Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Page A

away from us, bearing the weight of the cathedral; beyond this, dimly, through speed and mist, one made out the individual roofs of Paris, their myriad, squat chimney stacks very beautiful and varicolored under the pearly sky. Mist clung to the river, softening that army of trees, softening those stones, hiding the city’s dreadful corkscrew alleys and dead-end streets, clinging like a curse to the men who slept beneath the bridges—one of whom flashed by beneath us, very black and lone, walking along the river.
    â€œSome rats have gone in,” said Giovanni, “and now other rats come out.” He smiled bleakly and looked at me; to my surprise, he took my hand and held it. “Have you ever slept under a bridge?” heasked. “Or perhaps they have soft beds with warm blankets under the bridges in your country?”
    I did not know what to do about my hand; it seemed better to do nothing. “Not yet,” I said, “but I may. My hotel wants to throw me out.”
    I had said it lightly, with a smile, out of a desire to put myself, in terms of an acquaintance with wintry things, on an equal footing with him. But the fact that I had said it as he held my hand made it sound to me unutterably helpless and soft and coy. But I could not say anything to counteract this impression: to say anything more would confirm it. I pulled my hand away, pretending that I had done so in order to search for a cigarette.
    Jacques lit it for me.
    â€œWhere do you live?” he asked Giovanni.
    â€œOh,” said Giovanni, “out. Far out. It is almost not Paris.”
    â€œHe lives in a dreadful street, near
Nation
,” said Guillaume, “among all the dreadful bourgeoisie and their piglike children.”
    â€œYou failed to catch the children at the right age,” said Jacques. “They go through a period, all too brief,
hélas!
when a pig is perhaps the
only
animal they do not call to mind.” And, again to Giovanni: “In a hotel?”
    â€œNo,” said Giovanni, and for the first time he seemed slightly uncomfortable. “I live in a maid’s room.”
    â€œWith the maid?”
    â€œNo,” said Giovanni, and smiled, “the maid is I don’t know where. You could certainly tell that there was no maid if you ever saw my room.”
    â€œI would love to,” said Jacques.
    â€œThen we will give a party for you one day,” said Giovanni.
    This, too courteous and too bald to permit any further questioning, nearly forced, nevertheless, a question from my lips. Guillaume looked briefly at Giovanni, who did not look at him but outinto the morning, whistling. I had been making resolutions for the last six hours and now I made another one: to have this whole thing “out” with Giovanni as soon as I got him alone at Les Halles. I was going to have to tell him that he had made a mistake but that we could still be friends. But I could not be certain, really, that it might not be I who was making a mistake, blindly misreading everything—and out of necessities, then, too shameful to be uttered. I was in a box for I could see that, no matter how I turned, the hour of confession was upon me and could scarcely be averted; unless, of course, I leaped out of the cab, which would be the most terrible confession of all.
    Now the cabdriver asked us where we wanted to go, for we had arrived at the choked boulevards and impassable sidestreets of Les Halles. Leeks, onions, cabbages, oranges, apples, potatoes, cauliflowers, stood gleaming in mounds all over, on the sidewalks, in the streets, before great metal sheds. The sheds were blocks long and within the sheds were piled more fruit, more vegetables, in some sheds, fish, in some sheds, cheese, in some whole animals, lately slaughtered. It scarcely seemed possible that all of this could ever be eaten. But in a few hours it would all be gone and trucks would be arriving from all corners of France—and