Summary
Chapter 3
Cass asks to buy Vivaldo a drink after his work at the bookshop. She is pensive, remembering what it was like to be young. She confesses things are not good with Richard and she does not know what will become of them. Vivaldo asks if this is just a bump in the road, but she says she does not know. She wishes she could just get drunk and sleep with someone random who would make her feel like a woman again.
Vivaldo concentrates on what she is saying because it takes his thoughts away from Ida and Ellis. He is sick with his own fears, knowing her determination to become a singer might lead her to do anything.
Cass says Richard treats her like a housekeeper and hasn’t touched her in a long time. Perhaps he is right when he says she is a snob and a man-killer. They cannot talk anymore and it is deeply unsettling. She admits Richard is jealous of Vivaldo, as he will be a great writer and Richard cannot be.
Vivaldo sighs that he thinks Ida is sleeping with Ellis, and Cass laughs at how pitiful the two of them are. Vivaldo thinks of the quarrel he had when he and Ida first moved in with each other. It was about bringing Ida to meet his family. He was not excited to visit his family in the first place and listen to their quotidian chatter, but he asked Ida if she wanted to come. She said no, and that she was not interested in “educating” them. The fight escalated and she accused him of not wanting to bring his Black whore of a girlfriend home to his mother. Vivaldo was weary and said they should stop fighting, especially as they were already not on the best of terms with the landlord and neighbor, but Ida didn’t care, and smashed glasses. Vivaldo could only laugh, which broke the tension.
Cass admits to Vivaldo that she might be ready to commit adultery. He tells her not to do anything silly. She decides to see a movie and they bid goodbye. After the movie, she calls Eric’s number and says he was probably expecting this call. After a beat, he says yes. She asks to come over and he agrees. When they are in front of each other, they are both a little nervous and talk about his play while they have a drink. She talks about the lack of a future with Richard and he tells her gently he knows something is going on with them, but he also knows there is something between the two of them and he is not sure what it is but he will go with it. He tells her about Yves and lets her know this is short-term. She understands. The two of them make love, realizing “they were both oddly equal: perhaps each could teach the other, concerning love, what neither now knew” (291). Afterward, both say they feel wonderful, and Cass feels like a weight has been lifted. They agree to meet again.
Vivaldo calls the restaurant where Ida works and learns she called in sick. She does not answer at home either, and he begins to feel ill. He goes to a workingman’s bar, surrounding himself with the sorts of people he grew up with. His thoughts race in his head, and he tells himself to hell with Ida. How is it she loves him and he loves her if they are so locked away from each other? He wishes he had a male friend he could talk to. He considers Eric, but they are not close enough, and he misses Rufus.
On the street, he runs into Jane, who is with an “uptown, seersucker type” (297) named Dick Lincoln. She is drunk and obnoxious as always, and needles Vivaldo for thinking he is progressive for dating a Black girl. People on the street stop and stare, and he decides to leave before she starts a race riot.
As he hurries away, he wishes he were a real writer who would go home and feverishly apply himself to his work, but he cannot stop obsessing over Ida. He thinks about Richard and Cass, and realizes he envied Richard for getting with a girl above his station (he too is working class). It surprises him to also realize that even though Richard and Cass are older, they are just as confused and miserable as he and his young friends. A sense of terror creeps over him, as he senses he is in some sort of region “where there were no definitions of any kind, neither of color, nor of male and female. There was only the leap and the rending and the terror and the surrender” (302). All people and himself seem to be a mystery, perishing in isolation or running amok in mobs.
At Benno’s, he runs into a poet he knows, Lorenzo, and his girl, Belle, a “refugee from the Texas backwater” (303), and another friend, Harold. Lorenzo invites him to join him and they decide to get high. Vivaldi buys them beer and then they leave for Harold’s. Vivaldo tries to forget Ida by chatting with the trio, but he cannot stop wishing Ida would just love him for who he is.
Harold prepares the weed and they go up to the roof. Vivaldo starts to feel wonderful “in a strange, untrustworthy way. He was terribly aware of his body” (311). He wonders why he is so harsh about other people but knows that he won’t be any closer to Harold and the others when they are no longer high. He tells them dreamily his girl is a singer, and Belle says she has seen her and she is very beautiful.
