Another Country Read online

  “You people are high!” said Vivaldo.

  This sent them off again. “Baby,” cried Lorenzo, “one day, you’ve got to tell me how you figured that out!”

  “You want to turn on?” Harold asked.

  It had been a long time. He had become bored by the people with whom one turned on, and really rather bored with marijuana. Either it did not derange his senses enough, or he was already more than sufficiently deranged. And he found the hangover crushing and it interfered with his work and he had never been able to make love on it.

  Still, it had been a long time. It was only ten past eleven, he did not know what he was going to do with himself. He wanted to enter into, or to forget, the chaos at his center.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Let me buy a round first. What’re you drinking?”

  “We could make it on back to my pad,” said Harold, scowling his little scowl.

  “I’m having beer,” said Lorenzo. His expression indicated that he would rather have had something else, but did not wish to seem to be taking advantage of Vivaldo.

  Vivaldo turned to Belle. “And you?”

  She dropped her hand and leaned forward. “Do you think I could have a brandy Alexander?”

  “God,” he said, “if you can drink it, I guess they can make it.” She leaned back again, unsmiling, oddly ladylike, and he looked at Harold.

  “Beer, dad,” Harold said. “Then we’ll split.”

  So he walked over to the bar, and ordered the round, making a special trip to carry the brimming, viscous Alexander. He knew that Lorenzo liked rye and so he bought him a straight one and a bottle of beer, and a beer for Harold, and a double bourbon for himself. Let’s go for broke, he thought, the hell with it. Let’s see what happens. And he really could not tell, because he did not want to know, whether he was acting out of panic or recklessness or pain. There was certainly something he did not want to think about: he did not want to think about where Ida was, or what she was doing now. Not now, later for you, baby. He did not want to go home and lie awake, waiting, or walk up and down, staring at his typewriter and staring at the walls. Later for all that, later. And beneath all this was the void where anguish lived and questions crouched, which referred only to Vivaldo and to no one else on earth. Down there, down there, lived the raw, unformed substance for the creation of Vivaldo, and only he, Vivaldo, alone, could master it.

  “Here’s how,” he said, and, unsteadily, they raised their glasses, and drank.

  “Thanks, Vivaldo,” said Lorenzo, and downed his whiskey in a single swallow. Vivaldo looked at the young face, which was damp and a little gray and would soon be damper and grayer. The veins in the nose were thickening and darkening; and, sometimes, as now, when Lorenzo looked straight before him, the eyes were more baffled and infinitely lonelier than those of a child.

  And at such moments Belle watched him, too, sympathy struggling to overcome the relentless vacuity in her face. And Harold seemed hooded then, like a great bird watching from a tree.

  “I’d love to go back to Spain,” said Lorenzo.

  “Do you know Spain?” asked Vivaldo.

  “He used to live there,” Belle said. “He always talks about Spain when we get high. We were supposed to go this summer.” She bent her head over her cocktail glass, disappearing for a moment, like some unprecedented turtle, behind the citadel of her hair. “Are we going to go, baby?”

  Lorenzo spread his hands, helplessly. “If we can get enough bread, we’ll go.”

  “It shouldn’t cost much to get to Spain,” Harold said. “And you can live there for almost nothing.”

  “It’s a wonderful place,” said Lorenzo. “I lived in Barcelona, on a fellowship, for over a year. And I traveled all over Spain. You know, I think they’re the grooviest people in the world, the sweetest cats I ever met, I met in Spain. That’s right. They’ll do anything for you, baby, lend you their shirts, tell you the time, show you the ropes—”

  “Lend you their sisters,” Harold laughed.

  “No, man, they love their sisters—”

  “But hate their mothers?”

  “No, man, they love them, too. Like they never heard of Freud.” Harold laughed. “They’ll take you home and feed you, they’ll share anything they’ve got with you and they’ll be hurt if you don’t take it.”

  “Mothers, sisters, or brothers,” Harold said. “Take them away. Open up that window and let that foul air out.”

  Lorenzo ignored this, looking around the table and nodding gravely. “That’s the truth, men, they’re great people.”

