Hide Fox, and All After

by Rafael Yglesias

  They talked of running away, neither for a moment seriously intending to. But the romance of it keyed them up, their vitality, hopes, and ideals suddenly free.

  Yet this was fatal. Which one would break the acting, the scene, the love? Neither could do it separately, and a rare loss of sanity caused them not to end together.

  Alec finally said he would have to call his father. He was close to him, and he wouldn't leave without first discussing it with him. Why didn't Raul then say, "Let's forget it?" He knew it was over, why did be allow it to drag on?

  Again, he watched a mad suicide without stopping it. Though superficially no major rift seemed to be going on, Raul was breaking the rules of their game. He allowed this dwindling descent from the scene to reality. It was humiliation for both; a corruption of the rare contact they had. And he knew it. .

  Alec spoke to his father for more than a half hour. This was a process well rehearsed: his father was the opium to subdue any rebellion against his mother's dominance, while allowing Alec his self-respect. His father would promise to calm her, and thereby would calm Alec. He'd lower his voice and they'd be conspiratorial—without laying any plans, without any results.

  This isn't a novelty among adolescent relations with parents. Perhaps this was preferable; far less humiliating than having to dope oneself. Then one must openly admit cowardice, Raul thought. However responsible the advice one takes against rebellion, the reason is still fear. No matter how sound and true the objections, its appeal lies in the ready rationalization. The lengths Raul would go to at times to excuse himself from action were laughable.

  Alec finished his call. "He said I should wait a week or two and see if she calms down. He promised he would call her right after speaking to me."

  "Well," Raul said, smiling, "that's certainly reasonable."

  Alec's house was unconditionally denied to Raul. With only a week or two left in the school year, it was unnecessary for Alec to go to classes. Raul, therefore, didn't see him.

  On the following Monday, Miller announced that Michael Sussbaum would play Iago in next year's production of Othello.

  The pressure was overpowering. No friendly voice greeted Raul. His parents, his teachers, his advisers, and his brother all urged him to study for final exams. Returning to the company of his classmates, he found them doubly intolerable. Everywhere waste and frustration.

  With his parents anxious that he should study, Raul was forced to fake it. At night he would have to move quietly and lower his voice to a whisper, since they insisted he get his sleep. He found that he couldn't read; no novel held his interest. Writing was also impossible: he wished one could verbally express a scream. He felt he was in an ever diminishing cage, his inner rage at the restriction. Senseless values were cutting off all that was vital to him. The nearest he came to a personal identity was being angry at these jailers.

  There was no attitude he could take that didn't fit nicely into their conception of an adolescent. So consistent and determined was this condescension that Raul felt he could easily throw them all into one box and label it Them. They. You people. He hated everyone now.

  The black prince rode again in Raul's poetry. At night Raul would turn the lights off and sing of the avenging man at the beach. The spray of the sea on him, dawn breaking above him. The swirl of the sea and the sky, his cape fluttering in the wind.

  Only this lonely figure calmed him. Brief, cool peace. He wanted solitude. He wanted something mysterious and sublime from the earth and from his talent. He knew his identity: he wished its means and recognition.

  Perhaps these desires had never been more infused with egotism. He could not allow even the slightest condescension, and it came now from all sides. Never failing to hit their mark, all authorities knifed him with their arrogance and maddening irrelevancy.

  Even the well-intentioned blundered stupidly. Miller, Bowden, and White all found convenient clichés to convince Raul; nothing could repel him more. As for Henderson's promises, their influence had weakened considerably. Alexander and his course were no longer attractive. With the loss of Iago, and the knowledge that Miller would not do Shakespeare in later years, the theater's value disappeared. Yet the lure of a scholarly life couched in ease by Henderson's energetic liberalism was strong enough to keep him at the school.

  12

  All this bred a frantic inner life for Raul. He violently withdrew from contact with others. He practiced silence in school, speaking only when it was impossible to do otherwise. Creating a mystique, he recognized people only when he had translated them into this code. He tried to burrow deeply within himself and snugly bed down for the cold winter.

