Another Country

by James Baldwin

  He came close to the chair she sat in. She did not look up.

  “I know that you’ve always admired Vivaldo. More than you admire me.”

  There was a terrible mixture of humility and anger in his tone, and her heart shook; she saw what he was trying to accept. She almost looked up to reach out to him, to help him and comfort him, but something made her keep still.

  She said, “Admiration and love are very different.”

  “Are they? I’m not so sure. How can you touch a woman if you know she despises you? And if a woman admires a man, what is it, really, that she admires? A woman who admires you will open her legs for you at once, she’ll give you anything she’s got.” She felt his heat and his presence above her like a cloud; she bit one knuckle. “You did— you did, for me, don’t you remember? Won’t you come back?”

  Then she did look up at him, tears falling down her face. “Oh, Richard. I don’t know if I can.”

  “Why? Do you despise me so much?” She looked down, twisting the handkerchief. He squatted beside the chair. “I’m sorry we’ve got so far apart— I really don’t even know how it happened, but I guess I got mad at you because— because you seemed to have so little respect for”— he tried to laugh— “my success. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. I know you’re smarter than I am, but how are we going to eat, baby, what else can I do? Maybe I shouldn’t have let myself get so jealous of Vivaldo, but it seemed so logical, once I thought about it. Once I thought about it, I thought about it all the time. I know he must be alone a lot, and— and you’ve been alone.” She looked at him, looked away. He put one hand on her arm; she bit her lip to control her trembling. “Come back to me, please. Don’t you love me any more? You can’t have stopped loving me. I can’t live without you. You’ve always been the only woman in the world for me.”

  She could keep silence and go into his arms, and the last few months would be wiped away— he would never know where she had been. The world would return to its former shape. Would it? The silence between them stretched. She could not look at him. He had existed for too long in her mind— now, she was being humbled by the baffling reality of his presence. Her imagination had not taken enough into account— she had not foreseen, for example, the measure or the quality or the power of his pain. He was a lonely and limited man, who loved her. Did she love him?

  “I don’t despise you,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you think that.” Then she said nothing more. Why tell him? What good would it do? He would never understand it, she would merely have given him an anguish which he would never be able to handle. And he would never trust her again.

  Did she love him? And if she did, what should she do? Very slowly and gently, she took her arm from beneath his hand; and she walked to the window. The blinds were drawn against the night, but she opened them a little and looked out: on the lights and the deep black water. Silence rang its mighty gongs in the room behind her. She dropped the blinds, and turned and looked at him. He sat, now, on the floor, beside the chair that she had left, his glass between his feet, his great hands loosely clasped below his knees, his head tilted up toward her. It was a look she knew, a listening, trusting look. She forced herself to look at him; she might never see that look again; and it had been her sustenance so long! His face was the face of a man entering middle age, and it was also— and always would be, for her— the face of a boy. His sandy hair was longer than usual, it was beginning to turn gray, his forehead was wet, and his hair was wet. Cass discovered that she loved him during the fearful, immeasurable second that she stood there watching him. Had she loved him less, she might have wearily consented to continue acting as the bulwark which protected his simplicity. But she could not do that to Richard, nor to his children. He had the right to know his wife: she prayed that he would take it.

  She said, “I have to tell you something, Richard. I don’t know how you’ll take it, or where we can go from here.” She paused, and his face changed. Be quick! she told herself. “I have to tell you because we can never come back together, we can never have any future if I don’t.” Her stomach contracted again, dryly. She wanted to run to the bathroom, but she knew that that would do no good. The spasm passed. “Vivaldo and I have never touched each other. I’ve”— be quick!— “been having an affair with Eric.”

  His voice, when he spoke, seemed to have no consciousness behind it, to belong to no one; it was a mere meaningless tinkle on the air: “Eric?”

  She walked to the bar and leaned on it. “Yes.”

  How the silence rang and gathered! “Eric?” He laughed. “Eric?”

  It’s his turn now, she thought. She did not look at him; he was rising to his feet; he stumbled, suddenly drunken, to the bar. She felt him staring at her— for some reason, she thought of an airplane trying to land. Then his hand was on her shoulder. He turned her to face him. She forced herself to look into his eyes.

  “Is that the truth?”

  She felt absolutely cold and dry and wanted to go to sleep. “Yes, Richard. That’s the truth.”

  She moved away and sat down in the chair again. She had, indeed, delivered herself up: she thought of the children and fear broke over her like a wave, chilling her. She stared straight before her, sitting perfectly still, listening: for no matter what else was lost, she would not give up her children, she would not let them go.

