Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
“What would you like to drink?”
“I was drinking cognac. But I think I’d better switch.”
He looks at Guy, and, for no reason, they both laugh.
“Certainly. What will you change to?”
“A double vodka. On the rocks.”
“Okay. The same.”
The waiter disappears. Arthur realizes that the other couples in the dining room have left. It is as though someone has given orders that he and Guy should be left alone.
This cannot really be true, and yet, it seems partly true. He doesn’t really care. He is curious. He would like to get drunk. He doesn’t care what happens tonight. It might be a ball to ball.
It is at this moment, without quite realizing it—or, perhaps, without quite facing it—that he begins to be more and more fascinated by Guy.
A silence falls, and Arthur lights a cigarette—at the same moment, Guy puts his out—and the waiter comes back with their double vodkas.
They raise and touch their glasses, and drink.
“So. Where are you from? Are you from Paris?”
“No. I came late to Paris. I am from a town, no one has ever heard of it—near Nantes.”
“Where’s that?”
“It is north.” Guy sips his vodka. “Very north.”
“What do you do in Paris?”
“I am”—with a smile—“a kind of damned soul—you say that?—I am in les assurances—insurance, you call it—”
“Life insurance?”
“No. I am not quite as damned as all that. I have my honor.” He looks at Arthur’s face, and laughs. “No. Not life insurance. Property. Fire. Theft. Those things. I am very good at it. I help people who have money to keep it—is that not a valuable function?”
“Can you help people who don’t have money to get it?”
“Oh. That is much more delicate. And more ambitious. I may ask—what do you do?”
He sips his vodka, beginning to feel more and more at ease with his new friend.
“I’m a singer.”
“So. I wondered. What do you sing?”
“Gospel.”
“Comment?”
Arthur smiles into the intent, wondering brown eyes. “I sing—gospel songs. I’m a gospel singer.”
“I understand now. As Mahalia Jackson is—I would love to hear you sing, one day.”
“I would love for you to hear me.”
A longer silence falls. Music, from far downstairs, seems to be coming up through the floor. Arthur’s fingers drum on the table.
“There is a nightclub downstairs, in the cellar. Would you like to dance?”
“No.” And he keeps drumming on the table, to the beat.
“You have beautiful fingers. Do you also play piano?”
“Yes. I do,” and they smile at each other, a smile which, remarkably, clears the charged air.
Arthur begins to speak about the music, to translate, so to speak, as if he were standing outside. He is a little surprised that he can speak this way, of his life, me, the South—he speaks of the trees, but he does not speak of Peanut: Guy’s face becomes more and more somber, and he speaks of his days as a soldier in Algeria. Without premeditation, only semiconsciously, they are trying to use all that which might divide them to bring them closer together. Instinct, far more than knowledge, brings them in sight of the danger zone: they hope they can remain outside it. They are speaking as people who have met in a crowded waiting room, on different journeys, speak; wishing that they had met before, hoping that they will meet again, and yet, at the same time, forced to realize that it is only because of their very different journeys that they have met at all. “You got to learn to take the bitter with the sweet!” Arthur suddenly croons, and Guy nods, responding more to Arthur’s tone, and the look on his face than to the words: though he understands the conjunction of bitter and sweet. “Mais, tu es formidable!” he says, with a delighted, childlike grin, and Arthur clowns and scats a little more. The waiter reappears, and Guy says, “You will attract an audience. They will all leave le dancing.” Arthur grins, and they order two more double vodkas.
Then they are alone in the empty room again, more than ever.
“When do you leave Paris?” Guy asks.
Arthur sobers. “I’m not sure. I was thinking of leaving today—tomorrow—I’ve got to get back.”
He has already told Guy that he is going south as soon as he gets back to America.
“You must not leave today,” says Guy with urgency. “You cannot, it is already past three in the morning.” To dissemble his intensity, he sips his drink, and lights a cigarette. Then his dark eyes look very candidly into Arthur’s. “I am hoping you will spend the day with me—this day, and many days, it would make me very happy.” He raises his eyebrows, smiling, and puts one hand on Arthur’s hand. “D’accord? You will say yes?” His hand is very large, and heavy, very—friendly; it is impossible not to respond to his insistence. Arthur grins, leaning forward, and Guy grins with him. “Please. I will make myself free today, and we will wake up—I will cook you a lunch, I am a very good cook, you know, or we can go out, it does not matter—and I will show you Paris, I will show you—me—and we will take care of our day, it will be a beautiful day!”
Arthur puts one hand on top of the hand that holds his.
“Then—can I leave tomorrow?”
“We can discuss that tomorrow. All day long.”
They both laugh.
“It will be hard to get away.”
“Very.”
They laugh again, but not as before. Guy’s hand tightens on Arthur’s, Arthur’s hand tightens on Guy’s.
“I like you,” Arthur says.
“I, too. Énormément.”
