Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (51 page)

“I come from the streets. It's true I ride now, but I used to walk. Don't pull rank on
me.
I
might
outrank you.”

“Okay. Don't get mad. I was only putting you on. I can't help it. I always do that if I like somebody.”

I knew what he was saying, I heard him; it was as though he had just smuggled a note to me; and he knew that I would not read it until I was alone. But he also knew that I would certainly read it. He did not look at me now, but stared out of the window. And, to bring us back from where we were, and also to carry us further, he now said (while I began to be aware that the rest of the party was watching us, and said to myself, I've got to circulate around this room once, and get out of here): “Someone once told me that if it wasn't for the lights from the earth reflected in the sky, nobody would ever be able to look into the sky. It would be too frightening. I've often thought about that. I wonder if it's true.”

“I guess we'll never know,” I said. “When all the lights on earth go out, we'll be gone, too.”

“Well,” he said, and laughed, “I certainly hope so. I sure don't want to be left alone down here, in the dark.”

There was a note deliberately plaintive in that last statement, and I did not want to pursue it. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“Well, actually, I was born in New Jersey, but I grew up in New York—I grew up in Harlem.”

“Where in Harlem? That's my hometown.”

But I knew that his Harlem was not my Harlem.

“We used to live on 134th Street.”

“We lived on 136th.”

“Well, shit, you're one of the neighborhood boys, then—I wonder if I ever saw you—”

“No. You would have been a snot-nosed kid then.”

“Yeah,” he said, and looked at me quizzically, “I guess so. We wouldn't have had an awful lot in common—I was always in trouble.” He gestured toward the room. “That's how I met Frank.” Frank was our host, a social worker. “He knew my probation officer. He helped me out a lot.”

I did not want to ask him why he had been on probation, both because I did not want to know and because I was certain that one day he would tell me.

“If you were born in New Jersey,” I said, “and you were brought up in New York, how did you get that Southern accent?”

He grinned. “I haven't got a real accent.” He looked at me. “I went to reform school in the South. And then, later on, I used to go with this broad from Miami and I sort of put it on, you know, for her—she went for it—and I guess it kind of stuck.” He seemed a little embarrassed. He tapped on the glass with one astonishingly manicured fingernail. “Kid stuff,” he said.

I laughed. “Maybe you should have been an actor.”

“Not me,” he said. “I don't have the nerves. Or the patience.” He paused. “I'm fascinated,” he said, “by space.”

He was referring to those planets which were simply points of light to our eyes. They contained possibilities for him; and perhaps they really did, why not? The planet on which we stood was not extremely promising. But it had proved to be enough, and more than enough, for me.

“The only space which means anything to me,” I said, “is the space between myself and other people. May it never diminish.”

He looked as though I had hurt his feelings. “Ah,” he said, with a really disarming and disconcerting gentleness, “you don't mean that.” And when he said this everything about him seemed to shine, as though a light had been turned on from within. “Don't say things like that, it doesn't become you—and, anyway, I'll never believe you.”

I was shocked—bewildered—by his vehement sincerity, and discomfited because he had caught me in a lie. Of course I had not meant what I had said; I had only, and far more cunningly than he would have been able to do for himself, wrenched his full attention around to me again. I had been putting him on.

“I guess what I mean,” I said, then, guilty about having upstaged him and now, helplessly, feeding him his lines, “is the space between myself and
most
people.”

He was a quick study. “But not all of them?” And, after a moment, with a smile, “Not all of
us?
”

“No”—losing ground now every instant, and knowing
it—“by no means all. I know some very nice people.”

“I'll bet you do,” he said, with tranquillity, “you're a very nice person yourself.”

