If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

  “Okay,” is all he says.

  I seem to see his high cheekbones for the first time, and perhaps this is really true, he has lost so much weight. He looks straight at me, into me. His eyes are enormous, deep and dark. I am both relieved and frightened. He has moved—not away from me: but he has moved. He is standing in a place where I am not.

  And he asks me, staring at me with those charged, enormous eyes,

  “You all right?”

  “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “The baby all right?”

  “Yes. The baby’s fine.”

  He grins. It is, somehow, a shock. I will always see the space where the missing tooth has been.

  “Well. I’m all right, too. Don’t you worry. I’m coming home. I’m coming home, to you. I want you in my arms. I want your arms around me. I’ve got to hold our baby in my arms. It’s got to be. You keep the faith.”

  He grins again, and everything inside me moves. Oh, love. Love.

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll be home.”

  He grins again, and stands, and salutes me. He looks at me, hard, with a look I have never seen on any face before. He touches himself, briefly, he bends to kiss the glass, I kiss the glass.

  Now, Fonny knows why he is here—why he is where he is; now, he dares to look around him. He is not here for anything he has done. He has always known that, but now he knows it with a difference. At meals, in the showers, up and down the stairs, in the evening, just before everyone is locked in again, he looks at the others, he listens: what have they done? Not much. To do much is to have the power to place these people where they are, and keep them where they are. These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned. To do much is to have the power and the necessity to dictate to the damned. But that, thinks Fonny, works both ways. You’re in or you’re out. 0kay. I see. Motherfuckers. You won’t hang me.

  I bring him books, and he reads. We manage to get him paper, and he sketches. Now that he knows where he is, he begins to talk to the men, making himself, so to speak, at home. He knows that anything may happen to him here. But, since he knows it, he can no longer turn his back: he has to face it, even taunt it, play with it, dare.

  He is placed in solitary for refusing to be raped. He loses a tooth, again, and almost loses an eye. Something hardens in him, something changes forever, his tears freeze in his belly. But he has leaped from the promontory of despair. He is fighting for his life. He sees his baby’s face before him, he has an appointment he must keep, and he will be here, he swears it, sitting in the shit, sweating and stinking, when the baby gets here.

  Hayward arranges the possibility of bail for Fonny. But it is high. And here comes the summer: time.

  On a day that I will never forget, Pedrocito drove me home from the Spanish restaurant, and, heavy, heavy, heavy, I got to my chair and I sat down.

  The baby was restless, and I was scared. It was almost time. I was so tired, I almost wanted to die. For a long time, because he was in solitary, I had not been able to see Fonny. I had seen him on this day. He was so skinny; he was so bruised: I almost cried out. To whom, where? I saw this question in Fonny’s enormous, slanted black eyes—eyes that burned, now, like the eyes of a prophet. Yet, when he grinned, I saw, all over again, my lover, as though for the first time.

  “We got to get some meat on your bones,” I said. “Lord, have mercy.”

  “Speak up. He can’t hear you.” But he said it with a smile.

  “We almost got the money to bail you out.”

  “I figured you would.”

  We sat, and we just looked at each other. We were making love to each other through all that glass and stone and steel.

  “Listen, I’ll soon be out. I’m coming home because I’m glad I came, can you dig that?”

  I watched his eyes.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Now. I’m an artisan,” he said. “Like a cat who makes—tables. I don’t like the word artist. Maybe I never did. I sure the fuck don’t know what it means. I’m a cat who works from his balls, with his hand. I know what it’s about now. I think I really do. Even if I go under. But I don’t think I will. Now.”

  He is very far from me. He is with me, but he is very far away. And now he always will be.

  “Where you lead me,” I said, “I’ll follow.”

  He laughed. “Baby. Baby. Baby. I love you. And I’m going to build us a table and a whole lot of folks going to be eating off it for a long, long time to come.”

  From my chair, I looked out my window, over these dreadful streets.

  The baby asked,

  Is there not one righteous among them?

  And kicked, but with a tremendous difference, and I knew that my time was almost on me. I remember that I looked at my watch: it was twenty to eight. I was alone, but I knew that someone, soon, would be coming through the door. The baby kicked again, and I caught my breath, and I almost cried, and the phone rang.

  I crossed the room, heavy, heavy, heavy, and I picked it up.

  “Hello—?”

  “Hello—Tish? This is Adrienne.”

  “How are you, Adrienne?”

  “Tish—have you seen my father? Is Frank there?”

  Her voice almost knocked me down. I had never heard such terror.

  “No. Why?”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Why—I haven’t seen him. I know he’s seen Joseph. But I haven’t seen him.”

  Adrienne was weeping. It sounded horrible over the phone.

  “Adrienne! What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

  And I remember that at that moment everything stood still. The sun didn’t move and the earth didn’t move, the sky stared down, waiting, and I put my hand on my heart to make it start beating again.

  “Adrienne! Adrienne!”

  “Tish—my Daddy was fired from his job, two days ago—they said he was stealing, and they threatened to put him in jail—and he was all upset, because of Fonny and all, and he was drunk when he came home and he cursed everybody out and then he went out the door and ain’t nobody seen him since—Tish—don’t you know where my father is?”

  “Adrienne, baby, I don’t. I swear to God, I don’t. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Tish, I know you don’t like me——”

  “Adrienne, you and me, we had a little fight, but that’s all right. That’s normal. That don’t mean I don’t like you. I would surely never do anything to hurt you. You’re Fonny’s sister. And if I love him, I got to love you. Adrienne—?”

  “If you see him—will you call me?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Please. Please. Please. I’m scared,” said Adrienne, in a low, different altogether tone of voice, and she hung up.

