SONNY'S BLUES
353
now and I think I'll
be
all right. But I can't forget-where I've
been. I don't mean just the physical place I've been, I mean where
I've
been.
And
what
I've been."
"What have you been, Sonny?" I asked.
He smiled-but sat sideways on the sofa, his elbow resting
on the back,
his
fingers playing with his mouth and chin, not look–
ing at me. "I've been something I didn't recognize, didn't know I
could be. Didn't know anybody could be." He stopped, looking
inward, looking helplessly young, looking old. "I'm not talking
about it now because I feel
guilty
or anything like that- maybe it
would be better if I did, I don't know. Anyway, I can't really talk
about it. Not to you, not to anybody," and now he turned and faced
me. "Sometimes, you know, and it was actually when I was most
out
of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was
with
it, really, and
I could play or I didn't really have to
play,
it just came out of me,
it was there. And I don't know how I played, thinking about it now,
but I know I did awful things, those times, sometimes, to people. Or
it wasn't that I
did
anything to them-it was that they weren't real."
He picked up the beer can; it was empty; he rolled it between his
palms : "And other times- well, I needed a fix, I needed to find
a place to lean, I needed to clear a space to
listen-and
I couldn't
find it, and I-went crazy, I did terrible things to
me,
I was terrible
for
me." He began pressing the beer can between his hands, I
watched the metal begin to give. It glittered, as he played with it, like
a knife, and I was afraid he would cut himself, but I said nothing.
"Oh well. I can never tell you. I was all by myself at the bottom of
something, stinking and sweating and crying and shaking, and I
smelled it, you know?
my
stink, and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get
away from it and yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was
doing was just locking me in with it. And I didn't know," he paused,
still flattening the beer can, "I didn't know, I still
don' t
know, some–
thing kept telling me that maybe it was good to smell your own stink,
but I didn't think that
thai
was what I'd been trying to do-and–
who can stand it?" and he abruptly dropped the ruined beer can,
looking at me with a small, still smile, and then rose, walking to the
window as though it were the lodestone rock. I watched his face,
he watched the avenue. "I couldn't tell you when Mama died-but
the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from