I felt a terrible fatigue. I watched his profile. He was looking with wonder into the sky. I watched his hands, pressed flat against the windowpane, like the hands of the orphan in the fable, the orphan trapped outside of warmth and light and love, hoping to be received, to be rescued from the night. His mouth was a little open, like the mouths of waifs and orphans. Not so very long ago, I had stood as he now stood and had hoped as he now hoped. What had my hope come to? It had led me to this moment, here. I heard his cry because it was my own. He did not know this—did not know, that is, that his cry was my own—but he knew that
his
cry had been heard. Therefore, he hummed a little and tapped with his fingers on the glass. He sensed that he had found the path that led home. But I was afraid. What, after all, could I do with him? except, perhaps, set him on his path, the path that would lead him away from me. My honor, my intelligence, and my experience all informed me that freedom, not happiness, was the precious stone. One could not cling to happiness—happiness, simply, submitted to no clinging; and it is criminal to use the unspoken and unrealized needs of another as a means of escorting him, elaborately, into the prison of those needs, and sealing him there. But, on the other hand, the stone I hoped to offer was, nevertheless, a stone: its edges drew blood, and its weight was tremendous.

Still, there he was, before me. And my fatigue increased.

“I've got to get out of here,” I said.

“I know you do,” said Christopher. “I wish you didn't. We're all going to have to go soon. But I know you must be tired.”

“I guess I better circulate just a little bit, anyway,” I said, “then I'll split.”

“I've kind of monopolized you, haven't I? Well, crazy. I'm not going to say I'm sorry because I'm not. I'm a real selfish monster.”

“I outrank you again,” I said. “
I'm
the monster here.”

“You? You'll have to prove it to me.”

“You'll just have to take my word,” I said.

And I moved a little away from him. He followed me. We stood at the bar together, and he filled my drink. “I was born in the streets, baby, and I take nobody's word for
nothing.
” He touched my glass. “
You
know I'm not going to take your word.”

“You'd better.”

“You trying to scare me?”

“Shit. I'm probably trying to make you.”

He threw back his head, and laughed. “Tre
men
dous!” Then, “Do you like me? I like you, I think you're crazy.”

Something rose in me, stronger than intelligence or experience. “Sure, I like you. I like you very much. You know that.”

He gave me a smile of pure pleasure, and it cannot be denied that such a smile is rare. He touched my glass again. “Tremendous,” he said. “We're going to get on just fine.” He looked very grave. Then, irrepressibly, like a very small child, “You know something I was going to tell you before, but didn't have the nerve? You got your
name written all over me. That's right. I got my name on you, too.”

I smiled. “Okay. We'll see.”

We walked back to the window. Everyone was leaving us alone, and yet everyone was watching us, too, waiting for their opportunity. An English girl sat on the sofa, talking to our host, but her eyes were on Christopher and me. Two drama students, both male, were loudly disputing some point about the Stanislavski method, concerning which, as far as I could tell, neither of them knew anything. They hoped that I would overhear and genially interrupt and even, perhaps, find one of them attractive. Not that either of them was “gay”—to use the incomprehensible vernacular; anybody mad enough to make such a suggestion would have been beaten within an inch of his life. But they were on the make, and what else, after all, did they have to give? Also, they were lonely.

“When can I come to see your play?” Christopher now murmured. “I don't think I've seen more than two plays in my whole life, and I didn't like them much. But I'd like to see you—”

“Anytime,” I said. The English girl had screwed up her courage, and was approaching. One of the drama students had disappeared into the john. His friend, not knowing how to conquer the field, simply waited.

It was getting late.

“Well,” said Christopher, with a curious, muffled urgency in his voice that I was to come to know, “as soon as possible, don't give me this anytime crap. Is it hard to get the tickets?—I mean, you know, I can scrape up the bread to pay.”

“Don't be silly.” We agreed on a night. “You can pick
me up in my dressing room after the show and we can have a few drinks, maybe something to eat. Do you want to bring anyone with you?”

“No,” he said.

During all these years, Barbara and I had seen each other with many people, always slightly envying and slightly pitying whoever was with the other. We had achieved our difficult equanimity, were reconciled to the way our cookie had crumbled, and very often, indeed, alone or together, made of these crumbs a rare and delicate feast. One can live a long time without living: and we were both to discover this now.

