Hangsaman (12 page)

“Nothing in the world exists in a perfect form,” the professor murmured, watchfully. “Yes, I said it.”

“Well,” the girl said; she stared straight at the professor; to confound a professor of philosophy midway through the first month of the first semester of your first year . . . “Well,” she repeated, “I mean—what about a vacuum? I mean,
that's
perfect, isn't it?”

Natalie perceived that one of the junior members of the philosopher's circle (William James?), overeager, anxious to establish himself among the select, hurried with his joke, and was hushed by the others, and drew even a shade of a frown from the Bishop himself; would these impetuous young fellows never learn their equivocal standing?—and the professor, at whom the student was staring entranced, looked quickly, once, around the class, opened his mouth, and smiled.

*   *   *

There was, on alternate mornings, the class named history of music, and here the professor was a man equally thwarted, but happy about it nevertheless; he was ridden by a sort of genius, and felt strongly that it was far more valuable for college freshmen to participate two mornings in the week in the intricate, subtle, unendingly lovely convolutions of a genius mind than to concern themselves tidily with dates and composers, the whole-tone scale, the
castrati
.

“Listen,” he told them one morning, too soon after breakfast, and he held up one finger of one long hand in a graceful eloquent gesture, “this morning I shall play for you . . . ”

He selected, with the quick decisive motions of a man captivated by a thought he cannot elude, a volume from the stack on the desk; although his air was one of unpremeditated desire, he had nevertheless remembered to procure in advance copies of the music to pass among the girls in the front row. Natalie, who sat at the end of the front row nearest the piano, was thus able to follow the music and the professor's playing together, and found it perhaps as little instructive as anything she had ever heard; she was accustomed to listen to music rarely, and then in strict solitude, with her eyes shut and various odd glories in her head; she could read barely enough music to perceive that the professor consistently played a sharp where a double-sharp was written. To confound a professor of music midway through the first month of the first semester of the first year . . .

At the end of the class Natalie stopped at the desk where the professor was modestly disclaiming the shrill feminine compliments on his playing; when he turned to Natalie with his smile ready, she said meekly, “Please, may I ask you something?”

Where did you study? Is it a natural talent? Why do you not compose? The continuing smile on the professor's face showed Natalie that she had not made her question quite clear. “I mean,” she said, “here—” she had the book open, her finger on the spot, all ready “—you always played a sharp and isn't this a double-sharp? I mean,” she added, in the face of his uncomprehending smile, “I just wondered, while you were playing.”

“Playing very badly, by the way,” he said, still smiling, and raising one hand gracefully against the low voice of protest, in which Natalie, to her eternal recognized cowardice, found herself joining. “No,” he said, “I really
did
play badly. One knows.”

“But—” Natalie said, her finger on the book.

“This girl,” he said, his hand on Natalie's arm, his face turned toward the other girls, “this girl listens to music, as—how shall I say it?—as an artist. Perhaps music has a meaning for her beyond what it has for the rest of us.”

Perhaps it has, Natalie thought; I am fairly beaten. Desiring to retire with an understanding grin and a knowledgeable look, she turned when the professor spoke to someone else and went softly away, no one turning to look after her.

*   *   *

At the beginning of her second month at college, one day Natalie turned a corner suddenly (where was she going? what was she running from? She was never able to remember afterwards, since at the moment the incoherence of her life dissolved and she became again a functioning person, somewhat later than the red-haired Peggy Spencer, perhaps, but still much sooner than many of the girls around her) and crashed into someone who, picking her up, said, in the voice of one who was not confused but knew these many corners perfectly, “I'm terribly sorry; I should have looked where I was going.”

“My fault,” Natalie said. She had not dropped anything, otherwise she could have hidden her face searching for it on the ground. As it was, she was forced to observe that she had run into a woman, who was a woman as surely as Natalie was a girl, since where Natalie was unconnected and vague, this other was purposeful and compact. “You all right?” the woman asked the girl. “You're new, aren't you?”

