Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

  And his sister Ellen, a little older than he, a little darker, always overdressed, overmade-up, with a face and figure beginning to harden, and with too much jewelry everywhere, clanging and banging in the fight, sits on the sofa, reading; she read a lot, all the new books, and she used to go to the movies a great deal. Or she knits. It seems to me that she was always carrying a great bag full of dangerous-looking knitting needles, or a book, or both. And I don't know what she knitted, though I suppose she must, at least occasionally, have knitted something for my father, or me. But I don't remember it, anymore than I remember the books she read. It might always have been the same book and she might have been working on the same scarf, or sweater, or God knows what, all the years I knew her. Sometimes she and my father played cards—this was rare; sometimes they talked together in friendly, teasing tones, but this was dangerous. Their banter nearly always ended in a fight. Sometimes there was company and I was often allowed to watch them drink their cocktails. Then my father was at his best, boyish and expansive, moving about through the crowded room with a glass in his hand, refilling people's drinks, laughing a lot, handling all the men as though they were his brothers, and flirting with the women. Or no, not flirting with them, strutting like a cock before them. Ellen always seemed to be watching him as though she were afraid he would do something awful, watched him and watched the women and, yes, she flirted with the men in a strange, nerve-wracking kind of way. There she was, dressed, as they say, to kill, with her mouth redder than any blood, dressed in something which was either the wrong color, or too tight, or too young, the cocktail glass in her hand threatening, at any instant, to be reduced to shards, to splinters, and that voice going on and on like a razor blade on glass. When I was a little boy and I watched her in company, she frightened me.

  But no matter what was happening in that room, my mother was watching it. She looked out of the photograph frame, a pale, blonde woman, delicately put together, dark-eyed, and straight-browed, with a nervous, gentle mouth. But something about the way the eyes were set in the head and stared straight out, something very faintly sardonic and knowing in the set of the mouth suggested that, somewhere beneath this tense fragility was a strength as various as it was unyielding and, like my father's wrath, dangerous because it was so entirely unexpected. My father rarely spoke of her and when he did he covered, by some mysterious means, his face; he spoke of her only as my mother and, in fact, as he spoke of her, he might have been speaking of his own. Ellen spoke of my mother often, saying what a remarkable woman she had been, but she made me uncomfortable. I felt that I had no right to be the son of such a mother.

  Years later, when I had become a man, I tried to get my father to talk about my mother. But Ellen was dead, he was about to marry again. He spoke of my mother, then, as Ellen had spoken of her and he might, indeed, have been speaking of Ellen.

  They had a fight one night when I was about thirteen. They had a great many fights, of course; but perhaps I remember this one so clearly because it seemed to be about me.

  I was in bed upstairs, asleep. It was quite late. I was suddenly awakened by the sound of my father's footfalls on the walk beneath my window. I could tell by the sound and the rhythm that he was a little drunk and I remember that at that moment a certain disappointment, an unprecedented sorrow entered into me. I had seen him drunk many times and had never felt this way—on the contrary, my father sometimes had great charm when he was drunk—but that night I suddenly felt that there was something in it, in him, to be despised.

  I heard him come in. Then, at once, I heard Ellen's voice.

  'Aren't you in bed yet?' my father asked. He was trying to be pleasant and trying to avoid a scene, but there was no cordiality in his voice, only strain and exasperation.

  'I thought,' said Ellen, coldly, 'that someone ought to tell you what you're doing to your son.'

  'What I'm doing to my son?' And he was about to say something more, something awful; but he caught himself and only said, with a resigned, drunken, despairing calm: 'What are you talking about, Ellen?'

  'Do you really think,' she asked—I was certain that she was standing in the center of the room, with her hands folded before her, standing very straight and still—'that you're the kind of man he ought to be when he grows up?' And, as my father said nothing: 'He is growing up, you know.' And then, spitefully, *Which is more than I can say for you.'

  'Go to bed, Ellen,' said my father—sounding very weary.

  I had the feeling, since they were talking about me, that I ought to go downstairs and tell Ellen that whatever was wrong between my father and myself we could work out between us without her help. And, perhaps— which seems odd—I felt that she was disrespectful of me. For I had certainly never said a word to her about my father.

  I heard his heavy, uneven footfalls as he moved across the room, towards the stairs.

  'Don't think,' said Ellen, 'that I don't know where you've been.'

  'I've been out—drinking—' said my father, 'and now I'd like to get a little sleep. Do you mind?'

