Another Country

By the summer, Vivaldo and Ida are beginning to discover that their shared apartment is too cramped. Both continue to work menial jobs while pursuing their artistic ambitions, but the small apartment means that Vivaldo cannot write to his satisfaction nor can Ida practice singing without arousing the neighbors. Vivaldo suspects that Ida is having an affair with Ellis, but he is terrified to mention it. Occasionally, they go out with Eric and Cass, who have continued their own affair. Ida disapproves of the married woman’s affair while Vivaldo is happy she has embraced a more dangerous part of her personality. On their way to watch a movie with Eric and Cass, they bicker about the affair. Vivaldo suspects that Ida resents Eric for his relationship with Rufus. Vivaldo suggests that Ida has never forgiven him for Rufus’s death; she retorts that he still does not understand “how white people treat black boys and girls” (205). Her comments anger Vivaldo, but their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Eric and Cass. Eric announces that he has been cast in a film adaptation of Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ida and Vivaldo congratulate Eric, though Vivaldo feels “a mighty tug of jealousy and fear” (207). They enter the cinema and watch a film in which Eric has a small role.

After the movie, they go to a bar. After one drink and some hesitant small talk, Cass and Ida leave. Eric and Vivaldo continue to drink at Eric’s apartment. While they drink whisky, Vivaldo asks whether Eric is in love with Cass. He admits that he is not, though he wishes he were. They talk about love, sexuality, and Rufus. After explaining his struggles, Eric mentions that Yves is due to arrive in New York. He is unsure about his future with Yves even though they are very much in love. Eric’s affair with Cass, he admits, complicates his relationship with Yves. Soon, he will have to tell Cass about Yves’s arrival, and he is not sure how she will react. Vivaldo admits to similar doubts about his relationship with Ida, as he has no idea how to navigate their racial differences. He asks Eric about Rufus and shares a memory about their friend: when Rufus was still with Leona, he threatened to kill Vivaldo but afterward Vivaldo glimpsed a tenderness and a need for companionship in his friend’s eyes that still haunts him. Eric and Vivaldo sit in the dark room and drink together until dawn. When Vivaldo falls asleep on the bed, Eric undresses his friend and then lays beside him, thinking about Yves’s letter.

After leaving Eric and Vivaldo, Cass and Ida agree to have a drink together. As they share a cab to a bar, Cass senses that Ida needs to talk. Ida admits that she cannot see herself ever marrying Vivaldo. Not only is Vivaldo white, but he could not recognize her brother’s evident suffering even though they were friends. If Vivaldo could not understand pain that seems so obvious to her, Ida says, she does not know how he can ever really empathize with her. They talk about how white people will never truly understand the struggles of African Americans because they experience the world in such a different way. Ida suggests that her relationship with Vivaldo is as doomed to fail as Cass’s relationship with Eric. They arrive at the bar, still debating the complexities of the Black experience in America. Ida reveals that she is meeting Ellis at the bar, so they are led to Ellis’s table at the back of the room, where he sits with one white couple and one Black couple. They discuss Richard’s novel and Richard while Cass carefully examines the others at the table. Ida takes Ellis to dance. Cass watches and makes irreverent and barbed conversation with the others. She turns her attention back to the spectacle of the young, attractive Ida leading the older, married Ellis through an energetic dance. He cannot match her exuberance and Cass wonders whether Ida is somehow mocking or punishing him. After the dance, Cass makes her excuses and leaves. Ellis walks her to a taxi, and she rides home contemplating her sense of shame and her love for Richard and Eric. She wonders about her future and whether she could ever endure the reality of being a divorced woman. When she reaches her apartment, she finds Richard asleep on the sofa. After she checks on the sleeping children, he wakes up and they talk. He has “a great many questions” (232). As he interrogates her, she takes a defensive posture, and she remembers the early stages of their relationship. Richard knows about Ellis’s affair with Ida, which makes him suspicious about Cass’s behavior. He suspects that Cass is having an affair with Vivaldo as she has “always admired” (234) him more than she admires Richard. Cass denies sleeping with Vivaldo. As Richard begs Cass to return to him, she admits to her affair with Eric, claiming that he has “a sense of himself” (236) that Richard lacks. Richard becomes angry. He slaps Cass across the face twice and insults her before he collapses on the sofa, ashamed. Cass washes the blood from her face, thinks about her future, and sits in the kitchen, waiting for Richard “to rise and come to her” (237).