With those interlocked hands, looking into each other’s eyes, each pulls the other closer, and their parted lips meet—thirst slaking thirst. Guy closes his eyes. A trembling begins in Guy which transmits itself to Arthur. Guy opens his eyes and stares into Arthur’s eyes, with a kind of helpless, stricken wonder, not unlike a child’s delight, and Arthur takes Guy’s face between his hands and kisses him again. He is trembling in a kind of paroxysm of liberty. Kissing a stranger in a strange town, and in a strange upper room, and with all the world too busy to notice or to care or to judge, with Mama and Daddy sleeping, and Brother out to work, and God scrutinizing the peaceful fields of New England, his past seems to drop from him like a heavy illusion, he feels it fall to the floor beneath them, he pushes it away with his feet, all, Julia, Crunch, Peanut, Red, Hall, the congregations, the terror of trees and streets, the weight of yesterday, the dread of tomorrow, all, for this instant, falls away, all, but the song—he is as open and naked and questing as the song. He feels Guy tremble with delight, his tremendous, so utterly vulnerable weight shakes the table, and Arthur trembles, too, with love and gratitude: for he knows, too, that all has dropped from him he must pick up again, but not now—now, he and another will lie naked and open, in each other’s arms.
They pull back from each other. Neither speaks. Each inhales, faintly, with a delicate, private delight, the other’s odor.
“Ça va?”
Arthur understands this, more from Guy’s eyes than from the words.
He answers, gravely, “Ça va.”
“We go?”
“Yes. Where?”
“To my flat. It is not far. Just—la rue des Saints Pères.”
“The street of the holy fathers—right?”
Guy grins. “Yes. It is, perhaps, a strange street for me.”
“It wouldn’t be, if it had a number instead of a name. Anyway—them holy fathers had to be a bitch.”
Though they are leaving, neither is yet quite prepared to move. They light each other’s cigarettes and lean back, sipping the vodka, catching their breath.
The waiter is back—how long has he been there? But it does not matter. Guy asks him for the bill, and pays him.
They finish their vodka in a very rare silence, s
The streets are now empty—only, every once in a while, a lone, somehow desolate figure crosses a street, stands motionless on a corner. The streets frighten Arthur. Perhaps they always have. Perhaps they always will. After he and Crunch had broken up, he had wandered many streets at night, terrified and burning. It had been like wandering through hell. He is still terrified that that time will come again, the way someone with an affliction lives in terror of the symptoms which announce a new relapse.
He is calm now, though, and safe, walking beside Guy, in Paris.
They come to a great wall on Guy’s long, narrow street, and Guy puts a key in the door in the wall. They are, then, in a great courtyard—Arthur has had no idea that such splendor lay behind such walls, which are all over Paris—and they cross the courtyard to enter an old and massive building. The entrance is wide, with a loge on one side, and a broad, curving staircase on the other. They climb the staircase to the first floor, and enter Guy’s apartment.
It is old. This is the first note struck in Arthur’s consciousness—old and high, with rooms unfolding on rooms, not as though it had been built but as though it had somehow evolved, patiently developing year after year, and century after century. There are great high mirrors and massive chairs, one wall is hung with a tapestry—faded, but celebrating a battle. Arthur makes out horses and hounds, shields, sabers, and suits of armor. Guy takes Arthur’s coat, takes off his own, and throws them both on a large sofa, and they leave this foyer and go into a larger room, higher and less cluttered, with an immense dark sofa, easy chairs, a massive wooden cabinet, a chandelier—Guy clicks it on with the wall switch—another cabinet with a glass door, holding ornaments and goblets, a long, low table before the sofa, other round tables in corners of the room, two high windows, heavily draped, a door opening onto two corridors, one straight ahead, one to the left. The one straight ahead leads to the kitchen and the pantry, a bathroom, a small bedroom. The corridor to the left leads to Guy’s bedroom, his study, his W.C., and his bathroom—Arthur is to discover that these two facilities are (or were) separate in France.
“Wow,” he says, wandering around the room, his hands in his pockets, staring at the paintings on the walls.
Guy watches the long, dark figure in the old blue pants, the turtleneck sweater, the scuffed black shoes, with delight. But, “It is old,” he says.
“I’m hip it’s old. But it’s beautiful.” He turns to face Guy. “You live here all alone?”
“Hélas. Yes,” says Guy, still smiling.
“Have you always lived alone?”
“I had a friend here for a while—a friend from Algeria—but he has gone back to his home.” He paces a little, his hands in his pockets; Arthur realizes that his rolling stride is due to the fact that he is a little bowlegged. “I imagine that he will never come back to France.”
“Why not?”
“Well—as you may know—there is some misunderstanding—some difficulties, so I might say—between France and Algeria these days.”
Arthur does know this—that is, he has read and heard about the Algerian revolt against the French—but he does not really know, and, watching Guy’s face, does not want to pursue it.
“I see,” is all he says, and turns away again.
Guy walks to the wooden cabinet. “Would you like—what do you call it? We say un bonnet de nuit—enfin—would you like a night-cap—before we wash up and retire?”
