Summary
Chapter 2
Cass is at home on a rainy day when the phone rings. It is Ida Scott, Rufus’s sister, and she is looking for her brother. Cass says she saw him last night and Vivaldo is coming over later and she ought to as well. She tells Richard Ida is looking for Rufus and she has a strange feeling, but Richard scoffs that they just saw him and he is fine.
Vivaldo arrives and Cass asks if Rufus stayed with him last night. Vivaldo says no and explains how he was talking to Jane and Rufus went to the bathroom and never came back. Cass asks what he sees in Jane and Vivaldo says he wanted an older woman who “sort of knows the score” (96). Cass gets them all drinks.
Vivaldo says he will read Richard’s book as soon as he sobers up but he does not know when that will be. Richard tells him to tell him the truth about the book. Years ago Vivaldo brought his own manuscript to Richard and remembers that he asked for the same thing.
The bell rings and Rufus’s sister enters. She is pretty, “fairly tall, sturdy, very carefully dressed, and somewhat darker than Rufus,” with “large, intelligent, wary” eyes (98). Everyone says hello and when Cass says they have not seen Rufus since last night Ida looks worried. She says she does not want to fuss but he is the only brother she has and she wants to know he is okay. Cass assures her he is fine, that when something is wrong “he just wants to go and hide until it's over. He licks his wounds” (100).
Vivaldo has nothing else to help and feels useless. The room is silent and hostility emanates from Ida. Richard asks if she has been to the police and she says yes in a disgusted tone, but they said “colored men” run away from their family all the time and she doubts they will help. Richard complains that that isn’t fair because they will look for him like any other citizen. Ida pointedly asks how he would know.
Vivaldo tells her he loves Rufus and wants to find him and she suggests wearily that he can help her look at a few places in the Village. She moans that she knows her brother and he does not do things like this; he always comes by the house and it has been too long. She adds that they all know what happened with “that damn crazy little cracker bitch he got hung up with” (102).
Cass and Richard try to comfort her and Cass thinks it seems like Ida is enjoying this. Cass is annoyed but still thinks it is a good thing that Ida is preparing herself for the worst.
They settle in for a bit, deciding to give Rufus some time to show up. Vivaldo cannot stop staring at Ida, who is “terribly attractive when she grinned” like a “mischievous street boy” who still had “a marvelously feminine mockery” (103).
The next day there is a cold sun. Cass walks during the morning and when she comes home Richard tells her they found Rufus’s body. Vivaldo had called to tell them and was planning to go to Ida. Cass sighs that there was nothing they could have done; Rufus wanted to die. The two argue over Rufus, with Cass saying she liked him and Richard condemning him for his treatment of Leona. They are not acrimonious, though, and Cass thinks of how much she loves her husband and how everything about him is “familiar, confining, unutterably dear” (109).
Cass and Vivaldo attend the funeral Saturday while Richard stays with the children. It is uptown and in the cab ride Vivaldo ruminates on how his family thinks he is a bum and sometimes, like today, he agrees. He reflects on where he grew up and what a hard place it was, and how the young men burned out or died or were on drugs. He tells a story about how the group of boys he spent time with picked up a queer boy and beat him and abused him, and cannot believe he is the same person.
He also speaks of what it was like to go up to Rufus’s house, where his family stared at Vivaldo like he was the one who did it and all Vivaldo wanted to do was hold Ida and console her and let her know he didn’t do anything. Cass explains that while these things can happen to both white and Black people, this happened because Rufus was Black.
The cab continues up to Harlem and Cass begins to stress that she does not have a hat and will have to quickly buy one. She jumps out of the cab and tells Vivaldo she will meet him there. As she hurries down the street she feels a little afraid, “afraid of these people, these streets, the chapel to which she must return” (117). At a shop she decides just to get a scarf.
She joins Vivaldo at the funeral. A reverend speaks of what a tough time Rufus had in life, but the important thing was that he was trying, and not to hold his suicide against him. There is singing and a prayer, and it is over. Ida thanks them through tears for coming and says she will never forget it.
On the cab home, Vivaldo ponders what this means and Cass tells him she can tell he likes Ida. She smiles that Vivaldo does not know very much about women and he smiles too, saying he wants something real to happen. He asks if she knows about men. Cass’s depression that she has been battling returns. The city is cold and pitiless and for a moment she hates it. Everything feels “pale and so profitless: why did she feel so cold, as if nothing and no one could ever warm her again?” (126). She is envious of Vivaldo’s youth and Ida.
Chapter 3
Vivaldo is working on his novel but is faltering—he feels that he does not know his characters and that they are simply waiting for him to do something with them.
It has been a few weeks and he is finally seeing Ida. Richard’s novel is about to be published and Vivaldo, to his surprise, did not find it very remarkable, though he would never say that.
