Another Country (28 page)

“I’m getting old.” But he laughed and finished his drink and handed his glass to Yves.

And, as Yves walked away from him, as he heard him in the kitchen, as he looked out over the yellow, winking lights along the shore, something opened in him, an unspeakable despair swept over him. Madame Belet had arrived and he heard Yves and the old peasant woman in the kitchen. Their voices were muted.

On the day that Yves no longer needed him, Eric would drop back into chaos. He remembered that army of lonely men who had used him, who had wrestled with him, caressed him, and submitted to him, in a darkness deeper than the darkest night. It was not merely his body they had used, but something else; his infirmity had made him the receptacle of an anguish which he could scarcely believe was in the world. This anguish rendered him helpless, though it also lent him his weird, doomed grace and power, and it baffled him and set the dimensions of his trap. Perhaps he had sometimes dreamed of walking out of the drama in which he was entangled and playing some other role. But all the exits were barred— were barred by avid men; the role he played was necessary, and not only to himself.

And he thought of these men, that ignorant army. They were husbands, they were fathers, gangsters, football players, rovers; and they were everywhere. Or they were, in any case, in all of the places he had been assured they could not be found and the need they brought to him was one they scarcely knew they had, which they spent their lives denying, which overtook and drugged them, making their limbs as heavy as those of sleepers or drowning bathers, and which could only be satisfied in the shameful, the punishing dark, and quickly, with flight and aversion as the issue of the act. They fled, with the infection lanced but with the root of the infection still in them. Days or weeks or months might pass— or even years— before, once again, furtively, in an empty locker room, on an empty stairway or a roof, in the shadow of a wall in the park, in a parked car, or in the furnished room of an absent friend, they surrendered to the hands, to the stroking and fondling and kissing of the despised and anonymous sex. And yet the need did not seem to be predominantly physical. It could not be said that they were attracted to men. They did not make love, they were passive, they were acted on. The need seemed, indeed, to be precisely this passivity, this gift of illicit pleasure, this adoration. They came, this army, not out of joy but out of poverty, and in the most tremendous ignorance. Something had been frozen in them, the root of their affections had been frozen, so that they could no longer accept affection, though it was from this lack that they were perishing. The dark submission was the shadow of love— if only someone, somewhere, loved them enough to caress them this way, in the light, with joy! But then they could no longer be passive.

Chaos. For the great difference between these men and himself was also the terms of their connection. He saw their vulnerability and they saw his. But they did not love him for this. They used him. He did not love them, either, though he dreamed of it. And the encounter took place, at last, between two dreamers, neither of whom could wake the other, except for the bitterest and briefest of seconds. Then sleep descended again, the search continued, chaos came again.

And there was more to it than that. When the liaison so casually begun survived the first encounters, when a kind of shy affection began to force itself up through the frozen ground, and shame abated, chaos more than ever ruled. For shame had not so much abated as found a partner. Affection had appeared, but through a fissure, a crevice, in the person, through which, behind affection, came all the winds of fear. For the act of love is a confession. One lies about the body but the body does not lie about itself; it cannot lie about the force which drives it. And Eric had discovered, inevitably, the truth about many men, who then wished to drive Eric and the truth together out of the world.

And where was honor in all this chaos? He watched the winking lights and listened to Yves and Madame Belet in the kitchen. Honor. He knew that he had no honor which the world could recognize. His life, passions, trials, loves, were, at worst, filth, and, at best, disease in the eyes of the world, and crimes in the eyes of his countrymen. There were no standards for him except those he could make for himself. There were no standards for him because he could not accept the definitions, the hideously mechanical jargon of the age. He saw no one around him worth his envy, did not believe in the vast, gray sleep which was called security, did not believe in the cures, panaceas, and slogans which afflicted the world he knew; and this meant that he had to create his standards and make up his definitions as he went along. It was up to him to find out who he was, and it was his necessity to do this, so far as the witchdoctors of the time were concerned, alone.

