Another Country

Rufus Scott is a broke African American jazz musician who lives in the Greenwich Village district of New York City in the 1950s. After sleeping in a cinema during the day, he wanders through the streets. He is too embarrassed about his poor, disheveled appearance to enter any diner or restaurant. In contrast, he remembers when he was a well-known, respected, and successful drummer.

Rufus remembers a gig seven months before. After the concert, he meets a young white girl from the South named Leona. They go to an afterparty together where Leona is the only white person. As they drink and talk, Rufus begins to sense that he should “leave this poor little girl alone” (18). When he tries to kiss Leona, she begins to cry and he feels an unexpected “tenderness” (19) toward her as she clings desperately to him. They begin to undress one another on the balcony, ignoring the other guests. She cries while they have sex, and afterward he wants to hear her sad story about her abusive ex-husband and the child she is no longer allowed to see. Leona admits that she likes Rufus and asks him not to hurt her.

Rufus and Leona spend the following day together. He introduces her to his friend, a young white novelist named Vivaldo, who is shocked to find Leona in Rufus’s apartment. As Rufus spends more time with Leona, he realizes how differently people look at him when he is with her. They are not used to seeing an African American man with a white woman. His landlord, his neighbors, and even his family all treat Leona with some form of contempt. Rufus resents “all of them” (25), feeling their eyes on him when he is in a park with Leona and Vivaldo. The feeling reminds him of an evening when he went out with Vivaldo and Vivaldo’s girlfriend, Jane, whose loud, antagonistic comments about race provoked a bar fight in which Rufus and Vivaldo were badly beaten. Vivaldo was so hurt that he needed to go to the hospital; Rufus told Jane to take Vivaldo, as he knew that he would be in trouble if he brought an injured white man to the emergency room. Rufus has depended on Vivaldo since that night, just as he has resented Jane. In the park, they meet friends including a woman named Cass. If they are together, Rufus tells Leona, then she must “be good” (32) to him. She agrees to try.

In his destitute present, Rufus continues to wander the streets and reflect on the past months. A well-dressed white man steps out of a bar and propositions Rufus, who has “consented to the bleakly physical exchange” (32) before. He drinks a beer and eats a sandwich, paid for by the man. After they leave the bar, Rufus pleads with the man not to make him “go through with this” (34). Rufus leaves the man and remembers a friend named Eric with whom he once shared a homosexual relationship before Eric fled to Paris. Like Leona, Eric loved Rufus and now Rufus remembers only the affection he felt from Eric rather than “their battles and the unspeakable physical awkwardness” (35) between them. Rufus remembers how badly he treated both Eric and Leona and he feels ashamed.

Rufus walks to Vivaldo’s apartment. Vivaldo is happy to see Rufus, whose sudden disappearance left many people worried. He mentions that Rufus’s sister Ida has been searching for him, as have his friends Cass and Richard. Rufus admits to Vivaldo that he has spent most of the last month “wandering the streets” (36), prostituting himself to get by. Rufus could not bring himself to face his friends after he treated Leona so badly. He agrees to stay with Vivaldo and to contact his family in the morning. Rufus remembers how the issue of race became a frequent point of contention in his relationship with Leona, causing them to argue constantly. He was physically abusive toward her, and he wanted to “humiliate her” (40), to the point where he raped Leona, which he now regrets. Rufus breaks down in tears in Vivaldo‘s apartment.

Vivaldo once found Leona weeping in her bathroom, complaining that Rufus had beaten her “for nothing“ (41) after falsely accusing her of sleeping with other men. Vivaldo warned Rufus about his behavior, but Rufus refused to listen, accusing Vivaldo of trying to steal Leona away from him. As Vivaldo took her away, Leona explained that “something’s got all twisted up” (43) in Rufus’s mind. She loved him even though he beat her. The end of the relationship helped Vivaldo understand the ubiquitous and violent reality of racism in New York. That night, Rufus threatened Vivaldo with a knife. Vivaldo calmed his friend and then they talked about Rufus’s problems; Rufus admitted that he did not know why he was so angry.

In a pizzeria, Vivaldo buys Rufus a meal, and they sit together in silence. Rufus explains how Leona was found wandering the streets after suffering from a mental breakdown. After she was taken to the hospital, he was not allowed to see her or help her to leave. Instead, her family took her back to the South. Vivaldo is tired of the drama of Rufus’s life, but he tries to be supportive of his friend. After the pizzeria, they go to a crowded bar together. Rufus struggles to remember the names of old acquaintances. They see Cass, who complains that she is “tired” (52) of her husband Richard, even though they are celebrating because he has just sold his novel. Rufus and Vivaldo drink with Cass and Richard. When Vivaldo was younger, Richard was his high school English teacher. Now, he wishes he were as successful a writer as Richard but does not reveal his envy to his friends. Meanwhile, Rufus struggles with his painful memories of Leona. Cass comforts him and then leaves with Richard. Jane arrives and talks to Vivaldo; Rufus excuses himself from the tale and leaves the bar, planning to use $5 given to him by Cass to get a room for the night. As Rufus walks through the city streets, he thinks about Eric, Leona, and his regrets. He decides to take the subway but deliberately misses his stop, riding all the way to the George Washington Bridge. He walks out on to the bridge, thinking about how “the pain would never stop” (60). Rufus throws himself off the bridge and dies by suicide.