Vivaldo laughed, but thought, with wonder and a little fear, My God, he has changed. He never talked like this before. And he looked at the quiet street, at the shadows thrown by houses and trees, with a new sense of its menace, and its terrifying loneliness. And he looked at Eric again, in very much the same way he had looked at him in the film, wondering again who Eric was, and how he bore it.
They entered Eric’s small, lighted vestibule and climbed the stairs to his apartment. One light, the night light over the bed, was burning, “To keep away robbers,” Eric said; and the apartment was in its familiar state of disorder, with the bed unmade and Eric’s clothes draped over chairs and hanging from knobs.
“Poor Cass,” Eric laughed, “she keeps trying to establish some order here, but it’s uphill work. Anyway, the way things are between us, I don’t give her much time to do much in the way of straightening up.” He walked about, picking up odds and ends of clothing, which he then piled all together on top of the kitchen table. He turned on the kitchen light and opened his icebox. Vivaldo flopped down on the unmade bed. Eric poured two drinks and sat down opposite him on a straight-backed easy chair. Then there was silence for a moment.
“Turn out that kitchen light,” Vivaldo said, “it’s in my eyes.”
Eric rose and switched off the kitchen light and came back with the bottle of whiskey and put it on the floor. Vivaldo flipped off his shoes and drew his legs up, playing with the toes of one foot.
“Are you in love with Cass?” he asked, abruptly.
Eric’s red hair flashed in the dim light, as he looked down into his drink, then looked up at Vivaldo. “No. I don’t think I’m in love with her. I think I wish I were. I care a lot about her— but, no, I’m not in love.”
And he sipped his drink.
“But she’s in love with you,” said Vivaldo. “Isn’t she?”
Eric raised his eyebrows. “I guess she is. She thinks she is. I don’t know. What does it mean, to be in love? Are you in love with Ida?”
“Yes,” said Vivaldo.
Eric rose and walked to the window. “You didn’t even have to think about it. I guess that tells me where I am.” He laughed. With his back to Vivaldo, he said, “I used to envy you, you know that?”
“You must have been out of your mind,” said Vivaldo. “Why?”
“Because you were normal,” Eric said. He turned and faced Vivaldo.
Vivaldo threw back his head and laughed. “Flattery will get you nowhere, son. Or is that a subtle put-down?”
“It’s not a put-down at all,” said Eric. “But I’m glad I don’t envy you any more.”
“Hell,” said Vivaldo, “I might just as easily envy you. You can make it with both men and women and sometimes I’ve wished I could do that, I really have.” Eric was silent. Vivaldo grinned. “We’ve all got our troubles, Buster.”
Eric looked very grave. He grunted, noncommittally, and sat down again. “You’ve wished you could— you say. And I wish I couldn’t.”
“You say.”
They looked at each other and smiled. Then, “I hope you get along with Ida better than I did with Rufus,” Eric said.
Vivaldo felt chilled. He looked away from Eric, toward the window; the dark, lonely streets seemed to come flooding in on them. “How,” he asked, “did you get along with Rufus?”
“It was terrible, it drove me crazy.”
“I figured that.” He watched Eric. “Is that all over now? I mean— is Cass kind of the wave of your future?”
“I don’t know. I thought I could make myself fall in love with Cass, but— but, no. I love her very much, we get on beautifully together. But she’s not all tangled up in my guts the way— the way I guess Ida is all tangled up in yours.”
“Maybe you’re just not in love with her. You haven’t got to be in love every time you go to bed. You haven’t got to be in love to have a good affair.”
Eric was silent. Then, “No. But once you have been—!”
And he stared into his drink. “Yes,” Vivaldo said at last, “yes, I know.”
“I think,” said Eric, “that I’ve really got to accept— or decide— some very strange things. Right away.”
He walked into the dark kitchen, returned with ice, and spiked his drink, and Vivaldo’s. He sat down again in his straight chair. “I’ve spent years now, it seems to me, thinking that one fine day I’d wake up and all my torment would be over, and all my indecision would end— and that no man, no boy, no male— would ever have power over me again.”
