The Tunnel

by Baynard Kendrick

  Experience had taught Natalie that people who “wanted to talk to you” generally had something unpleasant to say, usually in the form of criticism. He had been in conference with Trev downstairs. If Trev had any complaints about the state of their married life, he ought to give them to her himself, and not send Dr. Olessa to do his dirty work for him. Natalie felt herself flushing with resentment, but she closed her book and waited quietly for whatever it was he had to say. First Mona, and now Cam. Next it would be the patient Sarah.

  Cam said, “I’m a little angry with you, Nat. There’s nothing physically the matter with you. But there’s something on your mind, something that’s worrying you, making you unhappy. I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

  Natalie caught her breath. This was a direct frontal attack. She was prepared for subtleties, vague plots and counterplots, but now Cam had launched a catapult which, if she were not careful, would breach the walls of her fortress.

  Did he honestly imagine that she would be so foolish as to count over her problem potatoes for him, so that he could report to Trev the need on Trev’s part for increased caution? Did Cam believe she would consider opening her heart to him as a grateful patient to her kindly doctor? With tears, perhaps, and a coy smile? Her quiet room the confessional, Cam the impersonal priest, the avowed absolver of her difficulties.

  She had to admit it, she was tempted to tell him. She had never noticed before how really attractive Cam was. He couldn’t be much older than Trev; he gave the appearance of settled stability because he was quiet and wise and so often solemn and because he was so occupied with the mind’s philosophies. The things he said seemed so significant and weighty and important, always; perhaps that was his retreat, his bulwark against shyness. Or possibly it was because of his constant association with the simple, virtuous Sarah. How had he come to marry Sarah, anyway, now that she thought of it? There was nothing gay or light about the woman, no relief from the sensible dullness. Her colors were grays and blacks, monotones; Cam looked as if he could use some reds and yellows and purples in his life. He had the tall, stringy frame of an athlete; the way his thinning blonde hair receded from his intelligent forehead made her want to touch his temples, feel the bone structure underneath. His eyes were blue and disarming under the businesslike spectacles.

  But, of course, she would have to wiggle out of this situation. She would meet his questioning gaze with frank candor; she could behave like a woman worried by simple woman’s problems. With all his astuteness, he couldn’t guess the dreadful things that lay beneath the surface of her mind …

  “It’s this house,” she said abruptly. “It depresses me, Cam. It always has.”

  “It isn’t like you,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve always thought it must be hard for someone like you to come into a tailor-made modus operandi. I understand, Nat, and so does Trev. It’s too full of things, isn’t it? Massive furniture and velvet draperies; whatnots and flowers under bells. The tea service is too heavy, there are too many marble-topped tables, and you find yourself wishing for more fresh air. Isn’t that it?”

  If that was all she had to worry about, it was so exactly it that Cam’s penetration was astounding. She nodded dumbly, for she found she was close to tears.

  “It’s the house of a woman who’s already filled it with her life—all of it,” he continued. “It’s Mrs. Sherrett’s house. And there’s no room left for storage space of your own. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

  The blue eyes peered at her over the glasses. “No,” she said, with a catch of laughter. “You’re so right. Go on, but this is bad for me. You’re making me feel terribly sorry for myself, and actually it’s idiotic to complain. Are you a psychiatrist, Cam?”

  He spread out his thin hands, palms down, on the counterpane, and spoke to them. “No,” he said slowly. “But I think I know how you feel anyway.”

  “I’d like to do something about it,” Natalie said quickly, “but you see, it would hurt Trev if I changed anything in the house. He might think I—resented Mrs. Sherrett. And I didn’t. I—don’t.”

  Here. Here, without Cam’s realizing it, was one of her problems held up to the light. He was helping her to find the answer to her feeling of guilt about the older woman, masked under a friendly discussion of home decorating. If he knew, without being told, about the house and its ill effect on her, then there might not be anything so very terrible, after all, in her attitude toward her mother-in-law.