“
Mais, bien sûr,
” he heard Yves saying to Madame Belet, “
je suis tout à fait à votre avis
.” Madame Belet was very fond of Yves and gave him the benefit, entirely unsolicited, of her seventy-two years’ experience each time she was able to corner him. He could see Yves now, in the kitchen, holding the two drinks in his hand, edging toward the door, a pale, polite, and lonely smile on his face— for he had great respect for old people— waiting for the pause in Madame Belet’s flow which would allow him to escape.

Madame Belet was fond of Eric, too, but he had the feeling that this was mainly because she recognized him as Yves’ somewhat unlikely benefactor. If Eric had been French, she would have despised him. But France did not,
Dieu merci!
produce such conundrums as Eric, and he was not to be judged by the civilized standards which obtained in her own country.

“And what time are you leaving?” she asked.

“Oh, surely not before noon, Madame.”

She laughed and Yves laughed. There was something bawdy in their laughter and he could not avoid the feeling, though he suppressed it at once, that they were laughing in league, against him. “I hope you will like America,” said Madame Belet.

“I will become very rich there,” said Yves, “and when I come back, I will take you on a pilgrimage to Rome.”

For Madame Belet was devout and had never been to Rome, and it was her great hope to see the Holy City before she died.

“Ah. You will never come back.”

“I will come back,” Yves said. But his voice was full of doubt. And Eric realized, for the first time, that Yves was afraid.

“People who go to America,” said Madame Belet, “never come back.”

“
Au contraire,
” said Yves, “they are coming back all the time.”

Coming back to what? Eric asked himself. Madame Belet laughed again. Then their voices dropped. Yves came back into the room. He handed Eric his drink and sat again on the hassock, with his head on Eric’s knee.

“I thought I would never get away,” he murmured.

“I was thinking of going in to rescue you.” He leaned down and kissed Yves on the neck.

Yves put one hand on Eric’s cheek and closed his eyes. They were still. A pulse beat in Yves’ neck. He turned and he and Eric kissed each other on the mouth. They pulled slightly away. Yves’ eyes were very black and bright in the unlit, leaping room. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, and kissed again. Then Eric sighed and leaned back and Yves rested once more against him.

Eric wondered what Yves was thinking. Yves’ eyes had carried him back to that moment, nearly two years before, when, in a darkened hotel room, in the town of Chartres, he and Yves had first become lovers. Yves had visited the cathedral once, years before, and he had wanted Eric to see it. And this gesture, this desire to share with Eric something he had loved, marked the end of a testing period, signaled Yves’ turning out of that dark distrust with which he was accustomed to regard the world and with which he had held Eric at bay. They had known each other for more than three months and had seen each other every day, but they had never touched.

And Eric had waited, attentive and utterly chaste. The change in him was like the change in a spendthrift when his attention is captured by something worth more than all his gold, worth more than all the baubles he has ever purchased; then, instead of scattering, he begins to assess and hoard and gather up; all that he has becomes valuable because all that he has may prove to be an unacceptable sacrifice. So Eric waited, praying that this violated urchin would learn to love and trust him. And he knew that the only way he could hope to bring this about was to cease violating himself: if
he
did not love himself, then Yves would never be able to love him, either.

So he did what he alone could do, purified, as well as he could, his house, and opened his doors; established a precarious order in the heart of his chaos; and waited for his guest.

Yves shifted and sat up and lit a cigarette, then lit one for Eric. “I am beginning to be quite hungry.”

“So am I. But we’ll be eating soon.” The kitten wandered in and leapt into Eric’s lap. He stroked it with one hand. “Do you remember how we met?”

“I will never forget it. I owe a great deal to Beethoven.”

Eric smiled. “
And
to the wonders of modern science.”

