Hangsaman (3 page)

“Well,” he said. He was looking down at the papers on his desk. “Have you brought your notebook?”

Silently Natalie passed it across the desk to him. There was always this moment of dismay, when the words she had written crossed her mind remorselessly and the thought of her father reading them made her hesitate with an urgent desire to be off, out of the study, anywhere. Then the moment passed, and she said as she handed him the notebook, “I did it last night. After you were all in bed.”

“Up all night writing again?” her father asked indulgently. He began to turn the pages of the notebook slowly, savoring them.

“I went to sleep about three,” Natalie said. Her father was bitter about people who moistened their thumbs as they read, and used such vulgarity as a symbol for much of the reading public, but he was probably unaware that as he turned the pages of Natalie's notebook he wet his lips slightly with his tongue, although he kept his fingers away from his mouth as he always did.

“This has always been a favorite of mine, Natalie,” he said, stopping at a page. “This one about the trees. ‘Lined up against the sky' is good, very good. And the one on your mother.” He chuckled, and turned another page. “I hope she never sees it,” he said, and looked up at Natalie with a smile like a child's.

“She's never interested in my notebooks,” Natalie said.

“I know,” said Mr. Waite. “Nor is she interested in my articles.” He laughed and said, as though in compensation, “I never could have found anyone else so unsympathetic as your mother, and so helpful.”

This time Natalie laughed with certainty. It was a statement very true of her mother.

“Now,” her father said. He stopped at the current page in the notebook, and deliberately hesitant, looked up at Natalie and smiled, turned to select a cigarette from the package on the desk, and made an elaborate ceremony of lighting it. “I'm a little bit worried,” he said. “I'm not really sure I dare read it.”

“It was the hardest thing I had to do yet,” Natalie said. Her father looked at her with a quick frown, and she thought and then said, “It was the hardest thing I have had to do, so far.”

“Can't be too careful,” her father said. He braced his shoulders, and bent his head down to the notebook.

While he read, Natalie, her initial nervousness over (once she had given him the notebook each morning her step was taken; it was irrecoverable then, and she had only to wait for it to be returned to her), surveyed the study freshly, as she did every morning. It was a deeply satisfying place. The books which stood expectantly on the shelves around the room had the fulfilled look of books which have been read, although not necessarily by Mr. Waite; the leather chair still held the marks of Mr. Waite's ample bottom, the ashtray beside it already this morning touched with ash. The room was used, perhaps worn, and had nothing of abandon about it; it was relaxed, as though nothing now could surprise it, once Mr. Waite had given into it the care of his own alarming self.

“This is good,” Mr. Waite said abruptly. He laughed aloud, and said again, “This is good. Here, where it says, ‘He seems perpetually surprised at the world's never being quite so intelligent as he is, although he would be even more surprised if he found out that perhaps he is himself not so intelligent as he thinks.' Too many words, Natalie, and I think you became intoxicated with the first half of the sentence, and only tacked the second half on to make it come down the way it went up. It could be said more neatly, I believe. But it's sound, very sound. And I like, ‘He has a great reputation for generosity, although no one has ever known him to give anything to the
poor
.' You've really extended yourself.” He sat back and looked at her cheerfully, as she had known that he would. “I am more than pleased,” he declared. He fell again to reading, laughing occasionally. “Of course,” he said after a minute, “you realize—in fact, I believe I told you this when I gave you the assignment—that I cannot afford to quarrel with anything you have written here.”

Natalie said, “Maybe I took advantage of that.”

He shook his head. “I know you did,” he said.

He read again, and Natalie looked around the study; the corpse would be over there, of course, between the bookcase with the books on demonology and the window, which had heavy drapes that could be pulled to hide any nefarious work. She would be found at the desk, not five feet away from the corpse, leaning one hand on the corner to support herself, her face white and distorted with screaming. She would be unable to account for the blood on her hands, on the front of her dress, on her shoes, the blood soaking through the carpet at her feet, the blood under her hand on the desk, leaving a smeared mark on the papers there.

“Oh, no,” her father said. “Not handsome, Natalie. That I absolutely disclaim.”

“But it's modified,” Natalie said. She chose her words with mischief. “I particularly say that the handsomeness is largely arrogance; that so few people are really arrogant these days that such a person gives the impression of beauty. I liked that idea.”

