He closed his eyes. He felt another weight on his chest, a hand, and he looked into Harold’s face. Terribly weary and lined and pale, and his hair was damp and curled on his forehead. And yet, beneath this spectacular fatigue, it was the face of a very young boy which stared at him.
“How’re you doing?”
“Great. It was great charge.”
“I knew you’d dig it. I like you, man.”
He was surprised and yet not surprised by the intensity in Harold’s eyes. But he could not bear it; he turned his face away; then he put the weight of Harold’s head on his chest.
“Please, man,” he told him after a moment, “don’t bother. It’s not worth it, nothing will happen. It’s been too long.”
“What’s been too long?”
And Vivaldo smiled to himself suddenly, a smile as sad as his tears, thinking of shooting matches and other contests on rooftops and basements and in locker-rooms and cars half his lifetime ago. And he had dreamed of it since, though it was only now that he remembered the dreams that he had dreamed. Feeling very cold now, inwardly cold, with Harold’s hand on his cock and Harold’s head on his chest, and knowing that: yes, something could happen, he recalled his fantasies— of the male mouth, male hands, the male organ, the male ass. Sometimes, a boy— who always rather reminded him of his younger brother, Stevie, and perhaps this was the prohibition, as, in others, it might be the key— passed him, and he watched the boy’s face and watched his ass, and he felt something, wanting to touch the boy, to make the boy laugh, to slap him across his young behind. So he knew that it was there, and he probably wasn’t frightened of it any more; but it was, possibly, too expensive for him, it did not matter enough. So he said to Harold, gently, “Understand me, man, I’m not putting you down. But my time with boys was a long time ago. I’ve been busy with girls. I’m sorry.”
“And nothing can happen now?”
“I’d rather not. I’m sorry.”
Harold smiled. “I’m sorry, too.” Then, “Can I lie here with you, like this, just the same?”
Vivaldo held him and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the sky was a great brass bowl above him. Harold lay near him, one hand on Vivaldo’s leg, asleep. Belle and Lorenzo lay wrapped in the blanket, like two dirty children. He stood up, moving too close to the edge, getting a dreadful glimpse of the waiting, baking streets. His mouth felt like Mississippi in the days when cotton was king. He hurried down the stairs into the streets, hurrying home to Ida. She would say, “My God, Vivaldo, where’ve you been? I’ve been calling this house all night long to let you know I had to go and sit in with some fellows in Jersey City. I keep telling you we better get an answering service, but you never hear anything I say!”
4
And the summer came, the New York summer, which is like no summer anywhere. The heat and the noise began their destruction of nerves and sanity and private lives and love affairs. The air was full of baseball scores and bad news and treacly songs; and the streets and the bars were full of hostile people, made more hostile by the heat. It was not possible in this city, as it had been for Eric in Paris, to take a long and peaceful walk at any hour of the day or night, dropping in for a drink at a bistro or flopping oneself down at a sidewalk café— the half-dozen grim parodies of sidewalk cafés to be found in New York were not made for flopping. It was a city without oases, run entirely, insofar, at least, as human perception could tell, for money; and its citizens seemed to have lost entirely any sense of their right to renew themselves. Whoever, in New York, attempted to cling to this right, lived in New York in exile— in exile from the life around him; and this, paradoxically, had the effect of placing him in perpetual danger of being forever banished from any real sense of himself.
In the evenings, and on week ends, Vivaldo sat in his undershorts at the typewriter, his buttocks sticking to the chair, sweat rolling down his armpits and behind his ears and dripping into his eyes and the sheets of paper sticking to each other and to his fingers. The typewriter keys moved sluggishly, striking with a dull, wet sound— moved, in fact, rather the way his novel moved, lifelessly, pushed forward, inch by inch by recalcitrant inch, almost entirely by the will. He scarcely knew what his novel was about any longer, or why he had ever wished to write it, but he could not let it go. He could not let it go, nor could he close with it, for the price of that embrace was the loss of Ida’s, or so he feared. And this fear kept him suspended in a pestilential, dripping limbo.
