Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

  I leave the window of the big room and walk through the house. While I am in the kitchen, staring into the mirror—I have decided to shave before all the water turns cold—I hear a knocking at the door. Some vague, wild hope leaps in me for a second and then I realize that it is only the caretaker from across the road come to make certain that I have not stolen the silver or smashed the dishes or chopped up the furniture for firewood. And, indeed, she rattles the door and I hear her voice out there, cracking, M'sieu! M'sieui M'sieu, l'américain!' I wonder, with annoyance, why on earth she should sound so worried.

  But she smiles at once when I open the door, a smile which weds the coquette and the mother. She is quite old and not really French; she came many years ago, 'when I was a very young girl, sir,' from just across the border, out of Italy. She seems, like most of the women down here, to have gone into mourning directly the last child moved out of childhood. Hella thought that they were all widows, but, it turned out, most of them had husbands living yet. These husbands might have been their sons. They sometimes played belote in the sunshine in a flat field near our house, and their eyes, when they looked at Hella, contained the proud watchfulness of a father and the watchful speculation of a man. I sometimes played billiards with them, and drank red wine, in the tabac. But they made me tense—with their ribaldries, their good-nature, their fellowship, the life written on their hands and in their faces and in their eyes. They treated me as the son who has but lately been initiated into manhood; but at the same time, with great distance, for I did not really belong to any of them; and they also sensed (or I felt they did) something else about me, something which it was no longer worth their while to pursue. This seemed to be in their eyes when I walked with Hella and they passed us on the road, saying, very respectfully, Salut, Monsieur-dame. They might have been the sons of these women in black, come home after a lifetime of storming and conquering the world, home to rest and be scolded and wait for death, home to those breasts, now dry, which had nourished them in their beginnings.

  Flakes of snow have drifted across the shawl which covers her head; and hang on her eyelashes and on the wisps of black and white hair not covered by the shawl. She is very strong yet, though, now, a little bent, a little breathless.

  'Bonsoir, monsieur. Vous n'êtes pas malade?'

  'No,' I say, I have not been sick. Come in.'

  She comes in, closing the door behind her, and allowing the shawl to fall from her head. I still have my drink in my hand and she notices this, in silence.

  'Eh bien,' she says. 'Tant mieux. But we have not seen you for several days. You have been staying in the house?'

  And her eyes search my face.

  I am embarrassed and resentful; yet it is impossible to rebuff something at once shrewd and gentle in her eyes and voice. 'Yes' I say, 'the weather has been bad.'

  'It is not the middle of August, to be sure,' says she, 'but you do not have the air of an invalid. It is not good to sit in the house alone.'

  'I am leaving in the morning,' I say, desperately. 'Did you want to take the inventory?'

  'Yes,' she says, and produces from one of her pockets the list of household goods I signed upon arrival. It will not be long. Let me start from the back.'

  We start toward the kitchen. On the way I put my drink down on the night table in my bedroom.

  It doesn't matter to me if you drink,' she says, not turning around. But I leave my drink behind anyway.

  We walk into the kitchen. The kitchen is suspiciously clean and neat. 'Where have you been eating?' she asks, sharply. They tell me at the tabac you have not been seen for days. Have you been going to town?'

  'Yes,' I say lamely, 'sometimes.'

  'On foot?' she inquires. 'Because the bus driver, he has not seen you, either.' All this time she is not looking at me but around the kitchen, checking off the list in her hand with a short, yellow pencil.

  I can make no answer to her last, sardonic thrust, having forgotten that in a small village almost every move is made under the village's collective eye and ear.

  She looks briefly in the bathroom. I'm going to clean that tonight,' I say.

  'I should hope so' she says. 'Everything was clean when you moved in.' We walk back through the kitchen. She has failed to notice that two glasses are missing, broken by me, and I have not the energy to tell her. I will leave some money in the cupboard. She turns on the light in the guest room. My dirty clothes are lying all over.

  Those go with me,' I say, trying to smile.

  'You could have come just across the road,' she says. I would have been glad to give you something to eat. A little soup, something nourishing. I cook every day for my husband; what difference does one more make?'

  This touches me, but I do not know how to Indicate it, and I cannot say, of course, that eating with her and her husband would have stretched my nerves to the breaking point.

  She is examining a decorative pillow. 'Are you going to join your fiancée?' she asks.

  I know I ought to lie, but somehow I cannot. I am afraid of her eyes. I wish, now, that I had my drink with me. 'No,' I say, flatly, 'she has gone to America.'

  'Tiens!' she says. 'And you—do you stay in France?' She looks directly at me.

  'For awhile,' I say. I am beginning to sweat. It has come to me that this woman, a peasant from Italy, must resemble, in so many ways, the mother of Giovanni. I keep trying not to hear her howls of anguish, I keep trying not to see in her eyes what would surely be there if she knew that her son would be dead by morning, if she knew what I had done to her son.

  But, of course, she is not Giovanni's mother.

