James Baldwin - Another Country

“Well, you can stay at my place until you find some place to go. I’m not leaving you here.”

Rufus threw back his head and laughed. Vivaldo and Leona both turned to watch him. Rufus cried to the ceiling, “He’s going to come to my house and walk out with my girl and he thinks this poor nigger’s just going to sit and let him do it. Ain’t this a bitch?”

He fell over on his side, still laughing.

Vivaldo shouted, “For Christ’s sake, Rufus! Rufus! ”

Rufus stopped laughing and sat straight up. “What? Who the hell do you think you’re kidding? I know you only got one bed in your place!”

“Oh, Rufus,” Leona wailed, “Vivaldo’s only trying to help.”

“You shut up,” he said instantly, and looked at her.

“Everybody ain’t a animal,” she muttered.

“You mean, like me?”

She said nothing. Vivaldo watched them both.

“You mean, like me, bitch? Or you mean, like you?”

“If I’m a animal,” she flared — perhaps she was emboldened by the presence of Vivaldo—“I’d like you to tell me who made me one. Just tell me that?”

“Why, your husband did, you bitch. You told me yourself he had a thing on him like a horse. You told me yourself how he did you — he kept telling you how he had the biggest thing in Dixie, black or white. And you said you couldn’t stand it. Ha- ha. That’s one of the funniest things I ever heard.”

“I guess,” she said, wearily, after a silence, “I told you a lot of things I shouldn’t have.”

Rufus snorted. “I guess you did.” He said — to Vivaldo, the room, the river—“it was her husband ruined this bitch. Your husband and all them funky niggers screwed you in the Georgia bushes. That’s why your husband threw you out. Why don’t you tell the truth? I wouldn’t have to beat you if you’d tell the truth.” He grinned at Vivaldo. “Man, this chick can’t get enough”—and he broke off, staring at Leona.

“Rufus,” said Vivaldo, trying to be calm, “I don’t know what you’re putting down. I think you must be crazy. You got a great chick, who’d go all the way for you — and you know it — and you keep coming on with this Gone with the Wind crap. What’s the matter with your head, baby?” He tried to smile. “Baby, please don’t do this. Please?”

Rufus said nothing. He sat down on the bed, in the position in which he had been sitting when Vivaldo arrived.

“Come on, Leona,” said Vivaldo at last and Rufus stood up, looking at them both with a little smile, with hatred.

“I’m just going to take her away for a few days, so you can both cool down. There’s no point in going on like this.”

“Sir Walter Raleigh — with a hard on,” Rufus sneered.

“Look,” said Vivaldo, “if you don’t trust me, man, I’ll get a room at the Y. I’ll come back here. Goddammit,” he shouted, “I’m not trying to steal your girl. You know me better than that.”

Rufus said, with an astonishing and a menacing humility, “I guess you don’t think she’s good enough for you.”

“Oh, shit. You don’t think she’s good enough for you .”

“No,” said Leona, and both men turned to watch her, “ain’t neither one of you got it right. Rufus don’t think he’s good enough for me .”

She and Rufus stared at each other. A tugboat whistled, far away. Rufus smiled.

“You see? You bring it up all the time. You the one who brings it up. Now, how you expect me to make it with a bitch like you?”

“It’s the way you was raised,” she said, “and I guess you just can’t help it.”

Again, there was a silence. Leona pressed her lips together and her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to wish to call the words back, to call time back, and begin everything over again. But she could not think of anything to say and the silence stretched. Rufus pursed his lips.

“Go on, you slut,” he said, “go on and make it with your wop lover. He ain’t going to be able to do you no good. Not now. You be back. You can’t do without me now.” And he lay face downward on the bed. “Me, I’ll get me a good night’s sleep for a change.”

Vivaldo pushed Leona to the door, backing out of the room, watching Rufus.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” said Rufus. “I’ll kill you if you come back.”

Leona looked at him quickly, bidding him to be silent, and Vivaldo closed the door behind them.

“Leona,” he asked, when they were in the streets, “how long have things been like this? Why do you take it?”

“Why,” asked Leona, wearily, “do people take anything? Because they can’t help it, I guess. Well, that’s me. Before God, I don’t know what to do.” She began to cry again. The streets were very dark and empty. “I know he’s sick and I keep hoping he’ll get well and I can’t make him see a doctor. He knows I’m not doing none of those things he says, he knows it!”

“But you can’t go on like this, Leona. He can get both of you killed.”

“He says it’s me trying to get us killed.” She tried to laugh. “He had a fight last week with some guy in the subway, some real, ignorant, unhappy man just didn’t like the idea of our being together, you know? and, well, you know, he blamed that fight on me. He said I was encouraging the man. Why, Viv, I didn’t even see the man until he opened his mouth. But, Rufus, he’s all the time looking for it, he sees it where it ain’t, he don’t see nothing else no more. He says I ruined his life. Well, he sure ain’t done mine much good.”

She tried to dry her eyes. Vivaldo gave her his handkerchief and put one arm around her shoulders.

“You know, the world is hard enough and people is evil enough without all the time looking for it and stirring it up and making it worse. I keep telling him, I know a lot of people don’t like what I’m doing. But I don’t care, let them go their way, I’ll go mine.”

A policeman passed them, giving them a look. Vivaldo felt a chill go through Leona’s body. Then a chill went through his own. He had never been afraid of policemen before; he had merely despised them. But now he felt the impersonality of the uniform, the emptiness of the streets. He felt what the policeman might say and do if he had been Rufus, walking here with his arm around Leona.

He said, nevertheless, after a moment, “You ought to leave him. You ought to leave town.”

“I tell you, Viv, I keep hoping — it’ll all come all right somehow. He wasn’t like this when I met him, he’s not really like this at all. I know he’s not. Something’s got all twisted up in his mind and he can’t help it.”

They were standing under a street lamp. Her face was hideous, was unutterably beautiful with grief. Tears rolled down her thin cheeks and she made doomed, sporadic efforts to control the trembling of her little-girl’s mouth.

“I love him,” she said, helplessly, “I love him, I can’t help it. No matter what he does to me. He’s just lost and he beats me because he can’t find nothing else to hit.”

He pulled her against him while she wept, a thin, tired girl, unwitting heiress of generations of bitterness. He could think of nothing to say. A light was slowly turning on inside him, a dreadful light. He saw — dimly — dangers, mysteries, chasms which he had never dreamed existed.

“Here comes a taxi,” he said.

She straightened and tried to dry her eyes again.

“I’ll come with you,” he said, “and come right back?”

“No,” she said, “just give me the keys. I’ll be all right. You go on back to Rufus.”

“Rufus said he’d kill me,” he said, half-smiling.