Their physical situation, in any case, was appalling. Their apartment was too small. Even had they both kept regular hours, had worked all day and come home only in the evenings, they would have been cramped; but some weeks Vivaldo worked nights in the bookstore and some weeks he worked days; and Ida, too, was on a kind of universal, unpredictable shift at the restaurant, sometimes working lunch and supper, sometimes either, sometimes both. They each hated their jobs— which did not help their relationship with one another— but Ida was the most popular waitress her boss had, which gave her a certain leeway, and Vivaldo could no longer accept those more demanding and more lucrative jobs which offered him a future he did not want. They were both, as it were, racing before a storm, struggling to “make it” before they were sucked into that quicksand, which they saw all around them, of an aimless, defeated, and defensive bohemia. And this meant that they could not hope to improve their physical situation, being scarcely able to maintain the apartment that they had.
Vivaldo had often suggested that they move out of the Village, into the lower East Side, where cheap lofts were available, lofts which could be made extremely attractive. But Ida had vetoed this. Her most important reason was never stated, but Vivaldo eventually realized that she had a horror of that neighborhood because Rufus’ last attempt at domestic life, or at life itself, had been made down there.
She told Vivaldo, “I wouldn’t feel safe, honey, coming home at night or coming home in the daytime. You don’t know those people the way I do, because they’ve never treated you the way they’ve treated me. Some of those cats, baby, if they catch you alone on a subway platform, or coming up the steps to your apartment, they don’t think nothing of opening up their pants and asking you to give them a blow job. That’s right. And, look, baby, I was down there, it was on Mott Street, with Rufus, a couple of years ago, to see some people for Sunday brunch. They were white. And we went out on the fire escape to look at a wedding procession down the street. So some of the people on the block saw us. Well, do you know that three white men came up to that apartment, one with a blackjack and one with a gun and one with a knife, and they threw us out of there. They said”— and she laughed— “that we were giving their street a bad name.”
She watched his face for a moment. “It’s true,” she said, gently. Then, “Let’s just stay here, Vivaldo, until we can do better. It’s rough, but it’s not as rough as it might be.”
So they tried to keep their door open, but there were risks attached to this, particularly if Ida were home, lounging on the sofa in her brief blue playsuit or practicing arrangements with the help of the record player. The sound of Vivaldo’s typewriter, the sound of Ida’s voice, the sound of the record player, attracted the attention of people coming up and down the stairs and the glimpse the open door afforded of Ida inflamed the transient imagination. People used the open door as an incitement— to stop, to listen, to stare, to knock, pretending that a friend of theirs had once lived in this very apartment, and did they know whatever had become of good old Tom or Nancy or Joanna? Or inviting them to a party upstairs or down the street, or inviting themselves to a party at Vivaldo’s. Once, absolutely beside himself, Vivaldo had beaten from the landing to the streets a boy who stood in the hot shadow of the landing, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on Ida— or, rather, on the spot from which, with a furious cry and a curse, she had hastily removed herself. The boy had not taken his hands from his pockets, only kept up a small, ugly animal moaning; and fallen, when Vivaldo had pushed him through the
street door, heavily, on one shoulder. The police came shortly afterward, their own combustible imaginations stiffening their ready civic pride. After that, they kept the doors not only closed but locked. Yet, the entire shapeless, unspeakable city seemed to be in the room with them, some summer nights.
He worked, she worked, he paced the room, she paced. She wanted him to become a “great” writer, but, unless she was working, she was incapable of being left alone. If she was working, the sound of her voice, the sound of her music, menaced, and, most often, drowned out that other orchestra in his head. If she was not working, she poured him another beer, ruffling his hair; she observed that his cigarette had burned itself out in the ashtray and lit him a new one; or she read over his shoulder, which he could not bear— but it was easier to bear this than to hear himself accused of having no respect for her intelligence. On the evenings they were together in the house, he really could not work, for he could not move far enough away from her, he could not enter himself. But he tried not to resent this, for the evenings she was away were worse.
