Another Country Page 30

  “Which character are you playing?”

  “Oh, I’m playing one of the bad cats, the one they call Malcolm.” She looked at the cast of characters and found that Malcolm was the son of Egan. The script was heavily underlined and there were long notes in the margin. One of these notes read, On this, maybe remember what you know of Yves, and she looked at the underlined sentence, No, I don’t want no damn aspirin. Man got a headache, why don’t you let him find out what kind of headache it is? Eric called, “Do you want water, or just ice?”

  “A little water, thanks.”

  He came back into the room and handed her her highball. “I play the last male member of a big, rich American family. They got rich by all kinds of swindles and by shooting down people, and all that jazz. But I can’t do that by the time I’m a man because its all been done and they’ve changed the laws. So I get to be a big labor leader instead, and my Dad tries to get me railroaded to jail as a Communist. It gives us a couple of nice scenes. The point is, there’s not a pin to choose between us.” He grinned. “It’ll probably be a big, fat flop.”

  “Well, just make sure we have tickets to opening night.” A brief silence fell, and her we resounded more insistently than the drums of Shostakovich.

  “Oh, I’m going to try to pack the house with my friends,” he said, “never fear.” Silence fell again. He sat down on the bed beside her, and looked at her. She looked down.

  “You make me feel very strange,” he said. “You make me feel things I didn’t think I’d ever feel again.”

  “What do I make you feel?” she asked. And then, “You do the same for me.” She sensed that he was taking the initiative for her sake.

  He leaned forward and put one hand on her hand; then rose, and walked away from her, leaving her alone on the bed. “What about Richard?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between Richard and me.” She forced herself to look into his eyes, and she put her drink down on the night table. “But it isn’t you that’s come between Richard and me— you don’t have anything to do with that.”

  “I don’t now, you mean. Or I don’t yet.” He put his cigarette down in the ashtray on the mantelpiece behind him. “But I guess I know what you mean, in a way.” He still seemed very troubled and his trouble now propelled him toward her again, to the bed. He felt her trembling, but still he did not touch her, only stared at her with his troubled and searching eyes, and with his lips parted. “Dear Cass,” he said, and smiled, “I know we have now, but I don’t think we have much of a future.” She thought, Perhaps if we take now, we can have a future, too. It depends on what we mean by “future.” She felt his breath on her face and her neck, then he leaned closer, head down, and she felt his lips there. She raised her hands to stroke his head and his red hair. She felt his violence and his uncertainty, and this made him seem much younger than she. And this excited her in a way that she had never been excited before; she glimpsed, for the first time, the force that drove older women to younger men; and then she was frightened. She was frightened because she had never before found herself playing so anomalous a role and because nothing in her experience had ever suggested that her body could become a trap for boys, and the tomb of her self-esteem. She had embarked on a voyage which might end years from now in some horrible villa, near a blue sea, with some unspeaking, unspeakably phallic, Turk or Spaniard or Jew or Greek or Arabian. Yet, she did not want it to stop. She did not quite know what was happening now, or where it would lead, and she was afraid; but she did not want it to stop. She saw the smoke from Eric’s cigarette curling up from the mantelpiece— she hoped it was still in the ashtray; the play script was beneath her head, the symphony was approaching its end. She was aware, as though she stood over them both with a camera, of how sordid the scene must appear: a married woman, no longer young, already beginning to moan with lust, pinned down on this untidy and utterly transient bed by a stranger who did not love her and whom she could not love. Then she wondered about that: love; and wondered if anyone really knew anything about it. Eric put one hand on her breast, and it was a new touch, not Richard’s, no; but she knew that it was Eric’s; and was it love or not? and what did Eric feel? Sex, she thought, but that was not really the answer, or if it was, it was an answer which clarified nothing. For now, Eric leaned up from her with a sigh and walked back to his cigarette. He leaned there for a moment, watching her; and she understood that the weight between them, of things unspoken, made any act impossible. On what basis where they to act? for their blind seeking was not a foundation which could be expected to bear any weight.

  He came back to the bed and sat down; and he said, “Well. Listen. I know about Richard. I don’t altogether believe you when you say that I don’t have anything to do with what’s happening between you and Richard, because obviously I do, I do now, anyway, if only because I’m here.” She started to say something, but he raised his hand to silence her. “But that’s all right. I don’t want to make an issue out of that, I’m not very well placed to defend— conventional morality.” And he smiled. “Something is happening between us which I don’t really understand, but I’m willing to trust it. I have the feeling, somehow, that I must trust it.” He took her hand and raised it to his unshaven cheek. “But I have a lover, too, Cass; a boy, a French boy, and he’s supposed to be coming to New York in a few weeks. I really don’t know what will happen when he gets here, but”— he dropped her hand and rose and paced his room again— “he is coming, and we have been together for over two years. And that means something. Probably, if it hadn’t been for him, I would never have stayed away so long.” And he turned on her now all of his intensity. “No matter what happens, I loved him very much, Cass, and I still do. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone quite like that before, and”— he shuddered— “I’m not sure I’ll ever love anyone quite like that again.”

