Another Country (27 page)

“Hell, my old man don’t give me no money. He certainly won’t give me any money to go North. He wants me to stay right here.”

“He going to die one day, Eric, he going to have to leave it to somebody, now who you think it’s going to be? Me?” And he laughed again.

“Well, I’m not going to hang around here the rest of my life, waiting for my papa to die. That’s certainly not much to look forward to.”

And he tried to laugh, to match his tone to LeRoy’s. But he did not really understand LeRoy’s tone. What was wrong between them today? For it was no longer merely the world— there was something unspoken between them, something unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired. And yet, on that far-off, burning day, though this knowledge clamored in him and fell all around him, like the sun, and everything in him was aching and yearning for the act, he could not, to save his soul, have named it. It had vet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. It had only a shape and the shape was LeRoy and LeRoy contained the mystery which had him by the throat.

And he put his arm around LeRoy’s shoulder and rubbed the top of his head against LeRoy’s chin.

“Well, you got it to look forward to, whether you like it or not,” LeRoy said. He put one hand on Eric’s neck. “But I guess you know what
I
got to look forward to.” And Eric felt that he wished to say more, but did not know how. They walked on a few seconds in silence and LeRoy’s opportunity came. A cream-colored roadster, bearing six young people, three white boys and three white girls, came up the road in a violent swirl and wake of dust. Eric and LeRoy did not have time to move apart, and a great laugh came from the car, and the driver beat out a mocking version of the wedding march on his horn— then kept his entire palm on it as the car shot down the road, away. All of the people in the car were people with whom Eric had grown up.

He felt his face flame and he and LeRoy moved away from each other; and LeRoy looked at him with a curiously noncommittal pity.

“Now
that’s
what you supposed to be doing,” he said— he said it very gently, looking at Eric, licking his lower lip— “and
that’s
where you supposed to be. You
ain’t
supposed to be walking around this damn country road with no nigger.”

“I don’t give a damn about those people,” Eric said— but he knew that he was lying and he knew that LeRoy knew it, too— “those people don’t mean a thing to me.”

LeRoy looked more pitying than ever, and also looked exasperated. The road now was empty, not a creature moved on it; it was yellow-red and brown and trees leaned over it, with fire falling through the leaves; and the road now began to drop beneath them, toward the railroad tracks and the warehouse. This was the town’s dividing line and they always turned off the road at this point, into a clump of trees and a rise which overlooked a stream. LeRoy now turned Eric into this haven. His touch was different today; insistent, gentle, ferocious, and resigned.

“Besides,” said Eric, helplessly, “you’re not a nigger, not for me, you’re LeRoy, you’re my friend, and I love you.” The words took his breath away and tears came to his eyes and they paused in the fiery shadow of a tree. LeRoy leaned against the tree, staring at Eric, with a terrible expression on his black face. The expression on LeRoy’s face frightened him, but he labored upward against his fear, and brought out, “I don’t know why people can’t do what they want to do; what
harm
are we doing to anybody?”

LeRoy laughed. He reached out and pulled Eric against him, under the shadow of the leaves. “Poor little rich boy,” he said, “tell me what you want to
do
.” Eric stared at him. Nothing could have moved him out of LeRoy’s arms, away from his smell, and the terrible, new touch of his body; and yet, in the same way that he knew that everything he had ever wanted or done was wrong, he knew that this was wrong, and he felt himself falling. Falling where? He clung to LeRoy, whose arms tightened around him. “Poor boy,” LeRoy murmured again, “poor boy.” Eric buried his face in LeRoy’s neck and LeRoy’s body shook a little—
the chest and belly of a man!
— and then he pushed Eric away and guided him toward the stream and they sat down beside it.

“I guess you know, now,” LeRoy said, after a long silence, while Eric trailed his hand in the water, “what they saying about us in this town. I don’t care but it can get us in a lot of trouble and you got to stop coming to see me, Eric.”

