Another Country Page 43

  He said, “I’ve got to be sure.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. She walked to the stove and put a light under the frying pan, walked to the table and opened the meat. She began to dust it with salt and pepper and paprika, and chopped garlic into it, near the bone. He took a swallow of his drink, which had no taste whatever; he splashed more whiskey into his glass. “When Rufus died, something happened to me,” she said. She sounded now very quiet and weary, as though she were telling someone else’s story; also, as though she herself, with a faint astonishment, were hearing it for the first time. But it was yet more astonishing that he now began to listen to a story he had always known, but never dared believe. “I can’t explain it. Rufus had always been the world to me. I loved him.”

  “So did I,” he said— too quickly, irrelevantly; and for the first time it occurred to him that, possibly, he was a liar; had never loved Rufus at all, but had only feared and envied him.

  “I don’t need your credentials, Vivaldo,” she said.

  She watched the frying pan critically, waiting for it to become hot enough, then dropped in a little oil. “The point, anyway, at the moment, is that I loved him. He was my big brother, but as soon as I knew anything, I knew that I was stronger than he was. He was nice, he was really very nice, no matter what any of you might have thought of him later. None of you, anyway, knew anything about him, you didn’t know how.”

  “You often say that,” he said, wearily. “Why?”

  “How could you— how can you?— dreaming the way you dream? You people think you’re free. That means you think you’ve got something other people want— or need. Shit.” She grinned wryly and looked at him. And you do, in a way. But it isn’t what you think it is. And you’re going to find out, too, just as soon as some of those other people start getting what you’ve got now.” She shook her head. “I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for you. I even feel kind of sorry for myself, because God knows I’ve often wished you’d left me where I was—”

  “Down there in the jungle?” he taunted.

  “Yes. Down there in the jungle, black and funky— and myself.”

  His small anger died down as quickly as it had flared up. “Well,” he said, quietly, “sometimes I’m nostalgic, too, Ida.” He watched her dark, lonely face. For the first time, he had an intimation of how she would look when she grew old. “What I’ve never understood,” he said, finally, “is that you always accuse me of making a thing about your color, of penalizing you. But you do the same thing. You always make me feel white. Don’t you think that hurts me? You lock me out. And all I want is for you to be a part of me, for me to be a part of you. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were striped like a zebra.”

  She laughed. “Yes, you would, really. But you say the cutest things.” Then, “If I lock you out, as you put it, it’s mainly to protect you—”

  “Protect me from what? and I don’t want to be protected. Besides—”

  “Besides?”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that’s why. You want to protect yourself. You want to hate me because I’m white, because it’s easier for you that way.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Then why do you always bring it up? What is it?”

  She stirred the rice, which was almost ready, found a colander, and placed it in the sink. Then she turned to face him.

  “This all began because I said that you people—”

  “Listen to yourself. You people!”

  “—didn’t know anything about Rufus—”

  “Because we’re white.”

  “No. Because he was black.”

  “Oh. I give up. And, anyway, why must we always end up talking about Rufus?”

  “I had started to tell you something,” she said, quietly; and watched him.

  He swallowed some more of his whiskey, and lit a cigarette. “True. Please go on.”

  “Because I’m black,” she said, after a moment, and sat at the table near him, “I know more about what happened to my brother than you can ever know. I watched it happen— from the beginning. I was there. He shouldn’t have ended up the way he did. That’s what’s been so hard for me to accept. He was a very beautiful boy. Most people aren’t beautiful, I knew that right away. I watched them, and I knew. But he didn’t because he was so much nicer than I.” She paused, and the silence grumbled with the sound of the frying pan and the steady sound of the rain. “He loved our father, for example. He really loved him. I didn’t. He was just a loudmouthed, broken-down man, who liked to get drunk and hang out in barber shops— well, maybe he didn’t like it but that was all he could find to do, except work like a dog, for nothing— and play the guitar on the week ends for his only son.” She paused again, smiling. “There was something very nice about those week ends, just the same. I can still see Daddy, his belly hanging out, strumming on that guitar and trying to teach Rufus some down-home song and Rufus grinning at him and making fun of him a little, really, but very nicely, and singing with him. I bet my father was never happier, all the days of his life, than when he was singing for Rufus. He’s got no one to sing to now. He was so proud of him. He bought Rufus his first set of drums.”

  She was not locking him out now; he felt, rather, that he was being locked in. He listened, seeing, or trying to see, what she saw, and feeling something of what she felt. But he wondered, just the same, how much her memory had filtered out. And he wondered what Rufus must have looked like in those days, with all his bright, untried brashness, and all his hopes intact.

  She was silent for a moment, leaning forward, looking down, her elbows on her knees and the fingers of one hand restlessly playing with her ring.

