Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

by James Baldwin

  In spite of everything, we were very happy in the August sun, toiling up the trail. I’m small, but Barbara’s smaller, and I am very strong. I was leading Barbara by the hand. The sleeping bag was on my back, and Barbara had the knapsack.

  “Let’s stop a minute. It’s hot.”

  “Barbara, there are snakes all over this place. If we stop now, we’ll never make it up. Come on, now!”

  I was being Spencer Tracy, in Northwest Passage.

  She was just being Barbara, who was afraid of snakes. “Shit,” she murmured, exasperated—but we kept moving upward, toward the retreating, cooling sun, which had nevertheless set everything around us on fire. Except for our breathing, and the breaking of twigs beneath our feet from time to time, it was very silent. Barbara was a good walker; we moved together like two soldiers. On either side of us, as we climbed, were the green, dark woods, hiding everything, hiding the height, hiding the snakes—there really were snakes—and becoming darker, it seemed, with every instant. The path was very narrow, so narrow that we had to walk single file; and very steep; sweat was pouring down my neck and down my back, seeming to soak into the sleeping bag, and making it heavier. A narrow strip of sky was directly over us, ahead of us was only the path, with sunlight splashing down erratically here and there. The path became steeper and then began to level off, the trees became more sparse, and then more individual—they began to look as though they’d had a hard time growing—and then we saw before us, above us, the gothic shape of the abandoned hotel someone had begun building on this mountain long ago. There were many stories about this hotel. Some mad financier had begun it and then lost all his money; the commune had never built a road. And there the hotel stood, a stone structure as gnarled as the trees, with great holes where windows had been. There was a large courtyard with a stone wall and the memory of a driveway and stone steps leading up to the aperture which had been the front door. This led into a high vault which had been intended as a lobby. In this space were stone steps leading up to the unfinished and unsafe second story, and stone steps leading down into the basement. There was a reception counter, the only detail which caused one to think of a hotel. There had, apparently, been other fixtures; but everything that could be moved had been carted away long ago. Some of the townspeople were earnestly discussing the possibility of tearing down the building and turning the stones to profit. But their ingenuity had not yet defeated the many practical difficulties this plan entailed.

  It did not look hospitable as we approached, with the light now failing fast, and the night sounds beginning. “God,” said Barbara, “wouldn’t it be awful if some other people had the same idea as we did—of spending the night here, I mean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind seeing a friendly face.” And, because I, too, was uneasy, I sang out, “Hello! You got visitors! Is there anybody here?”

  My voice echoed and echoed, crashing through the trees, sounding in the valley, and returning to us.

  I said, “Nobody here, I guess.” I dropped the sleeping bag in the middle of the courtyard, and Barbara put down the knapsack. I took Barbara’s hand. “Come on.” We walked into the lobby. I switched on the flashlight, and there was a scurrying in the darkness. “Rats. I wonder if they’ve got bats, too.”

  “Oh, Leo. You stop that.”

  I laughed, and trained the flashlight on the steps leading up. “Let’s see what’s upstairs.”

  Hand in hand, like children in a fairy tale, we started up the steps. We walked close to the wall, for there wasn’t any railing—there had been one, of mahogany, but it had been hijacked. At the top of the steps, there stretched before us a high, wide space. I turned the flashlight on the floor, which was wooden. There was a hole in the floor, to our right. The solid part of the floor was covered with all kinds of debris—old paper bags, paper cups; and facing us was a space in the wall which had been a window; and it gave onto a flagged terrace. We tiptoed across the floor, worried about whether or not it would bear our weight, and stepped onto the terrace.

  The mad financier had not been so very mad, after all, for when one stepped onto his terrace, one understood his dream. The terrace faced the valley which dropped before us, straight down to the river. The trees were blue and brown, purple and black. In the daytime, the houses and barns were red and white and green and brown. Now, the sun had turned them all into a color somewhere between gold and scarlet. We stood on the terrace, hearing no sound, and making no sound. The far-off river was as still as a great, polished copper plate.

  “If this had been mine,” said Barbara, at last, “I would never have dreamed of making a hotel out of it. I’d have kept it to myself.”

  “Perhaps he was lonely,” I said, “and he wanted people to share this with him.”

  “It really would have made a marvelous hotel,” said Barbara, after a moment. “He was right about that. Poor man. He must have spent a fortune. I hope he didn’t break his heart.”

  “I’ll go get the whiskey,” I said, “and we can have a drink up here.”

  I turned back into the dark house, and went down the steps and across the vault, into the courtyard, and picked up the knapsack. I came back to Barbara, who was sitting on the terrace, with her chin on her knees.

  “And what are you thinking, princess?”

  “I was thinking—that—it’s nice to be here. With you.”