He had
not
known what they were saying, or he had been unable to allow himself to know; but he knew now. He said, staring into the water, and with a totally mysterious abandon, “Well, if we’ve got the name, we might as well have the game is how I see it. I don’t give a shit about those people, let them all go to hell; what have they got to do with you and me?”

LeRoy looked briefly over at Eric and smiled. “You a nice boy, Eric, but you don’t know the score. Your Daddy
owns
half the folks in this town, ain’t but so much they can do to you. But what they can do to
me
—!” And he spread his hands wide.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

LeRoy laughed. You
better
get out of this town. Declare, they going to lynch you before they get around to me.” He laughed again and rubbed his hand in Eric’s bright red hair.

Eric grabbed his hand. They looked at each other, and a total, a dreadful silence fell. “Boy,” LeRoy said, weakly. And then, after a moment, “You really out for trouble, ain’t you?” And then nothing was said. They lay together beside the stream.

That day. That day. Had he known where that day would lead him would he have writhed as he did, in such an anguished joy, beneath the great weight of his first lover? But if he had known, or been capable of caring, where such a day might lead him, it could never have been his necessity to bring about such a day. He was frightened and in pain and the boy who held him so relentlessly was suddenly a stranger; and yet this stranger worked in Eric an eternal, a healing transformation. Many years were to pass before he could begin to accept what he, that day, in those arms, with the stream whispering in his ear, discovered; and yet that day was the beginning of his life as a man. What had always been hidden was to him, that day, revealed and it did not matter that, fifteen years later, he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation. For the meaning of revelation is that what is revealed is true, and must be borne.

But how to bear it? He rose from his seat and paced restlessly into the garden. The kitten lay curled on the stone doorstep, in the last of the sun, asleep. Then he heard Yves’ bicycle bell and, shortly, Yves’ head appeared above the low stone wall. He passed, looking straight ahead, and then Eric heard him in the kitchen, humping into things and opening and closing the icebox door.

Then Yves stood beside him.

“Madame Belet will be here in a few moments. She is cooking for us a chicken. And I have bought some whiskey and some cigarettes.” Then he looked at Eric and frowned. “You are mad to be standing here in your bathrobe. The sun is down and it is getting cold. Come in and get dressed, I will make us both a drink.”

“What would I do without you?”

“I wonder.” Eric followed him into the house. “I also bought some champagne,” Yves said, suddenly, and he turned to face Eric with a small, shy smile, “to celebrate our last night here.” Then he walked into the kitchen. “Get dressed,” he called, “Madame Belet will be here soon.”

Eric stepped into the bedroom and began putting on his clothes. “Are we going out after dinner?”

“Perhaps. That depends. If we are not too drunk on champagne.”

“I’d just as soon stay in, I think.”

“Oh, perhaps we must have just one last look at our little seaside town.”

“We have to get packed, you know, and clean up this house a little, and try to get some sleep.”

“Madame Belet will clean it for us. Anyway, we would never be able to get it done. We can sleep on the train. And we do not have so very much to pack.”

Eric heard him washing the glasses. Then he began to whistle a tune which sounded like a free improvisation on Bach. Eric combed his hair, which was too long. He decided that he would get it cut very short before he went back to the States.

Eventually, they sat, as they had sat so many evenings, before the window which overlooked the sea. Yves sat on the hassock, the back of his head resting on Eric’s knee.

“I will be very sad to leave here,” Yves said, suddenly. “I have never been happier than I have been in this house.”

Eric stroked Yves’ hair and said nothing. He watched the lights that played on the still, black sea, from the sky and the shore.

“I have been very happy, too,” he said at last. And then: “I wonder if we will ever be so happy again.”

“Yes, why not? But that is not so important— anyway, no matter how happy I may become, and I am sure that I shall have great moments yet, this house will always stay with me. I found out something here.”

“And what was that?”