Vivaldo wonders if he has ever really been present in his own life, and wonders what he knows about his own family. He thinks of how he paid for sex uptown often, choosing Black girls and choosing that neighborhood because he liked the danger and how real and open it was. He felt “more alive in Harlem. For he had moved in a haze of rage and self-congratulation and sexual excitement, with danger, like a promise, waiting for him everywhere” (132). But now he knows he was “just a poor white boy in trouble and it was not in the least original of him to come running to the n***ers” (133). If he is honest with himself, he has to admit he had feared and hated Rufus because he was Black.
His thoughts then flicker to when he first met Ida years ago when she was 14. Rufus was taking his little sister out and invited Vivaldo to come. He met Rufus’s mother, who was kind and serious, and could not help but notice how much Ida admired her big brother. This was the only time he’d seen Ida before the other day, for Rufus never invited him home again. He wonders how Ida remembers that day.
As he sits there with his novel, the characters within demanding he focus on them, he finds himself pleading to God for Ida to love him.
When he meets up with her, she is in a good mood and proclaims what a lovely day it is. Indeed, there is a brisk wind and such energy and vibrancy in the city and its people. Ida seems like she has finally come out of mourning. She has a regal beauty that people cannot help but stare at as she moves among them, though she is just a waitress in a chain restaurant on the edge of the Village. She is friendly to her customers but there is always an edge to her voice.
As she walks beside him, Vivaldo thinks of how beautiful she is and how proud he is to be with her, though eyes that glance upon him snigger as if they know why he is with her, and some look at him to invite “a wet complicity” (144). Some of the women look at her as if she were a thief. Yet Ida looks at none of them, as if “she felt them to be beneath her” (144). She tells him how grateful she is to him for the last few weeks, and he admits he sometimes felt like a pest. This charms her and she says he is cute.
They arrive at Cass and Richard’s apartment for a lunch celebrating the publication of the novel, but Vivaldo spontaneously tells Ida it is a celebration of them having a real date together. He says he wants to be with her more than anything in the world, and she seems pleased.
Cass opens the door and is flustered from her children, but laughs at how publishing a book seems to just be about having drinks and dinner with people she does not want to have drinks and dinner with. Ida and Vivaldo admire the new apartment, which Cass and Richard had moved into not long ago.
Cass tells them there are about five people coming, one of them being a TV producer named Steve Ellis. Ida is impressed, as she knows who that is. There will also be Richard’s editor, a writer Cass can’t remember, and their wives. She hands them the book, The Strangled Man. A novel of murder by Richard Silenski. Vivaldo compliments it and Ida says it will be him soon. Cass also hands them a newspaper and tells Vivaldo that Eric is coming home soon; there is an announcement saying Eric Jones has been signed for a drama opening in November. Vivaldo tells Ida he was a friend of all of theirs, including Rufus, and she will like him.
Richard comes down and is happy and boyish, and is clearly pleased when Vivaldo mentions the TV producer, even though he accuses Vivaldo of being a snob and not liking TV. They all toast. Ida accompanies Cass into the kitchen and Vivaldo stays with Richard, who looks at him knowingly and says Vivaldo has always had a thing for Black girls. Vivaldo replies he has never been with one before and Richard suggests Ida is just the next in “your long line of waifs and starts and unfortunates” (156). Vivaldo is a little confused and asks Richard if he is trying to bug him, but Richard says he is trying to encourage him to get his novel going and figure out what he wants to do in life.
Lunch is served and they are all a little drunk. Afterward Ida and Vivaldo dance to Billie Holiday and he is overcome with desire for her.
Loring Montgomery, Richard’s editor, arrives first, along with Richard’s agent and a younger woman named Barbara Wales. Not long after Steve Ellis and his wife arrive. When he sees Ida he is gregarious and flirtatious, proclaiming she must be an actress. She laughs and says no and she is a waitress. He talks to Vivaldo briefly, and states his opinion that Brooklyn as a source for a novel, which is what Vivaldo is writing on, has been done. Vivaldo dislikes him immensely, and feels that Ellis treated Ida without respect, but then wonders if that is the way Ellis treats everyone. Ellis bothers him because he is famous and powerful and not much older than Vivaldo. He wonders what he would have to do to achieve “a comparable eminence” (164).
The party continues and Vivaldo, irritated, suggests to Ida that they leave. She is confused and says he hasn’t talked to Miss Wales, and before he can stop himself, he asks if there is someone she wants to talk to. She realizes he meant something by this and coldly tells him maybe she’ll start to act like what he thinks she is. She walks over to Ellis and flirts with him, and Vivaldo realizes in horror that she is right—he was demeaning her when he has no say in who she talks to.
Cass introduces him to a young novelist named Sydney Ingram, and he is happy to meet the boy since he wanted to read his book, but he is upset about Ida. He notices she leaves the party and he finds her in the bathroom, where she is sitting sadly. She asks why he had to ruin everything and he implores her to understand he was just jealous and meant nothing by his comment. They make up and embrace, deciding to go home.