  “I’ve watched you,” Cam said. “I’ve watched you prowling around, trying to find some corner you could call your own. You’re growing up, Natalie, that’s all there is to it. You want to build your own nest; every woman does. Have you talked to Trev about it at all?”

  Natalie looked at him directly. “You’re the doctor, Cam. No. No, I haven’t. What right have I to want to build my own nest? I won’t have his children. There’s only me. I’m—lucky to be here.”

  “Oh. So they’re in it, too?” She felt he was steeling his voice to impersonality, but he was interested; his words had quickened. “I don’t like to pry, but why in the name of heaven won’t you have his children? Are you afraid, or is it just that you don’t like ’em?”

  “That’s it,” she said brightly, lying in her teeth, aware that she could not let him take one step further now, into her mind. “I don’t like ’em. I’m a selfish, vain woman who doesn’t want to lose her figure or her mind, and I just plain don’t want any. Now.” She pulled at the silken bow under her chin as though it were too tight, picked up her book, and stared at him defiantly over it. “That’s what you get for asking questions, Cam. You’ve discovered your best friend has married a mess. I really have a headache, Cam. I don’t want to talk any more. Do you mind?”

  She was frightened, and she wanted him out of there so she could think about the new thing she had discovered.

  She could not have Trevil’s children.

  Bob had fixed that.

  “Just you and I, Nat,” he had whispered one night in the hotel room in San Francisco. “I couldn’t stand worrying about you, while I’m out there. And when I come back for good, we’ll be too poor to have any responsibilities for quite some time. I’ll have to figure out some way to earn a living for us. I want us to be gay, Nat, to have fun when I come back. I want us to be like we are now, minus a war.”

  Natalie, who wanted children, had been glad of the dark. It’s the way they all are, she told herself. When he’s been out of it for a while, he’ll change his mind. I’ll see that he wants to change his mind.

  She had not had an inch of time to do any such thing.

  Alive or dead, he’d said, and he’d kept his promise.

  She was doomed to go through life a woman unfulfilled. She would never feel small hands dragging at her skirts, never look tenderly down at a small sleeping face in its crib, never spoon strained spinach into a small open mouth.

  To say nothing of the unfulfillment of Trevil, who was cut out to be an indulgent, humorous father. He would never hear the words, “Go to Daddy.” He would never take his son on a hunting trip, never admire his daughter in her first party dress, never struggle through the evening reading of Chicken Little. Unless, of course, he managed to kill her and marry Mona Desmé.

  She had had two husbands, really a surplus of husbands; one was dead and didn’t know it, the other was trying to murder her.

  “Cam,” she said, watching closely, testing her own words and his every possible reaction. “If I put my life in your hands would you help me or betray me?”

  He was silent a long time before he answered. Then it was to say: “That’s your decision to be made, Nat. If there is any thought in your mind that I’d betray you, then you lack faith enough in me for me to help you.”

  “Open the desk drawer and read what I’ve written.” Her lips felt numb, as though she were under the after-effects of novocain. “It will take a long time, and if you mention it to Trevil, I’ll die because I can’t go on.”

  Na
t watched him approach the desk, her executioner walking to throw the switch while she was strapped in the electric chair.

  “You wouldn’t let me read this,” said Cam, “unless you were sure I wouldn’t mention it to anyone.”

  She knew he was right. “You’ll find out why I don’t want Trev’s children, Cam. They might take after me.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Cam picked up the sheaf of handwritten pages. “Sometimes the best of artists paint very bad self-portraits—to themselves, but the portraits look wonderful to others.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Nat wondered how long she had been in love with Cam Olessa.

  Chapter 24

  “‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things.’” Certainly she had talked of many things—far more than from shoes to sealing wax. She had tied up a lifetime in a package and sent it hurtling off by express train, canteens to crabs, mothers to murder. That she probably had talked far too much was the only thought that kept popping into her mind today.