  She felt not at all frightened by his lover. She remembered the name written in the margin: Yves. But it was better for the name of his lover to fall from his lips. She felt very strangely moved, as though she might be able to help him endure the weight of the boy who had such power over him.

  “He sounds very remarkable,” she said. “Tell me his name, tell me about him.”

  He came back to the bed and sat down. His drink was finished, and he sipped from hers.

  “There isn’t much to tell. His name is Yves.” He paused, “I can’t imagine what he’ll think of the States.”

  “Or of all of us,” she said.

  He assented, with a smile. “Or of all of us. I’m not sure I know what I think.” They laughed; she took a sip of her highball; the atmosphere between them began to be easier, as though they were friends. “But— I’m responsible for him when he gets here. He wouldn’t be coming if it weren’t for me.” He looked at her. “He’s the son of somebody he can scarcely remember at all, and his mother runs a bistro in Paris. He hates his mother, or thinks he does.”

  “That’s not the usual pattern, is it?” Then she wished that she had held her tongue, or could call the words back. But it was too late, really, to do more than blandly compound her error: “I mean, from what we’re told, most men with a sexual bias toward men love their mothers and hate their fathers.”

  “We haven’t been told much,” he observed, mildly sardonic. “I used to know street boys in Paris who hadn’t had any opportunity to hate their mother or their fathers. Of course, they hated les flics— the cops— and I suppose some safe slug of an American would work it out that they hated the cops because they were father-figures— we know a hell of a lot about father-figures here because we don’t know anything about fathers, we’ve made them obsolete— but it seems just as likely to me that they hated the cops because the cops liked to beat the shit out of them.”

  It was strange how she now felt herself holding back— not from him, but from such a vision of the world. She did not want him to see the world this way because such a vision could not make
him happy, and whatever made him unhappy menaced her. She had never had to deal with a policeman in her life, and it had never entered her mind to feel menaced by one. Policemen were neither friends nor enemies; they were part of the landscape, present for the purpose of upholding law and order; and if a policeman— for she had never thought of them as being very bright— seemed to forget his place, it was easy enough to make him remember it. Easy enough if one’s own place was more secure than his, and if one represented, or could bring to bear, a power greater than his own. For all policemen were bright enough to know who they were working for, and they were not working, anywhere in the world, for the powerless.

  She stroked Eric’s hair, remembering how she and Richard, when they had first met, had argued over this very question: for he had been very conscious, in those days, of his poverty and her privilege. He had called her the icebound heiress of all the ages, and she had worked very hard to prove him wrong and to dissociate herself, in his mind, from those who wielded the knout of power.

  Eric put his head in her lap. He said, “Well, anyway, that’s the story, or all the story I know how to tell you now. I just thought you ought to know.” He hesitated; she watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed; and he said, “I can’t promise you anything, Cass.”

  “I haven’t asked you to promise me anything.” She bent down and kissed him on the mouth. “You’re very beautiful,” she said, “and very strong. I’m not afraid.”

  He looked up at her, looking upside down, so that he was for her at that moment both child and man, and her thighs trembled. He kissed her again and took the two clips out of her hair, so that her golden hair fell over him. He turned and held her beneath him on the bed. Like children, with that very same joy and trembling, they undressed and uncovered and gazed on each other; and she felt herself carried back to an unremembered, unimaginable time and state when she had not been Cass, as she was now, but the plain, mild, arrogant, waiting Clarissa, when she had not been weary, when love was on the road but not yet at the gates. He looked on her body as though such a body were a new creation, still damp from the vast firmament; and his wonder infected her. She watched his naked body as he crossed the room to turn off the lamp, and thought of the bodies of her children, Paul and Michael, which had come, so miraculously formed, and so heavy and secret with promise, out of her; and, like the water which sprang in the desert when Moses struck the rock with his rod, tears sprang to her eyes. He glowed in the light which came from the lamp above her head. She could not bear to turn it off. She watched him as he bent to take the long-silent record off the machine, and the green eye of the machine clicked off; then he turned to face her, very grave indeed, and with his eyes darker and set farther back than ever. Now, less than ever, did she know what love was— but she smiled, for joy, and he answered her with a small, triumphant laugh. They were oddly equal: perhaps each could teach the other, concerning love, what neither now knew. And they were equal in that both were afraid of what unanswerable and unimaginable riddles might be uncovered in so merciless a light.

  She switched off the lamp at the head of the bed, and watched him come to her in the gloom. He took her like a boy, with that singlemindedness, and with a boy’s passion to please: and she had awakened something in him, an animal long caged, which came pounding out of its captivity now with a fury which astounded and transfigured them both. Eventually, he slept on her breast, like a child. She watched him, watched his parted lips and the crooked teeth dully gleaming, and the thin, silver trickle of saliva, flowing on to her; and watched the tiny pulsations in the vein of one arm, the red hairs gleaming on it, thrown heavily across her hip; one leg was thrust out behind him, one knee pointed toward her: the little finger of the hand farthest from her, on the edge of the bed, palm upward, twitched; his sex and his belly were hidden.

  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.