Another Country (39 page)

She looked at her watch. It was ten past one. She would have to go home and she was relieved to discover that she was apprehensive, but not guilty. She really felt that a weight had rolled away, and that she was herself again, in her own skin, for the first time in a long time.

She moved slowly out from beneath his weight, kissed his brow and covered him. Then she went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower. She sang to herself in an undertone as the water crashed over her body, and used the towel which smelled of him with joy. She dressed, still humming, and combed her hair. But the pins were on the night table. She came out, to find him sitting up, smoking a cigarette. They smiled at each other.

“How are you, baby?” he asked.

“I feel wonderful. How are you?”

“I feel wonderful, too,” and he laughed, sheepishly. Then, “You have to go?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” She came to the night table and put the pins in her hair. He reached up and pulled her down on the bed and kissed her. It was a strange kiss, in its sad insistence. His eyes seemed to be seeking in her something he had despaired of finding, and did not yet trust.

“Will Richard be awake?”

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter. We’re very seldom together in the evenings; he works, I read, or go out to the movies, or watch TV.” She touched his cheek. “Don’t worry.”

“When will I see you?”

“Soon. I’ll call you.”

“Does it matter if I call you? Or would you rather I didn’t?”

She hesitated. “It doesn’t matter.” They both thought,
It doesn’t matter yet.
He kissed her again.

“I wish you could spend the night,” he said. He laughed again. “We were just beginning to get started, I hope you know that.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I can tell.” He placed his rough cheek next to hers. “But I’ve got to go now.”

“Shall I walk you to a taxi?”

“Oh, Eric, don’t be silly. There’s just no point to that at all.”

“I’d like to. I’ll only be a minute.” He jumped out of bed and entered the bathroom. She listened to the water splashing and flushing and looked around his apartment, which already seemed terribly familiar. She would try to get down and clean it up sometime in the next few days. It would be difficult to get away in the daytime, except, perhaps, on Saturdays. Then it occurred to her that she needed a smoke screen for this affair and that she would have to use Vivaldo and Ida.

Eric came out of the bathroom and pulled on his shorts and his trousers and his T-shirt. He stuck his feet into his sandals. He looked scrubbed and sleepy and pale. His lips were swollen and very red, like those of heroes and gods of antiquity.

“All ready?” he asked.

“All ready.” He picked up her bag and gave it to her. They kissed briefly again, and walked down the stairs into the streets. He put his arm around her waist. They walked in silence, and the street they walked was empty. But there were people in the bars, gesticulating and seeming to howl in the yellow light, behind the smoky glass; and people in the side streets, loitering and skulking; dogs on leashes, sniffing with their masters. They passed the movie theater, and were on the Avenue, facing the hospital. And in the shadow of the great, darkened marquee, they smiled into each other’s faces.

“I’m glad you called me,” he said. “I’m so glad.”

She said, “I’m glad you were home.”

They saw a cab coming crosstown and Eric put up his hand.

“I’ll call you in a few days,” she said, “around Friday or Saturday.”

“All right, Cass.” The cab stopped and he opened the door and put her in, leaned in and kissed her. “Be good, little gal.”

“You, too.” He closed the door on her, and waved. The cab began to move, and she watched him move, alone, into the long, dark street.

There were no phone booths on deserted Fifth Avenue and Vivaldo walked the high, silent block to Sixth Avenue and entered the first bar he came to, heading straight for the phone booth. He rang the number of the restaurant and waited quite a while before an irritated male voice answered. He asked for Miss Ida Scott.”

“She didn’t come in tonight. She called in sick. Maybe you can get her at home.”

“Thank you,” he said. But the man had already hung up. He felt nothing at all, certainly not astonishment; yet, he leaned against the phone for an instant, freezing and faint. Then he dialed his own number. There was no answer.

