Just Above My Head Page 52

  He looks over at Guy again, Guy has not moved. But his arm moves blindly, and his body lurches closer to Arthur.

  Arthur looks straight ahead. His life has grown heavier by a night: for, we are all waiting for him, in America.

  He does not feel the romantic schizophrenia. He knows very well that he cannot stay here: that knowledge is as real as the air blowing through this room. But so is the man in the bed as real as that.

  Neither does he feel that it is his duty to return—there are a thousand ways of evading a duty. Nor is it a matter of loyalty, a questionable document which can always be torn up, and always, furthermore, for excellent reasons.

  He puts out his cigarette: tormented, nevertheless.

  He moves quietly out of bed, and, naked, pads to the W.C., and, then, to the enormous bathroom, where he throws water on his face. He looks at his face in the mirror, but one’s face, when one searches it in the mirror, reveals nothing at all. He looks tired, triumphant, and sad—as though he has seen more than he wished to see, and is now about to see more than that.

  It will be hard to get away.

  Very.

  He walks back into the bedroom and stretches out on the bed. He lights another cigarette.

  Guy opens his eyes. His smile forces Arthur to smile.

  “Bonjour.”

  Arthur is picking up French very rapidly.

  “Bonjour yourself.”

  “Puis-je avoir une cigarette?”

  “Hey, you remember me? I speak English.” But he lights a Gitane, coughs, and hands it to Guy.

  “Pardon—I am sorry. It is that I am not awake.”

  Guy puffs on his cigarette, shakes his head, runs his hands through his hair.

  Arthur watches him.

  “Pardon. I must go to the W.C.”

  And he stumbles out of bed, and pads down the hall. Arthur walks to the study window, and stares out at the chilly day. He has no desire to face it. He feels that, perhaps, he should call his hotel, or, rather, have Guy call; sooner or later, he must call me; but not now. He wants to go back to bed. He wants to be with Guy as long as he can be.

  So, he is in bed when tall, bowlegged Guy comes shambling back.

  Guy puts out his cigarette butt, and crawls into bed beside him. He takes Arthur in his arms.

  “You are not hungry?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “I don’t think so.” His hands stroke Arthur’s back. “Not now.”

  “Do you think maybe we should call my hotel?”

  “We can call later. Or we can go there, if you are worried.”

  “No. I’m not worried.”

  As they kiss, as the heat rises between them, as they claim the hours of this afternoon, the coming night, the hours which remain, as Guy’s hands and mouth and tongue adore his body, as he gives himself and gives himself to Guy, as they come closer to the impending miracle of mutual surrender, laughing a little, pausing, simply looking at each other, sobbing a little, stroking the rigid, burning sex, drinking in each other’s odors, each astounded by the other’s color—how many colors a color has! What a labyrinth!—as they descend into quiet places, only slowly, to grow up again, coming closer to the edge, holding back, wanting it never to end, searching each other’s eyes, laughing at what each sees there, then, somber, dedicated, like wrestlers, delicately probing, like physicians, testing muscles, experimenting with tastes, comparing discoveries, the one lying still, then the other, each becoming more and more helpless and open to the other, using themselves in defiance of murder, time, language, and continents, history knotted in the balls, hope, glory, and power pounding in the prick, knowing that this suspension cannot last much longer, that each is coming to his own edge, lying quietly in each other’s arms, then turning again, this time Arthur’s slow long entry into Guy, oh don’t move, the stillness, then, the slow rising and falling, the tremendous conjunction, that sense of mysteries overturned and the sky exploding, something fragile and everlasting being accomplished between two lovers, two men, the gentleness of armpits, nipples, nape, and hair, the unmistakable pounding power of the going-home thrusts ah oui oh baby, the last unbelievable burning rigidity, the intolerably prolonged split second before lover finally pours himself into lover, the coming together, the endless fall, the rising into daybreak, weary, spent, at home in each other, there is, yet, a strange, cold pain in everything, and Arthur is thinking, I wish I could stay. I hope we meet again.

