This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, SO SOON by JAMES BALDWIN J ames B aldwin was born in New I ork City in 1924 and as a boy firs! lasted the poverty and discrimination of a Negro in Harlem. In 1945 a Eugene Saxon Fellowship enabled him to free-lance, and the stories, plays, and novels which followed established him as a young writer of extraordinary power. After living and writing in England and on the Continent, he has returned to this country and now makes his home in Greenwich Village. Y ou are full of nightmares,” Harriet tells me. they can build and build again, each time life’s She is in her dressing gown and has cream all over high-flying steel ball knocks down everything they her face. She and my older sister, Louisa, are have built. going out to be girls together. I suppose they Whenever I become upset, Harriet becomes have many things to talk about — they have me very cheerful and composed. I think she began to talk about, certainly — and they do not want to learn how to do this over eight years ago, when my presence. I have been given a bachelor’s I returned from my only visit to America. Now, evening. The director of the film which has perhaps, it has become something she could not brought us such incredible and troubling riches control if she wished to. This morning, at break will be along later to take me out to dinner. fast, when I yelled at Paul, she averted Paul’s I watch her face. I know that it is quite impos tears and my own guilt by looking up and saying, sible for her to be as untroubled as she seems. “My God, your father is cranky this morning, Her self-control is mainly for my benefit — my isn’t he?” benefit, and Paul’s. Harriet comes from orderly Paul’s attention was immediately distracted and progressive Sweden and has reacted against from his wounds, and the unjust inflicter of those all the advanced doctrines to which she has been wounds, to his mother’s laughter. He watched her. exposed by becoming steadily and beautifully old- “It is because he is afraid they will not like his fashioned. We never fought in front of Paul, not songs in New York. Your father is an artiste, mon even when he was a baby. Harriet does not so chou, and they are very mysterious people, les much believe in protecting children as she does artistes. Millions of people are waiting for him in in helping them to build a foundation on which New York, they are begging him to come, and Etching by Augusie-Jtean Gaudin. Courtesy of the Print Department, Boston Public Library. 34 THIS MOKMNG, THIS EVENING, SO SOON they will give him a lot of m oney, b u t he is afraid “That's what he’s afraid of.” Louisa grinned. they will not like him. Tell him he is wrong.” “ W e have got some expressions, believe me. She succeeded in rekindling Paul’s excitement Don’t let anybody ever tell you America hasn't about places he has never seen. I was also, at got a culture. Our culture is as thick as clabber once, reinvested with all my glamour. I think m ilk.” it is sometimes extremely difficult for Paul to “Ah,” Harriet answered, “I know. I know.” realize that the face he sees on record sleeves and “ I’m going to be practicing later,” I told Paul. in the newspapers and on the screen is nothing His face lit up. “ Bon.” Phis meant that, more or less than the face of his father — who later, he would come into my study and lie on the sometimes yells at him. Of course, since he is floor with his papers and crayons while I worked only seven — going on eight, he will be eight out with the piano and the tape recorder. He years old this winter — he cannot know that I knew that I was offering this as an olive branch. am baffled, too. All things considered, we get on pretty well, my “Of course, you are wrong, you are silly,” he son and I. said with passion — and caused me to smile. His He looked over at Louisa again. She held a English is strongly accented and is not, in fact, as coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the good as his French, for he speaks French all day other; and something about her baffled him. It at school. French is really his first language, the was early, so she had not yet put on her face. Her first he ever heard. “You are the greatest singer short, thick, graying hair was rougher than usual, in France” — sounding exactly as he must sound almost as rough as my own — later, she would be when he makes this pronouncement to his school going to the hairdresser’s; she is fairer than I, and mates — “the greatest American singer” — this better-looking; Louisa, in fact, caught all the concession was so gracefully made that it was not a looks in the family. Paul knows that she is my concession at all, it added inches to my stature, older sister and that she helped to raise me, America being only a glamorous word for Paul. though he does not, of course, know what this It is the place from which his father came, and means. He knows that she is a schoolteacher in to which he now is going, a place which very the American South, which is not, for some reason, few people have ever seen. But his aunt is one of the same place as South America. I could see him them and he looked over at her. “Mine. Dumont trying to fit all these exotic details together into a says so, and she says he is a great actor, too.” pattern which would explain her strangeness — Louisa nodded, smiling. “And she has seen Les strangeness of accent, strangeness of manner. In Faiives Nous Attendent — five times!” This clinched comparison with the people he has always known, it, of course. Mme. Dumont is our concierge and Louisa must seem, for all her generosity and she has known Paul all his life. I suppose he will laughter and affection, peculiarly uncertain of not begin to doubt anything she says until he herself, peculiarly hostile and embattled. begins to doubt everything. I wondered what he would think of his Uncle He looked over at me again. “So you are wrong Norman, older and much blacker than I, who to be afraid.” lives near the Alabama town in which we were “I was wrong to yell at you, too. 1 won’t yell born. Norman will meet us at the boat. at you any more today.” “All right.” He was very grave. Louisa poured more coffee. “He’s going to knock them dead in New York. You’ll see.” N o w Harriet repeats, “Nightmares, night “ M ats bien sur,,, said Paul, doubtfully. He does mares. Nothing ever turns out as badly as you not quite know what “knock them dead” means, think it will — in fact,” she adds laughing, “I though he was sure, from her tone, that she must am happy to say that that would scarcely be have been agreeing with him. He does not quite possible.” understand this aunt, whom he met for the first Her eyes seek mine in the mirror — dark-blue time two months ago, when she arrived to spend eyes, pale skin, black hair. I had always thought the summer with us. Her accent is entirely dif of Sweden as being populated entirely by blondes, ferent from anything he has ever heard. He does and I thought that Harriet was abnormally dark not really understand why, since she is my sister for a Swedish girl. But when we visited Sweden, and his aunt, she should be unable to speak French. I found out differently. “It is all a great racial Harriet, Louisa, and I looked at each other and salad, Europe, that is why I am sure that I will smiled. “Knock them dead,” said Harriet, “means never understand your country,” Harriet said. d.'avoir m succes jou. But you will soon pick up all That was in the days when we never imagined the American expressions.” She looked at me and that we would be going to it. laughed. “So will I.” I wonder what she is really thinking. Still, she 35 The Atlantic Monthly is right, in two days we will be on a boat, and and power would also have been our private there is simply no point in carrying around my compulsions, and would have blinded our eyes. load of apprehension. I sit down on the bed, We would never have been able to love each watching her fix her face. I realize that I am other. And Paul would never have been born. going to miss this old-fashioned bedroom. For Perhaps, if I had stayed in America, I would years, we’ve talked about throwing out the old have found another woman and had another son. junk which came with the apartment and re But that other woman, that other son are in the placing it with less massive, modern furniture. limbo of vanished possibilities. I might also have But we never have. become something else, instead of an actor- “Oh, everything will probably work out,” I singer, perhaps a lawyer, like my brother, or a say.

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