  “We’re going to make it all right,” I said, and I opened the whiskey and I poured some into two paper cups. I gave one to her and I sat down next to her. We touched cups. We sat and watched the sky and the valley change colors. Slowly, and yet not slowly, the sun entirely left the sky—the streaks of fire and gold vanished. The sky turned mother of pearl and then heavy, heavy silver. In the silver, faint stars gleamed, faint and pale, like wanderers arriving; and the pale moon appeared, like a guide or a schoolmistress, to assign the stars their places. The stars grew bolder as the moon rose, and the sky became blue-black. The trees, the houses, the barns were shapes of darkness now. The valley could not be seen. But, far away, beneath us, the river reflected the moon. They were in communion with each other. Barbara put her head on my shoulder. We had another drink. We looked into each other’s eyes, briefly, and moved closer together. We listened to the night sounds, wings beating dimly around us, the electrical whirring of insects, the cry of an owl, the barking of a dog. Lights appeared in the valley, here and there. The lights of a single boat glowed on the river. There were no human sounds at all. We were alone, at peace, on high.

  “What shall we do when the summer’s over, Leo?”

  “Why—we’ll go back to the city. What were you thinking of doing?”

  “Shall we go back to Paradise Alley?”

  “God. I don’t know. I’ve got to get some kind of job—you know.”

  “Yes. So must I.”

  “I’ll probably get a job as a waiter. So I can eat till I get paid.”

  “Except that those jobs always take away your appetite.”

  “That’s true. It’s pretty hard to make your living watching the human race eat.”

  “Well,” she said carefully, “we ought to be able to work it out all right.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll work it out fine.” Then I kissed her. “Tell me when you’re hungry and I’ll make a fire.”

  “In a little while,” she said, and she leaned against me again.

  I don’t know what she was seeing as we looked out over the dark valley; but I did not see any future for us; I did not see any future for myself at all. Barbara was young and talented and pretty, and single-minded. There was nothing to prevent her from scaling the heights. Her eminence was but a matter of time. And what could she then do with her sad, dark lover, a boy trapped in the wrong time, the wrong place, and with the wrong ambitions trapped in the wrong skin? If I stood in her way, she would certainly grow to hate me, and quite rightly. But I had no intention of standing in her way. The most subtle and perhaps the most deadly of alienations
is that which is produced by the fear of being alienated. Because I was certain that Barbara could not stay with me, I dared not be committed to Barbara. This fear obscured a great many fears, but it obscured, above all, the question of whether or not I wished to be committed to Barbara, or to anyone else, and it hid the question of whether or not I was capable of commitment. But these questions were hidden from me then, much as the shape of the valley was hidden. I knew that I had to make my way—somehow. No one could help me and I could not call for help. There was no way for me to know if the fear I sometimes felt when with Barbara, a fear which sometimes woke me in the middle of the night, which sometimes made me catch my breath when walking the streets at noon, was a personal fear, produced merely by the convolutions of my own personality, or a public fear, produced by the rage of others. I could not read my symptoms, for I loved her, I knew that, and loved her more than I loved anyone else. We were not always happy, but when I was happy with Barbara I was happier than I had ever been with anyone else. We were at ease with each other, as we were with no one else. And yet, I saw no future for us.

  We left the terrace and came downstairs to the courtyard, and I built a fire. Our fire, then, was the only light for miles around. We roasted the yams I had found, and grilled our hamburgers; and we had a small bottle of Chianti. As the night grew darker, we began to feel safer, for no one would attempt that mountain trail at night. Barbara leaned back in my arms, and I sang to her.

  It takes a worried man

  To sing a worried song,

  I’m worried now,

  But I won’t be worried long,

  I sang, and,

  I just got a cabin,

  You don’t need my cabin,

  River, stay ’way from my door,

  and,

  I hate to see that evening sun go down.

  “You’ve got a nice voice,” Barbara said. “You ought to work at it. I bet that’s how you’ll get your break.”

  “It’s just an ordinary voice. What do you mean, that’s how I’ll get my break?”

  “It’s not an ordinary voice. It’s a very haunting voice. If you started singing professionally, you’d attract a lot of attention. Well, look, that’s practically the classic way for a Negro to break into the theater. Look at Paul Robeson.”

  “You look at Paul Robeson. Robeson was a football star, he’s one of the greatest singers in the world, and one of the most handsome men in the world, and he’s built like a hero. You think he’s a good model for me?”

  “Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”

  “And, with all that, what’s he played? The Emperor Jones and Othello.”

  “I didn’t say that you looked like Paul Robeson. I said that your voice is an asset, and you ought to use it. People will hear you, and that means that they’ll see you, and—well, there are other roles besides The Emperor Jones and Othello.”

  “There are? You’ve really been scouting around.”

  “And you could start this winter. Really, why don’t you? So we’d both be working—”

  “You have a job lined up for this winter already?”

  “No. But I’ve heard of a couple of things. I was going to go down to the city next week to—to investigate. You know, this is August. The summer’s almost over.”

  “I know.” For no reason at all, I thought of Dinah Washington, singing “Blowtop Blues.”

  “And I know you’ve been practicing the guitar. And there are places in the Village where you could start out. Oh, you know, there’s that West Indian restaurant. I bet they’d be glad to have you start out there.”

  “If they want people to sing West Indian songs, why would they come to me? I’m not West Indian.”

  “Oh, Leo, you are too. You’re part West Indian. You’re just putting up objections so I can knock them down. I know you. It’s a damn good idea, and you know it.”

  I had thought about it before; I began to think about it again. “Maybe.”