Vivaldo blushed and lit a cigarette. “I can’t be sure,” he said, “that one fine day, I won’t get all hung up on some boy— like that cat in Death In Venice. So you can’t be sure that there isn’t a woman waiting for you, just for you, somewhere up the road.”
“Indeed,” said Eric, “I can’t be sure. And yet I must decide.”
“What must you decide?”
Eric lit a cigarette, drew one foot up, and hugged one knee. “I mean, I think you’ve got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there’s no possibility of achieving the life you want.” He paused. “Or think you want.”
“Or,” said Vivaldo, after a moment, “the life you think you should want.”
“The life you think you should want,” said Eric, “is always the life that looks safest.” He looked toward the window. The one light in the room, coming from behind Vivaldo, played on his face like firelight. “When I’m with Cass, it’s fun, you know, and sometimes it’s, well, really quite fantastic. And it makes me feel kind of restful and protected— and strong— there are some things which only a woman can give you,” He walked to the window, peering down through the slats in the Venetian blinds as though he were awaiting the moment when the men in their opposing camps would leave their tents and meet in the shadow of the trees. “And yet, in a way, it’s all a kind of superior calisthenics. It’s a great challenge, a great test, a great game. But I don’t really feel that— terror— and that anguish and that joy I’ve sometimes felt with— a few men. Not enough of myself is invested; it’s almost as though I’m doing something— for Cass.” He turned and looked at Vivaldo. “Does that make sense to you?”
“I think it does,” said Vivaldo. “I think it does.”
But he was thinking of some nights in bed with Jane, when she had become drunk enough to be insatiable; he was thinking of her breath and her slippery body, and the eerie impersonality of her cries. Once, he had had a terrible stomachache, but Jane had given him no rest, and finally, in order to avoid shoving his fist down her throat, he had thrown himself on her, hoping, desperately, to exhaust her so that he could get some sleep. And he knew that this was not what Eric was talking about.
“Perhaps,” said Vivaldo, haltingly, thinking of the night on the roof with Harold, and Harold’s hands, “it’s something like the way I might feel if I went to bed with a man only because I— liked him— and he wanted me to.”
Eric smiled, grimly. “I’m not sure that there is a comparison, Vivaldo. Sex is too private. But if you went to bed with a guy just because he wanted you to, you wouldn’t have to take any responsibility for it; you wouldn’t be doing any of the work. He’d do all the work. And the idea of being passive is very attractive to many men, maybe to most men.”
“It is?” He put his feet on the floor and took a long swallow of his drink. He looked over at Eric and sighed and smiled. “You make the whole deal sound pretty rough, old buddy.”
“Well, that’s the way it looks from where I’m sitting.” Eric grimaced, threw back his head, and sipped his whiskey. “Maybe I’m crying because I wanted to believe that, somewhere, for some people, life and love are easier— than they are for me, than they are. Maybe it was easier to call myself a faggot and blame my sorrow on that.”
Then silence filled the room, like a chill. Eric and Vivaldo stared at each other with an oddly belligerent intensity. There was a great question in Eric’s eyes and Vivaldo turned away as though he were turning fr
om a mirror and walked to the kitchen door. “You really think it makes no difference?”
“I don’t know. Does the difference make any difference?”
“Well,” said Vivaldo, tapping with his thumbnail against the hinges of the door, “I certainly think that the real ball game is between men and women. And it’s physically easier.” He looked quickly at Eric. “Isn’t it? And then,” he added, “there are children.” And he looked quickly at Eric again.
Eric laughed. “I never heard of two cats who wanted to make it failing because they were the wrong size. Love always finds a way, dad. I don’t know anything about baseball, so I don’t know if life’s a baseball game or not. Maybe it is for you. It isn’t for me. And if its children you’re after, well, you can do that in five minutes and you haven’t got to love anybody to do it. If all the children who get here every year were brought here by love, wow! baby, what a bright world this would be!”
And now Vivaldo felt, at the very bottom of his heart, a certain reluctant hatred rising, against which he struggled as he would have struggled against vomiting. “I can’t decide,” he said, “whether you want to make everybody as miserable as you are, or whether everybody is as miserable as you are.”