  'You've been with that girl, Beatrice,' said Ellen. 'That's where you always are and that's where all your money goes and all your manhood and self-respect, too.'

  She had succeeded in making him angry. He began to stammer. If you think—if you think—that I'm going to stand—stand—stand here—and argue with you about my private life—my private life!—if you think I'm going to argue with you about it, why, you're out of your mind.'

  I certainly don't care,' said Ellen, 'what you do with yourself. It isn't you I'm worried about. It's only that you're the only person who has any authority over David. I don't. And he hasn't got any mother. And he only listens to me when he thinks it pleases you. Do you really think it's a good idea for David to see you staggering home drunk all the time? And don't fool yourself,' she added, after a moment, in a voice thick with passion, 'don't fool yourself that he doesn't know where you're coming from, don't think he doesn't know about your women!'

  She was wrong. I don't think I did know about them—or I had never thought about them. But from that evening, I thought about them all the time. I could scarcely ever face a woman without wondering whether or not my father had, in Ellen's phrase, been 'interfering' with her.

  'I think it barely possible,' said my father, 'that David has a cleaner mind than yours.'

  The silence, then, in which my father climbed the stairs was by far the worst silence my life had ever known. I was wondering what they were thinking—each of them. I wondered how they looked. I wondered what I would see when I saw them in the morning.

  'And listen' said my father suddenly, from the middle of the staircase, in a voice which frightened me, 'all I want for David is that he grow up to be a man. And when I say a man, Ellen, I don't mean a Sunday school teacher.'

  'A man,' said Ellen, shortly, Is not the same thing as a bull. Good-night.'

  'Good-night,' he said, after a moment.

  And I heard him stagger past my door.

  From that time on, with the mysterious, cunning, and dreadful intensity of the very young, I despised my father and I hated Ellen. It is hard to say why. I don't know why. But it allowed all of Ellen's prophecies about me to come true. She had said that there would come a time when nothing and nobody would be able to rule me, not even my father. And that time certainly came.

  It was after Joey. The incident with Joey had shaken me profoundly and its effect was to make me secretive and cruel. I could not discuss what had happened to me with anyone, I could not even admit it to myself; and, while I never thought about it, it remained, nevertheless, at the bottom of my mind, as still and as awful as a decomposing corpse. And it changed, it thickened, it soured the atmosphere of my mind. Soon it was I who came staggering home late at night, it was I who found Ellen waiting up for me, Ellen and I who wrangled night in and night out.

  My father's attitude was that this was but an inevitable phase of my growing up and he affected to take it lightly. But beneath
his jocular, boys-together air, he was at a loss, he was frightened. Perhaps he had supposed that my growing up would bring us closer together— whereas, now that he was trying to find out something about me, I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me. And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the very young inevitably undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him. And the very harshness of this judgment, which broke my heart, revealed, though I could not have said it then, how much I had loved him, how that love, along with my innocence, was dying.

  My poor father was baffled and afraid. He was unable to believe that there could be anything seriously wrong between us. And this was not only because he would not then have known what to do about it; it was mainly because he would then have had to face the knowledge that he had left something, somewhere, undone, something of the utmost importance. And since neither of us had any idea of what this so significant omission could have been, and since we were forced to remain in tacit league against Ellen, we took refuge in being hearty with each other. We were not like father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies. I think my father sometimes actually believed this. I never did. I did not want to be his buddy; I wanted to be his son. What passed between us as masculine candor exhausted and appalled me. Fathers ought to avoid utter nakedness before their sons. I did not want to know—not, anyway, from his mouth—that his flesh was as unregenerate as my own. The knowledge did not make me feel more like his son—or buddy—it only made me feel like an interloper, and a frightened one at that. He thought we were alike. I did not want to think so. I did not want to think that my life would be like his, or that my mind would ever grow so pale, so without hard places and sharp, sheer drops. He wanted no distance between us; he wanted me to look on him as a man like myself. But I wanted the merciful distance of father and son, which would have permitted me to love him.

  One night, drunk, with several other people on the way back from an out-of-town party, the car I was driving smashed up. It was entirely my fault. I was almost too drunk to walk and had no business driving; but the others did not know this, since I am one of those people who can look and sound sober while practically in a state of collapse. On a straight, level piece of highway something weird happened to all my reactions, and the car sprang suddenly out of my control. And a telephone pole, foam-white, came crying at me out of the pitch darkness; I heard screams and then a heavy, roaring, tearing sound. Then everything turned absolutely scarlet and then as bright as day and I went into a darkness I had never known before.

