Hangsaman (28 page)

When they came out of the drugstore the town was beginning to fill up with people on their way to work and Tony said carelessly, as they went down the sidewalk, “Be late for work if we don't move along.”

“I've got to do five reports for the old man this morning,” Natalie said immediately. “Got to be in the mail this afternoon. Reports to the higher authorities on people caught doing the same things day after day, recommending the ultimate punishment.”

“Old lady Langdon caught us smoking in the washroom yesterday,” Tony went on, “and said she'd report it to the old man.”

“She wouldn't dare,” Natalie said. “Anyway, let's quit. Let's just not go into the office this morning. Let's go to Siam instead.”

“They ought to pension off old Langdon,” Tony said. “Let's go to Peru.”

They passed the town's biggest hotel; workmen on scaffolds were washing it down with power hoses and Tony and Natalie stopped shamelessly to watch. The fine spray from the hoses drifted down onto them through the foggy drizzle, and settled small drops in their hair.

“This is the only city I know,” Tony said, “where if it's raining already they throw more water on you.”

They walked on after a while, moving wherever they pleased but always bearing toward the railroad station. They stopped and stared at a cab driver who was trying to clean bird droppings off his windshield; they splashed in the water in the gutter.

They came at last into the railroad station hand in hand, small in the great doorway, dwarfed by the stained-glass window above their heads. At the top of the great sweeping stairway they paused and looked down on the people below, all so sure of their several destinations; they listened to the message of the train caller standing honorably at his desk beneath the clock and obedient to the will and the distant voices of the trains, translating by permission the great sounds to any who cared to listen.

Natalie and Tony came down the great stairway, down the wide aisle, and slid into seats in one of the rows, listening and watching; they perceived the thin thread of taxicabs which was all that held people in the station to the city outside, the transparent fine barrier of imminent going and coming, of being irresistibly called away or brought back, the conscious virtue of creatures selected to travel with the trains, the harmony of the discipline that controlled his huge, functioning order, where no head was uncounted and no ticket unhonored; they heard the distant paternal urging of the trains.

Oddly enough, Elizabeth Langdon and the rest came here only of necessity, with the intention of leaving this place as soon as they reached it. And yet two people who wanted earnestly to be strangers might sit here for hours and never lose the quick sense of being about to go away, and might probably never see anyone who knew their names, or cared to remember them. After a while Tony and Natalie rose quietly and went down the aisle again and into the station restaurant. They sat down at a table overlooking the nervous movements of the taxicabs and the suitcases set unerringly in the puddles, and ordered ham and eggs and orange juice and toast and griddlecakes and doughnuts and coffee and sweet rolls. They ate lavishly, passing bits of food to one another, regarding contentedly the glass domes on the coffeepot behind the counter, the glass covers on the stacks of English muffins, the round red seats of the stools. When Tony poured herself a third cup of coffee, Natalie said, “Don't hurry, we have until ten o'clock.”

“I do hope our train's not late,” Tony said, “We'll be late enough getting in as it is.”

“We can telegraph from Denver,” Natalie said.

“Or call from Boston,” Tony said. “They'll be expecting us to call, anyway, probably from New Orleans. We have two hours between trains; I thought we might spend it in some bookstore. We have
plenty
of money, after all.”

“A week from today we'll be on the boat.”

“And two weeks from today,” Tony said, “we'll be in Venice.”

“In London,” Natalie said.

“In Moscow,” Tony said. “In Lisbon, in Rome.”

“In Stockholm.”

“I only hope that train isn't
late
,” Tony said.

“Do you think Juan will be there to meet us?” Natalie asked. “And Hans, and Flavia?”

“And Gracia and Stacia and Marcia,” Tony said. “And Peter and Christopher and Michael.”

“And Langdon,” Natalie said. “Dear pathetic old Langdon, she'll be so
glad
to see us, jumping all over everybody and barking.”