He had been walking along the Rue des St. Pères on a spring evening, and his thoughts had not been pretty. Paris seemed, and had seemed for a long time, the loneliest city under heaven. And whoever prolongs his sojourn in that city— who tries, that is, to make a home there— is doomed to discover that there is no one to be blamed for whatever happens to him. Contrary to its legend, Paris does not offer many distractions; or, those distractions that it offers are like French pastry, vivid and insubstantial, sweet on the tongue and sour in the belly. Then the discontented wanderer is thrown back on himself— if his life is to become bearable, only he can make it so. And, on that spring evening, walking up the long, dark, murmuring street toward the Boulevard, Eric was in despair. He knew that he had a life to make, but he did not seem to have the tools.

Then, as he neared the Boulevard, he heard music. At first, he thought it came from the houses, but then he realized that it was coming from the shadows across the street, where there were no houses. He stood still and listened; to Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, which was moving away from him. Then, out of the shadows, ahead of him, and on the other side of the street, he saw the long, lean figure of a boy. He stood on the corner, waiting for the lights to change, and Eric saw that he was carrying a small portable radio, holding it with both hands. Eric walked to the corner, the lights changed, the boy crossed the street, and Eric followed. Down the long, dark street, the boy on one side and he on the other, and with the violence of the music, which was like the violence in his heart, filling the soft, spring air.

They reached the corner of the Rue de Rennes. The concerto was approaching its end. To the right, far from them, squatted the bulk of the Gare Montparnasse; to the left, and somewhat nearer, were the cafés and the Boulevard, and the clean, gray spire of St. Germain-des-Près.

The boy hesitated on the corner; looked over, briefly, and his eyes met Eric’s. He turned in the direction of St. Germain-des-Près. Eric crossed the street.
Tum-to-tum tum-ta-tum, tum-ta-tum, tum-to-tum!
went the music.

“Hello,” Eric said. “I’m afraid I’ve got to hear the end of that concerto.”

Yves turned and Eric was immediately struck by his eyes. In the candor with which they regarded him, they were like the eyes of a child; and yet there was also something in that scrutiny which was not childish at all. Eric felt his heart pound once, hard, against his chest. Then Yves smiled.

“It is almost ended,” he said.

“I know.” They walked in silence, listening to the end of the concerto. When it ended, Yves clicked the radio off.

“Will you have a drink with me?” Eric asked. He said, quickly, “I’m all by myself, I’ve got no one to talk to— and— and you don’t run into people playing Beethoven every day.”

“That is true,” said Yves, with a smile. “You have a funny accent, where are you from?”

“America.”

“I thought it
must
be America. But which section you are from?”

“The South. Alabama.”

“Oh,” said Yves, and looked at him with interest, “then you are
raciste
.”

“Why, no,” said Eric, feeling rather stunned, “we are not all like that.”

“Oh,” said Yves, majestically, “I read your newspapers. And I have many African friends and I have noticed that Americans do not like that.”

“Well,” said Eric, “that’s not
my
problem. I left Alabama as fast as I could and if I ever go back there, they’ll probably kill me.”

“Have you been here long?”

“About a year.”

“And you still know
no one?
”

“It’s hard to make friends with the French.”

“Well. It is only that we are more
réservé
than you.”

“I’ll say you are.” They stopped before the Royal St. Germain. “Shall we have a drink here?”

“It does not matter.” Yves looked over the tables, which were full; looked through the glass walls into the bar, which was crowded, mostly with young males. “But it is terribly crowded.”

“Let’s go someplace else.”

They walked to the corner and crossed the street. All of the cafés were full. They crossed the street again, and passed the Brasserie Lipp. Eric had been watching Yves with more intensity than he realized; as they passed the brasserie, it suddenly flashed through him that Yves was hungry. He did not know how he knew it, for Yves said nothing, did not pause or sigh; and yet Eric could not have been more certain that the boy was faint with hunger had he abruptly collapsed on the sidewalk.

“Look,” Eric said, “I’ve got an idea. I’m starving, I haven’t eaten any supper. Come on over to Les Halles with me and let’s get something to eat. And by the time we get back, it won’t be so crowded over here.” Yves looked at him, his head tilted in a kind of wary, waiting surprise.