Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
“I guess so.” He watched Arthur with direct, very candid eyes. “Does your brother know about you?”
“What about me?” Arthur countered, laughing. “What do you know about me?”
“Just about everything I need to know. You know, you forget. I was watching you when you didn’t know I was watching you.”
“What do you mean by that? You mean, you’ve been spying on me?”
“You don’t do anything for people to spy on. No, I just mean, when I was a kid, you know, I used to watch you.” He sipped his drink. “You were very nice to me.”
“I was?”
“Yeah. You used to give me candy sometimes, or a penny—once in a while, when you were rich, a nickel. I remember all that. You gave me movie fare a couple of times. And I remember when you and your brother took me to the ice cream parlor.” Then he grinned. “You all didn’t like Julia much.”
“Well, she was kind of a pain in the ass in those days.”
“Yeah. But that wasn’t really her fault. Of course, I didn’t know that then.” He took another sip of his drink. “Hey, if I get drunk, you’re going to have to take me home, and carry me up all those steps.”
“Then for Christ’s sake, don’t get drunk, man. How fucking much do you weigh?”
“I was only kidding—not so much. About one hundred and forty—forty-five, somewhere around in there.”
Arthur was watching him, a little smile on his face: he couldn’t help it. Jimmy was watching him, too, with those astounded, vulnerable eyes, and Arthur realized that Jimmy was never going to be misled by anything Arthur might say. He was not listening to him, he was watching him. And Jimmy asked, “You know what’s funny?”
“What’s funny?”
“When two people have so much to say to each other that there’s almost nothing they can say, and they just stare at each other. But that’s saying something, too.”
“And what do you want to say—when you look at me?”
Jimmy looked down. “I think you know.” Then, looking up, “I always hoped I’d see you again. When Julia came, I knew I would—somehow, somewhere, I’d see you. So—I’m real happy to be looking at you, man,” and he grinned and nodded. “Real glad.”
“And what are you doing? I mean, you going to be hanging around the city, you going back south, or what?”
“I don’t know yet. I’d like to say that that depends partly on you, because I meant everything I was saying before. But I’d like to get back south fairly soon.”
“I’d like to get there, too. But I think I’ve got to go west first, from here.”
“Well, I told you, I’d dig going with you.”
Silence fell between them, and Jimmy stared at him steadily, not smiling, his arms folded.
“You don’t think I’m a little old for you?”
Jimmy might have laughed, but he didn’t. Later on, when Arthur asked this question, he always cracked up. But now, his arms still folded, he said very calmly, “No. I think you’re exactly the right age for me.” He paused. “I think I’m exactly the right age for you, too. Since you brought up the question of your age, I might say that you seem to be getting a little set in your ways—not much, just a little. I’ll be good for you. You need somebody to stir you up.” He pursed his lips, trying not to smile. “I’ll be good for you, I’ll keep you stirred up.” He nodded gravely, his lips still pursed in that unwilling smile. He handed Arthur a cigarette, lit Arthur’s cigarette, and his own, and picked up his drink. “If I seem a little forward, it’s only because I know how shy you are.”
Arthur laughed, but he was a little frightened, too, his heart was racing, his clothes were suddenly too tight. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy. I know what I want.” Then, very gravely, “You know, you shouldn’t worry about my sister, or your brother. They’ll be very happy for us. I know it. My sister will be very happy to trust me with you. And your brother will be very happy to trust you with me. Believe me. I know it.”
“How do you you know it?”
Jimmy looked a little exasperated. “They love us, that’s how I know it. You ought to know it, too. You ought to trust it. Then you wouldn’t have to go through all those changes about a dirty old man like you fucking up a sweet little boy like me.”
Arthur thought of Crunch again, and stared at Jimmy. It was true: he was, perhaps, not as worried about fucking up Jimmy’s life as he was about exposing his own.
Jimmy smiled a very beautiful smile. “All right, old man? Listen. The only way you’re going to fuck me up is if you don’t love me. And, by the way, I’ve been talking so much, we never got around to that—do you?”