  His world ranged in imagery from the lonely to the bitter. He pumped his mind with poetry, surviving the day by relating the commonplace to an image. But he could riot live this way. His life barely had direction before this, but it had had joy, and that was gone. The routine refined a system that gradually ate away at his patience and sanity. So much activity with so little importance or interest infuriated him. He needed time, to stay sane, if for nothing else.

  He had read nothing for months, and the juicy paperbacks that lined the walls of his room cried out against this neglect. For days he would pick one out, open it, and, being preoccupied, leave it with barely a page read. The idiocy of all those who advised him had blocked the entrances to those doors that harbored time and thought of his own. The constriction was as precise as in chess: hardly visible. His poetry became ridiculous, expressing an oppression that called for a treatise, not imagery.

  His impotence against his oppressors, an impotence that included an inability to prove the oppression, sub-sided to self-hate. He saw his floppy arms and legs, his gawky manner. He masturbated each night, leaving the evidence pressing against his body for weeks. He found no limits to make himself more contemptible; and knowing the cause of his self-hate increased it. Impotent furor at his impotence: the circle in which his emotions were bound knew no escape. If he confessed to all this, he would be told he was the one who was sick. He wanted, and needed, his own life style; and suddenly, as if it had gone on too long, as if he had been pushed too far, he reared back and began spring cleaning.

  Wednesday night of one of the last weeks, Raul opened Dreiser's The Financier and began reading. Thursday morning, taking a collection of notebooks and old poems, he went on. A little rest Thursday night, and, taking Dreiser's Titan, he read and revitalized his poems. The air in Van Cortlandt Park was breezy, soft, and vital. The days were graceful, the freedom sweeter for being stolen, and the cost terrible.

  His friends, meeting him at Mike & Gino's, looked at him wide-eyed. Jeff, in a frightened whisper, told him that Tom Able was telling Raul's teachers where he was. Raul smiled and said, "That's what he's taught to do."

  He decided to go downtown early Friday afternoon and, passing through the subway cars, he saw his history teacher. He nodded at him and went on.

  Perhaps the frank way Raul cut school for those two days caused the relative calm with which it was met by his parents and the school. His brother didn't even feel a man-to-man talk was necessary. For once, the usual run of complaints aroused no guilt. Fucking up? Why, he had read two novels and completed twelve poems. The money? His father, but for his pride, could get a scholarship; they were based on need, not excellence; his sanity was worth more than the tuition.

  The school asked that Raul see Henderson, rather than White, on Monday. Though this was preferable, Raul would feel guilty with him, and therefore more vulnerable. Due mostly to his parents, though they did not encourage him to stay in school, by Monday Raul's calm had fled and he wished desperately to stay.

  His appointment with Henderson was in the afternoon, and he spent the morning with Jeff. After a class, Jeff and he walked off the school grounds to have a cigarette. They followed a wooded road that led to the rear of the school grounds. Rounding a corner, a car came sharply to a halt. Henderson was in it. "Jeff! Raul! Get in here."

  They
threw their cigarettes on the ground, pressing them out. Raul shook his head. "Oh boy," he said.

  They got into the back seat. Henderson started the car. "Do either of you have classes?"

  "No," Raul said. "I have a study hall now." Jeff, very nervous, outlined his entire morning schedule.

  Henderson merely grunted his recognition. "I was just driving to school," he said, stopping in irritation. "And I find you two. I hope you're not lying to me, and you do have no classes."

  They mumbled no. The statement required no denial; Henderson was pointing out how far they had breached his trust.

  The car stopped in the faculty parking lot. "Go up to my office," Henderson said. "I'll be up there in a few minutes."

  A few students looked on in surprise at seeing Raul and Jeff get out of Henderson's car. Raul, because of the stage and his cutting, was known; they were piecing it together. Jeff and he hurried up the stairs as if they were being chased. Jeff, in a tense whisper, asked Raul, "What's he gonna do?"