Once or twice a week, sometimes, or once every two or three weeks, she went to Harlem, never inviting him to come along. Or she was sitting in with some musicians in Peekskill or Poughkeepsie or Washington or Philadelphia or Baltimore or Queens. He drove down with her once, with the other musicians, to a joint in Washington. But the atmosphere was deadly; the musicians had not wanted him along. The people in the joint had liked him well enough but had also seemed to wonder what he was doing there— or perhaps it was only he who wondered it; and Ida had sung only two songs, which did not seem much after such a long trip, and she had not sung them well. He felt that this had something to do with the attitude of the musicians, who seemed to want to punish her, and with the uneasy defiance with which she forced herself to face their judgment. It was only too clear that if he had been a powerful white man, their attitudes would have been modified by the assumption that she was using him; but it was obvious that, as things were, he could do her no good whatever and, therefore, he must be using her. Neither did Ida have the professional standing which would force them to accept him as the whim, the house pet, or husband of a star. He had no function, they did: they pulled rank on him, they closed ranks against him.
There was speedily accumulating, then, between Ida and Vivaldo, great areas of the unspoken, vast minefields which neither dared to cross. They never spoke of Washington, nor did he ever again accompany her on such out-of-town jaunts. They never spoke of her family, or of his. After his long, tormenting Wednesday night, Vivaldo found that he lacked the courage to mention the name of Steve Ellis. He knew that Ellis was sending her to a more exclusive and celebrated singing teacher, as well as to a coach, and intended to arrange a recording date for her. Ida and Vivaldo buried their disputes in silence, in the mined field. It seemed better than finding themselves hoarse, embittered, gasping, and more than ever alone. He did not wish to hear himself accused, again, of trying to stand between her and her career— did not wish to hear it because there was more than a little truth to this accusation. Of course, he also felt that she, although unconsciously, was attempting to stand between himself and his fulfillment. But he did not want to say this. It would have made too clear their mutual panic, their terror of being left alone.
So, there they were, as the ghastly summer groaned and bubbled on, he working in order not to be left behind by her, and she working— in order to be free of him? or in order to create a basis on which they could be, more than ever, together? “I’ve got to make it,” she sometimes said, “I’m going to make it. And you better make it, too, sweetie. I’ve just about had it, down here among the garbage cans.”
As for Ellis:
“Vivaldo, if you want to believe I’m two-timing you with that man, that’s your problem. If you want to believe it, you’re going to believe it. I will not be put in the position of having to prove a damn thing. It’s up to you. You don’t trust me, well, so long, baby, I’ll pack my bags and go.”
Some nights, when Ida came in, from the restaurant, her singing teacher, her parents, wherever she had been, bringing him beer and cigarettes and sandwiches, her face weary and peaceful and her eyes soft with love, it seemed unthinkable that they could ever part. They ate and drank and talked and laughed together, and lay naked on their narrow bed in the darkness, near the open windows through which an occasional limp breeze came, and tasted each other’s lips and caressed each other in spite of the heat, and made great plans for their indisputable tomorrow. And often fell asleep like that, at perfect ease with one another. But at other times they could not find each other at all. Sometimes, unable to reach her and unable to reach the people in his novel, he stalked out and walked the summer streets alone. Sometimes she declared she couldn’t stand him another minute, his grumpy ways, and was going out to a movie. And sometimes they went out together, down to Benno’s, or over to visit Eric— though these days, it was usually Eric and Cass.
Ida professed herself very struck by the change in Eric— she meant by this that she disapproved of surprises and that Eric had surprised her— and the implacable, unaccountable Puritan in her disapproved of his new and astonishing affair. She said that Cass was foolish and that Eric was dishonest.
