Hangsaman (16 page)

“That's true,” Natalie said. “I mean, now that I know about it, I feel differently about it.” Why am I talking, she wondered in shame; who am I convicting, whose soul am I selling, what murder am I helping to commit; why am I here, she thought sadly, pretending that someone else has stolen from
me?

*   *   *

After the special trip Natalie had made back to her room to freshen her lipstick and comb her hair, it seemed almost callous of Arthur Langdon not to turn and smile at her when she stood timidly in the doorway of his office, not daring to knock for fear he had already seen her, not daring to enter for fear he had not already seen her; she thought of trying a slight cough, or of saying softly, “Mr. Langdon?” or of going away a step and walking heavily up to the door again, but all these devices were of course only endless vicious circles around the central point, which was that for some reason Mr. Almighty Langdon thought he need not, if he chose not, notice Miss Natalie Waite, and really thought he could keep her waiting uncertainly, endlessly, in the doorway to his office. As she was wondering, then, if a sort of dignified march back down the stairs might not prove that she was something more than this, he looked up at her, blankly for a minute, as one who thinks deeply, and then recognized her with a nod of companionship that said she was to enter but not speak. She moved respectfully into the room, thinking that she was the kind of woman who knows when to keep quiet, and sat docilely in the chair beside the desk, her hands folded, and her eyes discreetly turned away from him, to show that she was not in the least interested in what he was doing. She could see, however, from the corners of her eyes, that he looked tired as he bent his head over the papers on the desk; he's been fighting with Elizabeth, she thought with new knowledge, and hoped he would notice her quiet sympathy.

“I wish I were an insurance salesman,” he said abruptly, shoving the papers back on his desk.

Natalie lost her moment, in the split second during which she realized that
he
had been hoping that
she
would notice; she held with herself a seemingly endless debate over what to say and do (“Stop acting like a child, my dear,” her hand gently on his?), and by the time she had finally decided that his remark was to be treated as a joke, he had swung around in his chair to face her and was saying, “Well, Natalie?”

She smiled, and the moment became unexpectedly one of excruciating embarrassment. Natalie heard the back of her mind gibbering obscenities, and thought for a mad moment that she might be saying them aloud and not realizing; perhaps, she thought, I am undressing, or in the bathroom, or looking at myself in the mirror, and only pretending that I am here alone with Arthur Langdon; perhaps I am here with Arthur Langdon and pretending that I am dressing and talking really to myself; perhaps I will say something frightful and never know whether I have really said it or not, because of course he would pretend I never said it but he would always remember—a thousand years from now, Arthur Langdon telling Elizabeth for the hundredth time about the girl (Natalie? Helen? Joan?) who had said the shocking thing to him, and Natalie laughed suddenly, bringing herself immediately back to the present in Arthur Langdon's office, where she certainly
was
at the moment, and he was saying curiously, “What
were
you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about when I would be dead,” Natalie said.

“Dead?” he said, surprised. “Are we going to die, you and I?”

“I only worry about
how
,” Natalie said soberly; unlike most of the things she found herself saying to Arthur Langdon, this was true. “I keep thinking that of course it's
got
to happen, and even to me, but then I always think that somehow and someday this interesting person of mine will . . .” She searched for a word. “Subside,” she said finally. “I mean, I will be very suddenly aware of an ending, and that there is not going to be any more for
me
, and that I am not going to be with myself any longer. And all of that's all right,” she said, going on quickly as he opened his mouth to speak. “I'm only afraid of being caught unaware, of that terrible fast panic that comes when you're very very frightened, and of being
afraid
when it happens. So then, of course, I always think I'll kill myself before it
can
happen.”

She stopped, and Arthur Langdon said, “You have a very original mind, Natalie.”

“That's what I mean,” she said, thinking, Oh, the fool, “can you imagine having a mind like mine and losing it when you die?” Had she, she wondered, had she
the
original mind?

He waved his hand at the papers on the desk. “There are almost two hundred papers there,” he said. “I have to read every one of them. And I always watch for yours.”

(Joan? Helen? Anne?) “I find your criticisms very helpful,” Natalie said demurely. “My father discusses my work with me very much as you do.” She thought of her father with sudden sadness; he was so far away and so much without her, and here she was speaking to a stranger.

“Does your father think your work shows talent?”

“My father does not praise anyone.”

“Do you plan to be a writer?”

A what? Natalie thought; a writer, a plumber, a doctor, a merchant, a chief; the best-laid plans of; a writer the way I might plan to be a corpse? “A writer?” she repeated, as though she had never heard the word before.

He was staring at her with his mouth half-open; she must have delayed her idiotic answer beyond any reasonable time for thought. “Do you plan to be a writer?” he asked again.

He
did
mean it, then. “Look,” Natalie said, “why does everyone say they're going to be writers? When they're not? I mean, why do you and my father and everybody say ‘to be a writer' as though it were something different? Not like anything else? Is there something special about writers?”

Her delay had not helped him any. “It's because writing itself,” he began, hesitating, and then, “I suppose it's because writing—well, it's something important, I suppose.”

“Well, then,
what
am I going to write?”

“Well . . .” he said. He looked at her and then irritably at the papers on his desk. “Stories,” he said. “Poems. Articles. Novels. Plays.” He shook his head and then said, “Anything—well, creative.”

“But why is it so important, this creating?” Natalie was positive at the moment that she was asking him something very important, and that he could answer it, and she leaned forward eagerly; she needed only one answer, only one, she thought, and then she knew that he would not tell her, because he shook his head and said, “Natalie, this is metaphysical nonsense. Questioning one's own soul is not something at which I am particularly good at any time, and certainly it is not a subject which ought to be indulged in broad daylight. Some other time,” he laughed, “we can sit in the darkness under an oak tree and tell one another vast truths.”