  Raul shrugged. He didn't like Henderson's tone. It was White's, or his father's, or any blundering authoritarian trying to establish his perishable superiority. Raul's arrogance was clearly saying: Watch out, Henderson baby, you may blow it.

  Henderson's secretary, seeing Raul and Jeff hurrying into his office and knowing that both of them had appointments later in the day, realized something was wrong. "Did Mr. Henderson ask you to go to his office?" she asked softly.

  Jeff mumbled and nodded, Raul not stopping.

  Henderson, seeing a member of the faculty in the parking lot, went up to him, asking that he not mention Raul and Jeff being in his car to anyone. Reaching his office, he asked his secretary to get Raul's -and Jeff's folders. He stood in his outer office, trying to control an anger that arose from terrible frustration. Raul and Jeff had done nothing unusual. Students often walked that road to smoke. But his leniency had made the practice more frequent. The students, seniors in particular, had been taking advantage of him, loading the guns of those faculty and parents who opposed him.

  The man whom he succeeded would long ago have thrown Raul out on his ass. Henderson had been magnanimous. He had been willing to accept Raul's reasons for cutting, and the day he was to see him, he had broken a rule. For a moment, Henderson had to reflect that Raul's luck was awful. To have been caught on that day, and by him, was phenomenal. After all, this was the real crime.

  His secretary handed him Raul's and Jeff's folders. He looked at their schedules. They had told the truth, but he knew that already. He walked into his office. Raul and Jeff were sitting on the couch, their books on the coffee table before them. Henderson sat down, opening Raul's folder. In it was his letter to Raul's parents that smoothed everything over. It infuriated him. And Raul, oblivious, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, maddened him still more.

  "You were to see me today, isn't that so?" he asked Raul.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you too, Jeff."

  Jeff gulped. "Yes, sir."

  "All right." He shifted in his chair. "You've let me down," he said, looking at Raul. "Both of you. Raul, I was willing to let your cutting on Thursday and Friday pass. It seemed reasonable to me that you needed a rest. I've protected you from the faculty. Many of them, most of them, think that you should be thrown out. Mr. White, Mr. Miller, and I have all stuck our necks out." He paused. "I've written this letter to your parents, and I'm not going to change it, in spite of this. I don't want either of you to tell anyone about this. I'm not. I don't know why, but I'm going to give both of you another chance. But the next time that either of you breaks any rule, no matter how trivial, you're out!" He looked at Raul and then at Jeff. "Jeff, I'll see you later today." He paused again, rising. He pointed to the door. "I don't want to see either of you in here again like this. Now get out!"

  Out of both shock and fear, Raul and Jeff hurried out. The grace and dignity of both the man and his office had been violated by his tone. Jeff was whispering excitedly to Raul as they walked through the building, but Raul was not listening. He was smiling strangely.

  Those advisers at school—Mr. Miller, Mr. Bowden, and Mr. White—who took on the aspect of sorrowful fathers when they saw Raul after this incident warned him about the influence he had on Jeff, and Jeff on him. Though Raul would answer heatedly that, if either was being influenced, it was Jeff, he wasn't fooled. A very old tactic, he thought mildly, very cheap.

  He saw more of Jeff because of this, though his other fair-weather friends avoided prolonged contact. Raul preferred it that way. He found solitude comforting: he emerged stronger and wiser. Within, desperately, he felt the need for strength—an invulnerability to the insults, minute and monstrous, his station in life seemed to invite.

  A few days after the happening in Henderson's office Raul, getting into a subway car to go home, met his mother. He exclaimed and sat down next to her. He was pleased to see her. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  His mother briefly considered lying but felt that Raul deserved more than that. "I went to see the school psychiatrist." Raul's anger was transparent. "He asked to see me," she went on.

  "Oh?" His mother, a miraculous calm on her face, nodded. Raul, annoyed at her not elaborating, burst out, "What happened?"

  "Nothing," she said, a little annoyed at his tone. "I didn't know what to say. I told him I was upset and confused and that I didn't understand why you were cutting."