  I put down the phone and the key turned in the lock and Mama came in.

  “Tish, what’s the matter with you?”

  I got back to my chair and I sat down in it.

  “That was Adrienne. She’s looking for Frank. She said that he was fired from his job, and that he was real upset. And Adrienne—that poor child sounds like she’s gone to pieces. Mama”—and we stared at each other; my mother’s face was as still as the sky—“has Daddy seen him?”

  “I don’t know. But Frank ain’t been by here.”

  She put her bag down on top of the TV set and came over and put her hand on my brow.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Tired. Funny.”

  “You want me to get you a little brandy?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mama. That might be a good idea. It might help to settle my stomach.”

  She went into the kitchen and came back with the brandy and put it in my hand.

  “Your stomach upset?”

  “A little. It’ll go away.”

  I sipped the brandy, and I watched the sky. She watched me for a moment, then she went away again. I watched the sky. It was as though it had something to say to me. I w
as in some strange place, alone. Everything was still. Even the baby was still.

  Sharon came back.

  “You see Fonny today?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how was he?”

  “He’s beautiful. They beat him up, but they didn’t beat him—if you see what I mean. He’s beautiful.”

  But I was so tired, I remember that I could hardly speak. Something was about to happen to me. That was what I felt, sitting in that chair, watching the sky—and I couldn’t move. All I could do was wait.

  Until my change comes.

  “I think Ernestine’s got the rest of the money,” Sharon said, and smiled. “From her actress.”

  Before I could say anything, the doorbell rang, and Sharon went to the door. Something in her voice, at the door, made me stand straight up and I dropped the brandy glass on the floor. I still remember Sharon’s face, she was standing behind my father, and I remember my father’s face.

  Frank had been found, he told us, way, way, way up the river, in the woods, sitting in his car, with the doors locked, and the motor running.

  I sat down in my chair.

  “Does Fonny know?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet. He won’t know till morning.”

  “I’ve got to tell him.”

  “You can’t get there till morning, daughter.”

  Joseph sat down.

  Sharon asked me, sharply, “How you feeling, Tish?”

  I opened my mouth to say—I don’t know what. When I opened my mouth, I couldn’t catch my breath. Everything disappeared, except my mother’s eyes. An incredible intelligence charged the air between us. Then, all I could see was Fonny. And then I screamed, and my time had come.

  Fonny is working on the wood, on the stone, whistling, smiling. And, from far away, but coming nearer, the baby cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries, cries like it means to wake the dead.

  [Columbus Day] Oct. 12, 1973

  St. Paul de Vence

  JAMES BALDWIN

  James Baldwin was born in 1924. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986. He died in 1987.

  ALSO BY JAMES BALDWIN

  Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  Giovanni’s Room (1956)

  Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

  Another Country (1962)

  The Fire Next Time (1963)

  Nothing Personal (with Richard Avedon) (1964)

  Blues for Mister Charlie (1964)

  Going to Meet the Man (1965)

  The Amen Corner (1968)

  Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968)

  One Day When I Was Lost (1972)

  No Name in the Street (1972)

  If Beale Street Could Talk (1973)

  The Devil Finds Work (1976)

  Little Man, Little Man (with Yoran Cazac) (1976)

  Just Above My Head (1979)

  The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985)

  Jimmy’s Blues (1985)

  The Price of the Ticket (1985)

  ALSO BY JAMES BALDWIN

  THE AMEN CORNER

  For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety. But when her estranged husband, Luke, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path. The Amen Corner is an uplifting, sorrowful, and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater.

  Drama

  ANOTHER COUNTRY

  Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions sexual, racial, political, artistic that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at their most elemental and sublime.

  Fiction/Literature

  BLUES FOR MISTER CHARLIE

  In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a “boy” like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. In Blues for Mister Charlie, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion.

  Fiction/Literature

  THE DEVIL FINDS WORK

  Baldwin’s personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America’s self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist. Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness.

  African American Studies

  THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION

  The Cross of Redemption is a revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form. In The Cross of Redemption we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society. Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemption is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity.

  Essays/African American Studies

  THE FIRE NEXT TIME

  A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document.

  Social Science/African American Studies

  GIOVANNI’S ROOM

  Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

  Fiction/Literature

  GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

  Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin’s first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.

  Fiction/Literature

  GOING TO MEET THE MAN

  “There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.” The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son fo
r his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.

  Fiction/Literature

  IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

  Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions affection, despair, and hope.

  Fiction/Literature

  NO NAME IN THE STREET

  A searing memoir and an extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies, No Name in the Street is James Baldwin’s powerful commentary on the political and social agonies of America’s contemporary history. The prophecies of The Fire Next Time have been tragically realized through assassinations, urban riots, and increased racial polarization and the hope for justice seems more elusive than ever. Through it all, Baldwin’s uncompromising vision and his fierce disavowal of despair are ever present in this eloquent and personal testament to his times.

  Nonfiction

  NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME

  Nobody Knows My Name is a collection of illuminating, deeply felt essays on topics ranging from race relations in the United States—including a passionate attack on William Faulkner for his ambivalent views about the segregated South to the role of the writer in society, with personal accounts of such writers as Richard Wright and Norman Mailer.

  Literature/African American Studies

  TELL ME HOW LONG THE TRAIN’S BEEN GONE

  In this magnificently passionate, angry, and tender novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters, a man struggling to become himself even as he juggles multiple identities as black man, bisexual, and artist on the mercilessly floodlit stage of American public life. At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo’s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo’s loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war.