  “It’s not true. I don’t believe you. Why Eric? Why did you go to him?”

  “He has something— something I needed very badly.”

  “What is that, Cass?”

  “A sense of himself.”

  “A sense of himself,” he repeated, slowly. “A sense of himself.” She felt his eyes on her, and also felt, with dread, how slowly the storm in him gathered, how long it would take to break. “Forgive your coarse-grained husband, but I’ve always felt that he had no sense of himself at all. He’s not even sure he knows what’s between his legs, or what to do with it— but I guess I have to take that back now.”

  Here we go, she thought.

  She said, wearily, helplessly, “I know it sounds strange, Richard.” Tears came to her eyes. “But he’s a very wonderful person. I know. I know him better than you do.”

  He said, making a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sob, “I guess you do— though he may have preferred it the other way around. Did you ever think of that? You must be one of the very few women in the world—”

  “Don’t, Richard. Don’t. It won’t change anything, it won’t help.”

  He came and stood over her. “Let’s get this straight. We’ve been married almost thirteen years, and I’ve been in love with you all that time, and I’ve trusted you, and, except for a couple of times in the army, I haven’t had anything to do with any other woman. Even though I’ve thought about it. But it never seemed worth it. And I’ve worked, I’ve worked very hard, Cass, for you and our children, so we could be happy and so our marriage would work. Maybe you think that’s old-fashioned, maybe you think I’m dumb, I don’t know, you’re so much more— sensitive than I am. And now— and then—” He walked over to the bar and set his glass down. “Suddenly, for no reason, just when it begins to seem that things are really going to work out for us, all of a sudden— you begin to make me feel that I’m something that stinks, that I ought to be out of doors. I didn’t know what had happened, I didn’t know where you’d gone— all of a sudden. I’ve listened to you come into this house and go and look at the boys, and then crawl into bed— I swear, I could hear every move you made— and I’d stay on in the office like a little boy, because I didn’t know how, how, to come close to you again. I kept thinking, She’ll get over it, it’s just some strange kind of feminine shift that I can’t understand. I even thought, my God, that maybe you were going to have another baby and didn’t want to tell me yet.” He bowed his head on the bar. “And, Jesus, Jesus— Eric! You walk in and tell me you’ve been sleeping with Eric.” He turned and looked at her. “How long?”

  “A few weeks
.”

  “Why?” She did not answer. He came toward her again. “Answer me, baby. Why?” He leaned over her, imprisoning her in the chair. “Is it that you wanted to hurt me?”

  “No. I have never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Why, then?” He leaned closer. “Did you get bored with me? Does he make love to you better than I; does he know tricks I don’t know? Is that it?” He wrapped the fingers of one hand in her hair. “Is that it? Answer me!”

  “Richard, you’re going to wake the children—”

  “Now she worries about the children!” He pulled her head forward, then slammed it back against the chair, and slapped her across the face, twice, as hard as he could. The room dropped into darkness for a second, then came reeling back, in light; tears came to her eyes, and her nose began to bleed. “Is that it? Did he fuck you in the ass, did he make you suck his cock? Answer me, you bitch, you slut, you cunt!”

  She tried to throw back her head, choking and gasping, she felt her thick blood on her lips, and it fell onto her breasts. “No, Richard, no, no. Please, Richard.”

  “Oh, God. Oh, God.” He fell away from her, and, as though in a dream, she saw his great body stagger to the sofa; and he fell beside the sofa, on his knees, weeping. She listened, listened to hear a sound from the children, and looked toward the door, where they would be standing if they were up; but they were not there, there was no sound. She looked at Richard, and covered her face for a moment. She could not bear the sound of his weeping, or the sight of those breaking shoulders. Her face felt twice its size; when she took her hands away, they were covered with blood. She rose, and staggered into the bathroom.

  She ran the water, the bleeding slowly began to stop. Then she sat down on the bathroom floor. Her mind swung madly back and forth, like the needle of some broken instrument. She wondered if her face would be swollen in the morning, and how she would explain this to Paul and Michael. She thought of Ida and Vivaldo and Ellis, and wondered what Vivaldo would do when he discovered the truth; and felt very sorry for him, sad enough for her tears to begin again, dripping down on her clenched hands. She thought of Eric, and wondered if she had also betrayed him by telling Richard the truth. And what would she say to Eric now, or he to her? She did not want, ever, to leave the white, lighted haven of the bathroom. The center of her mind was filled with the sight and sound of Richard’s anguish. She wondered if there was any hope for them, if there was anything left between them which they could use. This last question made her rise at last, her dry belly still contracting, and take off her bloody dress. She wanted to burn it, but she put it in the dirty-clothes hamper. She walked into the kitchen and put coffee on the stove. Then she walked back into the bathroom, put on a bathrobe, and took the cigarettes out of her handbag. She lit a cigarette and sat down at the kitchen table. It was three o’clock in the morning. She sat and waited for Richard to rise and come to her.

