James Baldwin - Another Country

“You coming in with me?”

“Sure, I’m coming in with you.” He held her away from him. “All you got to do is sort of straighten your clothes”—he stroked her body, looking into her eyes—“and sort of run your hand through your hair, like this”—and he brushed her hair back from her forehead. She watched him. He heard himself ask, “Do you like me?”

She swallowed. He watched the vein in her neck throb. She seemed very fragile. “Yes,” she said. She looked down. “Rufus,” she said, “I really do like you. Please don’t hurt me.”

“Why should I want to hurt you, Leona?” He stroked her neck with one hand, looking at her gravely. “What makes you think I want to hurt you?”

“People do, ” she said, finally, “hurt each other.”

“Is somebody been hurting you, Leona?”

She was silent, her face leaning into his palm. “My husband,” she said, faintly. “I thought he loved me, but he didn’t — oh, I knew he was rough but I didn’t think he was mean . And he couldn’t of loved me because he took away my kid, he’s off someplace where I can’t never see him.” She looked up at Rufus with her eyes full of tears. “He said I wasn’t a fit mother because — I—drank too much. I did drink too much, it was the only way I could stand living with him. But I would of died for my kid, I wouldn’t never of let anything happen to him.”

He was silent. Her tears fell on his dark fist. “He’s still down there,” she said, “my husband, I mean. Him and my mother and my brother is as thick as thieves. They think I ain’t never been no good. Well, hell, if people keep telling you you ain’t no good”—she tried to laugh—“you bound to turn out pretty bad.”

He pushed out of his mind all of the questions he wanted to ask her. It was beginning to be chilly on the balcony; he was hungry and he wanted a drink and he wanted to get home to bed. “Well,” he said, at last, “I ain’t going to hurt you,” and he rose, walking to the edge of the balcony. His shorts were like a rope between his legs, he pulled them up, and felt that he was glued inside them. He zipped up his fly, holding his legs wide apart. The sky had faded down to purple. The stars were gone and the lights on the Jersey shore were out. A coal barge traveled slowly down the river.

“How do I look?” she asked him.

“Fine,” he said, and she did. She looked like a tired child. “You want to come down to my place?”

“If you want me to,” she said.

“Well, yes, that’s what I want.” But he wondered why he was holding on to her.

Vivaldo came by late the next afternoon to find Rufus still in bed and Leona in the kitchen making breakfast.

It was Leona who opened the door. And Rufus watched with delight the slow shock on Vivaldo’s face as he looked from Leona, muffled in Rufus’ bathrobe, to Rufus, sitting up in bed, and naked except for the blankets.

Let the liberal white bastard squirm, he thought.

“Hi, baby,” he called, “come on in. You just in time for breakfast.”

“I’ve had my breakfast,” Vivaldo said, “but you people aren’t even decent yet. I’ll come back later.”

“Shit, man, come on in. That’s Leona. Leona, this here’s a friend of mine, Vivaldo. For short. His real name is Daniel Vivaldo Moore. He’s an Irish wop.”

“Rufus is just full of prejudice against everybody,” said Leona, and smiled. “Come on in.”

Vivaldo closed the door behind him awkwardly and sat down on the edge of the bed. Whenever he was uncomfortable — which was often — his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them only a few moments before.

“I hope you can eat something, ” Leona said. “There’s plenty and it’ll be ready in just a second.”

“I’ll have a cup of coffee with you,” Vivaldo said, “unless you happen to have some beer.” Then he looked over at Rufus. “I guess it was quite a party.”

Rufus grinned. “Not bad, not had.”

Leona opened some beer and poured it into a tumbler and brought it to Vivaldo. He took it, looking up at her with his quick, gypsy smile, and spilled some on one foot.

“You want some, Rufus?”

“No, honey, not yet. I’ll eat first.”

Leona walked back into the kitchen.

“Ain’t she a splendid specimen of Southern womanhood?” Rufus asked. “Down yonder, they teach their womenfolks to serve .”

From the kitchen came Leona’s laugh. “They sure don’t teach us nothing else.”

“Honey, as long as you know how to make a man as happy as you making me, you don’t need to know nothing else.”

Rufus and Vivaldo looked at each other a moment. Then Vivaldo grinned. “How about it, Rufus. You going to get your ass up out of that bed?”

Rufus threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. He raised his arms high and yawned and stretched.

“You’re giving quite a show this afternoon,” Vivaldo said, and threw him a pair of shorts.

Rufus put on the shorts and an old pair of gray slacks and a faded green sport shirt. “You should have made it to that party,” he said, “after all. There was some pot on the scene that wouldn’t wait.”

“Well. I had my troubles last night.”

“You and Jane? As usual?”

“Oh, she got drunk and pulled some shit. You know. She’s sick, she can’t help it.”

“I know she’s sick. But what’s wrong with you?”

“I guess I just like to get beaten over the head.” They walked to the table. “This your first time in the Village, Leona?”

“No, I’ve walked around here some. But you don’t really know a place unless you know some of the people.”

“You know us now,” said Vivaldo, “and between us we must know everybody else. We’ll show you around.”

Something in the way Vivaldo said this irritated Rufus. His buoyancy evaporated; sour suspicions filled him. He stole a look at Vivaldo, who was sipping his beer and watching Leona with an impenetrable smile — impenetrable exactly because it seemed so open and good-natured. He looked at Leona, who, this afternoon anyway, drowning in his bathrobe, her hair piled on top of her head and her face innocent of make-up, couldn’t really be called a pretty girl. Perhaps Vivaldo was contemptuous of her because she was so plain — which meant that Vivaldo was contemptuous of him . Or perhaps he was flirting with her because she seemed so simple and available: the proof of her availability being her presence in Rufus’ house.

Then Leona looked across the table and smiled at him. His heart and his bowels shook; he remembered their violence and their tenderness together; and he thought, To hell with Vivaldo. He had something Vivaldo would never be able to touch.

He leaned across the table and kissed her.

“Can I have some more beer?” asked Vivaldo, smiling.

“You know where it is,” Rufus said.

Leona took his glass and went to the kitchen. Rufus stuck out his tongue at Vivaldo, who was watching him with a faintly quizzical frown.

Leona returned and set a fresh beer before Vivaldo and said, “You boys finish up now, I’m going to get dressed.” She gathered her clothes together and vanished into the bathroom.

There was silence at the table for a moment.

“She going to stay here with you?” Vivaldo asked.

“I don’t know yet. Nothing’s been decided yet. But I think she wants to—”

“Oh, that’s obvious. But isn’t this place a little small for two?”

“Maybe we’ll find a bigger place. Anyway — you know — I’m not home a hell of a lot.”

Vivaldo seemed to consider this. Then, “I hope you know what you’re doing, baby. I know it’s none of my business, but—”