  I must have begun to wake up as we were being moved to the hospital. I dimly remember movement and voices, but they seemed very far away, they seemed to have nothing to do with me. Then, later, I woke up in a spot which seemed to be the very heart of winter, a high, white ceiling and white walls, and a hard, glacial window, bent, as it seemed, over me. I must have tried to rise, for I remember an awful roaring in my head, and then a weight on my chest and a huge face over me. And as this weight, this face, began to push me under again, I screamed for my mother. Then it was dark again.

  When I came to myself at last, my father was standing over my bed. I knew he was there before I saw him, before my eyes focused and I carefully turned my head. When he saw that I was awake, he carefully stepped closer to the bed, motioning to me to be still. And he looked very old. I wanted to cry. For a moment we just stared at each other.

  'How do you feel?' he whispered, finally.

  It was when I tried to speak that I realized I was in pain and immediately I was frightened. He must have seen this in my eyes, for he said in a low voice, with a pained, a marvellous intensity, T)on't worry, David. You're going to be all right. You're going to be all right.'

  I still could not say anything. I simply watched his face.

  'You kids were mighty lucky,' he said, trying to smile. 'You're the one got smashed up the most.'

  'I was drunk,' I said at last. I wanted to tell him everything—but speaking was such agony.

  'Don't you know,' he asked, with an air of extreme bafflement—for this was something he could allow himself to be baffled about—better than to go driving around like that when you're drunk? You know better than that,' he said, severely, and pursed his lips. 'Why you could all have been killed.' And his voice shook.

  I'm sorry,' I said, suddenly. 'I'm sorry.' I did not know how to say what it was I was sorry for.

  'Don't be sorry,' he said. 'Just be careful next time.' He had been patting his handkerchief between his palms; now he opened his handkerchief and reached out and wiped my forehead. 'You're all I've got,' he said then, with a shy, pained grin. 'Be careful.'

  'Daddy,' I said. And began to cry. And if speaking had been agony, this was worse and yet I could not stop.

  And my father's face changed. It became terribly old and at the same time absolutely, helplessly young. I remember being absolutely astonished, at the still, cold center of the storm which was occurring in me, to realize that my father had been suffering, was suffering still.

  'Don't cry,' he said, 'don't cry.' He stroked my forehead with that absurd handkerchief as though it possessed some healing charm. There's nothing to cry about. Everything's going to be all right.' He was almost weeping himself. There's nothing wrong, is there? I haven't done anything wrong, have I?' And all the time he was stroking my face with that handkerchief, smothering me.

  'We were drunk,' I said. 'We were drunk.' For this seemed, somehow, to explain everything.

  'Your Aunt Ellen says it's my fault,' he said. 'She says I never raised you right.' He put away, thank heaven, that handkerchief, and weakly straightened his shoulders. 'You got nothing against me, have you? Tell me if you have?'

  My tears began to dry, on my face and in my breast. 'No,' I said, 'no. Nothing. Honest.'

  'I did the best I could,' he said. 'I really did the best I could.' I looked at him. And at last he grinned and said, 'You're going to be on your back for awhile but when you come home, while you're lying around the house, we'll talk, huh? and try to figure out what the hell we're going to do with you when you get on your feet. OK?'

  'OK,' I said.

  For I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that now we never would. I understood that he must never know this. When I came home he talked with me about my future but I had made up my mind. I was not going to go to college, I was not going to remain in that house with him and Ellen. And I maneuvered my father so well that he actually began to believe that my finding a job and being on my own was the direct result of his advice and a tribute to the way he had raised me. Once I was out of the house of course, it became much easier to deal with him and he never had any reason to feel shut out of my life for I was always able, when talking about it, to tell him what he wished to hear. And we got on quite well, really, for the vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in which I myself most desperately needed to believe.

  For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. Even constant motion, of course, does not prevent on occasional mysterious drag, a drop, like an airplane hitting an air pocket. And there were a number of those, all drunken, all sordid, one v
ery frightening such drop while I was in the Army which involved a fairy who was later court-martialed out. The panic his punishment caused in me was as close as I ever came to facing in myself the terrors I sometimes saw clouding another man's eyes.

  What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the joyless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships, wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work, which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But, again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France.

  Chapter Two

  I met Giovanni during my second year in Paris, when I had no money. On the morning of the evening that we met I had been turned out of my room. I did not owe an awful lot of money, only around six thousand francs, but Parisian hotel-keepers have a way of smelling poverty and then they do what anybody does who is aware of a bad smell; they throw whatever stinks outside.