Natalie, blessing her for avoiding the hateful word frosh, nodded and looked up. A pretty woman. “New,” Natalie confessed, “and confused. And frightened, I guess.”

“Everyone is,” the woman said. She hesitated, and Natalie, who was these days forming estimates about people because she feared speaking to them, imagined that the woman had had a destination and was wondering if it would wait while she helped Natalie; the desire to be helpless and the pride against being helped by a woman who might be, after all, inadequate, made Natalie say dismissingly, “I suppose I'll get over it.” She pretended to be ready to walk on, but, blessedly, the woman decided suddenly, and turned to walk with her.

“I was new here recently,” the woman said and smiled. “I'm Elizabeth Langdon,” she said. “My husband teaches English. I used to be a student.” And that's all she knows to tell me about herself, Natalie thought, and said, “Oh, yes. I believe I'm in one of Mr. Langdon's classes. At least,” she added doubtfully, for fear of being thought by his wife to have a crush on Mr. Langdon, “I
think
it's his class.”

“Is he short, with a mustache?” the woman asked, as though it were of some importance, “or dark? Curly hair? Blond with glasses?”

“Dark,” Natalie decided, remembering the slim figure which moved gracefully before the class, speaking with humorous informality of Shakespeare; suppressing quickly and emphatically the recollection of her own vague daydreams (“Miss Waite? I don't suppose you remember me? Well, I'm Arthur Langdon; I want to tell you that your performance of Portia was . . .”). “Of course, it must be Mr. Langdon. It's just that, being so new here . . .”

“Of course.” The woman sounded relieved, still giving the impression that the point had been important. “Has he begun to quote Suetonius yet?”

Natalie suddenly wanted to make a good impression on the wife of the slim figure who might, at any moment, quote Suetonius. “My father,” she said, “says that people only quote when they can't make a point any other way.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Langdon; Natalie thought that perhaps she was storing the remark away to use on her husband later. (“Dear, I understand that people only . . .”) “How do you like it here?” Mrs. Langdon asked.

It was, of course, not the first time Natalie had been asked; she laughed with embarrassment and then, changing her mind for some reason in midstream, said uncomfortably, “I don't know yet. I mean, I have so much yet to learn.”

“Like not running around corners?” said Mrs. Langdon, and paused, smiling, in their walk. “This is where we live,” she said. “It's a faculty house—observe the architecture, done by a fellow faculty member, since deceased, observe the college stonework and the handy-man air about the drainpipes. Students,” she added soberly, “are to feel free to call upon faculty members for assistance and advice, although it is recommended that they do not visit a faculty home without specific invitations having been issued.” She smiled again, and Natalie smiled back. “No one pays much attention to that sort of thing,” Mrs. Langdon said. “Won't you come in?”

“Thank you,” Natalie said; could it be true that she was so casually invited into Arthur Langdon's house?

As the door closed behind them Natalie hesitated in the small hallway; the fact that this was certainly the house where Arthur Langdon lived seemed somehow to color the air of it, and was that not a trace of his pipe smoke? It could be that as Natalie stood in the hallway her feet were set precisely in Arthur Langdon's footprints. It was undeniable, also, that he had at some time touched this doorknob.

Elizabeth Langdon, her own door closed behind her, had changed, as a bird stepping again inside its cage is no longer a creature of circle and parabola, but a hopping thing; Elizabeth pushed off her hat and slipped her coat from her shoulders and, preceding Natalie into a light living room, dropped her hat and coat on a couch. “Take off your things,” she said with a gesture. Seemingly she had accepted Natalie inside her house as a person, something more than the mere student Natalie had been outside the house. Natalie saw dimly, as she fumbled with the buttons of her coat, a succession of meetings with Elizabeth Langdon outside her house, of formal questions after one's health and dutiful laughter, of civility and disinterest and courtesy, of Elizabeth Langdon denying politely anything she might ever have said inside.