  BOOK THREE

  :

  TOWARD

  BETHLEHEM

  How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

  Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

  —SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet LXV

  1

  Vivaldo dreamed that he was running, running, running, through a country he had always known, but could not now remember, a rocky country. He was blinded by the rain beating down, the tough, wet vines dragged at his legs and feet, and thorns and nettles tormented his hands and arms and face. He was both fleeing and seeking, and, in his dream, the time was running out. There was a high wall ahead of him, a high, stone wall. Broken glass glittered on top of the wall, sharp points standing straight up, like spears. He was reminded of music, though he heard none: the music was created by the sight of the rain which fell in long, cruel, gleaming shafts, and by the bright glass which reared itself bitterly against it. And he felt an answering rearing in his own body, a pull fugitive and powerful and dimly troubling, such as he might have felt for a moment had there been the movement and power of a horse beneath him. And, at the same time, in his dream, as he ran or as he was propelled, he was weighed down and made sick by the certainty that he had forgotten— forgotten— what? some secret, some duty, that would save him. His breath was a terrible captive weight in his chest. He reached the wall. He grasped the stone with his bleeding hands, but the stone was slippery, he could not hold it, could not lift himself up. He tried with his feet; his feet slipped; the rain poured down.

  And now he knew that his enemy was upon him. Salt burned his eyes. He dared not turn; in terror he pressed himself against the rough, wet wall, as though a wall could melt or could be entered. He had forgotten— what? how to escape or how to defeat his enemy. Then he heard the wail of trombones and clarinets and a steady, enraged beating on the drums. They were playing a blues he had never heard before, they were filling the earth with a sound so dreadful that he knew he could not bear it. Where was Ida? she could help him. But he felt rough hands on him and he looked down into Rufus’ distorted and vindictive face. Go on up, said Rufus. I’m helping you up. Go up! Rufus’ hands pushed and pushed and soon Vivaldo stood, higher than Rufus had ever stood, on the wintry bridge, looking down on death. He knew that this death was what Rufus most desired. He tried to look down, to beg Rufus for mercy, but he could not move without falling off the wall, or falling on the glass. From far away, far beyond this flood, he saw Ida, on a sloping green meadow, walking alone. The sun was beautiful on her blue-black hair and on her Aztec brow, and gathered in a dark, glinting pool at the hollow of her throat. She did not look toward him, walked in a measured way, looking down at the ground; yet, he felt that she saw him, was aware of him standing on the cruel wall, and waited, in collusion with her brother, for his death. Then Rufus came hurtling from the air, impaling himself on the far, spiked fence which bounded the meadow. Ida did not look: she waited. Vivaldo watched Rufus’ blood run down, bright red over the black spikes, into the green meadow. He tried to shout, but no words came; tried to reach out to Ida and fell heavily on his hands and knees on the rearing, uplifted glass. He could not bear the pain; yet, he felt again the random, voluptuous tug. He felt entirely helpless and more terrified than ever. But there was pleasure in it. He writhed against the glass. Don’t kill me, Rufus. Please. Please. I love you. Then, to his delight and confusion, Rufus lay down beside him and opened his arms. And the moment he surrendered to this sweet and overwhelming embrace, his dream, like glass, shattered, he heard the rain at the windows, returned, violently, into his body, became aware of his odor and the odor of Eric, and found that it was Eric to whom he clung, who clung to him. Eric’s lips were against Vivaldo’s neck and chest.