  “What about Franco?” Belle asked. She seemed rather proud to know that Franco existed.

  “Oh, Franco’s an asshole, he doesn’t count.”

  “Bullshit he doesn’t count,” cried Harold, “you think all those uniforms that we help Franco pay for are walking around Spain just for kicks? You think they don’t have real bullets in those guns? Let me tell you, dad, those cats are for real, they shoot people!”

  “Well. That doesn’t have anything to do with the people,” said Lorenzo.

  “Yeah. But I bet you wouldn’t like to be a Spaniard,” Harold said.

  “I’m sick of all this jazz about the happy Spanish peasant,” Vivaldo said. He thought of Ida. He leaned over to Lorenzo. “I bet you you wouldn’t want to be a nigger here, would you?”

  “Oh!” laughed Lorenzo, “your chick sure has you brainwashed!”

  “Brainwashed, hell. You wouldn’t want to be colored here and you wouldn’t want to be Spanish there.” There was a curious tension in his chest and he took a large swallow of his whiskey. “The question is— what do we want to be?”

  “I want to be me,” said Belle, with an unexpected ferocity, and chewed at her thumbnail.

  “Well,” asked Vivaldo, and looked at her, “what’s stopping you?”

  She giggled and chewed; she looked down. “I don’t know. It’s hard to get straight.” She looked over at him as though afraid he might reach over and strike her. “You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” he said, after a long moment and a long sigh, “I sure do know what you mean.”

  They all dropped abruptly into silence. Vivaldo thought of his spade chick, his dark girl, his beloved Ida, his mysterious torment and delight and hope, and thought of his own white skin. What did she see when she looked at him? He dilated his nostrils, trying to smell himself: what was that odor like for her? When she tangled her fingers in his hair, his “fine Italian hair,” was she playing with water, as she claimed, or was she toying with the notion of uprooting a forest? When he entered that marvelous wound in her, rending and tearing! rending and tearing! was she surrendering, in joy, to the Bridegroom, Lord, and Savior? or was he entering a fallen and humiliated city, entering an ambush, watched from secret places by hostile eyes? Oh, Ida, he thought, I’d give up my color for you, I would, only take me, take me, love me as I am! Take me, take me, as I take you. How did he take her, what did he bring to her? Was it his pride and his glory that he brought, or his shame? If he despised his flesh, then he must despise hers— and did he despise his flesh? And if she despised her flesh, then she must despise his. Who can blame her, he thought, wearily, if she does? and then he thought, and the thought surprised him, who can blame me? They were always threatening to cut the damn thing off, and what were all those fucking confessions about? I have sinned in thought and deed. I have sinned, I have sinned, I have sinned— and it was always better, to undercut Hell’s competition, to sin, if you had to sin, alone. What a pain in the ass old Jesus Christ had turned out to be, and it probably wasn’t even the poor, doomed, loving, hopheaded old Jew’s fault.

  Harold was watching him. He asked, “You want to turn on now or you want another drink first?” His voice was extremely rough, and he was scowling and smiling at the same time.

  “Oh, I don’t care,” Vivaldo said, “I’m with the crowd.” He thought of making another phone call, but realized that he was afraid to. The hell with it. It was one-f
ifteen. And he was, at last, thank heaven, at least a little drunk.

  “Oh, let’s split,” said Lorenzo. “We’ve got beer at home.”

  They rose and left Benno’s and walked west to Harold’s pad. He lived in a narrow dark street near the river, on the top floor. The climb was discouraging, but the apartment was clean and not too disordered— it was not at all the kind of apartment one would have expected Harold to have— with carpets on the floor and burlap covering the windows. There was a hi-fi set, and records; and science-fiction magazines lay scattered about. Vivaldo flopped down on the narrow couch against the wall, in a kind of alcove formed by two bookcases. Belle sat on the floor near the window. Lorenzo went to the john, then to the kitchen, and returned with a quart bottle of beer.

  “You forgot to bring glasses,” Belle told him.

  “So who needs glasses? We’re all friends.” But he obediently returned to the kitchen.

