Another Country (45 page)

“I don’t know. Does the difference
make
any difference?”

“Well,” said Vivaldo, tapping with his thumbnail against the hinges of the door, “I certainly think that the real ball game is between men and women. And it’s physically easier.” He looked quickly at Eric. “Isn’t it? And then,” he added, “there are children.” And he looked quickly at Eric again.

Eric laughed. “I never heard of two cats who wanted to make it failing because they were the wrong size. Love always finds a way, dad. I don’t know anything about baseball, so I don’t know if life’s a baseball game or not. Maybe it is for you. It isn’t for me. And if its children you’re after, well, you can do that in five minutes and you haven’t got to love anybody to do it. If all the children who get here every year were brought here by love, wow! baby, what a bright world this would
be!
”

And now Vivaldo felt, at the very bottom of his heart, a certain reluctant hatred rising, against which he struggled as he would have struggled against vomiting. “I can’t decide,” he said, “whether you want to make everybody as miserable as you are, or whether everybody is as miserable as you are.”

“Well, don’t put it that way, baby. How happy are
you?
That’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with how I live, or what I think, or how miserable I am— how are
you
making it?”

The question hung in the room, like the smoke which wavered between Eric and Vivaldo. The question was as thick as the silence in which Vivaldo looked down, away from Eric, searching his heart for an answer. He was frightened; he looked up at Eric; Eric was frightened, too. They watched each other. “I’m in love with Ida,” Vivaldo said. Then, “And sometimes we make it, beautifully, beautifully. And sometimes we don’t. And it’s hideous.”

And he remained where he was, in the doorway, still.

“I, too, am in love,” said Eric, “his name is Yves; he’s coming to New York very soon. I got a letter from him today.”

He stood up and walked to his desk, picked up the play and opened it and took out an airmail envelope. Vivaldo watched his face, which had become, in an instant, weary and transfigured. Eric opened the letter and read it again. He looked at Vivaldo. “Sometimes we make it, too, and it’s beautiful. And when we don’t, it’s hideous.” He sat down again. “When I was talking before about accepting or deciding, I was thinking about him.” He paused, and threw his letter on the bed. There was a very long silence, which Vivaldo did not dare to break.

“I,” said Eric, “must understand that if I dreamed of escape, and I
did
— when this thing with Cass began, I thought that perhaps here was my opportunity to change, and I was
glad
— well, Yves, who is much younger than I, will also dream of escape. I must be prepared to let him go. He
will
go. And I think”— he looked up at Vivaldo— “that he
must
go, probably, in order to become a man.”

“You mean,” said Vivaldo, “in order to become himself.”

“Yes,” said Eric. And silence came again.

“All I can do,” said Eric, at last, “is love him. But this means— doesn’t it?— that I can’t delude myself about loving someone else. I can’t make any promise greater than this promise I’ve made already— not now, not now, and maybe I’ll never make any greater promise. I can’t be safe and sorry, too. I can’t act as though I’m free when I know I’m not. I’ve got to live with that, I’ve got to learn to live with that. Does that make sense? or am I mad?” There were tears in his eyes. He walked to the kitchen door and stared at Vivaldo. Then he turned away. “You’re right. You’re right. There’s nothing here to decide. There’s everything to accept.”

Vivaldo moved from the door, and threw himself face down on the bed, his long arms dangling to the floor. “Does Cass know about Yves?”

“Yes. I told her before anything happened.” He smiled. “But you know how that is— we were trying to be honorable. Nothing could really have stopped us by that time; we needed each other too much.”

“What are you going to do now? When does”— he gestured toward the letter, which was somewhere beneath his belly button— “Yves get here?”

“In about two weeks. According to that letter. It may be a little longer. It may be sooner.”

“Have you told Cass that?”

“No. I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

“How do you think she’ll take it?”

“Well, she’s always known he was on his way. I don’t know how she’ll take— his actual
arrival
.”

In the streets, they heard footsteps, walking fast, and someone whistling.

Eric stared at the wall again, frowning heavily. Other voices were heard in the street. “I guess the bars are beginning to close,” said Eric.

“Yes.” Vivaldo leaned up, looking toward the blinds which held back the jungle. “Eric. How’s one going to get through it all? How can you live if you can’t love? And how can you live if you
do
?”