“It's an unusual thought,” her father said consideringly. “I'm not sure but that you're too young for it, though.” He gave the notebook a little push, to get it away from the edge of the desk so he could put his elbows down. “Now,” he said.

Natalie settled herself, watching him.

“In the first place,” Mr. Waite said, choosing his words carefully, “I'm going to quarrel with your whole attack in regard to the problem of description. No description can be said to describe anything—and I've told you this before—if it's in mid-air, so to speak, unattached. It's got to be tied on to something, to be
useful
. You have apparently neglected this in today's work.”

“But I thought you said—” Natalie began, but her father held up his hand; he disliked being interrupted.

“Apparently, I say,” he went on. “I don't think that you yourself quite realize the
work
you have given to this little sketch. Under any other circumstances your weighting of it would be meaningless, but I gave you this on purpose to try you out, and you did exactly as I expected.” He paused, thinking. “Understand,” he said finally, “I am not finding fault with your interpretation. You are of course completely free to write whatever you please about me or anything else. I am
interested
in seeing you write what you please, and in encouraging you to write more. But you
must
, if you are ever to be a
good
writer, understand your own motives.”

He stopped, and made again his elaborate ceremony of lighting a cigarette. Then he folded his hands on the notebook and looked frankly at Natalie, the cigarette burning handsomely in the ashtray, the line of smoke framing his head on one side, and the squareness of the window shaping nicely on the other side.

“I am not a vain man,” he began slowly. “I do not hold myself in undue estimation. As a matter of fact, my own description of myself would be
much
harsher than yours. You do not mention my pettiness, for example, although you hint at it in your statements about”—he consulted the notebook—“the fact that I ‘substitute words for actions.' You overlook one of my outstanding characteristics, which is a brutal honesty which frequently leads me into trouble—an honesty so sincere that, applied to myself, it gives me a picture I cannot be proud of, although you name me as a proud man. My honest picture of myself has led me to aim less high than many of my contemporaries, because I know my own failings, and as a result I am in many respects less successful in a worldly sense. They, without knowledge of their own shortcomings, were able to conquer blindly, while I, always hesitating through doubt of myself, lost my chances, and fell. You do not mention—and I am using that same brutal honesty on myself now—that I am not always so kind to my family as I should care to be, because I am perhaps too much concerned with my own emotions at the expense of theirs—although, to speak with bitter truth, I am a person not gifted with great emotions and consequently, while I can never be sentimental, I can never be great.” He seemed about to go on in this strain, which was a favorite of his, but then recollected himself, and said wryly, “I reveal myself more with every word. I
am
honest, Natalie, and sometimes ashamed of it.”

“I always am, when I'm honest,” Natalie said.

“Are you?” he asked with interest. “Do you know when you're being honest?”

“Usually,” Natalie said. “If I'm surprised at myself for saying or thinking it, it's honest.”

He laughed and nodded, and then said, “You teach me as much as I teach you, my dear.” They were both quiet for a minute, counting over their individual virtues, and then he went on, his voice confidential. “Natalie,” he said solemnly, “you know by now that it is natural for girls to hate their fathers at some point in their growth. Now I submit that at this time of your life you are growing to hate me.”

“No,” Natalie said. She stared at him. “Of course I don't hate you,” she said. The remark had come so in a context of discussion that it was a moment before she thought to say, “I love you.”

He shook his head sadly. “When you were born, and when Bud was born, I realized, even though your mother did not, that there would come a time when you would both rebel against us, hating us for what we represented, fighting to get free of us; it's a reaction so natural that I am ashamed to think that now I have a pang, a twinge, when I recognize it at last; it has been slow in coming, but I am as unprepared for it as I have ever been. Natalie, you
must
remember that it is natural, that hatred of me does not imply that
you
as a person hate
me
as a person, but only that the child, growing normally, passes through a stage when hatred of the parents is inevitable. That is your stage now.” He held up his hand again as Natalie tried to speak and then, when she subsided, dropped his hand back to the pages of Natalie's notebook, which he touched as he talked, fumbling with the pages which held her assignment for that morning.

