Another Country

The life you think you should want,’ said Eric, ‘is always the life that looks safest.

And she carried him, as the sea will carry a boat: with a slow, rocking and rising and falling motion, barely suggestive of the violence of the deep.

A sign advertised the chewing gum which would help one to relax and keep smiling. An hotel’s enormous neon name challenged the starless sky. So did the names of movie stars and people currently appearing or scheduled to appear on Broadway, along with the mile-high names of the vehicles which would carry them into immortality. The great buildings, unlit, blunt like the phallus or sharp like the spear, guarded

Somewhere in his heart the black boy hated the white boy because he was white.

‘Sweetheart, suffering doesn’t have a colour. Does it? Can’t we step out of this nightmare?

He remembered, suddenly, his days in boot camp in the South and felt again the shoe of a white officer against his mouth.

‘Well’ – he looked down – ‘I want the chick to love me. I want to make her love me. I want to be loved.’

Women don’t see men the way men want to be seen. They see all the tender places, all the places where blood could flow.’

‘Yes, you did. You meant exactly what I thought you meant. And you know why? Because you can’t help it, that’s why. Can’t none of you white boys help it. Every damn one of your sad-arse white chicks think they got a cunt for peeing through and they don’t piss nothing but the best ginger ale, and if it wasn’t for the spooks wouldn’t a damn one of you white cock suckers ever get laid.

Something in Rufus which could not break shook him like a rag doll and splashed salt water all over his face and filled his throat and his nostrils with anguish.