Vivaldo wonders what the songs Ida sings to herself really mean, as sometimes she “often sang them in order to flaunt before him privacies which he could never hope to penetrate and to convey accusations which he could never hope to decipher, much less deny” (313).
Harold hits on him while they are high, and Vivaldo gently tells him his time with boys was a long time ago and he is with girls now. They lie together platonically, which comforts both of them.
Chapter 4
It is the height of summer, and it is hot and loud and “a city without oases, run entirely, insofar, at least as human perception could tell, for money” (316). Vivaldo is still writing his novel, sitting in his own sweat as he works on something he barely knows anymore. The apartment situation with Ida is untenable; it is too small, they are working too hard to make it before being stuck in the quicksand. They try keeping the door open but Ida’s Blackness is a lure, and once they see a young boy lurking in the hallway masturbating to her, they decide to keep the door closed. It is hard for him to work when she is there and when she is gone he is obsessing over her. She never invites him out to the clubs anymore. She did once, and everyone looked at him like they could not understand why he was there—or maybe that was his own paranoia. But it was clear the others “pulled rank on him, they closed ranks against him” (320).
There are too many things they cannot talk about. Vivaldo cannot even mention the name “Steve Ellis” anymore. He knows that Ellis is helping her, but he will not talk about it for fear of her rage. They have been visiting Eric and Cass a lot these days, and Vivaldo is surprised at how derisive she is of Cass, declaring that she has jeopardized everything. Vivaldo says what Cass does is none of their business, but Ida mocks her for sleeping with a poor, white gay man. Vivaldo corrects her and says Eric is from money, but Ida does not care. Rufus is there in the penumbras of their conversation, and Vivaldo susses out that she does not like Eric because she knows he and Rufus had sex once. She says that she knows how white people treat Black boys and girls, and Vivaldo is offended asking if she really thinks that after all the time they’ve been together. She says their being together doesn’t change the world, and when he replies that it does for him, she says he can say that because he is white. Vivaldo implores her to understand that he loves her and not to try and kill him, and she says she is not but she asks how he can love someone he knows nothing about. He says he wants to know her, but they are interrupted when they have to greet Cass and Eric.
They are planning to see a movie in which Eric has a small role, and Cass urges Eric to tell them the news—that he is going to be in a movie version of Dostoyevsky's Possessed. They are suitably impressed and Vivaldo tells him he is going to be a star. When they see him in the movie, they are struck by something in his presence; “it was a face which suggested, resonantly, in the depths, the truth about our natures” (330).
After the film they compliment Eric, and he is humble and bashful. The four of them grab a drink at Benno’s, all with much on their minds. After the one drink, Ida and Cass take a taxi home while Eric and Vivaldo decide to get one more drink. They plan to go to Eric’s house, and along the way Vivaldo realizes how much Eric has changed—he is frank and funny, kind and honest about who he is.
They talk about many things—how Cass might be in love with Eric but he is not in love with her; how loving Rufus made Eric feel crazy; how Eric has been working to accept the truth about himself and the life he wants; about how Vivaldo is in love with Ida and it is causing him extreme anguish; how Eric is in love with Yves and he is on his way to New York. Vivaldo peppers Eric with questions, such as how it is possible to live if you can’t love, but how can you live if you do? Eric sighs and admits that if it weren’t for Rufus he would not have gone away and not have faced himself and then been able to be with Yves.
Vivaldo shares something he had never shared with anyone before, which is that one night near the end of Rufus’s life he stayed with Rufus as if almost at a vigil, and they laid together but Vivaldo was afraid to take Rufus in his arms even though he seemed to want it, and perhaps if he had he could have saved him.
The men take a last drink and toast to the dawn. Eric feels a sense of comradeship with this other man, as if they were soldiers resting before the next battle.