  “When Rufus died, all the light went out of that house, all of it. That was why I couldn’t stay there, I knew I couldn’t stay there, I’d grow old like they were, suddenly, and I’d end up like all the other abandoned girls who can’t find anyone to protect them. I’d always known I couldn’t end up like that, I’d always known it. I’d counted on Rufus to get me out of there— I knew he’d do anything in the world for me, just like I would for him. It hadn’t occurred to me that it wouldn’t happen. I knew it would happen.”

  She rose and returned to the stove and took the rice off the fire and poured it into the colander and ran water over it; put water in the saucepan and put it back on the fire, placing the colander on top of it and covering the rice with a towel. She turned the chops over. Then she sat down.

  “When we saw Rufus’s body, I can’t tell you. My father stared at it, he stared at it, and stared at it. It didn’t look like Rufus, it was— terrible— from the water, and he must have struck something going down, or in the water, because he was so broken and lumpy— and ugly. My brother. And my father stared at it— at it— and he said, They don’t leave a man much, do they? His own father was beaten to death with a hammer by a railroad guard. And they brought his father home like that. My mother got frightened, she wanted my father to pray. And he said, he shouted it at the top of his lungs, Pray? Who, pray? I bet you, if I ever get anywhere near that white devil you call God, I’ll tear my son and my father out of his white hide! Don’t you never say the word Pray to me again, woman, not if you want to live. Then he started to cry. I’ll never forget it. Maybe I hadn’t loved him before, but I loved him then. That was the last time he ever shouted, he hasn’t raised his voice since. He just sits there, he doesn’t even drink any more. Sometimes he goes out and listens to those fellows who make speeches on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. He says he just wants to live long enough— long enough—.”

  Vivaldo said, to break the silence which abruptly roared around them, “To be paid back.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I felt that way, too.”

  She walked over to the stove again.

  “I felt that I’d been robbed. And I had been robbed— of the only hope I had. By a group of people too cowardly even to know what they had done. And it didn’t seem to me that they deserved a
ny better than what they’d given me. I didn’t care what happened to them, just so they suffered. I didn’t really much care what happened to me. But I wasn’t going to let what happened to Rufus, and what was happening all around me, happen to me. I was going to get through the world, and get what I needed out of it, no matter how.”

  He thought, Oh, it’s coming now, and felt a strange, bitter relief. He finished his drink and lit another cigarette, and watched her.

  She looked over at him, as though to make certain that he was still listening.

  “Nothing you’ve said so far,” he said, carefully, “seems to have much to do with being black. Except for what you make out of it. But nobody can help you there.”

  She sighed sharply, in a kind of rage. “That could be true. But it’s too easy for you to say that.”

  “Ida, a lot of what you’ve had to say, ever since we met, has been— too easy.” He watched her. “Hasn’t it?” And then, “Sweetheart, suffering doesn’t have a color. Does it? Can’t we step out of this nightmare? I’d give anything, I’d give anything if we could.” He crossed to her and took her in his arms. “Please, Ida, whatever has to be done, to set us free— let’s do that.”

  Her eyes were full of tears. She looked down. “Let me finish my story “

  “Nothing you say will make any difference.”

  “You don’t know that. Are you afraid?”

  He stepped back. “No.” Then, “Yes. Yes. I can’t take any more of your revenge.”

  “Well, I can’t either. Let me finish.”

  “Come away from the stove. I can’t eat now.”

  “Everything will be ruined.”

  “Let it be ruined. Come and sit down.”

  He wished that he were better prepared for this moment, that he had not been with Eric, that his hunger would vanish, that his fear would drop, and love lend him a transcendent perception and concentration. But he knew himself to be physically weak and tired, not drunk, but far from sober; part of his troubled mind was far away, gorging on the conundrum of himself.

  She put out the fire under the frying pan and came and sat at the table. He pushed her drink toward her, but she did not touch it.

  “I knew there wasn’t any hope uptown. A lot of those men, they got their little deals going and all that, but they don’t really have anything, Mr. Charlie’s not going to let them get but so far. Those that really do have something would never have any use for me; I’m too dark for them, they see girls like me on Seventh Avenue every day. I knew what they would do to me.”

  And now he knew that he did not want to hear the rest of her story. He thought of himself on Seventh Avenue; perhaps he had never left. He thought of the day behind him, of Eric and Cass and Richard, and felt himself now being sucked into the rapids of a mysterious defeat.

  “There was only one thing for me to do, as Rufus used to say, and that was to hit the A train. So I hit it. Nothing was clear in my mind at first. I used to see the way white men watched me, like dogs. And I thought about what I could do to them. How I hated them, the way they looked, and the things they’d say, all dressed up in their damn white skin, and their clothes just so, and their little weak, white pricks jumping in their drawers. You could do any damn thing with them if you just led them along, because they wanted to do something dirty and they knew that you knew how. All black people knew that. Only, the polite ones didn’t say dirty. They said real. I used to wonder what in the world they did in bed, white people I mean, between themselves, to get them so sick. Because they are sick, and I’m telling you something that I know. I had a couple of girl friends and we used to go out every once in a while with some of these shitheads. But they were smart, too, they knew that they were white, and they could always go back home, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. I thought to myself, Shit, this scene is not for me. Because I didn’t want their little change, I didn’t want to be at their mercy. I wanted them to be at mine.”

