Another Country Page 36

  “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.”

  And, after a moment, she added, under her breath, “So am I.”

  Cass said nothing, for she was too astonished. So far from imagining herself and Ida to be friends, she had long ago decided that Ida disliked and distrusted her. But she did not sound that way now. She sounded lonely and troubled.

  “I wish you’d come up and have one drink with me up there,” Ida said. She kept twisting the ring on her little finger.

  Cass thought, at once, I’ll feel terribly out of place up there, and if you’re meeting someone, what’s the good of my coming along? But she sensed, somehow, that she could not say this, that Ida needed a woman to talk to, if only for a few minutes, even if the woman were white.

  “Okay,” she said, “but just one drink. I’ve got to hurry home to Richard.” As she said this, both she and Ida laughed. It was almost the first time they had ever laughed together; and this laughter revealed to Cass that Ida’s attitude toward her had been modified by Ida’s knowledge of her adultery. Perhaps Ida felt that Cass was more to be trusted and more of a woman, now that her virtue, and her safety, were gone. And there was also, in that sudden and spontaneous laughter, the very faintest hint of blackmail. Ida could be freer with Cass now, since the world’s judgment, should it ever be necessary to face it, would condemn Cass yet more cruelly than Ida. For Ida was not white, nor married, nor a mother. The world assumed Ida’s sins to be natural, whereas those of Cass were perverse.

  Ida said, “Men are a bitch, aren’t they, baby?” She sounded sad and weary. “I don’t understand them, I swear I don’t.”

  “I always thought you did,” said Cass, “much better than I ever have.”

  Ida smiled. “Well, that’s all a kind of act. Besides it’s not hard to deal with a man if you don’t give a damn about him. Most of the jokers I’ve had to deal with weren’t worth shit. And I’ve always expected all of them to be like that.” Then she was silent. She looked over at Cass, who sat very still, looking down. The cab was approaching Times Square. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t know if I do, or not,” Cass said. “I guess I don’t. I’ve only dealt with— two men— in my whole life.”

  Ida looked at her, speculatively, a small, sardonic smile touching her lips. “That’s very hard to believe. It’s hard to imagine.”

  “Well! I was never very pretty. I guess I led a kind of sheltered life. And— I got married very young.” She lit a cigarette, she crossed her legs.

  Ida looked out at the lights, and the crowds. “I’m wondering if I’m ever going to marry. I guess I’m not. I’ll never marry Vivaldo, and”— she tapped her ring again— “it’s hard to see what’s coming, up the road. But I don’t seem to see a bridegroom.”

  Cass was silent. Then, “Why will you never marry Vivaldo? Don’t you love him?”

  Ida said, “Love doesn’t have as much to do with it as everybody seems to think. I mean, you know, it doesn’t change everything, like people say. It can be a goddam pain in the ass.” She shifted, restlessly, in their narrow, dark space, and looked out of the window again. “Sure, I love Vivaldo; he’s the sweetest man I’ve ever known. And I know I’ve given him a rough time sometimes. I can’t help it. But I can’t marry him, it would he the end of him, and the end of me.”

  “Well, why?” She paused; then, carefully, “You don’t mean just because he’s white—?”

  “Well, yes,” said Ida, forcefully, “in a way, I do mean that. That probably sounds terrible to you. I don’t care about the color of his skin. I don’t mean that.” She stopped, clearly trying to discover what she did mean. “I’ve only known one man better than Vivaldo, and that man was my brother. Well, you know, Vivaldo was his best friend— and Rufus was dying, but Vivaldo didn’t know it. And I was miles away, and I did!”

  “How do you know that Vivaldo didn’t know it? You’re being very unjust. And your knowing it didn’t stop anything, didn’t change anything—”

  “Maybe n
othing can be stopped, or changed,” Ida said, “but you’ve got to know, you’ve got to know what’s happening.”

  “But, Ida, nobody really does know what’s happening— not really. Like, perhaps you know things that I don’t know. But isn’t it possible that I also know things that you don’t know? I know what it’s like to have a child, for example. You don’t.”

  “Oh, hell, Cass, I can have a damn baby, and then I’ll know. Babies aren’t my kick, but, you know, I can find out if I want to. The way Vivaldo carries on, I’m likely to find out, whether I want to or not,” and, incongruously, she giggled. “But”— she sighed— “it doesn’t work the other way around. You don’t know, and there’s no way in the world for you to find out, what it’s like to be a black girl in this world, and the way white men, and black men, too, baby, treat you. You’ve never decided that the whole world was just one big whorehouse and so the only way for you to make it was to decide to be the biggest, coolest, hardest whore around, and make the world pay you back that way.” They were in the park. Ida leaned forward and lit a cigarette with trembling hands, then gestured out the window. “I bet you think we’re in a goddam park. You don’t know we’re in one of the world’s great jungles. You don’t know that behind all them damn dainty trees and shit, people are screwing and sucking and fixing and dying. Dying, baby, right now while we move through this darkness in this man’s taxicab. And you don’t know it, even when you’re told; you don’t know it, even when you see it.”

  She felt very far from Ida, and very small and cold. “How can we know it, Ida? How can you blame us if we don’t know? We never had a chance to find out. I hardly knew that Central Park existed until I was a married woman.” And she, too, looked out at the park, trying to see what Ida saw; but, of course, she saw only the trees and the lights and the grass and the twisting road and the shape of the buildings beyond the park. “There were hardly any colored people in the town I grew up in— how am I to know?” And she hated herself for her next question, but she could not hold it back: “Don’t you think I deserve some credit, for trying to be human, for not being a part of all that, for— walking out?”

  “What the hell,” asked Ida, “have you walked out on, Cass?”