  Harold, meanwhile, like a meticulous and scientific host, was busily preparing the weed. He seated himself at the coffee table, near Vivaldo, and placed on a sheet of newspaper tweezers, cigarettes, cigarette papers, and a Bull Durham sack full of pot.

  “It’s great stuff,” he told Vivaldo, “chick brought it in from Mexico only yesterday. And, baby, this shit travels well!”

  Vivaldo laughed. Lorenzo returned with the glasses and looked worriedly over at Vivaldo.

  “You feeling all right?”

  “I feel fine. Just quiet. You know.”

  “Groovy.” He set a glass of beer carefully on the floor near Vivaldo, and poured a glass for Harold.

  “He’s going to feel just swinging,” said Harold, as happy and busy as bees, “just as soon as he connects with old Mother Harold’s special recessed filter-tips. Baby! Are you going to wail!”

  Lorenzo poured a glass of beer for Belle, and set the bottle on the floor beside her. “How about some sides?”

  “Go, baby.”

  Vivaldo closed his eyes, feeling an anticipatory languor and lewdness. Lorenzo put on something at once bell-like and doleful, by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

  “Here.”

  He looked up. Harold stood above him with a glowing stick.

  He sat up, smiling vaguely, and carefully picked up his beer from the floor before taking the stick from Harold. Harold watched him, smiling intensely, as he took a long, shaky drag. He took a swallow of his beer and gave the stick back. Harold inhaled deeply and expertly, and rubbed his chest.

  “Come on over to the window,” Belle called.

  Her voice sounded high and pleased, like a child’s. And, exactly as though he were responding to a child, Vivaldo, though he preferred to remain alone on the sofa, walked over to the window. Harold followed him. Belle and Lorenzo sat on the floor, sharing a stick between them, and staring out at the New York rooftops.

  “It’s strange,” Belle said. “It’s so ugly by day and so beautiful at night.”

  “Let’s go up on the roof,” said Lorenzo.

  “Oh! What a groovy idea!”

  They gathered up the makings, and the beer, and Belle picked up a blanket; and, like children, they tiptoed out of the apartment, up the stairs to the roof. And there they seemed bathed in silence, all alone. Belle spread the blanket, which was not big enough for them all. She and Lorenzo shared it. Vivaldo took another large drag and squatted on the edge of the roof, his arms hugging his knees.

  “Don’t do that, man,” Lorenzo whispered, “you’re too near the edge, I can’t bear to watch it.”

  Vivaldo smiled and moved back, stretching out on his belly beside them.

  “I’m sorry. I’m like that, too. I can hang over the edge myself, but I can’t watch anybody else do it.”

  Belle grabbed his hand. He looked up at her pale, thin face, framed by the black hair. She smiled, and she was prettier than she had seemed in the bar. “I like you,” she said. “You’re a real groovy cat. Lorenzo always said you were, but I never believed him.” Her accent, too, was more noticeable now; she sounded like the simplest and most innocent of country girls— if country girls were innocent, and he supposed, at some point in their lives, they had to be.

  “Why, thank you,” he said. Lorenzo, palely caught in the lights of heaven and earth, grinned over at him. Vivaldo pulled his hand from Belle’s hand and reached over and struck Lorenzo lightly on the cheek. “I like you, too, both of you.”

  “How you feeling, dad?” It was Harold, who seemed to be quite far away.

  “I feel wonderful.” And he did, in a strange, untrustworthy way. He was terribly aware of his body, the length of his limbs, and the soft wind ruffling his hair, and of Lorenzo and Belle, poised like two cherubim together, and of Harold, the prince of darkness, industrious, indefatigable keeper of the weed. Harold was sitting in the shadow of the chimney, rolling another stick. Vivaldo laughed. “Baby, you really love your work.”

  “I just love to see people happy,” said Harold, and suddenly grinned; he, too, seemed very different from what he had been in the bar, younger and softer; and somewhere beneath it all, much sadder, so that Vivaldo regretted all his harsh, sardonic judgments. What happened to people? why did they suffer so hideously? And at the same time he knew that he and Harold could never be friends and that none of them, really, would ever get any closer to each other than they were right now.