  They go to Arthur’s hotel that evening. Arthur pays his bill, for he is moving into Guy’s flat. During this brief transaction—Guy has a cab waiting at the door—Arthur can see that the concierge is very impressed by Guy, and a little annoyed with himself for not having suspected that the black American might have had such splendid connections. Arthur has never seen him smile or bow: now he does both, at great length, and with great pleasure. Arthur is not allowed to touch his bags. A creature he has never seen before appears from the cellar and carries them out to the cab.

  Ah. The European bewilderment concerning the black American connections is very nearly the root of the problem his presence poses abroad.

  Laughing, breathless, a little like children, they deposit Arthur’s belongings in Guy’s foyer, and immediately leave the house. They are going to the movies, then they are going to eat, and Guy has extracted a promise from Arthur: they will not discuss his departure, or make any plans concerning it, until suppertime, tomorrow. They will steal twenty-four hours. What difference can the theft of twenty-four hours mean to eternity? The calendar has so many days to play with: why should the calendar care if we steal one? Arthur knows, now, that eternity is a jealous tyrant, demanding an accounting of every breath, and the calendar a malicious, meticulous bookkeeper pleased to be in the service of eternity—but, never mind, Guy is right, there are moments when one must challenge the tyrant. And tell his clerk to kiss you where the sun don’t shine.

  So, they leave Arthur’s bags in the foyer, rush down the stairs and cross the courtyard again, jump into the still waiting taxi, and are carried off to the Champs-Élysées. Or rather, as Guy directs the driver, to L’Étoile. “So, we start at the top,” says Guy, “and walk down. That way, you can see it all.”

  Anyway, Arthur has never seen the Champs-Élysées by night. It is best, of course, to see it for the first time at night, and, if one can manage to be young, that helps. If, in addition to being young, one can also arrange to see it for the first time at night with a lover, one cannot claim to be doing too badly. But, if in addition to being young and seeing the Champs-Élysées for the first time at night with a lover, that lover happens, furthermore, to be French, one is in a rare and exalted category indeed: and might as well take the vow of silence, for if your story is ever believed, it can only poison your relationships.

  Nevertheless, at about eight o’clock on this particular Thursday evening, the cab crossed the bridge and left Concorde behind and began rolling up the broad, pompous tree-lined avenue, which seemed to be alive with light. Straight ahead, like the promise of victory, and seeming to be on a height, stood the massive, perhaps somewhat Teutonic, Arc de Triomphe—L’Etoile—under which arch burns the eternal flame for the unknown soldier. There is nothing at all Elysian about the Champs-Elysees; neither does it bring to mind a field. It is a very serious marketplace, both by day and by night. By day, in the spring and the summertime, and some days in the early fall, it can be quite magical, exhilarating, in spite of the piratical prices; and anyway, one can walk on this crowded avenue and still feel quite alone.

  Anyway, if one has seen it for the first time at night when one was young, when one was happy, the memory comes back from time to time, and the memory stings, but it causes you to remember that you have not always been unhappy and need not always be.

  For Arthur, the shock of discovery and delight is mingled with the certainty of imminent departure. Thus, everything is double-edged. But there is a certain wisdom in Guy’s insistence that they not discuss his departure for
twenty-four hours. This twenty-four hours is deliberately, consciously stolen—ike playing hooky—and so, they are free to make the most of it.

  The cab stops at the Place de L’Étoile, and they get out and begin to walk.

  Now there is absolutely nothing to see on the Champs-Élysées, especially at night, except other, rather weary and calculating faces, mile upon mile of advertising, shop windows, shop windows, cinemas, and café terraces. But it is all quite magical tonight. Technically, their errand, now, is to decide which film to see, and, after that, where to eat.

