James Baldwin

 This passage is from James Baldwin, Another Country. ©1990 

by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart. Originally published in 

1962. Eric, an actor, and Vivaldo, a writer, are watching 

Vivaldo’s girlfriend, Ida, sing with a band that her brother, 

the Kid, once played with.

She was not announced; there was merely a brief 

huddle with the piano-player; and then she stepped 

up to the mike. The piano-player began the first few 

bars, but the crowd did not take the hint.

“Let’s try it again,” said Ida, in a loud, clear voice.

At this, heads turned to look at her; she looked 

calmly down on them. The only sign of her agitation 

was in her hands, which were tightly, restlessly 

clasped before her—she was wringing her hands, but 

she was not crying.

Somebody said, in a loud whisper, “Dig, man, 

that’s the Kid’s kid sister.”

There were beads of sweat on her forehead and on 

her nose, and one leg moved out, trembling, moved 

back. The piano-player began again, she grabbed the 

mike like a drowning woman, and abruptly closed 

her eyes:

You

Made me leave my happy home.

You took my love and now you’ve gone,

Since I fell for you.

She was not a singer yet. And if she were to be 

judged solely on the basis of her voice, low, rough-

textured, of no very great range, she never would be. 

Yet, she had something which made Eric look up and 

caused the room to fall silent; and Vivaldo stared at 

Ida as though he had never seen her before. What she 

lacked in vocal power and, at the moment, in skill, 

she compensated for by a quality so mysteriously and 

implacably egocentric that no one has ever been able 

to name it. This quality involves a sense of the self so 

profound and so powerful that it does not so much 

leap barriers as reduce them to atoms—while still 

leaving them standing, mightily, where they were; 

and this awful sense is private, unknowable, not to be 

articulated, having, literally, to do with something 

else; it transforms and lays waste and gives life, and 

kills.

She finished her first number and the applause 

was stunned and sporadic. She looked over at 

Vivaldo with a small, childish shrug. And this gesture 

somehow revealed to Eric how desperately one could 

love her, how desperately Vivaldo was in love with 

her. The drummer went into a down-on-the-

levee-type song, which turned out to be a song Eric 

had never heard before:

Betty told Dupree

She wanted a diamond ring.

And Dupree said, Betty,

I’ll get you most any old thing.

“My God,” muttered Vivaldo, “she’s been 

working.”

His tone unconsciously implied that he had not 

been, and held an unconscious resentment. And this 

threw Eric in on himself. Neither had he been 

working—for a long time; he had merely been 

keeping his hand in. He looked at Vivaldo’s white, 

passionate face and wondered if Vivaldo were now 

thinking that he had not been working because of

Ida: who had not, however, allowed him to distract 

her. There she was, up on the stand, and unless all the 

signs were false, and no matter how hard or long the 

road might be, she was on her way. She had started.

She and the musicians were beginning to enjoy 

each other and to egg each other on as they bounced 

through a ballad of cupidity, treachery, and death; 

and Ida had created in the room a new atmosphere 

and a new excitement. Even the heat seemed less 

intolerable. The musicians played for her as though 

she were an old friend come home and their pride in 

her restored their pride in themselves.

The number ended and Ida stepped off the stand, 

wet and triumphant, the applause crashing about her 

ears like foam. She came to the table, looking at 

Vivaldo with a smile and a small, questioning frown, 

and, standing, took a sip of her drink. They called her 

back. The drummer reached down and lifted her, 

bodily, onto the stand, and the applause continued.