“It's so nice here,” Natalie said. Although she had already glanced quickly around the room (wondering, as she did so, with a fast secret look at Elizabeth Langdon, What is it in here she finds so alarming? Will
I
be happy here? Will I ever know these things well?), she made now a great performance of looking around, letting her eyes stop suitably long at the Hayter etching over the mantel, taking in gratefully the blended colors of the slipcovers, the curtains, the rug. There were books, and she estimated them and the Langdons by her own secret process (the proportion of bright jackets to dull bindings) and found them dubious—too much yellow and red, too little calf. It occurred to her that she would probably like the Langdons very much, while privately deploring Elizabeth a little.

“I
can
offer you a drink, you know,” Elizabeth Langdon said; she had been busied hanging up their coats and now backed out of the closet, her hair rumpled. “Would you like a cocktail? Martini?”

Natalie realized how
very
indelicate this all was. She had been in college not more than a month, and this woman had certainly no business offering her cocktails, or even speaking to her so. “Thank you very much,” said Natalie, thinking,
She
must be
terribly
lonely. Her problem was illustrated directly with the question of sitting down: as a student, she should certainly not seat herself while a faculty wife stood; as a guest, she certainly could. The only solution was to lift the whole situation into a never-never land where neither rule applied, so Natalie, with dogged informality, followed Elizabeth into the small kitchen.

“May I help you?” Natalie asked.

“Nothing to do,” said Elizabeth, her head now buried in the refrigerator. “Arthur keeps a pitcher of martinis already made. I can't make them,” she added, drawing out her head, “and he's always too tired when he comes back from class. Olive?”

“Thank you.”

“God
damn
,” said Elizabeth. She leaned back, trying to see the top shelf of the pantry. “No more,” she said, and turned and laughed at Natalie. “We've got to have our martinis in fruit juice glasses. There's only one cocktail glass I haven't broken and of course I have to give that to Arthur.”

Natalie, who was not really completely certain of the difference between a cocktail glass and a fruit juice glass, spared a moment to wonder about the oddness of saving the last glass for Arthur, before she said, “Mother never lets me dry the glasses at home because I always drop them.” Why did I say that? she wondered again, it isn't true. Now I'll just have to remember it so I won't tell her in a few minutes that I never break anything.

They took their cocktails into the living room again, walking cautiously and not speaking. Then, when Natalie had lowered herself tentatively into an overstuffed armchair, with her cocktail correctly on a coaster and a cigarette offered and declined (Natalie was afraid to smoke until she had solved the problem of who was going to light whose cigarette; it was difficult for Natalie to get up from the overstuffed chair and walk across to Elizabeth with a match, but it was unthinkable that Elizabeth should stand up from the couch and walk across to Natalie with a match. It occurred to Natalie that she could light a cigarette after Elizabeth was well started on hers, taking one from her pocket with an absent-minded air, as one who smokes without thinking, and lighting it carelessly, holding the match a trifle too long while she talked), Elizabeth leaned back on the couch, looking at Natalie smilingly, and said, with an air of having all the time in the world to get to more important subjects, “So you're one of my husband's students?”

“I believe I am,” Natalie said cautiously—best not to appear too anxious.

“Do you like it here?” Elizabeth asked.

It was still not a question Natalie was entirely equipped to answer. She decided finally that the least she could do was reply again to this determined friendliness in an open manner, and so she looked at Elizabeth and smiled and shrugged. “I don't really think I like it very much yet,” she said. “No one seems to pay much attention to anyone else.”

Elizabeth nodded, choosing to take this statement as one of fact. “That's true,” she said. “You'll find as you go on that they'll pay less and less attention to you, and you get used to it. It's because everyone here is so much interested in themselves and their own concerns, and no one cares about anyone else or education or teaching the young or helping anyone else, but all they care about is getting as much as they can as fast as they can.”

What did I start? Natalie thought. “I suppose that's a good description of education,” she said, feeling her way. “Except that even if you learn
that
much, it's something.”