He walked out of the phone booth into the bar, which was a workingman’s bar, and there was a wrestling match on the TV screen. He ordered a double shot and leaned on the bar. He was surrounded by precisely those men he had known from his childhood, from his earliest youth. It was as though, hideously, after a long and fruitless voyage, he had come home, to find that he had become a stranger. They did not look at him— or did not seem to look at him; but, then, that was the style of these men; and if they usually saw less than was present, they also, often, saw more than one guessed. Two Negroes near him, in working clothes, seemed to have a bet on the outcome of the wrestling match, which they did not, however, appear to be watching very closely. They kept talking to each other in a rumbling, humorous monotone— a smile kept playing on both their faces— and every once in a while they ordered a new round of drinks, or exploded with laughter, or turned their attention again to the screen. All up and down the bar, men stood silently, usually singly, watching the TV screen, or watching nothing. There were booths beside the bar, near the back. An elderly Negro couple and a young Negro couple shared one booth, another booth held three aimless youths, drinking beer, in the very last booth an odd-looking man, who might have been a Persian, was feeling up a pasty-faced, string-haired girl. The Negro couples were in earnest conversation— the elderly Negro woman leaned forward with great vehemence; and the three youths were giggling and covertly watching the dark man and the pasty girl; and if this evening ended as all the others had, they would presently drive off to some haven and watch each other masturbate. The bartender was iron-haired and pablum-faced, with spectacles, and leaned on a barrel at one end of the bar, watching the screen. Vivaldo watched the screen, seeing two ancient, flabby men throwing each other around on a piece of canvas; from time to time a sensually grinning blonde advertised soap— but her grin was far less sensual than the wrestling match— and a strong-jawed neuter in a crew cut puffed rapaciously, with unnerving pleasure, on a cigarette. Then, back to the groaning wrestlers, who really should have been home in bed, possibly with each other.

Where was she?
Where
was she? With Ellis, certainly. Where? She had called the restaurant; but she had not called him. And she would say, “But we didn’t have any plans for tonight, sweetie, I
knew
you were seeing Cass, and I was sure you’d have supper with
her!
” Where was she? the hell with her. She would say, “Oh, honey, don’t be like that, suppose I made a fuss every time you went out and had a drink with someone else? I trust you, now, you’ve got to trust me. Suppose I really make it as a singer and have to see lots of people, what’re you going to do
then
?” She trusted him because she didn’t give a damn about him, the hell with her. The hell with her. The hell with her.

Oh, Ida. She would say, “Mama called me after you left and she was real upset; Daddy got into a fight this week end and he was cut kind of bad and I just left the hospital this very minute. Mama wanted me to stay with her but I knew you’d be worried, so I came on home. You know, they don’t like the idea of my living down here with you one bit, maybe they’ll get used to it, but I’m sure that’s what makes my Daddy so evil, he just can’t get over Rufus, you know, sugar, please make me a little drink, I’m just about dead.”

The hell with her. The hell with her.

She would say, “Oh, Vivaldo, why do you want to be so mean when you know how much I love you?” She would sound exasperated and very close to tears. And then, even though he knew that she was using him against himself, hope rose up hard in him, his throat became tight with pain, he willed away all his doubts. Perhaps she loved him, perhaps she did: but if she did, how was it, then, that they remained so locked away from one another? Perhaps it was he who did not know how to give, did not know how to love. Love was a country he knew nothing about. And he thought, very unwillingly, that perhaps he did not love her. Perhaps it was only because she was not white that he dared to bring her the offering of himself. Perhaps he had felt, somewhere, at the very bottom of himself, that she would not dare despise him.

And if this was what she suspected, well, then, her rage was bottomless and she would never be conquered by him.

He walked out of the bar into the streets again, not knowing what to do but knowing he could not go home. He wished he had a friend, a male friend, with whom he could talk; and this made him realize that, with the dubious exception of Rufus, he had never had a friend in his life. He thought of calling Eric, but Eric had been away too long. He no longer knew anything about Eric’s life and tonight he did not want to know.

So he walked. He passed the great livid scar of Forty-second Street, knowing that he could not endure sitting through a movie tonight; and on, down lonely Sixth Avenue, until he came to the Village. Again, he thought of calling Eric and again dismissed it. He walked eastward to the park; there were no singers there tonight, only shadows in the shadows of the trees; and a policeman coming into the park as he walked out of it. He walked along MacDougal Street. Here were the black-and-white couples, defiantly white, flamboyantly black; and the Italians watched them, hating them, hating, in fact, all the Villagers, who gave their streets a bad name. The Italians, after all merely wished to be accepted as decent Americans and probably could not be blamed for feeling that they might have had an easier time of it if they had not been afflicted with so many Jews and junkies and drunkards and queers and spades. Vivaldo peered into the bars and coffee houses, half-hoping to see a familiar and bearable face. But there were only the rat-faced boys, with beards, and the infantile, shapeless girls, with the long hair.

