“Why are we here again, then?”
“Or, if you like, we can be on a cloud, sound asleep in that hot rolling softness close to the sun, or we can be on a mountaintop where the sky is bright blue and the trees are bright green and everything smells of fresh pine and the earth is shining brown and you can see for a hundred miles because even the air is glittering. Or we can say we want to live forever in a palace of blue marble with fountains that flow with purple wine, and flowers growing through the open windows, and hangings of pale-green satin and ceilings of gold, and a repast of fruit and wine set in every room and music of cymbals and lyres, and handmaidens . . .”
“Are you going in here? Into the trees?”
“Or choose perhaps a throne higher than the moon, on a black rock, where sitting we can rule the world, where the stars are around our feet and the sun rises when we glance down and beckon, where far below there are contests to make us laugh and above us there is nothing but our own crowns and sitting there forever we can watch and end eternity with a gesture of our finger . . .”
The trees were waiting in the darkness ahead, quietly expectant. A tree is not a human thing, with its feet in the ground and its back hard against the sky; it cannot tolerate the small human tendernesses moving beneath, and, not obeying the whims of moveable creatures, can hardly have more pity for a Natalie than for a field mouse or a pheasant, moving with private pride but falling easily. Beneath the trees it was not dark as a room is dark when the lights are put out, the artificial darkness which comes when an artificial light is gone; it was the deep natural darkness which comes with a forsaking of natural light; Natalie’s feet went without sound on the path—made by whom? for what purpose? for whose feet?—and she could not lift her head from contemplation of her own feet on the path, although she knew surely that the trees bent over her, trying, perhaps, to touch her hair. Her feet felt the path and she knew that there was moss there, or something frightfully soft that made no sound.
“Everything is so easy,” Tony’s voice said from ahead of her. “You can remember it all if you try, and all you have to do is lie back against a comforting hand and close your heavy eyes and say, ‘I am here, I am where I belong, I have come home.’ Just as we’ve always been doing it, just as it’s the natural and quiet and exciting way of doing things . . . as we remember, as through all our wanderings we remember, as we remember . . .”
One foot going before another, it seemed that this was the only way to go in among these trees, and that no one had ever come this way and then turned to go back again, and had perhaps even gone in and out freely. “Tony?” Natalie said. “Tony?”
Tony’s voice came more faintly from ahead. “And do you remember the glory? The wonder of dancing and seeing in the firelight the others dancing?” It was as though Tony had removed a little, gone around a tree where the path had not, as though Tony had gone in the darkness a little farther away with each step, still speaking luringly, and was by now so far away that even Tony’s voice came only by permission of the trees, relayed in mockery.
“Tony?” Natalie said again more urgently, realizing suddenly, concretely and acutely, that it was indeed very dark and that ahead of her the figure she had mistaken for Tony was only another tree.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Tony, a voice dying away, now gone out of hearing; was it that way? Twigs over her mouth?
“Tony,” Natalie said, suddenly very frightened.
There was no answer, and Natalie stopped and stood very still among the trees, feeling dreadfully that they leaned forward to watch her. She put her hand to her face and it was there, she felt her raincoat cautiously and it was still slippery and firm under her hand. The look, she told herself, shutting her eyes. We were out for a walk and we came on a bus and we got to the lake and we went past the fairgrounds and we walked along a dark road in the rain, and Tony said—what did Tony say?—and anyway we started as a joke, a schoolgirl joke, to follow an odd old path through the trees, and whoever heard of anyone lost in a clump of a dozen trees like this near a lake and an amusement park and even in the rain? Why, people must have been along here a million times, and thought it was funny. Why, probably no one ever before got frightened in this clump of four trees and certainly no one ever before couldn’t be more than fifty feet from the road and if it were daylight it would be terribly funny, and even a little bit silly, like children playing ghost. So now turn around, Natalie told herself, and you’ll see that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
She turned boldly, before she could change her mind, and looked behind her; the path curved out of sight almost immediately, but of course it was a path and it led back to the road and certainly the road—if there was a road? if there ever had been a road?—led back to town. The trees so close to the path that it was hardly possible to pass between them without brushing against bark were of course no more than trees and only the fact that it was difficult to see them clearly in the darkness and the rain made them in any way terrible. And since this was only a clump of trees, after all, the path must go forward out of it and very probably Tony was right now standing just ahead beyond the turn in the path between the trees and waiting and laughing.
And waiting and laughing, Natalie told herself again, and she shivered. And waiting and laughing, and laughing and waiting, and, Natalie told herself sternly, this must stop, and thought, People are only afraid of other people. Waiting and laughing, she thought, and said, timidly, “Tony?”
When there was again no answer, she felt suddenly the elemental fear of some other person who will not speak when spoken to, and denies thus the similiarity of sanities between one person and another, some other person who, waiting and laughing, determines secretly and giggling to feast upon his own kind. “Tony?” she said, and, realizing after she had moved that she was walking, began to go quickly ahead on the path. Blundering on alone, she came out at last, almost crying (thinking, What is it I know that means steadiness and warmth and a home? Arthur Langdon? Elizabeth? and their names were meaningless) onto a smooth bare place where the dusk, or the light of the lake far behind reflected from the clouds overhead, fell with a brazen and ghastly clarity.
