Another Country Page 21

  And, of course, in Eric’s case, in Alabama, his increasing isolation and strangeness was held, even by himself, to be due to the extreme unpopularity of his racial attitudes— or, rather, as far as the world in which he moved was concerned, the lack of any responsible attitudes at all. The town in which Eric lived was celebrated and well-to-do, but it was not very big; as far as Eric was concerned, the South was not very big, certainly, as it turned out, not big enough for him; and he was the only son of very prominent people. So it was not long before his appearance anywhere caused heads to shake, lips to purse, tongues to stiffen or else, violently, venomously, to curl around his name. Which was also, however, his father’s name, and Eric, therefore, encountered, very often and very soon, the hideous obsequiousness of people who depised him but who did not dare to say so. They had long ago given up saying anything which they really felt, had given it up so long ago that they were now incapable of feeling anything which was not felt by a mob.

  Now, Eric stepped out of the shower, rubbing his body with the enormous, rough, white towel Yves had placed in the bathroom for him. Yves did not like showers, he preferred long, scalding baths, with newspapers, cigarettes, and whiskey on a chair next to the bathtub, and with Eric nearby to talk to, to shampoo his hair, and to scrub his back. The thought of the Oriental opulence which overtook Yves each time he bathed caused Eric to smile. He smiled, but he was troubled, too. And as he put on his bathrobe, his body tingled less from the effect of the towel and the toilet water than from his image, abruptly overwhelming, of Yves leaning back in the bathtub, whistling, the washrag in his hand, a peaceful, abstracted look on his face and his sex gleaming and bobbing in the soapy water like a limp, cylindrical fish; and from his memory, to which his image was somehow the gateway, of that moment, nearly fifteen years ago, when the blow had inexorably fallen and his shame and his battle and his exile had begun. He walked into the dining room and poured himself a drink. Then the bottle was empty and he dropped it in the waste basket. He lit a cigarette and sat down in a chair near the window, overlooking the sea. The sun was sinking and the sea was on fire.

  The sun had been sinking on that far-off day, a Sunday, a hot day. The church bells had ceased and the silence of the South hung heavy over that town. The trees along the walks gave no shade. The white houses, with their blank front doors, their blackly shadowed porches, seemed to be in battle with the sun, laboring and shuddering beneath the merciless light. Occasionally, passing a porch, one might discern in its depths a still, shadowed, faceless figure. The interminable pickaninnies were playing in the invincible dirt— where Eric was walking that day, on a back road, near the edge of town, with a colored boy. His name was LeRoy, he was seventeen, a year older than Eric, and he worked as a porter in the courthouse. He was tall and very black, and taciturn; Eric always wondered what he was thinking. They had been friends for a long time, from the time of Henry’s banishment. But now their friendship, their effort to continue an impossible connection, was beginning to be a burden for them both. It would have been simpler— perhapsif LeRoy had worked for Eric’s family. Then all would have been permitted, would have been covered by the assumption of Eric’s responsibility for his colored boy. But, as things were, it was suspect, it was indecent, that a white boy, especially of Eric’s class and difficult reputation, should “run,” as Eric incontestably did, after one of his inferiors. Eric had no choice but to run, to insist— LeRoy could certainly not come visiting him.

  And yet there was something absolutely humiliating in his position; he felt it very sharply and sadly, and he knew that LeRoy felt it, too. Eric did not know, or perhaps he did not want to know, that he made LeRoy’s life more difficult and increased the danger in which LeRoy walked— for LeRoy was considered “bad,” as lacking, that is, in respect for white people. Eric did not know, though of course LeRoy did, what was already being suggested about him all over town. Eric had not guessed, though LeRoy knew only too well, that the Negroes did not like him, either. They suspected the motives of his friendliness. They looked for the base one and naturally they found it.

  So, shortly before, when Eric had appeared in the road, his hands in his pockets, a hoarse, tuneless whistle issuing from his lips, LeRoy had jumped off his porch and come to meet him, striding toward Eric as though he were an enemy. There was a snicker from LeRoy’s porch, quickly muffled; a screen door slammed; every eye on the street was on them.

  Eric stammered, “I just dropped by to see what you were doing.”

  LeRoy spat in the dusty road. “Ain’t doing nothing. Ain’t you got nothing to do?”

  “You want to take a walk?” Eric asked.

  For a moment it really seemed that LeRoy was going to refuse, for his scowl deepened. Then a faint smile touched his lips. “Okay. But I can’t walk far. I got to get back.”

  They began to walk. “I want to get out of this town,” Eric said, suddenly.

  “You and me both,” said LeRoy.

  “Maybe we can go North together,” Eric said, after a moment, “where do you think’s best? New York? or Chicago? or maybe San Francisco?” He had wanted to say Hollywood, because he had a dim notion of trying to become a movie star. But he could not really imagine LeRoy as a movie star, and he did not want to seem to want anything LeRoy could not have.

  “I can’t be thinking about leaving. I got my Ma and all them kids to worry about.” He looked at Eric and laughed, but it was not an entirely pleasant laugh. “Ain’t everybody’s old man runs a bank, you know.” He picked up a pebble and threw it at a tree.

  “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 so
on, 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?”