“Well, don’t put it that way, baby. How happy are you? That’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with how I live, or what I think, or how miserable I am— how are you making it?”
The question hung in the room, like the smoke which wavered between Eric and Vivaldo. The question was as thick as the silence in which Vivaldo looked down, away from Eric, searching his heart for an answer. He was frightened; he looked up at Eric; Eric was frightened, too. They watched each other. “I’m in love with Ida,” Vivaldo said. Then, “And sometimes we make it, beautifully, beautifully. And sometimes we don’t. And it’s hideous.”
And he remained where he was, in the doorway, still.
“I, too, am in love,” said Eric, “his name is Yves; he’s coming to New York very soon. I got a letter from him today.”
He stood up and walked to his desk, picked up the play and opened it and took out an airmail envelope. Vivaldo watched his face, which had become, in an instant, weary and transfigured. Eric opened the letter and read it again. He looked at Vivaldo. “Sometimes we make it, too, and it’s beautiful. And when we don’t, it’s hideous.” He sat down again. “When I was talking before about accepting or deciding, I was thinking about him.” He paused, and threw his letter on the bed. There was a very long silence, which Vivaldo did not dare to break.
“I,” said Eric, “must understand that if I dreamed of escape, and I did— when this thing with Cass began, I thought that perhaps here was my opportunity to change, and I was glad— well, Yves, who is much younger than I, will also dream of escape. I must be prepared to let him go. He will go. And I think”— he looked up at Vivaldo— “that he must go, probably, in order to become a man.”
“You mean,” said Vivaldo, “in order to become himself.”
“Yes,” said Eric. And silence came again.
“All I can do,” said Eric, at last, “is love him. But this means— doesn’t it?— that I can’t delude myself about loving someone else. I can’t make any promise greater than this promise I’ve made already— not now, not now, and maybe I’ll never make any greater promise. I can’t be safe and sorry, too. I can’t act as though I’m free when I know I’m not. I’ve got to live with that, I’ve got to learn to live with that. Does that make sense? or am I mad?” There were tears in his eyes. He walked to the kitchen door and stared at Vivaldo. Then he turned away. “You’re right. You’re right. There’s nothing here to decide. There’s everything to accept.”
Vivaldo moved from the door, and threw himself face down on the bed, his long arms dangling to the floor. “Does Cass know about Yves?”
“Yes. I told her before anything happened.” He smiled. “But you know how that is— we were trying to be honorable. Nothing could really have stopped us by that time; we needed each other too much.”
“What are you going to do now? When does”— he gestured toward the letter, which was somewhere beneath his belly button— “Yves get here?”
“In about two weeks. According to that letter. It may be a little longer. It may be sooner.”
“Have you told Cass that?”
“No. I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
“How do you think she’ll take it?”
“Well, she’s always known he was on his way. I don’t know how she’ll take— his actual arrival.”
In the streets, they heard footsteps, walking fast, and someone whistling.
Eric stared at the wall again, frowning heavily. Other voices were heard in the street. “I guess the bars are beginning to close,” said Eric.
“Yes.” Vivaldo leaned up, looking toward the blinds which held back the jungle. “Eric. How’s one going to get through it all? How can you live if you can’t love? And how can you live if you do?”
And he stared at Eric, who said nothing, whose face gleamed in the yellow light, as mysteriously impersonal and as fearfully moving as might have been a death mask of Eric as a boy. He realized that they were both beginning to be drunk.
“I don’t see how I can live with Ida, and I don’t see how I can live without her. I get through every day on a prayer. Every morning, when I wake up, I’m surprised to find that she’s still beside me.” Eric was watching him, perfectly rigid and still, seeming scarcely to breathe, only his unmoving eyes were alive. “And yet”— he caught his breath— “sometimes I wish she weren’t there, sometimes I wish I’d never met her, sometimes I think I’d go anywhere to get this burden off me. She never lets me forget I’m white, she never lets me forget she’s colored. And I don’t care, I don’t care— did Rufus do that to you? Did he try to make you pay?”
