Free Another Country by James Baldwin Page A

He sat down on the bed, in the position in which he had been sitting when Vivaldo arrived.
    “Come on, Leona,” said Vivaldo at last and Rufus stood up, looking at them both with a little smile, with hatred.
    “I’m just going to take her away for a few days, so you can both cool down. There’s no point in going on like this.”
    “Sir Walter Raleigh— with a hard on,” Rufus sneered.
    “Look,” said Vivaldo, “if you don’t trust me, man, I’ll get a room at the Y. I’ll come back here. Goddammit,” he shouted, “I’m not trying to steal your girl. You know me better than that.”
    Rufus said, with an astonishing and a menacing humility, “I guess you don’t think she’s good enough for you.”
    “Oh, shit. You don’t think she’s good enough for you .”
    “No,” said Leona, and both men turned to watch her, “ain’t neither one of you got it right. Rufus don’t think he’s good enough for me .”
    She and Rufus stared at each other. A tugboat whistled, far away. Rufus smiled.
    “You see? You bring it up all the time. You the one who brings it up. Now, how you expect me to make it with a bitch like you?”
    “It’s the way you was raised,” she said, “and I guess you just can’t help it.”
    Again, there was a silence. Leona pressed her lips together and her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to wish to call the words back, to call time back, and begin everything over again. But she could not think of anything to say and the silence stretched. Rufus pursed his lips.
    “Go on, you slut,” he said, “go on and make it with your wop lover. He ain’t going to be able to do you no good. Not now. You be back. You can’t do without me now.” And he lay face downward on the bed. “Me, I’ll get me a good night’s sleep for a change.”
    Vivaldo pushed Leona to the door, backing out of the room, watching Rufus.
    “I’ll be back,” he said.
    “No, you won’t,” said Rufus. “I’ll kill you if you come back.”
    Leona looked at him quickly, bidding him to be silent, and Vivaldo closed the door behind them.
    “Leona,” he asked, when they were in the streets, “how long have things been like this? Why do you take it?”
    “Why,” asked Leona, wearily, “do people take anything? Because they can’t help it, I guess. Well, that’s me. Before God, I don’t know what to do.” She began to cry again. The streets were very dark and empty. “I know he’s sick and I keep hoping he’ll get well and I can’t make him see a doctor. He knows I’m not doing none of those things he says, he knows it!”
    “But you can’t go on like this, Leona. He can get both of you killed.”
    “He says it’s me trying to get us killed.” She tried to laugh. “He had a fight last week with some guy in the subway, some real, ignorant, unhappy man just didn’t like the idea of our being together, you know? and, well, you know, he blamed that fight on me. He said I was encouraging the man. Why, Viv, I didn’t even see the man until he opened his mouth. But, Rufus, he’s all the time looking for it, he sees it where it ain’t, he don’t see nothing else no more. He says I ruined his life. Well, he sure ain’t done mine much good.”
    She tried to dry her eyes. Vivaldo gave her his handkerchief and put one arm around her shoulders.
    “You know, the world is hard enough and people is evil enough without all the time looking for it and stirring it up and making it worse. I keep telling him, I know a lot of people don’t like what I’m doing. But I don’t care, let them go their way, I’ll go mine.”
    A policeman passed them, giving them a look. Vivaldo felt a chill go through Leona’s body. Then a chill went through his own. He had never been afraid of policemen before; he had merely despised them. But now he felt the impersonality of the uniform, the emptiness of the streets. He felt what the policeman might say and do if he had been Rufus, walking here with his arm around Leona.
    He