Pacing my dressing room some evenings before the curtain rose, glimpsing myself in the mirror, listening to the sounds, the voices, the life in the corridors, I found myself resisting, and wrestling with the fact that something had happened to me. I say something because I was reluctant indeed to use the word love—the word splashed over me like cold water, and made me catch my breath and shake myself. It certainly had not occurred to me that love would have had the effrontery to arrive in such a black, unwieldy, and dangerous package. Anyway, love was not exactly what it felt like. I don't know what it felt like. When something
does
happen to a person, it is somewhat chilling to observe how the memory, so authoritative till then, cops out, retreats, stammers out only the most garbled and treacherous of messages. One couldn't act on them, even if one was able to make any sense of them. What floated up to me, like the sounds of some infernal party on the dark ground floor of some dark house, were echoes, images, moments—memories? But they were too swift for memories. They came unreadably
into the light, and vanished. Was it memory, or was it a dream? I could not know. My life was whispering something to me. Was it my life, or was it the whirring of the wings of madness? I could not know. I could not even take refuge in any fear of what the world might call me. The world had already called me too many names, and while I knew that my indifference was not as great or as deep as Christopher's—was not the same quantity at all—the world would never be able to intimidate me in that way anymore. The world was not my problem.
I
was my problem. Something had happened to me. I was forced to suspect with what relentless cunning I had always protected myself against this. I was forced to suspect in myself some mighty prohibition, of which sex might be the symbol, but wasn't the key.

Barbara knew something had happened to me, knew it at once, knew it before she met Christopher. I did not tell her, but I knew she knew. I did not tell her because I was ashamed—not of my liaison; but, in beginning to thaw, I had to see how I had frozen myself; and, in freezing myself, had frozen Barbara. If I had merely been having an affair, I might have told her, without even thinking about it; for there would really have been nothing to tell. But now—oh, yes, something had happened to me, and now, for the very first time, really, Barbara was threatened, and Barbara knew it.

Christopher sometimes picked me up after the show. Sometimes he met me at home, sometimes he arrived the next day, sometimes he'd merely telephone. I didn't know much about his life then, except that most of it took place in the streets, or in lofts, or in basements, or on rooftops. I did not want to know. I gathered that I had an
interesting reputation in the streets. Some people considered me a fagot, for some I was a hero, for some I was a whore, for some I was a devious cocks-man, for some I was an Uncle Tom. My eminence hurt me sometimes, but I tried not to think too much about it. I certainly couldn't blame the people if they didn't trust me—why should they? They had no way of knowing whether or not I gave a shit about them, and all I could do to make them feel it—maybe—was to do what I could, and do my work.

Every once in a while, some of Christopher's friends came by the house. All of his friends were black. Sometimes, some of my friends might be there, and many of my friends were white. I knew that this made me suspect, but, then, everything about me was suspect, and always had been, and it was late in the day to start nursing an ulcer about it. I liked Christopher's friends very much, young, bright, eager, raggedy-assed, taking no shit from anyone; I had the feeling, hard to explain, that they found me very strange indeed; I had the feeling that the very strangest thing about me, for them, was that they rather liked me, too, but hadn't expected to and didn't trust the feeling. They were younger than they thought they were, much: they might arrive in their Castro berets, their Castro beards, their parkas and hoods and sweaters and thin jeans or corduroys and heavy boots, and with their beautiful black kinky hair spinning around their heads like fire and prophecy—this hair putting me in mind, somehow, of the extravagant beauty of rain-forests—and with Camus or Fanon or Mao on their person, or with
Muhammad Speaks
under their arms, but they were goggle-eyed just the same, and so far from being incapable of trusting, they had perpetually to fight the impulse to trust, overwhelmed, like all kids, by meeting
a Great Man, and awkward like all kids, and, however they tried to dissemble it, shy. They were proud of Christopher for knowing me, and delighted by me for knowing Christopher. Christopher lived partly with me, partly with a sister I had yet to meet. He had his own key, he had the run of the house. I admit that, at first, I was a little frightened, but I don't really, anyway, have very much to steal, and I've just never managed to get very hung-up on possessions. I tend not to give a shit. This is a trait in me of which Christopher entirely disapproved, and I very shortly realized that with Christopher in the house, every tie, tie-clasp, cufflink, spoon, every plaque, trophy, ring, shoe, shirt, sock, watch, coat, was as safe as, if not indeed considerably safer than, the gold rumored to be in Fort Knox.