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?

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.

He began to walk slowly to the centre of the bridge, observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire.

He thought how he had never before understood how an animal could smell water. But it was over there, past the highway, where he could see the speeding cars.

Then he stood on the bridge, looking over, looking down.

He stood at the centre of the bridge and it was freezing cold. He raised his eyes to heaven.

He was black and the water was black.