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—”
Rufus looked at him. “Don’t you like her?”
“Sure, I like her. She’s a sweet girl.” He took a swallow of his beer. “The question is — how much do you like her?”
“Can’t you tell?” And Rufus grinned.
“Well, no, frankly — I can’t. I mean, sure you like her. But — oh, I don’t know.”
There was silence again. Vivaldo dropped his eyes.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Rufus. “I’m a big boy, you know.”
Vivaldo raised his eyes and said, “It’s a pretty big world, too, baby. I hope you’ve thought of that.”
“I’ve thought of that.”
“Trouble is, I feel too paternal towards you, you son of a bitch.”
“That’s the trouble with all you white bastards.”
They encountered the big world when they went out into the Sunday streets. It stared unsympathetically out at them from the eyes of the passing people; and Rufus realized that he had not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy. He had not thought at all about his future with Leona, for the reason that he had never considered that they had one. Yet, here she was, clearly intending to stay if he would have her. But the price was high: trouble with the landlord, with the neighbors, with all the adolescents in the Village and all those who descended during the week ends. And his family would have a fit. It didn’t matter so very much about his father and mother — their fit, having lasted a lifetime, was now not much more than reflex action. But he knew that Ida would instantly hate Leona. She had always expected a great deal from Rufus, and she was very race-conscious. She would say, You’d never even have looked at that girl, Rufus, if she’d been black. But you’ll pick up any white trash just because she’s white. What’s the matter — you ashamed of being black?
Then, for the first time in his life, he wondered about that — or, rather, the question bumped against his mind for an instant and then speedily, apologetically, withdrew. He looked sideways at Leona. Now she was quite pretty. She had plaited her hair and pinned the braids up, so that she looked very old-fashioned and much younger than her age.
A young couple came toward them, carrying the Sunday papers. Rufus watched the eyes of the man as the man looked at Leona; and then both the man and the woman looked swiftly from Vivaldo to Rufus as though to decide which of the two was her lover. And, since this was the Village — the place of liberation — Rufus guessed, from the swift, nearly sheepish glance the man gave them as they passed, that he had decided that Rufus and Leona formed the couple. The face of his wife, however, simply closed tight, like a gate.
They reached the park. Old, slatternly women from the slums and from the East Side sat on benches, usually alone, sometimes sitting with gray-haired, matchstick men. Ladies from the big apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, vaguely and desperately elegant, were also in the park, walking their dogs; and Negro nursemaids, turning a stony face on the grownup world, crooned anxiously into baby carriages. The Italian laborers and small-business men strolled with their families or sat beneath the trees, talking to each other; some played chess or read L’Espresso. The other Villagers sat on benches, reading — Kierkegaard was the name shouting from the paper-covered volume held by a short-cropped girl in blue jeans — or talking distractedly of abstract matters, or gossiping or laughing; or sitting still, either with an immense, invisible effort which all but shattered the benches and the trees, or else with a limpness which indicated that they would never move again.
Rufus and Vivaldo — but especially Vivaldo — had known or been intimate with many of these people, so long ago, it now seemed, that it might have occurred in another life. There was something frightening about the aspect of old friends, old lovers, who had, mysteriously, come to nothing. It argued the presence of some cancer which had been operating in them, invisibly, all along and which might, now, be operating in oneself. Many people had vanished, of course, had returned to the havens from which they had fled. But many others were still visible, had turned into lushes or junkies or had embarked on a nerve-rattling pursuit of the perfect psychiatrist; were vindictively married and progenitive and fat; were dreaming the same dreams they had dreamed ten years before, clothed these in the same arguments, quoted the same masters; and dispensed, as they hideously imagined, the same charm they had possessed before their teeth began to fail and their hair began to fall. They were more hostile now than they had been, this was the loud, inescapable change in their tone and the only vitality left in their eyes.
Then Vivaldo was stopped on the path by a large, good-natured girl, who was not sober. Rufus and Leona paused, waiting for him.
“Your friend’s real nice,” said Leona. “He’s real natural. I feel like we known each other for years.”
Without Vivaldo, there was a difference in the eyes which watched them. Villagers, both bound and free, looked them over as though where they stood were an auction block or a stud farm. The pale spring sun seemed very hot on the back of his neck and on his forehead. Leona gleamed before him and seemed to be oblivious of everything and everyone but him. And if there had been any doubt concerning their relationship, her eyes were enough to dispel it. Then he thought, If she could take it so calmly, if she noticed nothing, what was the matter with him? Maybe he was making it all up, maybe nobody gave a damn. Then he raised his eyes and met the eyes of an Italian adolescent. The boy was splashed by the sun falling through the trees. The boy looked at him with hatred; his glance flicked over Leona as though she were a whore; he dropped his eyes slowly and swaggered on — having registered his protest, his backside seemed to snarl, having made his point.
“Cock sucker,” Rufus muttered.