  Guy says that seeing French movies is a great way of learning French, but concedes that there is really no point in beginning Arthur’s education tonight. So they will see an American film, but the marquees they pass are not terribly encouraging. Guy is willing to see a Western, but Arthur is not: “I didn’t come all the way to Paris just to see another TV show, man.” Guy is partial to Hitchcock, but there is no Hitchcock, and anyway, it begins to be apparent that neither of them is concentrating. They are merely taking a walk. Arthur is fascinated by the men’s clothes in the shop windows, and so, they keep stopping, Arthur calculating whether he can buy this, or that, but knowing that he almost certainly can’t. There is a raincoat in a window that he particularly admires. Guy agrees to come with him on the morrow—“before suppertime?” pleads Arthur—to try it on.

  In the meantime, they have covered almost no territory on the famous avenue, and it is beginning to be late to go to the movies. Now they will have to wait until ten, or ten thirty. “Then let me buy you a drink,” says Arthur, “and we can discuss it. I’d love to buy my man a drink in a café terrace on the Champs.”

  And, so, they sit down, and order two whiskies.

  At the hotel, Arthur had changed his underwear, and put on a white, open-neck shirt and a navy blue suit and a black gabardine topcoat, with a belt, and changed his socks and shoes. He looks quite elegant, and he is still young enough for this elegance to make him look younger. He is like a winning, questing student, and he is very happy, and this makes him look radiant. Guy smiles every time he looks at him, and calls him le chanteur sauvage—the savage singer—and sometimes, “my savage singer.”

  “Keep it up,” says Arthur, “you don’t know that, where I come from, some savage motherfucker would already have done savaged you. I’m nice.”

  They are sitting in a glass-enclosed terrace, watching the people pass by.

  “I wonder,” says Arthur, “what it would have been like to have been born here.”

  “Ah,” says Guy. “I know one thing—you would feel very differently about it.” He searches for his words. “I don’t know. I think you might still love it. But you would know so very much more about it that it would be a very different kind of love.” He nods, wryly, affectionately, at Arthur. “Maybe you would not like it when I joke and call you—mon chanteur sauvage. But”—and a kind of torment crosses his face—“I don’t know.”

  “Well,” says Arthur carefully, “if you came to New York, it would also be very new for you, right?”

  Since neither is certain of the other’s language, each is compelled to look the other in the eye when they speak, to make certain that the meaning is getting through.

  “Of course, that is true,” Guy says.

  “And you might love New York—but in a very different way from the way”—he grimaces, looking doubtful—“I love New York. If I love it. I’ve never made up my mind.” He looks out at the unknown avenue. “I may not know if I love it—well—that’s very complicated. But, Lord, I know I can hate it.”

  “I am certain,” Guy says firmly, “that I could never love anything you hate. It would destroy me. I do not know,” he continues, searching Arthur’s face, “anything about America, and I do not really trust what I hear. But I do not like the Frenchmen I know who like New York—or Florida, or Los Angeles, for that matter. This is just something, you understand, for me. It does not have anything to do with you. I have always felt this way. Oh,” and he lights a cigarette, “I do not mean the people who go for ten days, or so, and come back and tell me all about your Radio City or Times Square. They always sound as though they are relieved to have escaped with their lives.”

  Arthur throws back his head, and laughs. Guy continues. “No. I mean those people who really love it, who take it all seriously, all your shit, and want to be like the Americans. Not just because they work there.” He pauses again. “It’s hard for me to explain myself. It is, perhaps, that they take a model which I believe is false, and they want to be like that. I work for the Americans, too, of course, and you can say that I am no better than the others, and maybe I am not, I know that. But I do not want to be like that, it is like wanting to be German. And, me, I think, it is already much more than enough to be French. Truly.”

  Arthur watches him. He has understood something, something unexpected, again, mainly from the tone, and, in another way, from Guy’s eyes. “How? Enough to be French?”

  “To be hypocrites, to be racists—we do not need any models. We are very, very good at it, all by ourselves!” He grinds out his cigarette, immediately lights another. “I am a Frenchman. I have been a French soldier. I know.”

  Again, Arthur feels almost as though he is eavesdropping: he does not want to pursue this aspect of what he perceives to be Guy’s torment. And he has another, deadlier, drier apprehension: if Guy is offering his credentials; he does not want to see them, much less be compelled to examine them.