Arthur felt dizzy, as though the kid were dragging him, roughly, up a very steep hill. “Never got around to what?” With Jimmy’s brilliant eyes staring into his, he began to get his bearings. Unwillingly, he smiled, beginning to surrender. “Do I what?”
Jimmy whispered, with exaggerated lip movements, “Do you love me?”
Arthur leaned across the table and touched Jimmy on the face for a moment. He whispered, “Yes, you clown, I love you. I’ve just been playing hard to get.”
Jimmy leaned back. “Wow. That was a rough one. I deserve a drink.”
“But, then, you’ll be drunk and I’ll have to carry you up all those stairs.”
“Oh, I’ll take a piss before we leave here, and I won’t hardly weigh nothing at all.”
They laughed, and Arthur signaled the waitress. He signaled the waitress out of fear: he felt such a sudden sharp desire to take Jimmy with him out of this place, to be alone with Jimmy, and begin a voyage unlike any he had ever imagined. And this desire caused him to panic. He signaled the waitress, and ordered drinks, in order to give himself time to catch his breath, to steady his hands, to conquer the violence between his legs, the violence of hope in his heart. He had not felt anything so total since his time with Crunch, and then—then—-he had been a boy a little younger than Jimmy was now. Nothing in this moment reminded him of anything in his past, least of all of Crunch. He did not even feel, any longer, that he could ever be at all like Crunch, or ever so betray the boy before him: and the word betray had never before entered his mind. Still, he was frightened. The boy before him was suddenly sacred, causing Arthur to feel gross, ugly, and clumsy. He wanted them to leave, and get beyond this moment: and he wanted nothing more than this moment. He was urgently seduced by Jimmy’s eyes, voice, presence, by the combination in him of vulnerability and power, of innocence and knowledge. He did not know what he would do with it—which means that he did not know what it would do with him— and, so, presently, he signaled the waitress again.
They were happy, on the other hand, in a way new for them both. Desire and delight transfixed them where they were: and they were certain, after all, that they had all the time in the world.
Then, suddenly, it was closing time. They looked at each other, and, in silence, they walked out into the long, quite silent, not quite dark streets.
“So? you ready to carry me up them stairs, man?”
This, from Jimmy, with a smile at once tentative and daring, eyes at once blazing and opaque.
They were approaching the subway, which, at this moment, in the electrical gloom, could quite truly be considered the valley of decision. And if Arthur now, once more, panicked, it was for reasons both passionate and practical.
For he was being truthful when he said, “I don’t want to spend a couple hours with you, and then jump up and run. And I got an early morning.”
“Well,” Jimmy said, but with reluctance, “I do, too.”
“So,” said Arthur, “why don’t we both just go on and do what we got to do—and then hook up this evening, when we got all the shit behind us—and we can just hang out—and be together?”
He wanted to kiss the boy. He contented himself with touching his face lightly. Yet that light, brief touch seemed to cause each of them to tremble as they stood in the grim light at the top of the subway
Jimmy looked up at him, with those brilliant, astounded, trusting eyes.
“Okay. How shall we—hook up?”
They both laughed. They stood in that brief void between the retreating night and the crouching morning.
“Well,” Arthur said, “whoever gets home first, calls the other. Okay? And you meet me down at my place. Okay?”
“Okay.” Then, as gravely as a child, “You won’t forget?”
Arthur dared, in the void, the silence, the stillness, to put one hand on the nape of Jimmy’s neck and held him like that for a moment.
“I won’t hardly forget,” he said. Then, “Let’s go. We got to make tracks.”