“I hope they've rememberd to clip her against the heat,” Tony said anxiously. “She
does
suffer so.”

“She never did quite recover from the spaying,” Natalie said, and they began to laugh helplessly, and the waitress behind the long counter looked at them and then automatically at the clock.

Far away they could hear the voice of the train caller. “Albany,” he was saying, “New York.”

“New York,” Tony said softly. They put their hands together on the table and were silent, listening to the voice of the train caller echoing flatly through the station. “New York,” he shouted urgently.

“We wouldn't need but one room,” Natalie said. “They'd never find us.”

“I could get a job.” Tony leaned forward eagerly. “I can speak French, after all.”

“I could be a waitress, maybe.”

“We could open a small bookstore. Only the books we like ourselves.”

“And we've
got
fifteen dollars.”

They both took cigarettes from the pack on the table, and Tony lighted them; “Can I get you more coffee?” she asked.

Natalie glanced at the clock. “Yes, thank you. We have plenty of time.”

“Our train doesn't leave till nearly eleven,” Tony said.

You could live quite comfortably in a railroad station; there was the great arching roof for shelter, and food in the restaurant; there was a ladies' room and an enchanted spot where you could find books and magazines and little odd colored toys to amuse the children in Paris, in Lisbon, in Rome. It was better, even, than living in a department store, not quite so good, perhaps, as living in a garret in medieval Spain.

It was nearly twelve when they left the station and they went reluctantly, lingering on the stairway in the face of the drizzling rain outside.

“I understand it's a charming town,” Tony said as they came out into the damp day; over their heads the stained-glass window shone briefly in the reflected light of the restaurant neon sign across the street.

“
Very
provincial,” Natalie said. “Laughably so.”

“But such beautiful old homes.”

“And such a modern college.”

“And the theaters,” Tony said. “And the stores.”

“We must try to look up old Langdon while we're here,” Natalie said.

Near the station, for some reason, the world was filled with birds flying; all the movement ever made in the world was concentrated, for a minute or so, in one spot, and Tony surrounded by sweeping birds was a marvel of stillness; Natalie laughed and ran away, and the birds followed her briefly and came back to Tony.

“They think you've got fish in your pocket,” Natalie called to Tony, and Tony called back, “I wish I had my dear old falcon Langdon.”

“Still she haunts me phantomwise, Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes,”
Natalie said as Tony came running to her.

“Shall we fly?” Tony said, waving back at the birds. “Or would you rather walk?”

“You among the birds,” Natalie said. “Page of swords. Vigilance, secrecy.”

“Look,” Tony said, and held Natalie's arm to stop her before the posters of a theater; the movie now being shown inside was old, and apparently past any redemption by adjective, so that the management had simply, resignedly let the pictures into the frames outside the theater, and were now presumably hiding away somewhere inside, beyond reach of irate patrons. One of the pictures showed a glorious scene between a man in a cowboy hat and uncomfortable pistols, who backed against a door to face a darker, equally weaponful villain; in the background a damsel wrung her hands and all three seemed to turn anxiously to the camera, which alone could justify the violent emotions they ravished themselves to feel. It was plain from the picture that it was near the end of the day; the sun was setting dramatically outside the backdrop window; the hero had the look of one who would shortly remove his guns and his spurs and go home in a car he had bought but could not afford; the heroine seemed to be thinking, under her beautiful look of fear and concern, that perhaps she should keep the children out of school until this chicken-pox scare was over. The villain, too—who, tired now of jokes about his villainy and being treated mockingly by his friends as a potential murderer, had said to himself, “Just this one more time, and then I shall be myself again”—snarled, and sighed, and snarled again; “It must be a lovely movie,” said Natalie. “Shall we go in?”

“I would
not
embarrass them by watching them,” Tony said, “Look, this one here is a vampire.”