Ida and Cass are in the cab together. Ida is actually being frank with Cass, which surprises her, as Cass thought Ida did not like her. Ida says she is not going home because she has to meet other people, and invites Cass along. Their talk turns to Vivaldo, and Ida says she loves him but it is hard because he is white, and he and Cass will never understand what it means to be Black. Cass says she deserves some credit for not being like the rest of them because she walked out and left the world of tradition and rigidity behind, but Ida points out that she married Richard and that is what did it, not some bold choice of her own. Cass asks if she hates white people and Ida says sometimes yes, sometimes no, but wouldn’t Cass hate them too if she was in the same prison? But Ida says she knows Cass is suffering and will suffer more, as she stands to lose everything in her life.
Cass and Ida arrive at a bar and join Ellis’s party. In the crowded booth, Ellis sits with two couples, one Black, the Barrys, and one white, the Nashs. Ellis tells them all that Ida is going to be a famous singer one day. They compliment Richard, whose work they know, and Cass is uncomfortable. The music begins and Ida and Ellis dance, an improbable and ludicrous sight on the dance floor. Cass can feel the other couples’ eyes on them and she knows they all know they are having an affair. Cass tries to make excuses, saying Ellis has known Ida for a long time.
Cass excuses herself and says she must get home. In the cab, she sits burning with a kind of shame, perhaps at what she has done with Eric, wondering if it is like what Ida is doing with Ellis. She feels odd now, knowing her fall from grace has changed so much for her. She has twinges of sexual desire for other men now, even the Puerto Rican taxi driver who looks at her. Her thoughts turn to Eric, whom she knows does not love her and is only biding time. She is distressed she might lose her children when it comes time to pay this bill that is due.
When she arrives at home, she sees the fully dressed Richard asleep on the couch. She visits her sleeping boys and when she comes downstairs Richard is awake and full of questions. He asks her about her late nights and even though she is irritated at this line of questioning, she says she has been with Ida and Vivaldo. Richard says she cannot always have been with them, since he knows Ida and Ellis are together all the time. Cass is surprised he knows this and Richard scoffs that the man is obsessed with her.
He repeats his question of what Cass was doing, and accuses her of sleeping with Vivaldo. She denies this heatedly and asks why he cares, as she has lived like a ghost for the last few months. He is incredulous and says he has, that he has waited for her to get over whatever phase this is and to come back to him. With despair in his voice he asks why Cass cannot love him and be with him. Part of her wants to go into his arms. She knows she has to tell him the truth, though, if they are ever truly to be together, so she tells him that she has been having an affair with Eric. He is dumbstruck, saying that Eric is gay. She says she admired his sense of self, which Richard does not have. Richard vacillates between sorrow and rage, asking her questions about the sexual things she did with Eric. He hits her and she slams her head. Weeping, he slumps down. She goes to the bathroom to wash the blood away and wonders if there is any hope for them.
Analysis
In this brutally and oppressively hot summer, Cass, Vivaldo, and Ida work through similar concerns as Vivaldo—how to be honest with oneself, what the past means for the present, how to work through suffering, how to fully engage with oneself and with others. Their journeys are different, of course, especially due to the differing intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, but ultimately they are seeking the same things.
Cass begins an affair with Eric in order to temporarily forget about her lackluster marriage. Though even-tempered and generous with Richard in most of the encounters we are privy to before their huge fight at the end of this section, occasionally Cass’s antipathy toward the commercial nature of Richard’s writing peeks through. She admits to Vivaldo that her family thinks she married beneath them and herself, and she does not fully bring herself to disavow that view. Yet through the bitter fight between Cass and Richard when Cass admits to her affair, Baldwin suggests that the relationship between two people is much more complicated than might meet the eye. Being alongside Cass as she justifies her affair makes us sympathetic to her, but when Richard gets his say, the waters become murkier.
