James Baldwin - Another Country

Harold was watching him. He asked, “You want to turn on now or you want another drink first?” His voice was extremely rough, and he was scowling and smiling at the same time.

“Oh, I don’t care,” Vivaldo said, “I’m with the crowd.” He thought of making another phone call, but realized that he was afraid to. The hell with it. It was one-fifteen. And he was, at last, thank heaven, at least a little drunk.

“Oh, let’s split,” said Lorenzo. “We’ve got beer at home.”

They rose and left Benno’s and walked west to Harold’s pad. He lived in a narrow dark street near the river, on the top floor. The climb was discouraging, but the apartment was clean and not too disordered — it was not at all the kind of apartment one would have expected Harold to have — with carpets on the floor and burlap covering the windows. There was a hi-fi set, and records; and science-fiction magazines lay scattered about. Vivaldo flopped down on the narrow couch against the wall, in a kind of alcove formed by two bookcases. Belle sat on the floor near the window. Lorenzo went to the john, then to the kitchen, and returned with a quart bottle of beer.

“You forgot to bring glasses,” Belle told him.

“So who needs glasses? We’re all friends.” But he obediently returned to the kitchen.

Harold, meanwhile, like a meticulous and scientific host, was busily preparing the weed. He seated himself at the coffee table, near Vivaldo, and placed on a sheet of newspaper tweezers, cigarettes, cigarette papers, and a Bull Durham sack full of pot.

“It’s great stuff,” he told Vivaldo, “chick brought it in from Mexico only yesterday. And, baby, this shit travels well! ”

Vivaldo laughed. Lorenzo returned with the glasses and looked worriedly over at Vivaldo.

“You feeling all right?”

“I feel fine. Just quiet. You know.”

“Groovy.” He set a glass of beer carefully on the floor near Vivaldo, and poured a glass for Harold.

“He’s going to feel just swinging,” said Harold, as happy and busy as bees, “just as soon as he connects with old Mother Harold’s special recessed filter-tips. Baby! Are you going to wail!”

Lorenzo poured a glass of beer for Belle, and set the bottle on the floor beside her. “How about some sides?”

“Go, baby.”

Vivaldo closed his eyes, feeling an anticipatory languor and lewdness. Lorenzo put on something at once bell-like and doleful, by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

“Here.”

He looked up. Harold stood above him with a glowing stick.

He sat up, smiling vaguely, and carefully picked up his beer from the floor before taking the stick from Harold. Harold watched him, smiling intensely, as he took a long, shaky drag. He took a swallow of his beer and gave the stick back. Harold inhaled deeply and expertly, and rubbed his chest.

“Come on over to the window,” Belle called.

Her voice sounded high and pleased, like a child’s. And, exactly as though he were responding to a child, Vivaldo, though he preferred to remain alone on the sofa, walked over to the window. Harold followed him. Belle and Lorenzo sat on the floor, sharing a stick between them, and staring out at the New York rooftops.

“It’s strange,” Belle said. “It’s so ugly by day and so beautiful at night.”

“Let’s go up on the roof,” said Lorenzo.

“Oh! What a groovy idea!”

They gathered up the makings, and the beer, and Belle picked up a blanket; and, like children, they tiptoed out of the apartment, up the stairs to the roof. And there they seemed bathed in silence, all alone. Belle spread the blanket, which was not big enough for them all. She and Lorenzo shared it. Vivaldo took another large drag and squatted on the edge of the roof, his arms hugging his knees.

“Don’t do that, man,” Lorenzo whispered, “you’re too near the edge, I can’t bear to watch it.”

Vivaldo smiled and moved back, stretching out on his belly beside them.

“I’m sorry. I’m like that, too. I can hang over the edge myself, but I can’t watch anybody else do it.”

Belle grabbed his hand. He looked up at her pale, thin face, framed by the black hair. She smiled, and she was prettier than she had seemed in the bar. “I like you,” she said. “You’re a real groovy cat. Lorenzo always said you were, but I never believed him.” Her accent, too, was more noticeable now; she sounded like the simplest and most innocent of country girls — if country girls were innocent, and he supposed, at some point in their lives, they had to be.

“Why, thank you,” he said. Lorenzo, palely caught in the lights of heaven and earth, grinned over at him. Vivaldo pulled his hand from Belle’s hand and reached over and struck Lorenzo lightly on the cheek. “I like you, too, both of you.”

“How you feeling, dad?” It was Harold, who seemed to be quite far away.

“I feel wonderful.” And he did, in a strange, untrustworthy way. He was terribly aware of his body, the length of his limbs, and the soft wind ruffling his hair, and of Lorenzo and Belle, poised like two cherubim together, and of Harold, the prince of darkness, industrious, indefatigable keeper of the weed. Harold was sitting in the shadow of the chimney, rolling another stick. Vivaldo laughed. “Baby, you really love your work.”

“I just love to see people happy,” said Harold, and suddenly grinned; he, too, seemed very different from what he had been in the bar, younger and softer; and somewhere beneath it all, much sadder, so that Vivaldo regretted all his harsh, sardonic judgments. What happened to people? why did they suffer so hideously? And at the same time he knew that he and Harold could never be friends and that none of them, really, would ever get any closer to each other than they were right now.

Harold lit his stick and passed it to Vivaldo. “Go, baby,” he said — very tenderly, watching Vivaldo with a smile.

Vivaldo took his turn, while the others watched him. It was a kind of community endeavor, as though he were a baby just learning to use the potty or just learning how to walk. They all but applauded when he passed it on to Lorenzo, who took his turn and passed it on to Belle. “Ooh,” said Lorenzo, “I’m flying,” and leaned back with his head in Belle’s lap.

Vivaldo turned over on his back, head resting on his arms, knees pointing to the sky. He felt like singing. “My chick’s a singer,” he announced.

The sky looked, now, like a vast and friendly ocean, in which drowning was forbidden, and the stars seemed stationed there, like beacons. To what country did this ocean lead? for oceans always led to some great good place: hence, sailors, missionaries, saints, and Americans.

“Where’s she singing?” asked Lorenzo. His voice seemed to drop gently from the air: Vivaldo was watching heaven.

“She’s not, right now. But she will be soon. And she’s going to be great.”

“I’ve seen her,” Belle said, “she’s beautiful.”

He turned his head in the direction of the voice. “You’ve seen her? Where?”

“In the restaurant where she works. I went there with somebody — not with Lorenzo,” and he heard her giggle, “and the cat I was with told me she was your girl.” There was a silence. Then, “She’s very tough.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. She just seemed — very tough, that’s all. I don’t mean she wasn’t nice. But she was very sure of herself, you could tell she wasn’t going to take any shit.”

He laughed. “Sounds like my girl, all right.”

“I wish I looked like her,” Belle said. “My!”

“I like you just the way you are,” said Lorenzo. Out of the corner of his eye, and from far away, Vivaldo watched his arms go up and saw Belle’s dark hair fall.