Just Above My Head Page 49

  Arthur also nods and smiles, and, helplessly, mimics him—the first step toward learning French: “Bonsoir, m’sieu.” And he walks into the street.

  He is in the student quarter of Paris, has been guided there by some of the people he had worked with at the dub in London. In the two days he has been in Paris, he has walked all over the city, from Sacré-Cœur to Notre-Dame, from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower, from the Eiffel Tower to L’Étoile. He has got lost in the side streets running off Pigalle—having been warned not to go wandering along these side streets at night. He has been told that, as long as he can find the Seine, he can find his way home. This has turned out to be true, though the river can sometimes be a discouragingly long ways off. It isn’t true that you can’t lose the river—you can lose it, all right—but it functions as the North Star, if you can find it, you can be guided by it.

  He turns away from the river now, and walks the boulevard St.-Michel until he comes to the boulevard St.-Germain. He walks up St.-Germain toward Odéon and St.-Germain-des-Prés. There is a big pizza place between Odéon and St.-Germain-des-Prés, and, simply because ordering a pizza presents no problems, he walks in and orders a pizza, and a glass of red wine.

  And, now, perhaps, he rather regrets his solitude, and wishes he had someone to eat with, someone with whom to share the city. He wishes that I were there, but he needs someone else more than he needs me, he needs a friend. He needs someone to be with, needs someone to be with him.

  He thinks of Jimmy. Suddenly, he sees Jimmy’s face.

  The pizza is hot—there is not much else to be said for it, except that it will keep hunger at bay—and he nibbles on it, and sips his wine, watching the throng on the boulevard.

  They seem carefree and happy, in a way that he has never been. My brother is old enough to know—or has seen, at least, enough to suspect—that they cannot be what they seem to him to be. They may be better or worse, happy or less happy, wicked or desperate: they are, in any case, in all cases, other than what his imagination makes of them. There is always more—or less—than one sees: and what one sees is mitigated by ten thousand tricks of light. Arthur, nibbling on his pizza, alone in the alien, splendid capital, tries to make something coherent and bearable out of all that he sees, and doesn’t see.

  For that, he needs another: in order to see what he fears to see, he must, himself, be seen. He needs to give himself to someone who needs to give himself to Arthur.

  He has been tormented by this for a long time now, but he cannot honestly say that he has been confused. Crunch frustrated confusion by thrusting on him an anguish absolutely lucid: so lucid and so total that it would have been nearly a relief to have been able to find a haven in guilt and shame. Yet guilt and shame nag at him, too, when he worries about his father’s judgment, or anticipates mine. (He is not worried about his mother’s judgment, but is worried about causing her pain.) At bottom, he really feels that his father, and brother, will not love him less for the truth. In a sense, he feels obligated to tell the truth, both for our sakes, and his own. For it is perfectly possible, after all, that it is his judgment that he fears and not ours, that he reads his judgment in our eyes.

  Still, the step from this perception to articulation is not an easy one. He has faltered and turned back many times. And yet, he knows that, when he was happy with Crunch, he was neither guilty nor ashamed. He had felt a purity, a shining, joy, as though he had been, astoundingly, miraculously, blessed, and had feared neither Satan, man, nor God. He had not doubted for a moment that all love was holy. And he really does not doubt it now, but he is very lonely.

  And if he walked into these streets outside, right now, and simply looked a way he knew he could look, he need not spend this night alone. He knew that. Sometimes, his encounters had been very, very pleasant, even beautiful; sometimes the encounter had led to friendship, friends who slept together whenever they met, for the pleasure it gave them both, for the ease it brought them. This was not love, but it was very close to love, and easier; but, though it was easier, it was not enough. Both parties recognized this, which was, in a sense, the proof of their friendship: Ah, they could say, jokingly, as they were getting dressed again, we’ll always have each other! Some of these men were married men, with children, whose masculinity had never been questioned by anyone, including, perhaps, above all, themselves: and, indeed, there was no reason to question it. They were living their lives, and their loves.