To begin, when Cass explains to Vivaldo why she is unhappy, she claims that there is something problematic that has been there all along, that “he hasn’t touched me in oh, I don’t know how long… I sit in that house like—like a housekeeper… He’s always working” (274). They “don’t seem to be able to talk to each other anymore” (274). From what we have glimpsed of Richard thus far, he is prone to racist and misogynist views (to be fair, Cass occasionally is as well in regards to the former, though not from the same cruel place), and his work does seem to smell of the sell-out, the hack. It is implied that Richard is the only man Cass had been with before Eric, and that makes her crave something new and exciting. She admits to herself that this is a double-edged sword, however; “her fall from—grace—had left her prey to ambiguities whose power she had never glimpsed before. Richard had been her protection, not only against the evil in the world, but also against the wilderness of herself. And now she would never be protected again” (362).
As for Richard, though, he becomes more sympathetic when he makes his case. He moans, “Do you know how you make your presence known? By the way you look at me, by the contempt in your eyes when you look at me. What have I done to deserve your contempt?” (371), and “How can you touch a woman if you know she despises you?” (371). He says “I know you’re smarter than I am, but how are we going to eat, baby, what else can I do?” (372). After hearing about Eric finally, he explains in anguish that just as things were going well for them, she began disappearing and treating him like he was something noxious, that he didn’t “know what had happened, I didn’t know where you’d gone” (375). Richard’s cries of pain are understandable, and it isn’t hard to see why he is so taken aback by Cass’s revelation—he loves her, she treats him with disdain, and he has suffered from not knowing where she has been or why she has changed. Yet, of course, none of that justifies his hitting her or speaking to her in the degrading way he does at the end of the chapter, but Baldwin does effectively convey the acute pain of infidelity and division on both people in a marriage.
Ida and Vivaldo’s relationship is also being put through its paces. Ida is pursuing her dream of becoming a singer, but is also having an affair with producer Steve Ellis to advance her career. Vivaldo is suffering through his novel, making progress but still doubting himself. At the center of both of their lives is their relationship—sensual, angry, tempestuous, riven with misunderstanding and tension over race. It does not help that they are both struggling with money and living in a tiny apartment, but those things pale in comparison. For example, Ida balks at going to Vivaldo’s family’s house because “I know that I am not about to be bugged by any more white jokers who still can’t figure out whether I’m human or not” (279). She also claims Vivaldo treats her “like a whore” (280), and knows that people don’t approve of her and Vivaldo: “the landlord and the neighbors and the cop on the corner disapproved of Ida’s presence” (280). She tells Cass that she loves Vivaldo, but that his whiteness is an insurmountable barrier to their future.
Vivaldo tries to figure out why things are so troublesome for them, wondering if “it was only because she was not white that he dared bring her the offering of himself. Perhaps he felt, somewhere, at the very bottom of himself, that she would not dare despise him” (296). He finds himself increasingly twisted by jealousy, and finds it difficult to write. He asks her why she cannot forgive him for her brother’s death, why she cannot see that their being together means something. For her part, he is naive and blind; she knows “how white people treat black boys and girls” (324), and she still blames him for playing a part in Rufus’s death.
It is actually with Eric, not Ida, that Vivaldo can be completely open about his regrets about Rufus. He admits that he did not give Rufus the affection his friend craved, and that he wonders if he had a role to play in his friend’s death. This is a breakthrough for Vivaldo, who has a lot of mental work to do. Barry Gross explains that “In a sense, then, Ida is right: Vivaldo is white people. He uses Harlem, uses Negroes parasitically, vicariously, to solve his own identity crises… He is in flight from himself, trying to lose himself in the black jungle… Vivaldo's use of Negroes is usually sexual; indeed, Baldwin suggests that this relationship is always sexual.” This sexual facet also matters when it comes to Rufus. Gross suggests that “Vivaldo's identity crisis is also a sexual crisis. He suppresses a strong sexual attachment for Rufus, whom he also wishes to use. His love for Ida is, at first, merely a transference, an acting out of the love-- lust--he felt for her brother. He can be free to love Ida as Ida only when he consummates his love for Rufus, which he is finally able to do with Eric, who also loved Rufus.” This evening with Eric, in which he is emotionally and physically vulnerable and open, is crucial for Vivaldo. He has to comes to “grips with his past, with his guilt [until he] understands his love-hate relationship with Rufus and, consequently, with Negroes in general. Eric provides him the means for that encounter.”