It was, indeed, with horns and blood and black cloak and possibly a machine inside which created heartless villainy while sparing its patronizing public any sense of immediacy (“It's
only
a movie; don't be afraid to look.”) and which perhaps in some sense of ultimate justice was the kind of machine most moviegoers imagined vaguely would someday take over the world, after their children and their children's children and any posterity they might possibly meet were gone; it was precisely the sort of machine that should take over the world (postulating, of course, that it was a world worth taking over at all, and valuable enough to any machine to justify conquest)—precisely the sort of machine to take over the world: heartless, villainous, unimaginative. “A vampire?” said Natalie. “I think it's a werewolf. Look at its tail.”

“More likely one of those hidden personalities, I'd say,” said Tony.

“Look over here,” said Natalie. “It's got hold of some girl. Girls who get caught by werewolves always look surprised, did you notice?”

“She'd have reason to be surprised if she knew anything about werewolves,” Tony said wisely. “Perplexed, she looks to
me
.”

“I remember the day Langdon got caught,” Natalie said.

“
She
didn't look surprised,” Tony said. “No, nor perplexed, neither. She just looked sort of relieved, after chasing
him
for years.”

“If we were vampires,” Natalie said, falling into step beside Tony, “we would not pick on Langdon.”

“I love my love with a V,” said Tony, “because he is a vampire. His name is Vestis and he lives in Verakovia. He—”

“I love my love with a W,” said Natalie, “because he is a werewolf. His name is William and he lives in Williamstown.”

“He is also a waberdasher,” Tony said. “
Mine
is a vixter-repairman.”

“Not much work for him in Verakovia,” Natalie said critically. “I don't believe I saw a single vixter out of order the whole time I was there.”

“Ah,” said Tony, “but
you
were there in the
rainy
season.”

“Still,” said Natalie, “what, after all, is there to fixing a vixter? A string here, a screw there—nothing.”

“It takes a strong man,” Tony said. “Could
you
do it?”

“I used to think,” Natalie said, “when I was a child, that I had only a limited stock of ‘yeses' and ‘nos,' and that when they were used up I couldn't get any more and then I wouldn't be able to answer most of the questions silly people asked me.”

“Like, ‘What did you learn in school today?' and ‘Tell the nice lady your name'?” Tony wanted to know.

“I comforted myself by remembering that I could eke out my stock by things like, ‘I don't think so,' and, ‘Well, perhaps.'”

“And, ‘If you don't mind,' and, ‘Much obliged, I'm sure,' and, ‘You better be careful what you say or I'll call a cop.'”

“Which is the reason,” Natalie went on, “why I don't answer your very pertinent questions about . . .”

“Hanged man,” said Tony suddenly. “Hanged man.”

“It is
not
,” Natalie said indignantly. “It's not fair to use a toy.”

“We never
said
it wasn't fair.”

Natalie stopped and stared at Tony's hanged man. It was a toy in the shop window, a tiny figure on a trapeze which turned and swung, around and around, endlessly and irritatingly. “Hanged man,” Tony insisted.

“The tree of sacrifice is not living wood,” Natalie pointed out.

“You can't ever tell,” Tony said, peering. “They make extraordinary things for children these days. Dolls that can walk, and birds that can lay eggs, and I suppose animals with real blood for butchering. Not to mention—”

“All
right
,” said Natalie sullenly. “Life in death. Joy of constructive death.”

“Reversed?”

“Reversed, probably not practical for any smart child,” said Natalie, and walked on.

Tony caught up with her laughing. “Let's get something to eat.”

“I don't want anything to eat.”

“I resign my hanged man,” Tony said, still laughing. “It was probably not living wood at all.”

They walked on for a minute in silence, and then Natalie said softly, “I used to think, when I was a child, that it was an awful thing to have to go on breathing and breathing, all my life until I was dead, all those thousands of years. And then I used to think that now I was conscious of breathing it would be like everything else where I did it without thinking for a while and then became aware of it, and it would be awkward and difficult to do it as well consciously, and then by the time I had thought that I used to realize that while I was thinking it I had been breathing.”