  He thinks about it another way, carefully sipping his whisky, and lighting a cigarette—these gestures are made almost in order to hide his face. If Guy is saying that he does not like being a Frenchman, what would he think of Arthur if Arthur proclaimed that he did not like being a black American? And, indeed, for the very first time, and almost certainly because he is sitting on this unknown avenue, he puts the two words together black American and hears, at once, the very crescendo of contradiction and the unanswering and unanswerable thunder and truth of history—which is nothing more and nothing less than the beating of his own heart, his song. In many ways, he does not like being a black American, or being black, or being American, or being Arthur, and, for many millions of people, in his country, and elsewhere—including France—his existence was of the unspeakable perversity of history, a flaw in the nature of God. However: here he is, sitting on the Champs-Élysées, with Guy, a Frenchman, a stranger, and a lover, not yet a friend. He does not want to think about it, it will ruin the stolen twenty-four hours, and make his burden, already heavier by a day, much heavier.

  He wonders about Guy’s Mustapha. He has gone back to Algeria. He is going back to America. He does not want to think about it now, he will think about it on the plane, and, swallowing his whisky, he leaps back into the present:

  “I suggest,” he says, “that we forget about empires past, present, or to come, from Ashanti to Charlemagne to Queen Victoria to Eisenhower, and have another drink and decide where we’re going to eat. And then, if there’s any music in this town, we can go and hear some music. If not, not. Anyway, we shouldn’t hang out too late, right? Get our buns in the house at some reasonable hour, and maybe play a couple of your records and go to bed and make love and go to sleep. How you feel about that, pudding?”

  “Ça va très bien,” Guy says gravely: but he has been watching Arthur’s face, and is aware that Arthur’s mood has changed. He is aware, too, that this has something to do with some new assessment Arthur is making as concerns him.

  He signals the water, and they order their whiskies. Then he looks back at Arthur. He leans forward, one elbow on the table, holding his cigarette, watching Arthur, with a frown.

  “I don’t know if I make myself clear,” he says. “I really would hate for you to misunderstand me.”

  “So would I,” says Arthur, “but”—and he decides to take the plunge, the Puritan in him having announced that the horizontal position will soon be joyless if the vertical position is a lie—“can I tell you som
ething? Well, tell you something, and ask you something?

  “Of course.” Guy’s square face is tight with concentration, his dark eyes nearly black. He still leans forward on one elbow, the cigarette ash is about to drop.

  “Well—first—listen. I just got here, right? Never saw Paris before, never saw London—well, I had seen London—but this is not my territory, if I hadn’t met you, I’d probably be on a plane by now, or I’d be sitting in my hotel room, jerking off, and I’d be walking the streets, you dig? I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  The cigarette ash drops, just as the waiter returns. He is elaborately resigned about this misadventure—which Guy has failed to notice—sets down his tray, wipes the table, empties the ashtray, picks up the empty glasses, sets down the full glasses, puts the bill under the ashtray, leaves.

  Arthur takes Guy’s dead cigarette, and puts it in the ashtray.

  “Listen. You were talking about France before, and America, and you mentioned Germany, and you don’t want to be like the Americans, and you don’t want to be like the Germans, and you don’t even want to be like the French. Well, I have to ask myself who the fuck do you want to be like? Hold it,” for Guy has made a gesture. He picks up a cigarette, and Arthur lights it for him. Then he picks up his whisky, and lifts it toward Guy. “Cheers. But listen. All these places may be different. They are different for you. Shit, they eat knockwurst in Germany, and pâté in France, and some awful slop in England, and you got different flags and systems and whatnot and you’re always at each other’s throats and you think that makes you different. But you want me to tell you where you are all alike? The only subject on which you ain’t got no disagreement?”

  Guy leans back, drawing on his cigarette, watching Arthur with a dry, shrewd pursing of the lips, not quite a smile, with narrowed eyes.

  Arthur touches his chest. “Me. You got no disagreement about me. I just told you that this is not my territory. I just got here. But I met every single one of you motherfuckers long before I got here.”