They walked down the subway steps together: but they did not hook up that evening. Arthur’s morning appointment led him to California on that afternoon: he left a message for Jimmy, but he did not see him. When Arthur came back from California, Jimmy was in the South: they failed to make connections. Then there was the storm of Julia’s leaving, of which I remember almost nothing. I know that Arthur was in Chicago. Jimmy was exceedingly downcast, partly because of him and Arthur, partly because of Julia and me. His life then seemed to him to be nothing more than a series of ruptures: I know that I was no help to him at all. Which brings us up to the trip south, when Arthur was really hoping to find Jimmy, and when we lost Peanut. Jimmy and Arthur did not meet again for more than two years.
But the truth, beneath all these events, details, circumventions, is that Arthur panicked: he was terrified of confession.
But nothing less than confession is demanded of him. He dreams of Jimmy, and comes, almost, to prefer the dream because dreams appear to be harmless: dreams don’t hurt. Dreams don’t love, either, which is how we drown. Arthur had to pull himself to a place where he could say to Paul, his father, and to Hall, his brother, and to all the world, and to his Maker, Take me as I am!
Everyone has now abandoned the terrace Chez Lipp, where he sits, sipping his cognac, and thinking what a thoroughgoing Puritan he is, after all. And he is, indeed. But everyone must be born somewhere, and everyone is born in a context: this context is his inheritance. If he were a Muslim, or a Jew, or an Irish, Spanish, Greek, or Italian Catholic, if he were a Hindu or a Haitian or a Brazilian, an Indian or an African chief, his life might be simpler in some ways and more complex in others; more open in one way, more closed in another. An inheritance is a given: in struggling with this given, one discovers oneself in it—and one could not have been found in any other place!—and, with this discovery, and not before, the possibility of freedom begins.
So my brother is not entirely cast down, in spite of all his cowardice, folly, and rage. He feels, somehow, certain that he will soon see Jimmy again. He senses that something is moving, that he has moved: something is about to happen, something is being changed. He sits still. People are beginning to leave the restaurant.
The red-haired giant whom he has seen seated at the Café de Flore comes to the door of the terrace, smiles, enters, and comes over to him.
“I do not disturb you, I hope?”
The smile is genuine, the eyes very warm and dark.
“ ‘Not at all.” Arthur gestures: “Won’t you sit down?”
“With pleasure,” says the redhead. He sits down, looks around, looks at his watch. “But this place is closing very soon.” He looks at Arthur, with a smile. “Will you make me the pleasure to offer you a drink in another place I know? It is, oh, less than two minutes from here.”
“With pleasure,” Arthur says. He finishes his cognac, looks at his bill, and leaves some money on the table. They both rise.
“You are an American,” says the redhead. “You have tipped him too much. You will ruin the French economy.”
He laughs heartily as he says this, as though the French economy were a thing to be laughed at anyway, and they go into the street.
In the street, he stops and puts out his hand.
“I must present myself. I am Guy Lazar.”
They shake hands. “I am Arthur Montana.”
“Ah! That is the name of a bar near here—but I think we will not go there.” They begin walking. “You are not named for the state of Montana, are you?”
“I certainly hope not,” Arthur says, and they laugh.
They turn right, at the immediate corner. There are about half a dozen laughing, unsteady boys and girls, sometimes arabesquing before them, sometimes behind them, sometimes surrounding them. Guy walks with a steady, wide-legged stride, a slightly rolling motion, his hands in his coat pockets. His short, heavy black overcoat is open, his gray scarf is thrown across his neck and one shoulder. The wind ruffles his short, curly red hair, bringing it forward over his brow. He looks straight ahead. They are on a long, wide, dark street. The street grows darker as they move away from the boulevard.
“It is your first time in Paris?”
“Yes. I just got here—oh, a couple of days ago.”
“From Montana—?”
“Hell, I’ve never even seen Montana. No. From New York, and, then, London, and—now—here.”
Guy touches Arthur’s elbow lightly, and they cross the street, entering a narrower, darker street. This street is also filled with people—with the moving shapes of people—and music and voices come from the lighted windows and doorways on either side of the street. It is a little like a walk through a bazaar. One might pause at any window, walk through any door, and discuss—oh, many things—while agreeing or disagreeing, as to the quality and the price of the merchandise.
