eyes closed, drinking in the sun and the odors of the garden and the dark, salty odors of Yves. The children from the nearby house were still on the beach; he could hear their voices.

“You have no sympathy for animals. She will suffer terribly when we go away.”

“She’ll recover. Cats are much stronger than people.”

He kept his eyes closed. He felt Yves turn to look down at him.

“Why are you so troubled about going to New York?”

“New York’s a very troubling place.”

“I am not afraid of trouble.” He touched Eric lightly on the chest and Eric opened his eyes. He stared up into Yves’ grave, brown, affectionate face. “But
you
are. You are afraid of trouble in New York. Why?”

“I’m not
afraid,
Yves. But I
have
had a lot of trouble there.”

“We have had much trouble here, too,” said Yves, with his abrupt and always rather shocking gravity, “and we have always come out of it and now we are better than ever, I think, no?”

“Yes,” said Eric, slowly, and watched Yves’ face.

“Well, then, what use is there to worry?” He pushed Eric’s hair back from his forehead. “Your head is hot. You have been in the sun too long.”

Eric grabbed his hand. The kitten leapt away. “Jesus. I’m going to miss you.”

“It is for so short a time. You will he busy, I will be in New York before you know we have been apart.” He grinned and put his chin on Eric’s chest. “Tell me about New York. You have many friends there? Many
famous
friends?”

Eric laughed. “Not many famous friends, no. I don’t know if I have
any
friends there now, I’ve been away so long.”

“Who were your friends when you left?” He grinned again and rubbed his cheek against Eric’s. “Boys like me?”

“There are no boys like you. Thank God.”

“You mean not so pretty as I? Or not so warm?”

He put his hands on Yves’ salty, sandy shoulders. He heard the children’s voices from the sea and the buzzing and booming in the garden. “No. Not so impossible.”

“Naturally, now that you are about to leave, you find me impossible. And from what point of view?”

He drew Yves closer. “From every point of view.”

“
C’est dommage. Moi, je t’aime bien.
”

These words were whispered against his ear, and they lay still for a few moments. Eric wanted to ask, Is that true? but he knew that it was true. Perhaps he did not know what it meant, but, there, Yves could not help him. Only time might help, time which surrendered all secrets but only on the inexorable condition, as far as he could tell, that the secret could no longer be used.

He put his lips to Yves’ shoulder and tasted the Mediterranean salt. He thought of his friends— what friends? He was not sure that he had ever really been friends with Vivaldo or Richard or Cass; and Rufus was dead. He was not certain who, long, long after the event, had sent him the news— he had the feeling that it had to be Cass. It could scarcely have been Vivaldo, who was made too uneasy by what he knew of Eric’s relation to Rufus— knew without being willing to admit that he knew; and it would certainly not have been Richard. No one, in any case, had written very often; he had not really wanted to know what was happening among the people he had fled; and he felt that they had always protected themselves against any knowledge of what was happening in him. No, Rufus had been his only friend among them. Rufus had made him suffer, but Rufus had dared to know him. And when Eric’s pain had faded, and Rufus was far away, Eric remembered only the joy that they had sometimes shared, and the timbre of Rufus’ voice, his half-beat, loping, cocky walk, his smile, the way he held a cigarette, the way he threw back his head when he laughed. And there was something in Yves which reminded him of Rufus— something in his trusting smile and his brave, tough vulnerability.

It was a Thursday when the news came. It was pouring down rain, all of Paris was wavering and gray. He had no money at all that day, was waiting for a check which was mysteriously entangled in one of the bureaucratic webs of the French cinema industry. He and Yves had just divided the last of their cigarettes and Yves had gone off to try and borrow money from an Egyptian banker who had once been fond of him. Eric had then lived on the Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève, and he labored up this hill, in the flood, bareheaded, with water dripping down his nose and eyelashes and behind his ears and down his back and soaking through his trench-coat pocket, where he had unwisely placed the cigarettes. He could practically feel them disintegrating in the moist, unclean darkness of his pocket, not at all protected by his slippery hand. He was in a kind of numb despair and intended simply to get home and take off his clothes and stay in bed until help came; help would probably be Yves, with the money for sandwiches; it would be just enough help to enable them to get through yet another ghastly day.

He traversed the great courtyard and started up the steps of his building; and behind him, near the
porte-cochère,
the bell of the concierge’s
loge
sounded, and she called his name.

He went back, hoping that she was not going to ask him about his rent. She stood in her door, with a letter in her hand.

“This just came,” she said. “I thought it might be important.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She, too, hoped that it might be the money he was waiting for, but she closed her door behind her. It was nearly suppertime and she was cooking; in fact, the entire street seemed to be cooking, and his legs threatened to give way beneath him.