Vivaldo’s feelings were much milder— it was not Eric who had surprised him, but Cass. She had certainly jeopardized everything; and he remembered her declaration: No, thank you, Vivaldo, I don’t want to be protected any more. And, insofar as his own confusion allowed him to consider hers at all, he was proud of her— not so much because she had placed herself in danger as because she knew she had.
A French movie in which Eric played a bit part came to New York that summer and the four of them made an appointment to go and see it. Ida and Vivaldo were to meet Eric and Cass at the box office.
“What does she think she’s doing?” Ida asked. She and Vivaldo were walking toward the theater through the July streets.
“She’s trying to live,” said Vivaldo, mildly.
“Oh, shit, baby, Cass is a grown woman with two kids. What about those kids? Eric’s not the fatherly type, at least not with boys that age.”
“What a filthy little moralist you are. What Cass does with Cass’s life is her business. Not yours. Maybe she knows more about those kids than you do; maybe she’s trying to live the way she thinks she ought to live so that they won’t be afraid to do it when their time comes.” He felt himself beginning to be angry. “And you don’t know enough about Eric to talk about him that way.”
“Those kids are going to hate her before it’s over, believe me. And don’t tell me I don’t know about Eric; I knew all about him the minute I laid eyes on him.”
“You knew what you’d heard. And you’d never heard that he was going to have an affair with Cass. So you’re bugged.”
“Eric may have you fooled, and he may have Cass fooled— of course, I think she’s just fooling herself— but I’m not fooled. You’ll see.”
“You’re not a singer at all, you’re a fortune-teller. We should get you some big brass earrings and a vivid turban and set you up in business.”
“Laugh, clown,” she said.
“Well, what do you care? If he wants to make it with her and she wants to make it with him, what do we care?”
“Don’t you care? Richard’s your friend.”
“Cass is more my friend than Richard,” he said.
“She can’t realize what she’s doing. She’s got a good man and he’s really starting to get someplace, and she can’t find anything better to do than start screwing some poor-white faggot from Alabama. I swear, I don’t understand white folks worth a damn.”
“Eric’s not poor-white; his family’s very well off,” he said, beginning to sweat with more than the heat, wishing her voice would cease.
“Well, I hope they haven’t disowned him. Do you think Eric’s ever going to make it as an actor?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. But, yes, I do,
he’s a very good actor.”
“He’s getting kind of old to be so unknown. What was he doing in Paris all that time?”
“I don’t know, baby, but I hope he was having a ball. You know? Like whatever he digs most, that’s what I hope he was doing.”
“Well,” she said, “that isn’t what he’s doing now.”
He sighed, telling himself to drop the subject or change it. But he said, “I just don’t see why it should matter to you, that’s all. So he likes a roll in the hay with a man. So what?”
“He wanted a roll in the hay with my brother, too,” she said. “He wanted to make him as sick as he is.”
“If anything happened between Eric and your brother, it didn’t happen because Eric threw him down and raped him. Let me cool you, honey, you don’t know as much about men as you think you know.”
She turned on him a small, grim smile. “If anything happened. You’re a damn liar, and a coward, too.”
He looked at her; for that moment he hated her. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you know damn well what happened. Its only that you don’t want to know—”
“Ida, it was none of my damn business, I never talked about it with Rufus or with Eric. Why should I have?”
“Vivaldo, you haven’t got to talk about what’s happening to know what’s happening. Rufus never talked to me about what was happening to him— but I knew just the same.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “You’re never going to forgive me, are you? for your brother’s death.”
Then she, too, was silent. He said, “I loved your brother, too, Ida. You don’t believe that, I know, but I did. But he was just a man, baby. He wasn’t a saint.”
“I never said he was a saint. But I’m black, too, and I know how white people treat black boys and girls. They think you’re something for them to wipe their pricks on.”
He saw the lights of the movie theater three blocks down the Avenue. The summer streets were full. His throat closed and his eyes began to burn.
Another Country Page 33