“Ah. And how do you like us?”
“I don’t know. You’re the first person I’ve talked to. But I really—really—dig Paris.”
Guy turns to him with a smile unexpectedly and disarmingly shy. “Good. I shall do all my best, then, for to make you dig—me.”
They stop at a door which seems locked, next to windows which seem barred, though muffled sounds of life are coming from within. Guy pushes a doorbell and smiles into Arthur’s somewhat anxious face. “It is all right. I assure you, I do not disturb no one: it is a private club.”
And, indeed, from a slot in the door, an eye peers out. The slot drops back into place—Arthur thinks of the guillotine—and the door buzzes open.
Guy pushes Arthur in before him. They are, then, in a short, narrow vestibule, pale gray or dusty white, facing the high, wide, square entrance to the club—a doorway, really, with the door removed. Some people are seated on the staircase, which is immediately beyond the entrance; to the left, there is a corridor, and another room. To the right, there is a cage, in which a woman sits. It is she who controls the buzzer that opens the door. The person, her indispensable accomplice, who had peeped through the slot and given the signal to the lady in the cage, is a dark-haired youth who is smiling and shaking Guy’s hand. Arthur is being inundated, suddenly, by the sound of the French language, and by music—music from home—coming at him from somewhere to his right. He is also drowning in smiles, a tidal wave of smiles: from the youth who now takes his duffel coat and takes Guy’s coat and shakes his hand, de-daring himself, as Arthur hears it, enchanted, and from the lady in the cage who leans out and kisses Guy on both cheeks and shakes Arthur’s hand, declaring herself, as Arthur hears it, ravished, and calling him M’sieu Montana! as though she has been looking forward to this meeting for a while. Through all this, Guy is impeccably charming and single-minded, conveying to Arthur, always by means of a slight pressure on his elbow, to keep moving past the smiles and the greetings.
They are, finally, in the dub. There are people standing at the bar, seeming to wait, as Arthur senses it, to pounce, and eager males and females smiling from the staircase. Arthur scarcely dares to look into the room on the left, which seems to contain a kitchen: something in all of this, insanely enough, reminds him of Harlem.
Guy looks sharply to the right, where the tables all are full—he smiles and waves, but keeps Arthur to one side of him and does not go near the tables. He gives a sign
They enter a very large dining room, nearly empty now, and sit down at a table in a corner.
Guy smiles, and says, “I am sorry it was so—mouvementé. It is not always like this—never, when I come here alone.”
“Well, you know—you maybe just don’t notice it, when you’re alone.”
Arthur is fascinated, is having a ball; is grateful for being exposed to something of Paris—and this is, certainly, something of Paris; and, for having been shaken out of himself, he is grateful to Guy.
This is more fun, anyway, than his hotel room, more challenging than his lonely walks.
“Well,” says Guy, “at least it stays open until all hours. And no one will bother us here.”
. He takes out a package of Gitanes, and extends the pack to Arthur. Arthur, ruefully, shakes his head.
“I tried one of those the other day. I thought my lungs was trying to come up through the top of my skull.” They both laugh. Guy lights his Gitane. “When I come back, maybe. I might have more courage.”
“Oh. For a cigarette, it does not matter. You will be coming back—? That would be very nice, it means you like us. When?”
“Oh. I don’t know. But I would like to come back.”
There is silence for a moment. Guy watches him through the smoke of his cigarette.
“If you would like to come back, then you will come back. And I would like very much to see you again.”
Arthur is not really being coy: he isn’t, in any case, coy, it isn’t one of his attributes. Perhaps he is being reckless, or, possibly, ruthless, because he is not in America. “Me? How come? You don’t know me. You just met me.”
“Well. It was necessary for me to meet you in order to know that I would like to meet you again.”
They watch each other. Arthur wryly nods and smiles, and someone who is apparently the waiter—one of the people who had been sitting on the stairs—arrives with a tray, and clears the table, and waits.