  Yet surely this was the time to be elated, not frightened.

  Cam had read her outpourings without any change of expression and equally without the recrimination she had expected.

  She had watched him from the bed, not daring to speak, not even daring to think. The ash tray beside her was filled with cigarette butts when he was done. Her own. She counted them guiltily. Twenty-four. Incredible that one woman could smoke so many in so short a time; yet the length of time depended on the length of the journey. How short was a lifetime, or how long? That, like the journey on the train, depended on where you were going and, also a necessary factor, where you were coming from.

  She had burst into tears when Dr. Olessa read the last page and put it down.

  His calmness was like ice water dousing her threatened hysterics. “What are you crying about?”

  “You can read what you’ve just finished reading, Cam, and then ask me such a question?”

  “It’s because I’ve read it that I’m surprised at your tears. Tears are the refuge of a weakling.”

  “You read what Bob Helms said, Cam. He was on to me the first time he saw me in the canteen. He said, ‘You’re not very strong.’”

  “You’ve made a liar out of him,” Dr. Olessa said calmly. “It’s a funny thing, Nat, but you seem to be the antithesis of those people we occasionally run across who take on characteristics from their names.”

  “I’ll admit I’m weak. It’s in every line there, Cam, and you know it. To let anyone read it was the greatest weakness of all.”

  “You’re as stubborn as a mule,” Dr. Olessa declared. “In the first place, I didn’t say you were weak. Lots of weak women would have gone through life drawing false comfort from the name of Strong. You got a bit obsessed with Bob Helms’ words and a bit more than obsessed with Bob Helms himself, if I might make so bold as to say so.”

  Let him think what he wanted to, damn it! She wasn’t obsessed with Bob Helms. She didn’t care whether he died overseas or in his car. She wasn’t obsessed with anything, unless maybe it was Trevil Sherrett and herself.

  Yes, that might be it. Self-obsession. Let the brainy Dr. Olessa figure that one out for himself.

  He was coming to sit by her bedside now and tell her what a naughty girl she had been to put down all those dirty words on paper.

  He sat down and looked at her and she vainly tried to read his expression.

  It seemed essential, vital, that somehow she get back of that mask, find out what he was concealing with surface kindliness.

  He had said she was strong. If that was true then all her strength had gone for nothing. All the hours of effort which had ripped and torn her, instead of dispelling terror, had dissolved into a brand-new fear.

  She knew of a sudden why no analyst could possibly have helped her. Her problem, whatever it was, was one which could never be explained, for no other living person could ever understand.

  Could you tell a partner what defeats you in the heights of passion, or what sets your blood to tingling in any one of life’s transcendent moments? Conversely, was loneliness explainable? Your own despicability, or the fathomless depths of fear?

  She had set out blithely to be greater than the angels, more omnipotent than a confused and cowering universe, more succinct and clever than the whole mass mind of a trembling nation. This was the result, and it served her right. Cam didn’t need to lift the veil from his kindly eyes. She already knew that condemnation lay behind it—sympathy, not for her, but for those others on board the train that she had written about.

  “Nat,” he said, “there are several questions I want to ask. Will you try to be frank with me?”

  She laughed in his face and the crazy timbre of it almost produced a chill. “How can a person be frank about unreserved frankness, Cam?”

  “Unreserved frankness?” he repeated. “Nat, my dear, there’s no such thing.”

  “Then what have I written there?” she demanded weakly.

  “An approximation,” said Cam, “but one so close to fulfillment that it astonishes me.”

  “You’re astonished at my boldness?”

  “More at your strength, your own self-honesty, your determination to overcome obstacles. You’ve performed almost a miracle, Nat.”

  “But what have I left out?” She knew she sounded plaintive.

  “Probably only fleeting thoughts.”

  “What are those, Cam?”