  'It is not good,' she says, It is not right for a young man like you to be sitting alone in a great big house with no woman.' She looks, for a moment, very sad; starts to say something more and thinks better of it. I know she wants to say something about Hella, whom neither she nor any of the other women here had liked. But she turns out the light in the guest room and we go into the big bedroom, the master bedroom, which Hella and I had used, not the one in which I have left my drink. This, too, is very clean and orderly. She looks about the room and looks at me, and smiles.

  'You have not been using this room lately,' she says.

  I feel myself blushing painfully. She laughs.

  'But you will be happy again,' she says. You must go and find yourself another woman, a good woman, and get married, and have babies. Yes, that is what you ought to do,' she says, as though I had contradicted her, and before I can say anything, 'Where is your maman?'

  'She is dead.'

  'Ah!' She clicks her teeth in sympathy. That is sad. And your Papa—is he dead, too?'

  'No. He is in America.'

  'Pauvre bambino!' She looks at my face. I am really helpless in front of her and if she does not leave soon, she will reduce me to tears or curses. 'But you do not have the intention of just wandering through the world like a sailor? I am sure that would make your mother very unhappy. You will make a home someday?'

  'Yes, surely. Someday.'

  She puts her strong hand on my arm. 'Even if your maman, she is dead—that is very sad!— your Papa will be very happy to see bambinos from you.' She pauses, her black eyes soften; she is looking at me, but she is looking beyond me, too. 'We had three sons. Two of them were killed in the war. In the war, too, we lost all our money. It is sad, is it not, to have worked so hard all one's life in order to have a little peace in one's old age and then to have it all taken away? It almost killed my husband; he has never been the same since.' Then I see that her eyes are not merely shrewd; they are also bitter and very sad. She shrugs her shoulders. 'Ahl What can one do? It is better not to think about it.' Then she smiles. 'But our last son, he lives in the north; he came to see us two years ago, and he brought with him his little boy. His little boy, he was only four years old then. He was so beautiful! Mario, he is called. She gestures. It is my husband's name. They stayed about ten days and we felt young again.' She smiles again. ^Especially my husband
.' And she stands there a moment with this smile on her face. Then she asks, abruptly, 'Do you pray?'

  I wonder if I can stand this another moment. *No,' I stammer. TMo. Not often.'

  'But you are a believer?'

  I smile. It is not even a patronizing smile, though, perhaps, I wish it could be, 'Yes.'

  But I wonder what my smile could have looked like. It did not reassure her. Tou must pray,' she says, very soberly. I assure you. Even just a little prayer, from time to time. Light a little candle. If it were not for the prayers of the blessed saints, one could not live in this world at all. I speak to you,' she says, drawing herself up slightly, 'as though I were your maman. Do not be offended.'

  'But I am not offended. You are very nice. You are very nice to speak to me this way.'

  She smiles a satisfied smile. 'Men—not just babies like you, but old men, too—they always need a woman to tell them the truth. Les hommes, ils sont impossibles.' And she smiles, and forces me to smile at the cunning of this universal joke, and turns out the light in the master bedroom. We go down the hall again, thank heaven, to my drink. This bedroom, of course, is quite untidy, the light burning, my bathrobe, books, dirty socks, and a couple of dirty glasses, and a coffee cup half full of stale coffee—lying around, all over the place; and the sheets on the bed a tangled mess.

  'I'll fix this up before morning,' I say.

  'Bien sûr.' She sighs. Tou really must take my advice, monsieur, and get married.' At this, suddenly, we both laugh. Then I finish my drink.

  The inventory is almost done. We go into the last room, the big room, where the bottle is, before the window. She looks at the bottle, then at me. 'But you will be drunk by morning,' she says.

  'Oh, no! I'm taking the bottle with me.'

  It is quite clear that she knows this is not true. But she shrugs her shoulders again. Then she becomes, by the act of wrapping the shawl around her head, very formal, even a little shy. Now that I see she is about to leave, I wish I could think of something to make her stay.' When she has gone back across the road, the night will be blacker and longer than ever. I have something to say to her—to her?—but of course it will never be said. I feel that I want to be forgiven; I want her to forgive me. But I do not know how to state my crime. My crime, in some odd way, is in being a man and she knows all about this already. It is terrible how naked she makes me feel, like a half-grown boy, naked before his mother.

  She puts out her hand. I take it, awkwardly.

  'Bon voyage, monsieur. I hope that you were happy while you were here and that, perhaps, one day, you will visit us again.' She is smiling and her eyes are kind but now the smile is purely social, it is the graceful termination of a business deal.

  'Thank you,' I say. Terhaps I will be back next year.' She releases my hand and we walk to the door.

  'Oh!' she says, at the door, 'please do not wake me up in the morning. Put the keys in my mailbox. I do not, any more, have any reason to get up so early.'

  'Surely.' I smile and open the door. 'Goodnight, Madame.'

  'Bonsoir, Monsieur. Adieu? She steps out into the darkness. But there is a light coming from my house and from her house across the road. The town lights glimmer beneath us and I hear, briefly, the sea again.

  She walks a little away from me, and turns. 'Souvenez-vous,' she tells me. 'One must make a little prayer from time to time.'

  And I close the door.