It then occurred to her that she was expected here. This small clearing among the trees had been set up because she could not remain under the trees any longer, and it was necessary for her to find a place to rest. Nothing happens unless it needs to, she told herself, and saw with complacent pleasure a fallen tree across the small clearing and, as she knew she was expected to, sat down upon it. If I take a minute or so to calm down, she said to herself, if I try to relax and not be so nervous about nothing, if I get a perspective on things instead of . . .
Without stumbling, as though permitted, Tony came walking easily through the trees and not by the path, seeming not to put her feet down on the soundless moss. It was a dark unfamiliar figure coming, for a minute, so that Natalie turned suddenly, sitting on the log, and was unable to speak and would almost have run back among the trees except that in time she saw that it was Tony. Tony came closer, in the blue raincoat, hands in the pockets and smiling. “I lost you,” Natalie said helplessly.
Tony glanced easily at the trees around them, staring back at them boldly and with amusement. “I was there.”
“Only one antagonist . . . only one enemy,” Natalie said.
“That’s very true,” Tony said.
She had done what she was told, then, Natalie thought; she has brought me here with friendship and without force, she has followed her instructions to the letter and will probably be commended. Is she sorry? Does she regret it even for a minute, does a sudden fleeting picture come to her, of the two of us together when it was just beginning? Could she forget the methods she had to use, the small jokes and the little intimacies—or is she wholly a traitor, using any means to achieve the traitorous end, not sparing any thought for the tremendous personal, real emotions that were so undefined in her orders (
“Get her here”) and yet so inclusive, so desirable, and so secret; will she be required to state in her report that means she used?
Once, try it once, Natalie thought, and said, “Tony, I’m afraid of this place. Please let’s go back.” Perhaps there might be, somehow, a weakness in the traitor to make this an equal battle, perhaps there might be a small remembered joke which could unlock the chains, bribe the guards, press the hidden panel, perhaps—and only to make it an equal battle, Natalie promised—perhaps there might be—
“Later,” Tony said peacefully, the unrepentent traitor, the traitor to traitors. “Later I might let you go back.”
Natalie put her head down on her knees and thought, I wish I could go home, and perhaps said it aloud, and Tony, her head back against a tree trunk, familiarly, said, “It’s good to be here at last; it’s the only possible place.”
“Have you been here before?” Natalie asked after a minute, wanting to say, Have there been others? Are you experienced? Am I the first? What did they say? Do? Were they afraid? Did it happen here? Why does it happen at all? Who put you up to it? May I please go home? May I please go back to my own home? Please?—because she did not know any other word that might somehow ask please, no other word than please. “Of course I’ve been here before,” Tony said, surprised. “How did you think I knew how to come?”
And were they all afraid? Natalie wanted to ask, but she said, “Was it always this cold?”
“Cold? Are you cold?” Tony asked, and there was a note of sarcasm, as though she said, And was she cold, the poor thing, was she cold? And did she want her mother, poor thing, poor thing?
“Tony,” Natalie said, half-rising, but Tony put her hand on Natalie’s arm, almost casually, and held her.
“Wait a while,” Tony said. “I’m almost ready.” She looked up at Natalie and smiled, and seemed measuring Natalie, because she looked down even at Natalie’s feet, and smiled again. “I’m almost ready,” she repeated reassuringly. “It won’t take long. What are you afraid of?” When Natalie, suddenly helpless, did not answer, she patted Natalie’s arm lightly and said, “Don’t be afraid,” and added, as one reassuring a whimpering child with a familiar rhyme, “Page of pentacles.” When Natalie again did not move or answer, she said, “Well, then. A soldier, a child. Reversed, degradation or pillage.”
“I thought it was a game,” Natalie said.
“Keep thinking of it as a game,” Tony said, and put out her cigarette carefully. With Tony’s hands on her face, on her back, holding her, Natalie shuddered. One is one and all alone and evermore will be so; “I will not,” said Natalie, and ripped herself away. She wants me, Natalie thought with incredulity, and said again, aloud, “I will not.”
“Of course you won’t,” said Tony, moving quietly, and Natalie at the last minute saw and stepped back again and said, “I am not afraid of you.”
There was a short, an absolute, silence, the trees suddenly alert, listening. Then: “Certainly,” Tony said. “If you want to run home, nobody’s going to keep you here.” And she laughed.
I have been found wanting, Natalie thought; I have made myself unacceptable and am not worthy. She hesitated, half-moving, waiting for the hand or branch to pull her rudely down again and knowing at the same time that she was not worthy, and then she said, “Going?” as though it were a casual thing. Tony looked at her once, and then away at the trees again, and did not speak. Everything’s waiting for me, Natalie thought; she half-moved again, and was still. Perhaps even yet? She thought hopefully, but Tony did not stir, and Natalie took a step toward the path. “Tony?” Natalie said. “Going?”
“No.”
