James Baldwin - Another Country

Vivaldo handed him the wallet.

The man lit a cigarette which he held in the corner of his mouth as he deliberately, insolently, began looking through the wallet. “What I don’t understand,” he said, with a fearful laziness, “is why you white boys always come uptown, sniffing around our black girls. You don’t see none of us spooks downtown, sniffing around your white girls.” He looked up. “Do you?”

Don’t be so sure, Vivaldo thought, but said nothing. But this had struck some nerve in him and he felt himself beginning to be angry again.

“Suppose I told you that that was my sister,” the man said, gesturing toward the girl. “What would you do if you found me with your sister?”

I wouldn’t give a damn if you split her in two, Vivaldo thought, promptly. At the same time this question made him tremble with rage and he realized, with another part of his mind, that this was exactly what the man wanted.

There remained at the bottom of his mind, nevertheless, a numb speculation as to why this question should make him angry.

“I mean, what would you do to me?” the man persisted, still holding Vivaldo’s wallet and looking at him with a smile. “I want you to name your own punishment.” He waited. Then: “Come on. You know what you guys do.” And then the man seemed, oddly, a little ashamed, and at the same time more dangerous than ever.

Vivaldo said at last, tightly, “ I haven’t got a sister” and straightened his tie, willing his hands to be steady, and began looking around for his jacket.

The man considered him a moment more, looked at the girl, then looked down to the wallet again. He took out all the money. “This all you got.”

In those days Vivaldo had been working steadily and his wallet had contained nearly sixty dollars. “Yes,” Vivaldo said.

“Nothing in your pockets?”

Vivaldo emptied his pockets of bills and change, perhaps five dollars in all. The man took it all.

“I need something to get home on, mister,” Vivaldo said.

The man gave him his wallet. “Walk,” he said. “You lucky that you can. If I catch your ass up here again, I’ll show you what happened to a nigger I know when Mr. Charlie caught him with Miss Anne.”

He put his wallet in his back pocket and picked up his jacket from the floor. The man watched him, the girl watched the man. He got to the door and opened it and realized that his legs were weak.

“Well,” he said, “thanks for the buggy ride,” and stumbled down the stairs. He had reached the first landing when he heard a door above him open and quick, stealthy footsteps descending. Then the girl stood above him, stretching her hand over the banister.

“Here,” she whispered, “take this,” and leaned dangerously far over the banister and stuffed a dollar into his breast pocket. “Go along home now,” she said, “hurry!” and rushed back up the stairs.

The man’s eyes remained with him for a long time after the rage and the shame and terror of that evening. And were with him now, as he climbed the stairs to Rufus’ apartment. He walked in without knocking. Rufus was standing near the door, holding a knife.

“Is that for me or for you? Or were you planning to cut yourself a hunk of salami?”

He forced himself to stand where he was and to look directly at Rufus.

“I was thinking about putting it into you, motherfucker.”

But he had not moved. Vivaldo slowly let out his breath.

“Well, put it down. If I ever saw a poor bastard who needed his friends, you’re it.”

They watched each other for what seemed like a very long time and neither of them moved. They stared into each other’s eyes, each, perhaps, searching for the friend each remembered. Vivaldo knew the face before him so well that he had ceased, in a way, to look at it and now his heart turned over to see what time had done to Rufus. He had not seen before the fine lines in the forehead, the deep, crooked line between the brows, the tension which soured the lips. He wondered what the eyes were seeing — they had not been seeing it years before. He had never associated Rufus with violence, for his walk was always deliberate and slow, his tone mocking and gentle: but now he remembered how Rufus played the drums.

He moved one short step closer, watching Rufus, watching the knife.

“Don’t kill me, Rufus,” he heard himself say. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m only trying to help.”

The bathroom door was still open and the light still burned. The bald kitchen light burned mercilessly down on the two orange crates and the board which formed the kitchen table, and on the uncovered wash and bathtub. Dirty clothes lay flung in a corner. Beyond them, in the dim bedroom, two suitcases, Rufus’ and Leona’s, lay open in the middle of the floor. On the bed was a twisted gray sheet and a thin blanket.

Rufus stared at him. He seemed not to believe Vivaldo; he seemed to long to believe him. His face twisted, he dropped the knife, and fell against Vivaldo, throwing his arms around him, trembling.

Vivaldo led him into the bedroom and they sat down on the bed.

“Somebody’s got to help me,” said Rufus at last, “somebody’s got to help me. This shit has got to stop.”

“Can’t you tell me about it? You’re screwing up your life. And I don’t know why.”

Rufus sighed and fell back, his arms beneath his head, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know, either. I don’t know up from down. I don’t know what I’m doing no more.”

The entire building was silent. The room in which they sat seemed very far from the life breathing all around them, all over the island.

Vivaldo said, gently, “You know, what you’re doing to Leona — that’s not right. Even if she were doing what you say she’s doing — it’s not right. If all you can do is beat her, well, then, you ought to leave her.”

Rufus seemed to smile. “I guess there is something the matter with my head.”

Then he was silent again; he twisted his body on the bed; he looked over at Vivaldo.

“You put her in a cab?”

“Yes,” Vivaldo said.

“She’s gone to your place?”

“Yes.”

“You going back there?”

“I thought, maybe, I’d stay here with you for awhile — if you don’t mind.”

“What’re you trying to do — be a warden or something?”

He said it with a smile, but there was no smile in his voice.

“I just thought maybe you wanted company,” said Vivaldo.

Rufus rose from the bed and walked restlessly up and down the two rooms.

“I don’t need no company. I done had enough company to last me the rest of my life.” He walked to the window and stood there, his back to Vivaldo. “How I hate them — all those white sons of bitches out there. They’re trying to kill me, you think I don’t know? They got the world on a string, man, the miserable white cock suckers, and they tying that string around my neck, they killing me .” He turned into the room again; he did not look at Vivaldo. “Sometimes I lie here and I listen — just listen. They out there, scuffling, making that change, they think it’s going to last forever. Sometimes I lie here and listen, listen for a bomb, man, to fall on this city and make all that noise stop. I listen to hear them moan, I want them to bleed and choke, I want to hear them crying, man, for somebody to come help them. They’ll cry a long time before I come down there.” He paused, his eyes glittering with tears and with hate. “It’s going to happen one of these days, it’s got to happen. I sure would like to see it.” He walked back to the window. “Sometimes I listen to those boats on the river — I listen to those whistles — and I think wouldn’t it be nice to get on a boat again and go someplace away from all these nowhere people, where a man could be treated like a man.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and then suddenly brought his fist down on the window sill. “You got to fight with the landlord because the landlord’s white! You got to fight with the elevator boy because the motherfucker’s white . Any bum on the Bowery can shit all over you because maybe he can’t hear, can’t see, can’t walk, can’t fuck — but he’s white! ”