In bed later Vivaldo watches Ida sleep, feeling like the two of them are very far from each other. He wonders about her past lovers and if they were white or Black; it should not matter but it does. When she wakes, he tells her he loves her and has never felt this way before. She reciprocates the sentiment. When asked, he admits he has had sex with Black girls before but only prostitutes. She has nothing to say about this. They have passionate sex again, and she admits she has never had an orgasm like that before. They sleep.
Analysis
In this section, Rufus’s friends and family learn of his death, and Baldwin spends the rest of the novel exploring those characters’ psyches, in particular their interpretation of why Rufus killed himself and what the nature of their own relationship to him was.
First, there is Vivaldo, Rufus’s closest friend. Vivaldo is white and progressive, a novelist living the bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. He truly loved Rufus, accepted him for who he was, and earnestly tried to understand Rufus’s experience as a Black man. When he meets Ida, Rufus’s sister, he is immediately taken by her and the two soon begin a relationship, which is, obviously, interracial. As sensitive as Vivaldo is, though, he is often not capable of fully interrogating the process of his identity formation and his own views on race or homosexuality. He confesses to Cass that as a boy he and friends beat up and abused a young queer boy and that he still wonders “if I’m the same person who did those things—so long ago” (112). He has trouble with his novel’s characters, and it seems like “He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel…They were waiting for him to find the key, press the nerve, tell the truth” (127), and muses over “whether or not he had ever been present at his life” (128). He does know his family is “ashamed of him” (130) and that he has “contempt” (129) for most women. The women he had sex with before his relationship with Ida were primarily prostitutes, and primarily Black women up in Harlem. He knows Harlem has a pull for him, that “He had felt more alive in Harlem, for he had moved in a blaze of rage and self-congratulation and sexual excitement, with danger, like a promise, waiting for him everywhere” (132), and admits “He was just a poor white boy in trouble and it as not in the least original of him to come running to the ni**ers” (133). This is where his inward probing stops, though, and he continues to have trouble with his novel and to engage in stereotyping and exoticizing for most of the rest of Another Country.
Cass and Richard are a picture-perfect, middle-class white couple: Cass the free-thinking, smart, and dedicated mother and wife, and Richard, the writer about to break into literary stardom. They are gregarious and social, and cultivate a circle of young, talented people as well as influential literary and media types. Richard, however, is not as racially progressive or as feminist as he might like to think himself. When Ida says that the cops will not care about finding Rufus, Richard reacts by saying hotly, “is that fair? I mean, hell, I’m sure they’ll look for him just like they look for any other citizen of this country” (101), completely disregarding the tumultuous relationship between Black people and the police. After he finds out Rufus died, he says “I couldn’t help feeling, anyway, that one of the reasons all of you made such a kind of—fuss—over him was partly just because he was colored. Which is a hell of a reason to love anybody. I just had to look on him as another guy” (107). Richard paints himself as colorblind, fair and balanced in his assessment of people, but what he really is is a limousine liberal—someone who talks the talk about race but still holds deep-seated, problematic opinions that they feel no need to analyze or alter. That also extends to his views on women, as he tells Cass that he doesn’t believe “all that female intuition shit. It’s something women have dreamed up” and that she’s “got a bad case of penis envy” (108). And combining his prejudice towards women and Black people, he sneers at Vivaldo that “it’s logical, somehow, that you should be trying to make it with a colored girl now—you certainly scraped the bottom of the white barrel” (156). Richard views women, especially Black women, as mere sexual objects, and privileges white women over Black women; his disrespect to both Ida and Vivaldo is clearly rooted in racism and misogyny.
Cass is more multifaceted than Richard. While she is privy to problematic thoughts and has a great deal of privilege, which Ida later calls out, she is far more intuitive, insightful, and empathetic than her husband. She tells Vivaldo point-blank about the disparities in living conditions between Harlem and other places in the city, saying “what happens up here… happens because they are colored. And that makes a difference” (113-14). She realizes she needs to wear a hat or a scarf to the funeral as to not be disrespectful. Yet while in Harlem she does realize “she was mysteriously afraid: afraid of these people, these streets, the chapel to which she must return” (117), and does not acknowledge that fear is due to racism and classism.
Ida is Rufus’s younger sister, and similar to him in her often blazing hatred of whites—Michael Lynch notes that Rufus’s “desire for vengeance is passed to her.” This often extends to Richard, Cass, Vivaldo, and Eric (whom we do not meet yet): “Ida blames Vivaldo for being white, but more specifically and more justifiably for not seeing or caring that Rufus was destroying himself. She resents Cass for offering the illusion of friendship with Rufus while remaining comfortably protected from the reality of poverty and racial hatred which injure him so deeply. Ida’s anger toward Eric, whose affair with Rufus ended years ago, suggests that she holds him responsible also and feels that he could have done more to reach her brother.” She does not want to consider her own role in his death, asking herself if she should have recognized his suffering and done something about it; she will not begin to do this until the very end of the novel.