  “You could be the singing waiter.” She laughed. “You’d be a tremendous drawing card.”

  I thought, It’s true that I have to start somewhere. I said, “I’m not ready to start singing in public yet.”

  “But, Leo, the whole point of starting out in a place like that is that you haven’t got to be ready. They’ll think you’re doing it just for fun. But that’s how you’ll learn.”

  “And I can just see me, twenty years from now, playing my guitar all over the Bowery.”

  “You will not. You’ll use it to get what you want.”

  “I’m not always sure that I know what I want.” I held her a little closer and I stared at our little fire.

  “I think—sometimes—when a person says that, he just says it because he’s—afraid—that he won’t get what he wants.”

  “Maybe. But you know what you want. Don’t you?”

  “I know that I want some things I’ll never get.”

  “What things?”

  She shifted her weight a little. “Oh. You know. The corny things. A husband. A home.” She paused. “Kids.”

  “Why can’t you have those things, Barbara?”

  “Maybe I don’t want them enough,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.” I felt her watching me. “It’s funny. I haven’t turned out to be the kind of girl I thought I’d be. I’m not yet twenty, and I’ve had, oh, about three affairs and one abortion already. It makes you feel kind of used up. And sometimes I get frightened—oh, well.” She sighed, and shrugged, smiling. “Sing me another song.”

  “After what you’ve said, I don’t know what song to sing. Poor Barbara. I don’t make your life any simpler, do I?”

  “I’m not complaining. You didn’t make the world.”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t.” I looked up at the sky. “Sometimes, you know? I still wonder who did. I wonder what whoever it was was thinking about.”

  “He wasn’t,” she said, with an unexpected harshness in her voice, “thinking about you and me.”

  “No. What rotten casting,” I said, and we laughed.

  “Sing me one more song, please?” she said. “Before we go to sleep.”

  I sang,

  I don’t know why

  There’s no sun up in the sky,

  Stormy weather!

  Since my gal and I ain’t together,

  It’s raining all the time.

  We crawled into our sleeping bag at last, and lay there for awhile, watching the fire drop and disperse and die. The stars were very close, and I saw one fall. I made a wish. I wished that Barbara and I, no matter what happened, would always love each other and always be able, without any bitterness, to look each other in the eye. The familiar and yet rather awful heat and pressure rose in my chest and descended to my loins; and I lay there, while the heat wrapped me round, holding Barbara with one arm and feeling her delicate trembling. The heat rose and rose, partly against my will, partly to my delight. For I was beginning to realize that vows were made with the body as sacred as those made with the tongue. And these vows were at once harder to keep, and harder to break. We turned to each other. Everything was still. We began to make love very slowly, more gently and more sorrowfully than we ever had before. We did not say a word. Every caress seemed to drag us up from the depths of ourselves, revealing another nakedness, a nakedness we could scarcely bear. Her face, in the starlight, in the faint light of the embers of our fire, was a face I had never known. I caressed that face, and held it and kissed it, with that passion sometimes produced by memory, the passion of our deepest dreams. I seemed to know, that night, that we were trapped, trapped no matter what we did: we would have to learn to live in the trap. But that night it did not seem impossible. Nothing seemed impossible. Barbara began to moan. It was a black moan, and it was as though, trapped within the flesh I held, there was a black woman moaning, struggling to be free. Perhaps it was because we were beneath the starlight, naked. I had unzipped the sleeping bag, and the August night traveled over my body, as I trembled o
ver Barbara. It was as though we were not only joined to each other, but to the night, the stars, the moon, the sleeping valley, the trees, the earth beneath the stone which was our bed, and the water beneath the earth. With every touch, movement, caress, with every thrust, with every moan and gasp, I came closer to Barbara and closer to myself and closer to something unnameable. And her thighs locked around me, sweeter than water. She held me, held me, held me. And I was very slow. I was very sure. I held it, held it, held it, held it because I knew it could not long be held. All this had nothing to do with time. The moment of our liberation gathered, gathered, crouched, ready to spring, and Barbara sobbed; the wind burned my body, and I felt the unmistakable, the unanswerable retreat, contraction, concentration, the long, poised moment before the long fall. I murmured, Barbara, and seemed to hear her name, my call, ringing through the valley. And her name echoed in the valley for a long time. Then the stars began to grow pale. I zipped the sleeping bag over us. We curled into each other, and slept. We had not spoken.

  It was a bright morning. The sun woke us early, and, naked, we dared to wash, and splash each other in the cold stream which trickled near the path. The silver cold water stung us wide awake, and made us proud of our bodies. Naked, I built the fire, and boiled our coffee. Naked and happy, facing each other, we drank it. We became drunk on the sun and the coffee and our nakedness and touched each other’s bodies with a terrible wonder everywhere and we had to make love again. Then, we were covered with sweat, and we washed in the stream again. Then, the sun was high, warning us that the world might be on the way, and we got dressed. I rolled up the sleeping bag, and Barbara packed the knapsack, and we started down. No one was coming up the trail. It was a bright, clear, still morning, and birds were making those sounds we call singing. As we descended, my fear began to return, like the throb of a remembered toothache before the new toothache begins.