  But these men, though by no means so rare as is generally supposed, nevertheless, were rare: freedom is rare. Sometimes, the encounter was—not so much sordid or demeaning or dangerous, one learned, fairly quickly, where not to go fishing—it was that it was, simply, nothing, nothing made flesh, emptiness in one’s bed, in one’s arms, in one’s heart and soul. One felt that the other had been cheated, and that one had cheated oneself, and, if one continued cheating, love could never come again. Arthur does not know if he can live without love. Neither, on the other hand, can he invent it.

  He watches the boulevard. He is practically on the boulevard, divided from it merely by a pane of glass. It is like being in the theater, and being, at the same time, a part of the audience and a part of the spectacle. The people on the boulevard can also see him as they pass, a strange-looking, wide-eyed black boy, eating a lonely pizza. An American black man—Arthur does not know how he knows he is American—with a mustache, and wearing a beret, passes by swiftly, with a Harlem strut, throwing him a wink. Arthur nods, and smiles, but the man is already gone. Two blue-jeaned students, a male and a female, she in a long cape, he in a heavy sweater, pass by, laughing, the girl’s cape billowing out behind her. Two North Africans, one quite young, with brilliant eyes, the other not so young, whose eyes are hooded, large, and wary, walk by slowly, deep in conversation—planning a hijacking, perhaps, or, perhaps, simply, a matter which can be almost equally complex, calculating how, and where, to eat and sleep tonight. A policeman walks by slowly, his weighted cape swaying slightly, swinging his club. He stops at the corner, under the light, looking down the boulevard. The dock above the métro station says ten to ten. The lights turn red and the boulevard traffic stops, hordes of people cross the boulevard. One of them is a small, round, brown man, carrying a sketch pad and a shopping bag, and wearing a large knitted hat, of many bright colors. He is remarkable, even a joyous apparition; Arthur cannot imagine where he was born. The shopping bag seems heavy. He pauses at the corner, under the light, near the policeman, and puts the bag down, rubbing his hands together as though to warm them. The policeman looks at him, he looks at the policeman. Suddenly, he throws back his head, and laughs. The policeman, uncertain, bewildered, laughs, too. The small, round, brown man, as though he has scored a victory, picks up his shopping bag and moves on, throwing a brilliant smile at Arthur as he passes. Arthur almost rises to follow him.

  A blond woman, probably but not certainly American, walks by, swiftly, purposefully on high heels. She, too, is quite remarkable. Her coat is long and elegant, of some soft, yellow fur. Her hair is fashioned into a bun at the back of her head, her hair pulled up from the nape of the neck. Her eyes are large and dark brown, full of humor and expectation. A tall, thin boy, with curly hair and an upturned nose, dressed too lightly for this weather, runs across the boulevard, barely missing falling under the wheels of the bus he is running to catch. The policeman, exasperated, blows his whistle, but the boy gets to the bus stop and boards the bus. The bus disappears down the boulevard. Another boy, wearing a shapeless gray overcoat too large for him, walks slowly, as in a daze, carrying a violin. Arthur finishes his pizza, orders coffee, sits awhile sipping the coffee and smoking a cigarette, pays the waiter, and joins the boulevard caravan.