  "And? What did he say?"

  "Nothing. He said I shouldn't worry."

  Raul turned away in anger. "Why did you go?"

  "I wanted to."

  "What do you mean, you wanted to!"

  His belligerence was presumptuous and angering.

  "You know, I didn't have to tell you I went. I have my reasons and I'll keep them to myself," she said.

  "I would thank you, when you play with my life, to consult me first."

  She laughed. "I'm responsible for you. It's our money you're wasting."

  Too old an argument to pursue. Raul closed his eyes in shame and anger. "Did they ask Dad?"

  "They asked both of us."

  "And did he go?" he asked, about to scream.

  "No. Your father said he didn't think it was necessary."

  Raul calmed. It came out of pride, he thought, but at least his politics are correct. "Are you going to go every week?" Raul asked with evident sarcasm.

  She looked at him and frowned. "He just wanted to see me."

  That night Raul trembled with rage. His mother going didn't matter so much. It was the school and its cheap tactics. Its cheap rationalizations. The society's cheap process: get all the anti-nine-to-fivers, the capable students who won't go to school, bend them, dull the pearl that flaws their normality. They wouldn't give an inch of their curriculum, of their blundering faculty. And that they dared try this filthy cheap trick on him. It was an insult to his perception. Now they not only denied his identity, they were trying to recast it.

  But how could he strike back? It seemed that they wanted him: if they were willing to tame him, they wanted him. He had to destroy that hope irrevocably; lead them on, and smash it. Appear wildly defiant, beautifully opposed.

  The last week of regularly scheduled school, Raul saw Mr. Miller each day, talking eagerly of next year's productions, outlining his intense studying for final exams. He would linger after class with his English teacher, Mr. Bowden, doing the same. He imitated the humble tones of other "rebels" reforming, harboring jealously the knowledge of its falsity. He went into the same detail with his parents, acting it out, reading Dreiser on the sly.

  After closing exercises, four days were given to exams. These days carried a sort of emotional ambiguity: the brief days, only two hours of tests per day, had an air of college freedom, but the tests' intensity seemed to concentrate school pressure into one overpowering dose. On Friday, after the farewell speech, the students hurried about with the frightening joy of experimental rats whose maze has been widened. Raul, whimsical amids
t this activity, met Alec, whom he hadn't seen for three weeks, in front of the theater.

  "Ah," Raul said, seeing him, "so you've come to bid adieu to the ol' theater."

  "I, yes. But why you asked to come with me, I don't know."

  "I won't see it for a long time."

  "Just the summer."

  "True," Raul smiled.

  Alec mistrusted that smile. They went up the stairs in silence. The auditorium was deserted. Alec stopped him while they were walking down an aisle. "You are going to stay?"

  "Of course," Raul said, laughing. "I've been studying my ass off for the finals."

  Alec smiled affectionately. He patted Raul on the shoulder. "Good," he said.

  They went up to Miller's office. His stage manager and technical director were going over the last details of locking everything up. He nodded at Raul and Alec, who sat down quietly. When they were alone with Miller, Alec said, "Shutting up shop, eh?"

  Miller nodded, dragging on his cigarette holder.

  Raul watched that object of pretension tap against an ashtray. "You won't be here during finals?" he asked.

  "No, I'll be working on my stone wall," he said, smiling intimately.

  "Nor during summer school?"

  "No." They all laughed. "Thank God." They laughed less forcefully. "No, actually, I'm not needed. They only use the auditorium, see, and White knows how to handle that."

  "I won't see you"—Raul cleared his throat—"until fall then."

  "Probably. Come up to my house any time you'd like. It would be a pleasure to have you come."

  "Thank you, I will."

  Alec beamed at Raul, who returned a frown. "Alec," Miller said, "you'll come back and see Othello, won't you?"

  "Certainly."

  "Good." He rose. "I have to go down and check on a few things."

  Alec and Raul, in turn, wished Miller a pleasant summer. After he left, they sat silently.