  Vivaldo hoped that he was dreaming still. A terrible sorrow entered him, because he was dreaming and because he was awake. Immediately, he felt that he had created his dream in order to create this opportunity; he had brought about something that he had long desired. He was frightened and then he was angry— at Eric or at himself? he did not know— and started to pull away. But he could not pull away, he did not want to, it was too late. He thought to keep his eyes closed in order to take no responsibility for what was happening. This thought made him ashamed. He tried to reconstruct the way in which this monstrous endeavor must have begun. They must have gone to sleep, spoon-fashion. Eric curled against him— oh, what did this cause him, nearly, to remember? He had curled his legs, himself, around Eric, since Eric’s body was there; and desire had entered this monastic, this boyish bed. Now it was too late, thank God it was too late; it was necessary for them to disentangle themselves from the drag and torment of their undershorts, their trousers, and the sheets. He opened his eyes. Eric was watching him with a small half-smile, a troubled smile, and this smile caused Vivaldo to realize that Eric loved him. Eric really loved him and would be proud to give Vivaldo anything Vivaldo needed. With a groan and a sigh, with an indescribable relief, Vivaldo came full awake and pulled Eric closer. It had been a dream and not a dream, how long could such dreams last? this one could not last
long. Instantaneously, then, they each seemed to become intent on carrying this moment, which belonged to them, as far as it could go. They kicked their trousers to the floor, saying nothing— what was there to say?— and not daring to let go of one another. Then, as in a waking dream, helpless and trustful, he felt Eric remove his shirt and caress him with his parted lips. Eric bowed and kissed Vivaldo on the belly button, half-hidden in the violent, gypsy hair. This was in honor of Vivaldo, of Vivaldo’s body and Vivaldo’s need, and Vivaldo trembled as he had never trembled before. And this caress was not entirely pleasant. Vivaldo felt terribly ill at ease, not knowing what was expected of him, or what he could expect from Eric. He pulled Eric up and kissed him on the mouth, kneading Eric’s buttocks and stroking his sex. How strange it felt, this violent muscle, stretching and throbbing, so like his own, but belonging to another! And this chest, this belly, these legs, were like his, and the tremor of Eric’s breath echoed his own earthquake. Oh, what was it that he could not remember? It was his first sexual encounter with a male in many years, and his very first sexual encounter with a friend. He associated the act with the humiliation and the debasement of one male by another, the inferior male of less importance than the crumpled, cast-off handkerchief; but he did not feel this way toward Eric; and therefore he did not know what he felt. This tormented self-consciousness caused Vivaldo to fear that their moment might, after all, come to nothing. He did not want this to happen, he knew his need to be too great, and they had come too far, and Eric had risked too much. He was afraid of what might happen if they failed. Yet, his lust remained, and rose, chafing within and battering against the labyrinth of his bewilderment; his lust was unaccustomedly arrogant and cruel and irresponsible, and yet there was mingled in it a deep and incomprehensible tenderness: he did not want to cause Eric pain. The physical pain he had sometimes brought to vanished, phantom girls had been necessary for them, he had been unlocking, for them, the door to life; but he was now involved in another mystery, at once blacker and more pure. He tried to will himself back into his adolescence, grasping Eric’s strange body and stroking that strange sex. At the same time, he tried to think of a woman. (But he did not want to think of Ida.) And they lay together in this antique attitude, the hand of each on the sex of the other, and with their limbs entangled, and Eric’s breath trembling against Vivaldo’s chest. This childish and trustful tremor returned to Vivaldo a sense of his own power. He held Eric very tightly and covered Eric’s body with his own, as though he were shielding him from the falling heavens. But it was also as though he were, at the same instant, being shielded— by Eric’s love. It was strangely and insistently double-edged, it was like making love in the midst of mirrors, or it was like death by drowning. But it was also like music, the highest, sweetest, loneliest reeds, and it was like the rain. He kissed Eric again and again, wondering how they would finally come together. The male body was not mysterious, he had never thought about it at all, but it was the most impenetrable of mysteries now, and this wonder made him think of his own body, of its possibilities and its imminent and absolute decay, in a way that he had never thought of it before. Eric moved against him and beneath him, as thirsty as the sand. He wondered what moved in Eric’s body which drove him, like a bird or a leaf in a storm, against the wall of Vivaldo’s flesh; and he wondered what moved in his own body: what virtue were they seeking, now, to share? what was he doing here? This was as far removed as anything could be from the necessary war one underwent with women. He would have entered her by now, this woman who was not here, her sighs would be different and her surrender would never be total. Her sex, which afforded him his entry, would nevertheless remain strange to him, an incitement and an anguish, and an everlasting mystery. And even now, in this bright, laboring and doubting moment, with only the rain as their witness, he knew that he was condemned to women. What was it like to be a man, condemned to men? He could not imagine it and he felt a quick revulsion, quickly banished, for it threatened his ease. But at the very same moment his excitement increased: he felt that he could do with Eric whatever he liked. Now, Vivaldo, who was accustomed himself to labor, to be the giver of the gift, and enter into his satisfaction by means of the satisfaction of a woman, surrendered to the luxury, the flaming torpor of passivity, and whispered in Eric’s ear a muffled, urgent plea.