“That does not mean,” he continued thoughtfully, “—although, remember, this is actually a new experience for me as well as for you—that does not mean that I am not able to help you, or advise you, or sympathize with you; it only means that we must recognize now that you are a growing girl and I an old man, and that a basic sex antagonism, combined with a filial resentment, separates us, so that we cannot always be honest with one another as we have been up to now.”

If it's happening why does he tell me? Natalie thought briefly, and heard from far away the police detective demanding, “Are you prepared to confess that you killed him?”

For a long minute her father looked at her, obviously expecting some answer which she was unable to give; Natalie, her mind moving swiftly, went back over what he had said: what had there been, for instance, which indicated what she was to say? Had he asked a question, perhaps? Made a false statement she was to correct? Praised her, to hear her disclaim modestly?

“Well,” her father said at last, and sighed. “It is not necessary to discuss it in detail, my dear. You will soon know more about it than I do. And I shall learn from you.”

He sat back in his chair, and stared reflectively down at the desk, his eyes reading absently the lines of Natalie's notebook.

“Handsome,” he said, and laughed. “Oh, Natalie, my dear.” And he shook his head helplessly.

It was a dismissal. Nothing was to be further identified. As Natalie rose, her mind already moving ahead to the garden, to lunch, to the length of the day stretching ahead, her father pushed the notebook impatiently across the desk.

“You will be at the party this afternoon?” he asked, accenting the “you” just enough to make Natalie remember Bud's refusal to come.

“I guess so,” Natalie said lamely because she was wondering where Bud found the courage to announce publicly that he was not bound by family plans.

“Try to help your mother, if you can,” her father said. “Entertaining is difficult for her.” He smiled up at Natalie, his mind already going on to more important things, the deep complex ideas that were his own work. “A fundamental hatred of people, I believe,” he added as Natalie went toward the door.

*   *   *

On Sundays the Waites regarded themselves as living in a carefree, bohemian fashion, although for the other six days of the week they lived like everyone else. Mrs. Waite was not allowed the services of her maid on Sundays, and on Sundays the Waites usually entertained, with what Mr. Waite confidently referred to as potluck, although it was Mrs. Waite who dealt with the pot—the only reason the Waites were able to keep a maid at all. Mr. Waite customarily invited anyone who pleased him over for Sunday afternoon at his house, and Mrs. Waite was expected to provide various manner of refreshments for Mr. Waite's casual guests. This included, usually, one or another form of small sandwiches and canapés for any number of people—since Mr. Waite was never able to remember whether he had or had not invited any given person—and buffet supper afterwards; Mrs. Waite had thus established for herself a strict eight-o'clock Sunday bedtime, retiring at about the time Natalie and Bud were released from Sunday bondage and Mr. Waite was settling down with his convivial guests.

Natalie and her mother spent Sunday mornings, after Natalie's visit with her father, in the kitchen preparing for the day's guests; Mrs. Waite thought of this as good training for her daughter, and Natalie, telling her father about her mother, had once remarked, “She makes the kitchen like a room with a sign saying ‘Ladies' on the door.”

The kitchen was, in fact, the only place in the house that Mrs. Waite possessed utterly; even her bedroom was not her own, since her husband magnanimously insisted upon sharing it. He shared also the dinner table and the services of the radio in the living room; he felt himself privileged to sit on the porch and to use a bathtub. In the kitchen, however, Mr. Waite amusedly confessed himself “inadequate,” and so Mrs. Waite, one day a week, was allowed a length of time unmolested except for the company of her daughter. Perhaps, even, Mrs. Waite felt that in these hours that they shared the kitchen, she and Natalie were associated in some sort of mother-daughter relationship that might communicate womanly knowledge from one to the other, that might, by means of small female catchwords and feminine innuendoes, separate, at least for a time, the family into women against men. At any rate the kitchen alone with Natalie was the only place where Mrs. Waite talked at all, and probably because she talked so little elsewhere she made her conversation in the kitchen into a sort of weekly chant, a news bulletin wherein all that Mrs. Waite had thought or wanted to say or felt or surmised during the week was aired and considered, in combination with Mrs. Waite's refrain of reminiscence and complaint. Natalie admired her mother at these times, and, although she would go to any length to avoid even the slightest conversation with her mother in the living room, she enjoyed and profited by the kitchen conversations more than even Mrs. Waite suspected.