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!”
“Rufus. Rufus. What about—” He wanted to say, What about me, Rufus? I’m white. He said, “Rufus, not everybody’s like that.”
“No? That’s news to me.”
“Leona loves you—”
“She loves the colored folks so much,” said Rufus, “sometimes I just can’t stand it. You know all that chick knows about me? The only thing she knows?” He put his hand on his sex, brutally, as though he would tear it out, and seemed pleased to see Vivaldo wince. He sat down on the bed again. “That’s all.”
“I think you’re out of your mind,” said Vivaldo. But fear drained his voice of conviction.
“But she’s the only chick in the world for me,” Rufus added, after a moment, “ain’t that a bitch?”
“You’re destroying that girl. Is that what you want?”
“She’s destroying me, too,” said Rufus.
“Well. Is that what you want?”
“What do two people want from each other,” asked Rufus, “when they get together? Do you know?”
“Well, they don’t want to drive each other crazy, man. I know that.”
“You know more than I do,” Rufus said, sardonically. “What do you want — when you get together with a girl?”
“What do I want?”
“Yeah, what do you want?”
“Well,” said Vivaldo, fighting panic, trying to smile, “I just want to get laid, man.” But he stared at Rufus, feeling terrible things stir inside him.
“Yeah?” And Rufus looked at him curiously, as though he were thinking, So that’s the way white boys make it. “Is that all?”
“Well”—he looked down—“I want the chick to love me. I want to make her love me. I want to be loved.”
There was silence. Then Rufus asked, “Has it ever happened?”
“No,” said Vivaldo, thinking of Catholic girls, and whores, “I guess not.”
“How do you make it happen?” Rufus whispered. “What do you do?” He looked over at Vivaldo. He half-smiled. “What do you do?”
“What do you mean, what do I do?” He tried to smile; but he knew what Rufus meant.
“You just do it like you was told?” He tugged at Vivaldo’s sleeve; his voice dropped. “That white chick — Jane — of yours — she ever give you a blow job?”
Oh, Rufus, he wanted to cry, stop this crap! and he felt tears well up behind his eyes. At the same time his heart lunged in terror and he felt the blood leave his face. “I haven’t had a chick that great,” he said, briefly, thinking again of the dreadful Catholic girls with whom he had grown up, of his sister and his mother and father. He tried to force his mind back through the beds he had been in — his mind grew as blank as a wall. “Except,” he said, suddenly, “with whores,” and felt in the silence that then fell that murder was sitting on the bed beside them. He stared at Rufus.
Rufus laughed. He lay back on the bed and laughed until tears began running from the corners of his eyes. It was the worst laugh Vivaldo had ever heard and he wanted to shake Rufus or slap him, anything to make him stop. But he did nothing; he lit a cigarette; the palms of his hands were wet. Rufus choked, sputtered, and sat up. He turned his agonized face to Vivaldo for an instant. Then: “Whores!” he shouted and began to laugh again.
“What’s so funny?” Vivaldo asked, quietly.
“If you don’t see it, I can’t tell you,” Rufus said. He had stopped laughing, was very sober and still. “Everybody’s on the A train — you take it uptown, I take it downtown — it’s crazy.” Then, again, he looked at Vivaldo with hatred. He said, “Me and Leona — she’s the greatest lay I ever had. Ain’t nothing we don’t do.”