It was precisely as Natalie's father would have rebuked her; she sat back in her chair and thought, I will never ask him this again, and then thought, What a silly person I am, and now he
does
think I am a fool.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning forward. “You were giving me your ideas about death.”

*   *   *

“But the
best
thing they did,” Anne said, laughing before she had even begun to describe it, “was the time they wrote to someone's boy friend and told him not to come to the dance.”

“They sent him a telegram,” Vicki said. “And the girl waited and waited and of course he never showed up.”

“But everyone knew except
her
,” Anne said. “That was the joke of it.”

“Didn't she ever find out?” Natalie asked.

“
That
was the best part,” Anne said. “Of course she found out later, and of course it was
awful
for her, but she had to be a good sport about it,
naturally
. It was only a joke, after all, and she waited and waited all dressed up for the dance.”

“And remember the time they called up and pretended to be some guy's mother and had this girl almost in hysterics?”

“And that old car and they ran it right across anyone's lawn or anything or anywhere they pleased, and they weren't afraid of
any
one; and the time they poured iodine all over someone's fur coat?”

“
She
was sore,” Vicki said with satisfaction.

“I should think so,” said Natalie.

“But of course she had to be a good
sport
,” Vicki said.

“And the time,” said Anne, giggling, “that they sent invitations to all the faculty, inviting them to a party, and on the bottom of the invitation it said in big letters ‘Your wife is NOT invited'?”

Vicki laughed. “There was trouble
then
,” she said.

“Nothing's the same since they graduated,” Anne said wistfully. “No one can think of anything to
do
, any more.”

Natalie, my dear,

Needless to say, your letters amuse and delight me, although, as I have often told you (how humorless I sound!) your style leaves much to be desired; how
very
often, my dear Natalie, have we, you and I, spent our morning hours puzzling out the intricate filigree of the subordinate clause, and yet I find, in your last letter but one, the following (please forgive my quoting you, my dear; it is the only way, you know, to improve you. I have a notion you would hardly read a bare, invented example): “I like college very much, but am still a little confused. I don't think I'll ever learn French. I like philosophy, though. Is there any chance of your coming down soon?”

Ignoring the sense of the quotation (except to mention, in passing, that it is not possible to “learn” French; as I believe someone else has said, one either is or is not born with the kind of personality to which French is a mother-tongue), let me only say that two self-evident remarks connected with “but” do not constitute an English style. Nor do a series of short sentences, unless they are building into something very clear and definite, which in your case seems to be “with love to all, Natalie”—a desirable sentiment, and one your mother could hardly do without, but surely not an adequate consummation—almost, in fact, an anticlimax.

Enough for your letter; you are presumably studying English composition and we may expect to see an improvement soon. Your mother and I are better able to avoid one another without you and your brother cluttering up the house. Your mother remarks nostalgically that the dinner table seems unusually deserted, which of course is true, although it persuades me finally that your mother has from the beginning counted her children only by the places set at table, and has marked your growth from one chop to two with pride and appreciation—soon her little girl will be quite grown up, and able to manipulate her own knife and fork. You may, however, suppose that we miss you.

Has your Mr. Langdon seen my piece in the last
Passionate Review?
If not, you may use its arguments as your own, and confound him.

Obediently,

Dad

Natalie's journal; middle October:

I suppose you have been wondering for a long time, my darling Natalie, what I can find to be thinking about. I suppose you have even noticed—Natalie seems so strange lately, she seems so withdrawn and distant and quiet, I wonder if Natalie is coming along all right, or if there is something troubling her. Perhaps you have been thinking, dearest, that Natalie had something she wanted to say to you. Perhaps, you thought, Natalie is frightened and perhaps she even thinks sometimes about a certain long ago bad thing that she promised me never to think about again. Well, that's why I'm writing this now. I could tell, my darling, that you were worried about me. I could feel you being apprehensive, and I knew that what you were always thinking about was you and me. And I even knew that you thought I was worried about that terrible thing, but of course—I promise you this, I really do—I don't think about it at all, ever, because both of us know that it never happened, did it? And it was some horrible dream that caught up with us both. We don't have to worry about things like that, you remember we decided we didn't have to worry.

No, what I have been thinking about is something entirely different. I have been thinking—and it is very very hard to say this, so be patient with me—about the beautiful wonderful exciting things that are happening. That does not quite describe it. Look. Let me say it like this: when I came here to college I was all alone and that bad thing had just happened and I had no friends and no one to think about and I was always frightened. Now all of a sudden I find that I am walking around in a world very full of other people, and because they are all frightened too I can afford to be frightened, and then once I
know
I am frightened then I can go ahead and forget about it and start looking around at other things. And of course now I know that it isn't important about other people, and only the people who don't dare be all alone need friends. I don't suppose I will need any friends or anything for the rest of my life, now that I am not frightened.

But of course I think sometimes (thank heaven no one will ever read this but you and me, my dear) about being in love, which is something I hardly expect ever to happen to me, but I think I have just a slight idea, from the way I feel about other things, what it would be like. I think, for instance, that no one can really love a person who is not superior in every way. For instance, I know from how I feel about people who are superior to me in some things just exactly how I would feel about someone who was superior to me in everything, which of course would be the only kind of person I could really love.

I wanted to tell my father about this, and I wanted to tell Arthur too, but of course it is not really possible to go up to some man and say that you could never really love any person who was not superior to you in everything and let them see clearly that they are
not
that.