  He took a moment to cogitate. “The lack of ink on your pen point while you were writing, the inadvertent slipping of paper under your fingers, the adjustment of a light shade, the passing desire for food, Mrs. Sherrett’s age, the polish peeling from your fingernail, a million, two million, more.”

  She could scarcely bring herself to ask him, “Does it help me? In what?”

  Cam said, “Let’s see, what is the matter with you?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m trying to find out? Good God, Cam, don’t ask me!”

  “I certainly will,” he persisted. “If anyone else knew, they could help you without your tearing yourself to pieces. You’re the only one who happens to know the truth, unfortunately.”

  “You’re being very brutal, Cam. I’ve been thinking that something happened to the world, the country. You persist in saying that it’s happened to me.”

  “If it hasn’t happened to you, Nat, you’ve wasted a lot of time. You’re just one of a billion people on this globe eager to blame things on the world and their country because they want to duck responsibility. People refusing to recognize that they happen to be a part—no matter how infinitesimal—of both world and country. Is that house where you lived still standing in Washington?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You haven’t been back there since you were a child?”

  “No.”

  “It might pay you to go.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d see what I mean. Houses may deteriorate, but they seldom change. Sir Gwynneth is probably just the same as when he sat around the nonexistent King Arthur’s Round Table before you endowed him with a personality of his own. Yet if you go back now, you’ll find that he’s changed. You’ll also find that the Union General has grown older, lost the wolfish look in his eye, and moved back into his picture frame never to lust for your girlish form again. Your father will be missing. The enormous chairs will fit you snugly, the rooms you thought tremendous will be small.” He held a match for her cigarette. “Did you ever really visit Bob Helms’ family?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Didn’t you find that the place had changed?”

  Fleeting thoughts were what he wanted. Natalie puffed her cigarette nervously, and snuffed it out in the tray. “How could I think it had changed, Cam? I’d never been there before.”

  “You did a damned good job of making me believe that you had.” He smiled. “There was a moment when I thought you were going to give birth to a monkey. I was particularly impressed
with Andy, the ancient servitor.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Cam.”

  “That’s the last thing I want to do. I’m trying to show you how real some things which don’t exist can be to me and you, and how distorted. We live in a world of figments, Nat, which we ourselves have made real.”

  “They are real,” she protested stubbornly. “What about Russia, the atom bomb, the threat of war—don’t tell me those aren’t real. Everyone has the jitters about them, including you.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” said Cam. “Are you sure we’re not having the jitters about the figments? What comes instantly into your mind when I say Russia? Quick, now!”

  A bear. How clearly she could see it, that monstrous bruin with open mouth and gleaming teeth, stalking erect from an ocean of ink to devour her, scratching with claws at the skies overhead to blot out the sun of existence with impenetrable clouds of darkness labeled WAR.

  She told him about it.

  “I had a bear when I was a kid,” said Cam. “Not literally, of course, but he was very real in my imagination. Too much plum pudding might cause him to creep into my bedroom. A couple of times while walking through the woods, I heard him growling in back of me. Once in a dream, he chased me naked up a tree. Of course, he wasn’t Russia then—he was just a bear.”

  Again he paused, and Nat had the feeling that he was digging, probing, weighing what he knew of her against the unbelievable indiscretions she had committed to paper, trying to type this changeling who confronted him. Couldn’t he see she was a figment herself, like the bear—not really there?

  “It’s only a short time ago we had a different picture,” Cam went on. “Then, Russia was the friendly, brave and stalwart soldier, and England and the United States felt happy and secure at sight of the tremendous cannon Russia had pointed toward the invading horde of Nazis. We’re a country conditioned by symbols and slogans, Nat, the tools of advertising men and cartoonists. The stalwart soldier begins to grumble, so we turn him into a bear.”

  She was listening halfway, distantly, from a point back in her own little, narrow world again. The tunnel had developed windows. If movement could stop, she might be able to gaze through one of them and get a concrete picture of something else beside herself.