Arthur is fascinated by him, yes, but he also likes him more and more. There is something very lonely and vulnerable about him. At the same time, he realizes that this is practically the very first time he has felt so at ease with a white man. But it is only now, seeing Guy in his house, standing, so to speak, among the witnesses to his inheritance, that he thinks of him as white. He would not have reacted to Guy in New York as he has reacted to him here, certainly not so quickly. He stares at Guy for a moment. Then, he shakes his head. The truth is, he thinks of Guy as French, someone, therefore, who has nothing to do with New York, or Georgia. He has no learned, or willed response to him because Guy has never existed for him; neither in his imagination, nor in his life, has he ever been threatened by him—that is, by a Frenchman. But he is dimly aware that this may be connected with his reluctance to discuss Algeria. He shakes his head again.
“Are you shaking your head yes?” asks Guy, with a laugh. “Or no?”
He has opened the wooden cabinet and holds the bottle of vodka in his hand.
“Yes,” says Arthur. “Don’t mind me.”
“I will get ice and glasses then.”
“Let me come with you?”
“Of course. You are home.”
The kitchen is big, and very old-fashioned. It is a kitchen, Arthur thinks, that his mother would love. They get the ice out of a refrigerator far from modern, and the glasses out of the cupboard, and return to the living room. Guy pours the vodka, and they sit down on the sofa.
Guy lights a cigarette, and goes to one of the windows and opens the drapes. The dawn, a kind of electrical gray, fills the room.
Guy comes back to the sofa, and picks up his glass from the low table.
“I have sat here many mornings alone, and watched the day come. Sometimes, it is sad, sometimes it is not so sad, but always it is—something awaiting you.” He looks at Arthur. “It is so, no? Something waiting, just out there.”
“We have a song something like that,” Arthur says. “Well, for me, it’s just like that. You ever hear of a blues singer named Bessie Smith?”
“Oh, yes. I have many of her records.”
“Well, she has a song, goes, Catch ‘em. Don’t let them blues in here!”
Guy laughs, and Arthur laughs, watching him. “Why, yes,” says Guy. “It is a little like that.”
Then he puts out his cigarette and turns to Arthur, putting one great hand on the nape of Arthur’s neck. “I do not feel the blues this morning, though.”
Arthur puts down his glass, suddenly feeling as tentative and as powerful as a boy. Tentative, because he is watching, sensing, awaiting Guy, powerful because a depth of desire has been struck in him which will cause both Guy and himself to tremble—powerful, because this desire, dormant for so long, has been awakened by Guy’s desire. Again, he feels a kind of thrill of freedom. He and his newfound friend are alone. They have each other to discover; and, for the moment, only each other. He laughs, low in his throat, for pure joy, and Guy laughs with him, and pulls him closer.
Guy is still sleeping when Arthur wakes up, at about three o’clock in the afternoon.
Guy’s bedroom opens on his adjoining study, and, in the study, one of the windows has been left slightly open. A small breeze comes through this window, as pleasant and peaceful as the half-light coming through the drapes. Arthur is luxuriously wide awake: wide awake, that is, without wishing to move.
Guy lies on his side, facing Arthur, one arm outstretched toward Arthur. Some faces, in sleep, become tormented, endure hard wrestling matches, undergo great trials: Guy’s face was as quiet and defenseless as it must have been when he was three years old. He is snoring slightly, his teeth faintly gleaming through his parted lips. His rough hair is slightly damp and tangled on his forehead. The covers are half off: Arthur watches the faint rise and fall of the hairy chest. He is the spy of the midafternoon: Guy does not see him watching him. The hand at the end of the arm which had been thrown across Arthur twitches slightly, not yet alarmed—but soon, some message will be carried to Guy’s brain, waking him up.
Arthur does not disturb the covers, does not touch Guy. He can see all that there is to see—the navel, the darker pubic hair, the labyrinthine sex, t
He watches Guy. Anguish translates, it travels well, has as many tongues as vehicles: but desire is among the chief of these, and if desire is not a confession, it can only be a curse. Never, in all of Arthur’s life, has anyone been so helpless in his arms, or wanted or needed so much, or given so much. He feels—transformed: in a night, he has grown much older.
He watches Guy, and wishes to protect him. He does not feel that this is ridiculous; or, if it is, he doesn’t care. He knows that Guy also wishes to protect him—he does not feel that this is ridiculous, either. It is real to him, for the first time, that this is what lovers do for each other—by daring to be naked, by giving each other the strength to have nothing to hide.
No one can do this alone.
He lights a cigarette, and leans back on the pillow. He looks straight ahead into the vast old study, seeing Guy’s desk, and chairs, his lamps, his books, one or two pieces of sculpture; the paintings, some on the wall, some, like scrolls, piled high on a corner; the mail, the ornate North African letter opener, the telephone; the photographs, on the desk, on the walls, some of Guy in uniform, some in North African dress, one photograph of his friend, Mustapha, in a corner above the record player; the records, with a vast selection of Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Ida Cox, Fats Waller—and others, obscure even for him, including some seventy-eights he would love to get his hands on, all tirelessly catalogued and labeled, each in its place.
This apartment, which had seemed so vast last night, he sees, now, as a kind of purgatory; it seems to ring with the quiet and somehow gallant horror of Guy’s days and nights.