  She sipped her drink.

  “Well, you were calling me all the time about that time, but I didn’t really think about you very much, not seriously anyway. I liked you, but I certainly hadn’t planned to get hung up on a white boy who didn’t have any money— in fact, I hadn’t planned to get hung up on anybody. But I liked you, and the few times I saw you it was a kind of— relief— from all those other, horrible people. You were really nice to me. You didn’t have that look in your eyes. You just acted like a real sweet boy and maybe, without knowing it, I got to depend on it. Sometimes I’d just see you for a minute or so, we’d just have a cup of coffee or something like that, and I’d run off— but I felt better, I was kind of protected from their eyes and their hands. I was feeling so sick most of the time through there. I didn’t want my father to know what I was doing and I tried not to think about Rufus. That was when I decided that I ought to try to sing, I’d do it for Rufus, and then all the rest wouldn’t matter. I would have settled the score. But I thought I needed somebody to help me, and it was then, just at the time that I—” She stopped and looked down at her hands. “I think I wanted to go to bed with you, not to have an affair with you, but just to go to bed with somebody that I liked. Somebody who wasn’t old, because all those men are old, no matter how young they are. I’d only been to bed with one boy I liked, a boy on our block, but he got religion, and so it all stopped and he got married. And there weren’t any other colored men, I was afraid, because look what happened to them, they got cut down like grass! And I didn’t see any way out, except— finally— you. And Ellis.”

  Then she stopped. They listened to the rain. He had finished his drink and he picked up hers. She looked down, he had the feeling that she could not look up, and he was afraid to touch her. And the silence stretched; he longed for it to end, and dreaded it; there was nothing he could say.

  She straightened her shoulders and reached out for a cigarette. He lit it for her.

  “Richard knows about me and Ellis,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “but that’s not why I’m telling you. I’m telling you because I’m trying to bring this whole awful thing to a halt. If that’s possible.”

  She paused. She said, “Let me have a sip of your drink, please.”

  “It’s yours,” he said. He gave it to her and poured himself another one.

  She blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “It’s funny the way things work. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think Ellis would ever have got so hung up on me. He saw, better than I did, that I really liked you and that meant that I could really like somebody and so why not him, since he could give me so much more? And I thought so, too, that it was a kind of dirty trick for life to play on me, for me to like you better than I liked him. And, after all, the chances of its lasting were just about equal, only with him, if I played it right, I might have something to show for it when it was all over. And he was smart, he didn’t bug me about it, he said, Sure, he wanted me but he was going to help me, regardless, and the one thing had nothing to do with the other. And he did— he was very nice to me, in his way, he was as good as his word, he was nicer to me than anyone had ever been before. He used to take me out to dinner, to places where nobody would know him or where it wouldn’t matter if they did. A lot of the time we went up to Harlem, or if he knew I was sitting in somewhere, he’d drop in. He didn’t seem to be trying to hype me, not even when he talked about his wife and his kids— you know? He sounded as though he really was lonely. And, after all, I owed him a lot— and— it was nice to be treated that way and to know the cat had enough money to take you anywhere, and— ah! well, it started, I guess I’d always known it was going to start, and then, once it started, I didn’t think I could stand it but I didn’t know how to stop it. Because it’s one thing for a man to be doing all these things for you while you’re not having an affair with him and it’s another thing for him to be doing them after you’ve stopped having an affair with him. And I had to go on, I had to get up there on top, where maybe I could begin to breathe
. But I saw why he’d never been upset about you. He really is smart. He was glad I was with you, he told me so; he was glad I had another boy friend because it made it easier for him. It meant I wouldn’t make any scenes, I wouldn’t think I’d fallen in love with him. It gave him another kind of power over me in a way because he knew that I was afraid of your finding out and the more afraid I got, the harder it was to refuse him. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” he said, slowly, “I think I understand that.”

  They stared at each other. She dropped her eyes.

  “But, you know,” she said, slowly, “I think you knew all the time.”

  He said nothing. She persisted, in a low voice, “Didn’t you?”

  “You told me that you weren’t,” he said.

  “But did you believe me?”

  He stammered: “I– I had to believe you.”

  “Why?”

  Again, he said nothing.

  “Because you were afraid?”

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I was afraid.”

  “It was easier to let it happen than to try to stop it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes searched his face. It was his turn to look away.

  “I used to hate you for that sometimes,” she said, “for pretending to believe me because you didn’t want to know what was happening to me.”

  “I was trying to do what I thought you wanted! I was afraid that you would leave me— you told me that you would!” He rose and stalked the kitchen, his hands in his pockets, water standing in his eyes. “I worried about it, I thought about it— but I put it out of my mind. You had made it a matter of my trusting you— don’t you remember?”