Eric dropped his eyes, and his lips tightened. “Ah. He didn’t try. I paid.” He raised his eyes to Vivaldo’s. “But I’m not sad about it any more. If it hadn’t been for Rufus, I would never have had to go away, I would never have been able to deal with Yves.” And then, rising and walking to the window, from which more and more voices rose, “Maybe that’s what love is for.”
“Are you sleeping with anyone besides Cass?”
Eric turned. “No.”
“I’m sorry. I just thought you might be. I’m not sleeping with anyone except Ida.”
“We can’t be everywhere at once,” said Eric.
They listened to the footfalls and voices in the street: someone was singing, someone called, someone was cursing. Someone ran. Then silence, again.
“You know,” said Eric, “it’s true that you can make kids without love. But if you do love the person you make the kids with, it must be something fantastic.”
“Ida and I could have great kids,” said Vivaldo.
“Do you think you will?”
“I don’t know. I’d love to— but”— he fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
He allowed himself, for a moment, the luxury of dreaming of Ida’s children, though he knew that these children would never be born and that this moment was all he would ever have of them. Nevertheless, he dreamed of a baby boy who had Ida’s mouth and eyes and forehead, his hair, only curlier, his build, their color. What would that color be? From the streets, again, came a cry and a crash and a roar. Eric switched off the night light and opened the blinds and Vivaldo joined him at the window. But now there was nothing to see, the street was empty, dark, and still, though an echo of voices, diminishing, floated back.
“One of the last times I saw Rufus,” Vivaldo said, abruptly— and stopped. He had not thought about it since that moment; in a way, he had never thought about it at all.
“Yes?” He could barely make out Eric’s face in the darkness. He turned away from Eric and sat down on the bed again, and lit a cigarette. And in the tiny flare, Eric’s face leapt at him, then dropped back into darkness. He watched the red-black silhouette of Eric’s
head against the dim glow of the Venetian blinds.
He remembered that terrible apartment again, and Leona’s tears, and Rufus with the knife, and the bed with the twisted gray sheet and the thin blanket: and it all seemed to have happened many, many years ago.
But, in fact, it had only been a matter of months.
“I never told this to anybody before,” he said, “and I really don’t know why I’m telling you. It’s just that the last time I saw Rufus, before he disappeared, when he was still with Leona”— he caught his breath, he dragged on his cigarette and the glow brought the room back into the world, then dropped it again into chaos— “we had a fight, he said he was going to kill me. And. at the very end, when he was finally in bed, after he’d cried, and after he’d told me— so many terrible things— I looked at him, he was lying on his side, his eyes were half open, he was looking at me. I was taking off my pants, Leona was staying at my place and I was going to stay there, I was afraid to leave him alone. Well, when he looked at me, just before he closed his eyes and turned on his side away from me, all curled up, I had the weirdest feeling that he wanted me to take him in my arms. And not for sex, though maybe sex would have happened. I had the feeling that he wanted someone to hold him, to hold him, and that, that night, it had to be a man. I got in the bed and I thought about it and I watched his back, it was as dark in that room, then, as it is in this room, now, and I lay on my back and I didn’t touch him and I didn’t sleep. I remember that night as a kind of vigil. I don’t know whether he slept or not, I kept trying to tell from his breathing— but I couldn’t tell, it was too choppy, maybe he was having nightmares. I loved Rufus, I loved him, I didn’t want him to die. But when he was dead, I thought about it, thought about it— isn’t it funny? I didn’t know I’d thought about it as much as I have— and I wondered, I guess I still wonder, what would have happened if I’d taken him in my arms, if I’d held him, if I hadn’t been— afraid. I was afraid that he wouldn’t understand that it was— only love. Only love. But, oh, Lord, when he died, I thought that maybe I could have saved him if I’d just reached out that quarter of an inch between us on that bed, and held him.” He felt the cold tears on his face, and he tried to wipe them away. “Do you know what I mean? I haven’t told Ida this, I haven’t told anyone, I haven’t thought about it, since he died. But I guess I’ve been living with it. And I’ll never know. I’ll never know.”
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