Yves turned his head and looked up at Eric. “I was afraid that I would just remain a street boy forever, that I was no better than my mother.” He turned away, toward the window again. “But, somehow, down here in this house with you, I finally realized that that is not so. I have not to be a whore just because I come from whores. I am better than that.” He stopped. “I learned that from you. That is really strange, for, you know? in the beginning I thought you thought of me like that. I thought that you were just another sordid American, looking for a pretty, degenerate boy.”

“But you are not pretty,” Eric said, and sipped his whiskey. “
Au fait, to es plutôt moche
.”

“Oh.
Ça va
.”

“Your nose turns up.” He stroked the tip of Yves’ nose. “And your mouth’s too big”— Yves laughed— “and your forehead’s too high and soon you won’t have any hair.” He stroked Yves’ forehead, stroked his hair. “And those ears, baby! you look like an elephant or a flying machine.”

“You are the first person who ever say that I am ugly. Perhaps that is why I am intrigued.” He laughed.

“Well. Your eyes are not too bad.”

“
Tu parle. J’ai du chien, moi.
”

“Well, yes, baby, now that you mention it, I’m afraid you’ve got a point.”

They were silent for a moment.

“I have been with so many horrible people,” Yves said, gravely, “so soon, and for so long. Really, it is a wonder that I am not completely
sauvage
.” He sipped his whiskey. Eric could not see his face, but he could imagine the expression it held: hard and baffled and terribly young, with the cruelty that comes from pain and fear. “First, my mother and all those soldiers,
ils étaient mes oncles, tons,
” and he laughed, “and then all those awful, slimy men, I no longer know how many.” He was silent again. “I lay in the bed, sometimes we never got to bed, and let them grunt and slobber. Some of them were really fantastic, no whore has ever told the truth about who comes to her, I am sure of that, they would chop off her head before they would dare to hear it. But it is happening, it is happening all the time.” He leaned up, hugging his knees, staring at the sea. “Then I would take their money; if they made difficulties I could scare them because I was
mineur
. Anyway, it was very easy to scare them. Most of those people are cowards.” Then he said, in a low voice, “I never thought that I would be happy to have a man touch me and hold me. I never thought that I would be able, truly, to make love with a man. Or with anyone.”

“Why,” Eric asked at last, “didn’t you use women instead of men, as you despised the men so much?”

Yves was silent. Then, “I don’t know.
D’abord,
I took what there was— or allowed what there was to take
me,
” and he looked at Eric and grinned. He sipped his whiskey and stood up. “It is simpler with men, it is usually shorter, the money is easier. Women are much more cunning than men, especially those women who would go after a boy like me, and even more unattractive, really.” He laughed. “It is much harder work, and it is not so sure.” His face dropped again into its incongruous, austere melancholy. “You do not meet many women in the places I have been; you do not meet many human persons at all. They are all dead. Dead.” He stopped, his lips pursed, his eyes glittering in the light that fell though the window. “There were many whores in my mother’s place, but— well, yes, there have been a few women, but I couldn’t stand them, either.” He moved to the window and stood there with his back to Eric. “I do not like
l’elégance des femmes
. Every time I see a woman wearing her fur coats and her jewels and her gowns, I want to tear all that off her and drag her someplace, to a
pissoir,
and make her smell the smell of many men, the
piss
of many men, and make her know that
that
is what she is for, she is no better than that, she does not fool me with all those shining rags, which, anyway, she only got by blackmailing some stupid man.”

Eric laughed, but he was frightened. “
Comme to es feroce!
” He watched Yves turn from the window and slowly pace the room— long and lean, like a stalking cat, and in the heavy shadows. And he saw that Yves’ body was changing, was losing the adolescent, poverty-stricken harshness. He was becoming a man.

And he watched that sullen, wiry body. He watched his face. The dome of his forehead seemed more remarkable than ever, and more pure, and his mouth seemed, at once, more cruel and more defenseless. This nakedness was the proof of Yves’ love and trust, and it was also the proof of Yves’ force. Yves, one day, would no longer need Eric as he needed Eric now.

Now, Yves tilted back his head and finished his drink and turned to Eric with a smile.

“You are drinking very slowly tonight. What is the matter?”