And he stared at Eric, who said nothing, whose face gleamed in the yellow light, as mysteriously impersonal and as fearfully moving as might have been a death mask of Eric as a boy. He realized that they were both beginning to be drunk.

“I don’t see how I can live with Ida, and I don’t see how I can live without her. I get through every day on a prayer. Every morning, when I wake up, I’m surprised to find that she’s still beside me.” Eric was watching him, perfectly rigid and still, seeming scarcely to breathe, only his unmoving eyes were alive. “And yet”— he caught his breath— “sometimes I wish she weren’t there, sometimes I wish I’d never met her, sometimes I think I’d go anywhere to get this burden off me. She never lets me forget I’m white, she never lets me forget she’s colored. And I don’t care, I don’t care— did Rufus do that to you? Did he try to make you pay?”

Eric dropped his eyes, and his lips tightened. “Ah. He didn’t
try
. I paid.” He raised his eyes to Vivaldo’s. “But I’m not sad about it any more. If it hadn’t been for Rufus, I would never have had to go away, I would never have been able to deal with Yves.” And then, rising and walking to the window, from which more and more voices rose, “Maybe that’s what love is for.”

“Are you sleeping with anyone besides Cass?”

Eric turned. “No.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought you might be. I’m not sleeping with anyone except Ida.”

“We can’t be everywhere at once,” said Eric.

They listened to the footfalls and voices in the street: someone was singing, someone called, someone was cursing. Someone ran. Then silence, again.

“You know,” said Eric, “it’s true that you can make kids without love. But if you
do
love the person you make the kids with, it must be something fantastic.”

“Ida and I could have great kids,” said Vivaldo.

“Do you think you will?”

“I don’t know. I’d love to— but”— he fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

He allowed himself, for a moment, the luxury of dreaming of Ida’s children, though he knew that these children would never be born and that this moment was all he would ever have of them. Nevertheless, he dreamed of a baby boy who had Ida’s mouth and eyes and forehead, his hair, only curlier, his build,
their
color. What would that color be? From the streets, again, came a cry and a crash and a roar. Eric switched off the night light and opened the blinds and Vivaldo joined him at the window. But now there was nothing to see, the street was empty, dark, and still, though an echo of voices, diminishing, floated back.

“One of the last times I saw Rufus,” Vivaldo said, abruptly— and stopped. He had not thought about it since that moment; in a way, he had never thought about it at all.

“Yes?” He could barely make out Eric’s face in the darkness. He turned away from Eric and sat down on the bed again, and lit a cigarette. And in the tiny flare, Eric’s face leapt at him, then dropped back into darkness. He watched the red-black silhouette of Eric’s head against the dim glow of the Venetian blinds.

He remembered that terrible apartment again, and Leona’s tears, and Rufus with the knife, and the bed with the twisted gray sheet and the thin blanket: and it all seemed to have happened many, many years ago.

But, in fact, it had only been a matter of months.

“I never told this to anybody before,” he said, “and I really don’t know why I’m telling you. It’s just that the last time I saw Rufus, before he disappeared, when he was still with Leona”— he caught his breath, he dragged on his cigarette and the glow brought the room back into the world, then dropped it again into chaos— “we had a fight, he said he was going to kill me. And. at the very end, when he was finally in bed, after he’d cried, and after he’d told me— so many terrible things— I looked at him, he was lying on his side, his eyes were half open, he was looking at me. I was taking off my pants, Leona was staying at my place and I was going to stay there, I was afraid to leave him alone. Well, when he looked at me, just before he closed his eyes and turned on his side away from me, all curled up, I had the weirdest feeling that he wanted me to take him in my arms. And not for sex, though maybe sex would have happened. I had the feeling that he wanted someone to hold him, to hold him, and that, that night, it had to be a man. I got in the bed and I thought about it and I watched his back, it was as dark in that room, then, as it is in this room, now, and I lay on my back and I didn’t touch him and I didn’t sleep. I remember that night as a kind of vigil. I don’t know whether he slept or not, I kept trying to tell from his breathing— but I couldn’t tell, it was too choppy, maybe he was having nightmares. I loved Rufus, I loved him, I didn’t want him to die. But when he was dead, I thought about it, thought about it— isn’t it funny? I didn’t know I’d thought about it as much as I have— and I wondered, I guess I still wonder, what would have happened if I’d taken him in my arms, if I’d held him, if I hadn’t been— afraid. I was afraid that he wouldn’t understand that it was— only love. Only love. But, oh, Lord, when he died, I thought that maybe I could have saved him if I’d just reached out that quarter of an inch between us on that bed, and held him.” He felt the cold tears on his face, and he tried to wipe them away. “Do you know what I mean? I haven’t told Ida this, I haven’t told anyone, I haven’t thought about it, since he died. But I guess I’ve been living with it. And I’ll never know. I’ll never know.”