“How’re you and your spade chick making it?”

He turned, and it was Jane. She was drunk and with an uptown, seersucker type, who probably worked in advertising.

He stared at her and she said, quickly, with a laugh, “Oh, now, don’t get mad, I was only teasing you. Don’t old girl friends have
some
rights?” And to the man beside her, she said, “This is an old friend of mine, Vivaldo Moore. And
this
is Dick Lincoln.”

Vivaldo and Dick Lincoln acknowledged each other with brief, constrained nods.

“How are you, Jane?” Vivaldo asked, politely; beginning to move, at the same time, in what he hoped was not their direction.

But they, naturally, began to move with him.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “I seem to have made an incredible recovery—”

“Have you been ill?”

She looked at him. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Nerves. Due to a love affair that didn’t work out.”

“Someone I know?”

She laughed, breathily. “You bastard.”

“It’s just that I’m terribly accustomed to your dramatics. But I’m glad that everything’s working out for you now.”

“Oh, everything’s fine now,” she said, and made a grotesquely girlish little skip, holding heavily onto Lincoln’s hand. “Dick doesn’t care much about soul-searching, but he’s good at what he cares about.” The man she thus described moved stiffly beside her, his face a ruddy mask of uncertainty, clearly determined to do the right thing, whatever the right thing might prove to be.

“Come and have a drink with us,” Jane said. They were standing on the corner, in the lights spilling outward from a bar. The light illumined and horribly distorted her face, so that her eyes looked like coals of fire and her mouth stretched joylessly back upon the gums. “For old times’ sake.”

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’m going on home. I’ve had a long, hard day.”

“Rushing home to your chick?”

“Good thing to rush home to, if you’ve got one,” Dick Lincoln said, putting his pink, nerveless hand on Jane’s shoulder.

Somehow, she bore it; but not without another girlish twitch. She said, “Vivaldo’s got a great chick.” She turned to Dick Lincoln. “I bet you think you’re a liberal,” she said, “but this boy, baby, he’s miles ahead of you. He’s miles ahead of
me;
why, if I was as liberal as my friend, Vivaldo, here”— she laughed; a very tall Negro boy passed them, looking at them briefly— “why, I wouldn’t be with
you,
you poor white slob. I’d be with the biggest, blackest buck I could find!” Vivaldo felt his skin prickling, Dick Lincoln blushed. Jane laughed, and Vivaldo realized that others, both black and white, were watching them. “Maybe I should have gone with her brother,” Jane said, “would you have liked me better if I had? Or were you going with
him,
too? Can’t ever tell about a liberal,” and she turned her face, laughing, into Dick Lincoln’s shoulder.

Lincoln stared helplessly into Vivaldo’s eyes. “She’s all yours, mister,” Vivaldo said, and at this Jane looked up at him, not laughing at all, her face livid, and old with rage. And all his anger left him at once.

“So long,” he said, and turned away. He wanted to leave before Jane precipitated a race riot. And he also realized that he had become the focus of two very different kinds of attention. The blacks now suspected him of being an ally— though not a friend, never a friend!— and the whites, particularly the neighborhood Italians, now knew that he could not be trusted. “Hurry home,” Jane called behind him, “hurry home! Is it true that they’ve got hotter blood than ours? Is her blood hotter than mine?” And laughter rang down the street behind this call, the suppressed, bawdy laughter of the Italians— for, after all, Vivaldo was one of them, and a male, and apparently, a gifted one— and the delighted, vindictive laughter of the Negroes. For a moment, behind him, they were almost united— but then, each, hearing the other’s laughter, choked their laughter off. The Italians heard the laughter of black men; the black men remembered that it was a black girl Vivaldo was screwing.