  He walks up, past the church, on his right, stands a moment before the glass-enclosed terrace of Deux Magots, watching the soundless, somehow glittering people, continues to the Café de Flore, where the terrace is packed. In another mood, he would go in, merely to be consoled by the anonymous body heat, but not t
onight. Still, for a moment, he looks over the crowd, noting, prominently, a small woman wearing bangs and an incredible amount of makeup, white on her face, black on her eyes, a thoroughly chilling scarlet on her lips. She holds a tiny Pekingese on her lap, and is smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. She is looking in his direction—for a moment, it seems that everyone is—and he suddenly very nearly panics, reverting to adolescence, and wondering what he looks like. He looks lonely and vulnerable, that’s what he looks like, in his old, navy blue duffel coat, his black turtleneck sweater, his blue-flannel pants,. his scuffed black shoes, that spinning rain forest of nappy black hair, and those big eyes. He looks as though he has just come ashore after six months at sea; and a giant of a man, about thirty, perhaps, with red hair, a square, friendly face, and deep-set, dark brown eyes, looks at him with a kind of friendly amusement, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  Arthur turns, and looks across the street. The terrace of Chez Lipp is very nearly empty, and so, he crosses the street, pushes open the terrace doors and takes a table in the corner. There are only three other people on the terrace, a heavy, gray-haired man, smoking a pipe and reading a book, and a middle-aged couple, sitting the length of the terrace away from Arthur, in the opposite corner, against the glass wall.

  The waiter comes, and Arthur orders cognac because he has hardly ever tasted it before, and it would be a pity to be in France and not drink it at the source.

  He sits there, sipping the cognac, smoking a cigarette, and his mind went back to Crunch.

  He was no longer surprised that Crunch remained so vivid for him, after so many years. Crunch had been his first lover, that was reason enough. He did not know if he had been lucky or unlucky in his first love. The question did not make much sense. It could be said that he had been lucky, and Crunch had not been, but the reasons for this were more mysterious than luck. It was only through meeting Jimmy again that he had begun to see how complex the matter might have been for Crunch.

  At first, when Crunch had returned, he had felt that it was his concern for Julia, and his torment over the baby, that accounted for his sullen distance, and his unforeseeable rages. He had not wanted to touch Arthur: he said that that was “all over.” Arthur had to grow up, and realize what kind of world he was living in. Arthur felt that he knew very well what kind of world he was living in—he intended to have as little to do with it as possible—but he did not see what that had to do with him and Crunch. The world was the world: so fuck the world, who gives a shit what those creeps think?

  Ah, but those creeps have the power of life and death, my friend. They can grind your ass to powder!

  Crunch, all I care about is you and me.

  Well, that’s not all there is in the world, baby.

  Crunch went to New Orleans, and came back, more sullen, more silent, than ever, and with a bright, bewildered pain in his eyes. Arthur spent days down on 14th Street, sitting in a corner, still, watching him, not knowing what to say, or do.

  The worst of it was that, while Crunch insisted that it was “all over,” Arthur knew that it was not all over: not in him, not in Crunch. Crunch wanted to believe that it was all over, for myriad reasons of his own, but he was not able to will passion out of existence. It was in his eyes, every time he looked at Arthur, it was in his lightest touch, it was in his voice, it was in all his contradictions. He would give Arthur, at great length, unanswerable reasons for their not seeing each other, and, then, five minutes later, as though he had said nothing of all that, ask Arthur to run an errand for him, or make a date to see him the next day. And he would actually say, with a small, wistful smile, “Now, you’ll be there, won’t you? Don’t keep me waiting.”

  And, in answer to Arthur’s question, “Hell, yes, I love you, that’s why I’m trying to beat some sense into your stubborn, hard head. I want you to be all right, what’s the matter, don’t you understand that?”

  Arthur did not know how to say that he couldn’t be all right, if Crunch wasn’t. He waited, numbly, for the tide to turn, for the dam to break, and for Crunch to come back to him.

  He never, in all this, blamed Julia, and never felt, in fact, that she had very much to do with it: in this, he was wiser than he knew. The baby, yes, the destroyed fetus weighed much more heavily, but nothing could undo that. Even finding Joel Miller, and beating him to a pulp, would not undo what he had done. Julia would never come to Crunch, that was over, certainly. And Arthur was not certain that Crunch really wanted Julia so much as he wanted some unassailable corroboration of his manhood. This, precisely, so far as Crunch was concerned, Arthur could not supply.