“No,” said Eric, “you’ll never know. If I had been there, I’d have held him— but it wouldn’t have helped. His little girl tried to hold him, and that didn’t help.”

He sat down on the bed beside Vivaldo. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Hell, no.” Vivaldo dried his eyes with the back of his hand. “Let’s have another drink. Let’s watch the dawn come up.

“Okay.” Eric started to move away. Vivaldo grabbed his hand.

“Eric—” He watched Eric’s dark, questioning eyes and the slightly parted, slightly smiling lips. “I’m glad I told you about that. I guess I couldn’t have told anybody else.”

Eric seemed to smile. He took Vivaldo’s face between his hands and kissed him, a light, swift kiss, on the forehead. Then his shadow vanished, and Vivaldo heard him in the kitchen.

“I’m out of ice.”

“The hell with the ice.”

“Water?”

“No. Well, maybe a little.”

Eric returned with two glasses and put one in Vivaldo’s hand. They touched glasses.

“To the dawn,” said Eric.

“To the dawn,” Vivaldo said.

Then they sat together, side by side, watching the light come up behind the window and insinuate itself into the room. Vivaldo sighed, and Eric turned to look at his lean, gray face, the long cheeks hollowed now, and the stubble coming up, the marvelous mouth resigned, and the black eyes staring straight out— staring out because they were beginning to look inward. And Eric felt, for perhaps the first time in his life, the key to the comradeship of men. Here was Vivaldo, long, lean, and weary, dressed, as he almost always was, in black and white; his white shirt was open, almost to the navel, and the shirt was dirty now, and the hair on his chest curled out; the hair on his head, which was always too long, was tousled, and fell over his forehead; and he smelled Vivaldo’s sweat, his armpits and his groin, and was terribly aware of his long legs. Here Vivaldo sat, on Eric’s bed. Not a quarter of an inch divided them. His elbow nearly touched Vivaldo’s elbow, as he listened to the rise and fall of Vivaldo’s breath. They were like two soldiers, resting from battle, about to go into battle again.

Vivaldo fell back on the bed, one hand covering his forehead, one hand between his legs. Presently, he was snoring, then he shuddered, and turned into Eric’s pillow, toward Eric’s wall. Eric sat on the bed, alone, and watched him. He took off Vivaldo’s shoes, he loosened Vivaldo’s belt, turning Vivaldo to face him. The morning light bathed the sleeper. Eric made himself another drink, with ice this time, for the ice was ready. He thought of reading Yves’ letter again, but he knew it by heart; and he was terrified of Yves’ arrival. He sat on the bed again, looking at the morning….
Mon plus cher. Je te previendra la jour de mon arrivée. Je prendrai l’avion. J’ai dit au revoir à ma mère. Elle a beaucoup pleurée. J’avoue que ça me faisait quelque chose. Bon. Paris est mortelle sans toi. Je t’adore mon petit et je t’aime. Comme j’ai envie de te serre très fort entre mes bras. Je t’embrasse. Toujours à toi. Ton
YVES
.

Oh, yes. Somewhere, someone turned on a radio. The day was here. He finished his drink, took off his shoes, loosened his belt, and stretched out beside Vivaldo. He put his head on Vivaldo’s chest, and, in the shadow of that rock, he slept.

Ida told the taxi driver, “Uptown, please, to
Small’s Paradise
,” then turned, with a rueful smile, to Cass.

“
Their
night,” she said, indicating the vanished Eric and Vivaldo, “is just beginning. So is mine, only mine won’t be as much fun.”

“I thought you were going home,” Cass said.

“Well. I’m not. I’ve got some people to meet.” She looked thoughtfully at her fingernails, then looked over to Cass. “I couldn’t tell Vivaldo, so don’t you tell him, please. He just gets upset when he’s around— some of those musicians. I can’t blame him. I really can’t blame them, either; I know how they feel. But I don’t like for them to take it out on Vivaldo, he’s having a rough enough time as it is.”