He did not look carefully at the outside of the envelope because his mind was entirely occupied by the recalcitrant check, and he was not expecting a check from America, which was where the letter came from; and he crumpled it up, unread, in his trench-coat pocket and crossed the courtyard and went upstairs to his room. There, he put the letter on the table, dried himself, and undressed and got under the covers. Then he lay the cigarettes out to dry, lit the driest one, and looked at the letter again. It seemed a very ordinary letter, until the paragraph beginning
We were all very fond of him, and I know that you were, too
— yes, it must have been Cass who wrote. Rufus was dead, and by his own hand. Rufus was dead.

Boys like me?
Yves had teased. How could he tell the boy who lay beside him now anything about Rufus? It had taken him a long while to realize that one of the reasons Yves had so stirred his heart, stirred it in a way he had almost forgotten it could be stirred, was because he reminded him, somehow, somewhere, of Rufus. And it had taken him almost until this very moment, on the eve of his departure, to begin to recognize that part of Rufus’ great power over him had to do with the past which Eric had buried in some deep, dark place; was connected with himself, in Alabama,
when I wasn’t nothing but a child;
with the cold white people and the warm, black people, warm at least for him, and as necessary as the sun which bathed the bodies of himself and his lover now. Lying in this garden now, so warm, covered, and apprehensive, he saw them on the angular, blazing streets of his childhood, and in the shuttered houses, and in the fields. They laughed differently from other people, so it had seemed to him, and moved with more beauty and violence, and they smelled like good things in the oven.

But had he ever loved Rufus? Or had it simply been rage and nostalgia and guilt? and shame? Was it the body of Rufus to which he had clung, or the bodies of dark men, seen briefly, somewhere, in a garden or a clearing, long ago, sweat running down their chocolate chests and shoulders, their voices ringing out, the white of their jock-straps beautiful against their skin, one with his head tilted back before a dipper— and the water splashing, sparkling, singing down!— one with his arm raised, laying an axe to the base of a tree? Certainly he had never succeeded in making Rufus believe he loved him. Perhaps Rufus had looked into his eyes and seen those dark men Eric saw, and hated him for it.

He lay very still, feeling Yves’ unmoving, trusting weight, feeling the sun.

“Yves—?”

Oui, mon chou?
”

“Let’s go inside. I think, maybe, I’d like to take a shower and have a drink. I’m beginning to feel sticky.”

“
Ah, les américains avec leur
drinks! I will surely become an alcoholic in New York.” But he raised his head and kissed Eric swiftly on the tip of his nose and stood up.

He stood between Eric and the sun; his hair very bright, his face in shadow. He looked down at Eric and grinned.

“
Alors to es toujours prêt, toi, d’après ce que je vois
.”

Eric laughed. “
Et toi, salaud?
”

“
Mais moi, je suis français, mon cher, je suis pas puritain, fort heureusement. T’aura du to rendre compte d’ailleurs.
” He pulled Eric to his feet and slapped him on the buttocks with the red bikini. “
Viens
. Take your shower. I think we have almost nothing left to drink, I will bicycle down to the village. What shall I get?”

“Some whiskey?”

“Naturally, since that is the most expensive. Are we eating in or out?”

They started into the house, with their arms around each other.

“Try to get Madame Belet to come and cook something for us.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

The house was long and low, built of stone, and very cool and dark after the heat and brightness of the kitchen. The kitten had followed them in and now murmured insistently at their feet.

“Perhaps I will feed her before I go. It will only take a minute.”

“She can’t be hungry yet, she eats all the time,” said Eric. But Yves had already begun preparing the kitten’s food.

They had entered through the kitchen and Eric walked through it and through the dining salon, into their bedroom, and threw himself down on the bed. The bedroom also had an entrance on the garden. The mimosas pressed against the window, and beyond these were two or three orange trees, holding hard, small oranges, like Christmas balls. There were olive trees in the garden, too, but they had been long untended; it was not worth anyone’s while to pick the olives.

The script of the new play was on the plain wooden table which, along with the fireplace in the dining room, had persuaded them to rent the house; on the table, too, were a few books, Yves’ copies of Blaise Cendrars and Jean Genet and Marcel Proust, Eric’s copies of
An Actor Prepares
and
The Wings of the Dove
and
Native Son
. Yves’ sketch pad was on the the floor. So were his tennis shoes and his socks and his underwear, all of these embracing Eric’s sport shirts and sandals and bathing trunks— less explicit and more somber than Yves’ bikini, these last, as Eric himself was less explicit and more sombre.