  He could only as Crunch saw it, menace his manhood, as he feared he was destroying Arthur’s. For, after all, inevitably, the dam did break, more than once, during those flame-colored, awful months, nearly drowning them in the flood. And it was Crunch, at the absolute limit of his endurance, no longer able, simply, to contain it, who roughly pulled Arthur into his arms, sobbing and shaking, plowing home. And afterward, he could scarcely dissemble his happiness. It seemed mightily to relieve him to be able to tell Arthur how much he loved him. Yet, at the same time, the shadow lay between them still, the war was not over. Arthur moved between hope and joy and fear and trembling. Eventually, each reconciliation was tinged by the inevitable nightmare of remorse and hostility which would follow it: then, the reconciliation itself became a nightmare. Crunch could say neither yes nor no, and it was Arthur, finally, who crawled away from Crunch, because there was no way, any longer, for them to be together. The dam would break, and break again, but the tide would never turn, and Crunch would never come back to him.

  There is still a great, flowing press of people on the boulevard, very close to him, and very far away, leaving him remote and secure in his corner. He looks up, and signals the waiter for another cognac, thinking of Jimmy.

  When he and Jimmy had left us, on the night of our dinner at the Red Rooster, Jimmy had suggested a nightcap, and, so they had stopped at a bar Arthur knew, on the Avenue, near 125th Street.

  Arthur had gone into mild shock upon the discovery that Julia and I were living together, and were happy, but this was as nothing compared to his astonishment at seeing Jimmy again. This astonishment was compounded by an unbelievable, unforeseen, and, therefore, rather frightening delight: it may be said that it was his joy at seeing Jimmy again that constituted his astonishment.

  For he had scarcely ever looked at him before. There had been, after all, virtually nothing to look at. Jimmy had been Child Evangelist Julia Miller’s sullen, and somewhat scrappy younger brother, who didn’t get along too well in the household where everyone was so busy kissing Sister Julia’s ass that they only noticed him when he got between them and Sister Julia’s butt, and, then, they just pushed him out of the way, and went on smacking. It was assumed, with all that, that he’d certainly turn out “bad,” there didn’t seem to be any other way he could turn out. Arthur, like everyone else, had only a dim idea of where he was, no idea at all of what he was doing, and no one, really, ever expected to see Jimmy again. That we did was due entirely to Julia, as Arthur had very quickly divined, but this did not prepare him for Jimmy. For he found Jimmy funny, brave, and terribly moving. If Jimmy had not been Julia’s younger brother—and, perhaps, if Julia and I had not been living together—Arthur might have realized that his reaction to Jimmy, what Jimmy caused him to feel, was not very far from what is called love at first sight: and what is not far from love at first sight probably is love at first sight. That, anyway, is the way I always read it.

  But Jimmy was Julia’s younger brother, and something like four years younger than Arthur—perhaps, even, after all, a minor—and, during that first drink, Arthur was busy running the other way. “Look,” he had said, finally, when they had ordered their second drink. “You’re a beautiful kid, and I dig you, but you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Jimmy lit a cigarette, and stared at him. “Why do you say that?”

 
“Because it’s true. You say you want to hang out with me, get to know me, play piano for me. How do you know all that? You don’t know me, you don’t know me at all. I might be one weird motherfucker.”

  “How weird?”

  Arthur laughed, uneasy, turning his face away, and shifting in his seat. He was happy, and he was miserably uncomfortable. He wished that the boy and he were sitting side by side, instead of face to face—though it was he who had instituted this arrangement—so that he could touch him. He wanted to stroke that face, wanted to kiss him, hold him, and never let him go. The sweat on his back caused his shirt to cling, and become ice-cold, and the temperature sped to his jacket. This was just a kid. He didn’t have any right to fuck him up.

  It was then that he thought of Crunch.

  He turned and faced Jimmy again.

  “How weird are you? Come on, you might as well tell me, I’m going to find out anyway. You don’t know me, you’re just getting yourself into more and more trouble.”

  The waitress came, and set down their drinks.

  “Does your sister know about all this?” But Arthur had not meant to ask that question.