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?

Well, that’s what’s the matter with most people,’ Leona insisted, plaintively, ‘ain’t got nobody to be with. That’s what makes them so evil. I’m telling you, boy, I know.’

There aren’t a hell of a lot of streets. Only, we’ve been taught to lie so much, about so many things, that we hardly ever know where we are.’

Maybe he’ll hate New York. And then, maybe he’ll hate me, too. Yves looked frightened and determined

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.’