Everything’s waiting for me to go away, Natalie thought. It’s time for me to leave, I am innocent, my father has work to do, Elizabeth is going to bed, Tony wants me away. Everything is waiting for me to go off and do something by myself, everything is waiting for me to act without someone else; they are all too busy for me now, even Tony, standing dark under the dark trees. “Tony?” she said again, insistently. “Please, Tony.”
There was again no answer, and Natalie was at the point where the path entered the trees again. She knew that Tony would not answer her; she knew that she would find her way back by the path without difficulty, the trees drawing back from her as she moved, her feet rustling on the dead leaves and dirt, and, crying now, she went out of the light and into the dark woods, through which she could see the lights, now, of the road back to town.
“Tony?” she called back once, stopping with her hand against a tree, and its rough back lifeless under her fingers, “Tony, come on back with me,” but there was no answer.
Her feet again upon the road, with the roller coaster—so soon to be revived for summer traffic—ahead of her, she thought theatrically, I will never see Tony any more; she is gone, and knew that, theatrical or not, it was true. She had defeated her own enemy, she thought, and she would never be required to fight again, and she put her feet down tiredly in the mud and thought, What did I do wrong?
* * *
The incredible sight of car headlights stopped her on the road, flat-footed, and as the car came closer it seemed to her frighteningly that it might be her mother and father, come to look for her. Then the car stopped next to her and a voice said, coming louder as the front window was rolled down, “What on earth are you doing out here alone?”
It is my mother, Natalie thought, come to take me home. “I’m lost, I think,” she said.
“Well, get in,” said the woman. She leaned in her seat to open the back door of the car and Natalie obediently climbed in; it was an old car, and the back seat was crowded and cramped with accumulated junk; there were bottles there, she could hear from the rattling, and old papers, and a kind of blanket that felt like the horrible hair of some animal. The car moved as Natalie leaned back and the woman turned halfway around to stare at Natalie. The driver of the car, of whom Natalie could see only a neck and the back of a hat, leaned forward to peer at the road, as though able to see farther with his own eyes than the headlights showed. “Well,” said the woman, looking at Natalie in the dark, “you were certainly far away from everywhere.”
“I was lost,” Natalie said.
“Long walk back to town,” the driver said.
“You were very kind to pick me up,” Natalie said.
“We always pick up people,” the woman said comfortingly. “Can’t stand seeing anyone walk so long’s we have a car ourselves. And lucky for you.”
“It certainly was,” Natalie said.
“Where you from?”
“The college.”
The woman nodded against the reflected light of the headlights. “College,” she confirmed, not at all surprised.
“This is certainly nice of you,” Natalie said.
“How old are you? Eighteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“Our girl’s eighteen,” the woman said, pointing out some irremediable fault in Natalie. “Goes to business school.”
“Stays out of the woods,” the man added.
“Well, now, you don’t ever know,” the woman said consideringly. She turned and looked at him and then back at Natalie. “I guess Moms and Dads never do know what the kids are doing, really,” she said.
“I guess not,” Natalie said.
“I guess your Mom would be pretty mad if she saw you walking down that lonely road alone.”
“I guess so.”
“Can’t ever tell what’ll happen to a girl alone along there,” the man added.
“Attackers,” the woman said, and nodded. Beyond her nodding head the first lights of the town showed suddenly. “Terrible things,” she said in a low voice to Natalie, as one communicating female facts not suitable for the ears of men. “Attackers and all that.”
“Where she want to go?” the man asked the woman.
“Back to college?”
the woman asked Natalie.
“Extra two miles,” the man said.
“The center of town will be fine,” Natalie said hastily. “After all, you’ve saved me a mighty long walk.”
“More’n that,” said the woman, nodding again. “Down that lonely road.”
“Tell you,” the man said, compromising, “we’ll take her as far’s the bridge. How’s that?”
“That will be wonderful,” Natalie said, “I can get back to the college from there in five minutes.”
“All lighted streets, too,” said the woman with satisfaction. They all watched with silent pleasure as the town took shape around them, filling out its streets with stores, with hotels, with lights. They went down the main street and Natalie saw without surprise that the lampposts were trimmed with wreaths and that strings of lights had been festooned overhead in preparation for Christmas; the yellow and blue and red of neon signs blinked crazily into the car as they went on down the main street to the bridge.
The man brought his car to a slow and accurate stop in the center of the bridge, and the woman reached around to open the door for Natalie. “There, now,” she said.
Getting out, Natalie told them both, “Thank you very much, very much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“Nothing at all,” said the woman, and the man said, “All right.”
“Thank you again,” Natalie said, and closed the door. She waved after them as the man made a cautious, formal turn in the middle of the bridge, and waved again as they went back off the way they had come. Then, somehow puzzled by her quick transition from a lonely wet road to the middle of a lighted bridge, she crossed the sidewalk to the bridge parapet and stood looking down, to make sure where she was, but she saw instead the water below, with the raindrops falling into it.
Why shouldn’t I—? she thought with irresistible logic and leaned over farther, and even farther; she put one shoe against the stone to urge herself higher and thought with glory, Mother won’t care if I scuff it now; it will be lost before it wears out.