  She has made me realize that I have much to do before morning. I decide to clean the bathroom before I allow myself another drink. And I begin to do this, first scrubbing out the tub, then running water into the pail to mop the floor. The bathroom is tiny and square, with one frosted window. It reminds me of that claustrophobic room in Paris. Giovanni had had great plans for remodelling the room and there was a time, when he had actually begun to do this, when we lived with plaster all over everything and bricks piled on the floor. We took packages of bricks out of the house at night and left them in the streets.

  I suppose they will come for him early in the morning, perhaps just before dawn, so that the last thing Giovanni will ever see will be that grey, lightless sky over Paris, beneath which we stumbled homeward together so many desperate and drunken mornings.

  Chapter One

  I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning, our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues. By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride. Giovanni's face, which I had memorized so many mornings, noons, and nights, hardened before my eyes, began to give in secret places, began to crack. The light in the eyes became a glitter; the wide and beautiful brow began to suggest the skull beneath. The sensual lips turned inward, busy with the sorrow overflowing from his heart. It became a stranger's face—or it made me so guilty to look on him that I wished it were a stranger's face. Not all my memorizing had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorizing had helped to bring about.

  Our day began before daybreak, when I drifted over to Guillaume's bar in time for a preclosing drink. Sometimes, when Guillaume had closed the bar to the public, a few friends and Giovanni and myself stayed behind for breakfast and music. Sometimes Jacques was there—from the time of our meeting with Giovanni he seemed to come out more and more. If we had breakfast with Guillaume, we usually left around seven o'clock in the morning. Sometimes, when Jacques was there, he offered to drive us home in the car which he had suddenly and inexplicably bought, but we almost always walked the long way home along the river.

  Spring was approaching Paris. Walking up and down this house tonight, I see again the river, the cobblestoned quais, the bridges. Low boats passed beneath the bridges and on those boats one sometimes saw women hanging washing out to dry. Sometimes we saw a young man in a canoe, energetically rowing, looking rather helpless, and also rather silly. There were yachts tied up along the banks from time to time, and houseboats, and barges; we passed the firehouse so often on our way home that the firemen got to know us. When winter came again and Giovanni found himself in hiding in one of these barges, it was a fireman who, seeing him crawl back into hiding with a loaf of bread one night, tipped off the police.

  The trees grew green those mornings, the river dropped, and the brown winter smoke dropped downward out of it, and fishermen appeared. Giovanni was right about the fishermen; they certainly never seemed to catch anything, but it gave them something to do. Along the quais the bookstalls seemed to become almost festive, awaiting the weather which would allow the passerby to leaf idly through the dogeared books, and which would inform the 'Yourist with a passionate desire to carry off to the United States, or Denmark, more colored prints than he could afford, or, when he got home, know what to do with. Also, the girls appeared on their bicycles, along with boys similarly equipped; and we sometimes saw them along the river, as the light began to fade, their bicycles put away until the morrow. This was after Giovanni had lost his job and we walked around in the evenings. Those evenings were bitter. Giovanni knew that I was going to leave him, but he did not dare accuse me for fear of being corroborated. I did not dare to tell him. Hella was on her way back from Spain and my father had agreed to send me money, which I was not going to use to help Giovanni, who had done so much to help me. I was going to use it to escape his room.

  Every morning the sky and the sun seemed to be a little higher and the river stretched before us with a greater haze of promise. Every day the bookstall keepers seemed to have taken off another garment, so that the shape of their bodies appeared to be undergoing a most striking and continual metamorphosis. One began to wonder what the final shape would be. It was observable, through open windows on the quais and sidestreets, that hôteliers had called in
painters to paint the rooms; the women in the dairies had taken off their blue sweaters and rolled up the sleeves of their dresses, so that one saw their powerful arms; the bread seemed warmer and fresher in the bakeries. The small school children had taken off their capes and their knees were no longer scarlet with the cold. There seemed to be more chatter—in that curiously measured and vehement language, which sometimes reminds me of stiffening egg white and sometimes of stringed instruments but always of the underside and aftermath of passion.

  But we did not often have breakfast in Guillaume's bar because Guillaume did not like me. Usually I simply waited around, as inconspicuously as possible, until Giovanni had finished cleaning up the bar and had changed his clothes. Then we said good-night and left. The habitués had evolved toward us a curious attitude, composed of an unpleasant maternalism, and envy, and disguised dislike. They could not, somehow, speak to us as they spoke to one another, and they resented the strain we imposed on them of speaking in any other way. And it made them furious that the dead center of their lives was, in this instance, none of their business. It made them feel their poverty again, through the narcotics of chatter, and dreams of conquest, and mutual contempt.

  Wherever we ate breakfast and wherever we walked, when we got home we were always too tired to sleep right away. We made coffee and sometimes drank cognac with it; we sat on the bed and talked and smoked. We seemed to have a great deal to tell—or Giovanni did. Even at my most candid, even when I tried hardest to give myself to him as he gave himself to me, I was holding something back. I did not, for example, really tell him about Hella until I had been living in the room a month. I told him about her then because her letters had begun to sound as though she would be coming back to Paris very soon.