  “That world,” said Cass, “that empty life, that meaningless life!”

  Ida laughed. It was a cruel sound and yet Cass sensed, very powerfully, that Ida was not trying to be cruel. She seemed to be laboring, within herself, up some steep, unprecedented slope. “Couldn’t we put it another way, honey— just for kicks? Couldn’t we, sort of, blame it on nature? and say that you saw Richard and he got you hot, and so you didn’t really walk out— you just got married?”

  Cass began to be angry; and she asked herself, Why? She said, “No. Long before I met Richard, I knew that that wasn’t the life for me.” And this was true, and yet her voice lacked conviction. And Ida, relentlessly, put Cass’ unspoken question into words.

  “And what would have happened if Richard hadn’t come?”

  “I don’t know. But this is silly. He did come. I did leave.”

  Now the air thickened between them, as though they were on opposite sides of a chasm in the mountains, trying to discern each other through the cloud and the fog, but terribly frightened of the precipice at their feet. For she had left Richard, or had, anyway, betrayed him— and what did that failure mean? And what was she doing, now, with Eric, and where was the meaning there? She began, dimly and unwillingly, to sense the vast dimensions of Ida’s accusation at the same time that her ancient, incipient guilt concerning her life with Richard nosed its way, once more, into the front hall of her mind. She had always seen much farther than Richard, and known much more; she was more skillful, more patient, more cunning, and more single-minded; and he would have had to be a very different, stronger, and more ruthless man, not to have married her. But this was the way it always had been, always would be, between men and women, everywhere. Was it? She threw her cigarette out of the window. He did come. I did walk out. Had she, indeed? The cab was approaching Harlem. She realized, with a small shock, that she had not been here since the morning of Rufus’ funeral.

  “But, imagine,” Ida was saying, “that he came, that man who’s your man— because you always know, and he damn sure don’t come every day— and there wasn’t any place for you to walk out of or into, because he came too late. And no matter when he arrived would have been too late— because too much had happened by the time you were born, let alone by the time you met each other.”

  I don’t believe that, Cass thought. That’s too easy. I don’t believe it. She said, “If you’re talking of yourself and Vivaldo— there are other countries— have you ever thought of that?”

  Ida threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, yes! And in another five or ten years, when we get the loot together, we can pack up and go to one of those countries.” Then, savagely, “And what do you think will have happened to us in those five years? How much will be left?” She leaned toward Cass. “How much do you think will be left between you and Eric in five years— because I know you know you’re not going to marry him, you’re not that crazy.”

  “We’ll be friends, we’ll be friends,” said Cass. “I hope we’ll be friends forever.” She felt cold; she thought of Eric’s hands and lips; and she looked at Ida again.

  Ida had turned again to the window.

  “What you people don’t know,” she said, “is that life is a bitch, baby. It’s the biggest hype going. You don’t have any experience in paying your dues and it’s going to be rough on you, baby, when the deal goes down. There’re lots of back dues to be collected, and I know damn well you haven’t got a penny saved.”

  Cass looked at the dark, proud head, which was half-turned away from her. “Do you hate white people, Ida?”

  Ida sucked her teeth in anger. “What the hell has that got to do with anything? Hell, yes, sometimes I hate them, I could see them all dead. And sometimes I don’t. I do have a couple of other things to occupy my mind.” Her face changed. She looked down at her fingers, she twisted her ring. “If any one white person gets through to you, it kind of destroys your— single-mindedness. They say that love and hate are very close together. Well, that’s a fact.” She turned to the window again. “But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself— wouldn’t you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?” They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be in the streets, draped, almost, from lampposts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. “Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but, every day, every day, for years, for generations? Shit. They keep you here because you’re black, the filthy, white cock suckers, while they go around jerking themselves off with all that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with that same music, too, only, keep your distance. Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don’t believe it has a right to exist. Now, you’ve never felt like that, and Vivaldo’s never felt like that. Vivaldo didn’t want to know my brother was dying because he doesn’t want to know that my brother would still be alive if he hadn’t been born black.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true or not,” Cass said, slowly, “but I guess I don’t have any right to say it isn’t true.”

  “No, baby, you sure don’t,” Ida said, “not unless you’re really willing to ask yourself how you’d have made it, if they’d dumped on you what they dumped on Rufus. And you can’t ask yourself that question because there’s no way in the world for you to know what Rufus went through, not in this world, not as long as you’re white.” She smiled. It was the saddest smile Cass had ever seen. “That’s right, baby. That’s where it’s
at.”

  The cab stopped in front of Small’s.

  “Here we go,” said Ida, jauntily, seeming, in an instant, to drag all of herself up from the depths, as though she were about to walk that mile from the wings to the stage. She glanced quickly at the meter, then opened her handbag.

  “Let me,” said Cass. “It’s just about the only thing that a poor white woman can still do.”

  Ida looked at her, and smiled. “Now, don’t you be like that,” she said, “because you can suffer, and you’ve got some suffering to do, believe me.” Cass handed the driver a bill. “You stand to lose everything— your home, your husband, even your children.”

  Cass sat very still, waiting for her change. She looked like a defiant little girl.

  “I’ll never give up my children,” she said.

  “They could be taken from you.”

  “Yes. It could happen. But it won’t.”

  She tipped the driver, and they got out of the cab.

  “It happened,” said Ida, mildly, “to my ancestors every day.”

  “Maybe,” said Cass, with a sudden flash of anger, and very close to tears, “it happened to all of us! Why was my husband ashamed to speak Polish all the years that he was growing up?— and look at him now, he doesn’t know who he is. Maybe we’re worse off than you.”

  “Oh,” said Ida, “you are. There’s no maybe about that.”

  “Then have a little mercy.”