  Harold lit his stick and passed it to Vivaldo. “Go, baby,” he said— very tenderly, watching Vivaldo with a smile.

  Vivaldo took his turn, while the others watched him. It was a kind of community endeavor, as though he were a baby just learning to use the potty or just learning how to walk. They all but applauded when he passed it on to Lorenzo, who took his turn and passed it on to Belle. “Ooh,” said Lorenzo, “I’m flying,” and leaned back with his head in Belle’s lap.

  Vivaldo turned over on his back, head resting on his arms, knees pointing to the sky. He felt like singing. “My chick’s a singer,” he announced.

  The sky looked, now, like a vast and friendly ocean, in which drowning was forbidden, and the stars seemed stationed there, like beacons. To what country did this ocean lead? for oceans always led to some great good place: hence, sailors, missionaries, saints, and Americans.

  “Where’s she singing?” asked Lorenzo. His voice seemed to drop gently from the air: Vivaldo was watching heaven.

  “She’s not, right now. But she will be soon. And she’s going to be great.”

  “I’ve seen her,” Belle said, “she’s beautiful.”

  He turned his head in the direction of the voice. “You’ve seen her? Where?”

  “In the restaurant where she works. I went there with somebody— not with Lorenzo,” and he heard her giggle, “and the cat I was with told me she was your girl.” There was a silence. Then, “She’s very tough.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She just seemed— very tough, that’s all. I don’t mean she wasn’t nice. But she was very sure of herself, you could tell she wasn’t going to take any shit.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like my girl, all right.”

  “I wish I looked like her,” Belle said. “My!”

  “I like you just the way you are,” said Lorenzo. Out of the corner of his eye, and from far away, Vivaldo watched his arms go up and saw Belle’s dark hair fall.

  Just above my head.

  That was a song that Ida sometimes sang, puttering inefficiently about the kitchen, which always seemed sandy with coffee grinds and vaguely immoral with dead cigarettes on the burnt, blistered paint of the shelves.

  Perhaps the answer was in the songs.

  Just above my head,

  I hear music in the air.

  And I really do believe

  There’s a God somewhere.

  But was it music in the air, or trouble in the air? He began whistling another song:

  Trouble in mind, I’m blue,

  But I won’t be blue always,

  ’Cause the sun’s going to s
hine

  In my back door someday.

  Why back door? And the sky now seemed to descend, no longer phosphorescent with possibilities, but rigid with the mineral of choices, heavy as the weight of the finite earth, onto his chest. He was being pressed: I’m pressing on, Ida sometimes sang, the upward way!

  What in the world did these songs mean to her? For he knew that she often sang them in order to flaunt before him privacies which he could never hope to penetrate and to convey accusations which he could never hope to decipher, much less deny. And yet, if he could enter this secret place, he would, by that act, be released forever from the power of her accusations. His presence in this strangest and grimmest of sanctuaries would prove his right to be there; in the same way that the prince, having outwitted all the dangers and slaughtered the lion, is ushered into the presence of his bride, the princess.

  I loves you, Porgy, don’t let him take me.

  Don’t let him handle me with his hot hands.

  To whom, to whom, did she sing this song?

  The blues fell down this morning. The blues my baby gave to me. Water trickled past his ear, onto his wrist. He did not move and the slow tears rolled from the corners of his eyes.

  “You’re groovy, too,” he heard Belle say.

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Let’s try to make it to Spain. Let’s really try.”

  “I’ll get dressed up Monday, uptown style”— she giggled

  —“and I’ll get a job as receptionist somewhere. I hate it, its such a drag, but, that way, we can get away from here.”

  “Do that, baby. And I’ll get a job, too, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to promise.”

  “But I do.”

  He heard their kiss, it seemed light and loving and dry, and he envied them their deadly and unshakable innocence.

  “Let’s ball.”

  “Not here. Let’s go downstairs.”

  He heard Lorenzo’s laugh. “What’s the matter, you shy?”

  “No.” He heard a giggle and a whisper. “Let’s go down.”

  “They’re stoned out of their heads, they don’t care.”

  She giggled again. “Look at them.”