THE Hamblers lived on West Tenth Street. I had gotten my ideas of the Village mainly from overheard conversations, and I wondered if the Hamblers were Bohemians, standing around Washington Square in the summer doing likenesses in chalk; then I told myself that even Val, a student at the Norton School, could not possibly be living with semi-responsible people. Anyway, Val had told me that the Hamblers had been chosen by Norton; that several of the Eights whose parents lived elsewhere boarded in the same way she did, that in fact there was quite a little group of them. She told me this in an effort to justify herself, and convinced me that there was nothing irregular about the situation.
Val met me by the subway stop at Fifty-ninth and Lexington. She was standing in the doorway of a flower shop, looking at some yellow roses, and she pretended not to see me until I was practically on top of her. We looked at each other cautiously. It was the first time we’d ever appeared in anything other than our gym tunics, but as a matter of fact, the change was hardly startling. We both wore our Wright and Ditson shirts and wool skirts, sneakers, and school coats. We felt immediate relief that neither of us had committed a social error, and went down the steps into the gloomy New York underworld.
“How’s Mr. Drago?” I asked, trying to make conversation. Val seemed slightly nervous.
“Oh, fine,” she answered, sounding relieved at having something to talk about. “He’s full of soul. He has long blond hair in tufts, and he waves his arms like a windmill” (she demonstrated this) “and he’s always telling me I’m going to suffer and be a great musician, because geniuses always suffer.” She giggled.
“Would you like to be a great musician?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Would you like to be a great anything?”
“Sure,” I said. “But I’m not good enough.”
“That’s just the way it is with me,” said Val. “Anyway, who wants to suffer? Here’s our train.”
We sat down in one of the wicker seats, and the train rattled away. I looked around with interest. I had hardly ever ridden on a subway before, since I had nowhere to go in one. My knowledge of New York was pretty well limited to the upper East Side, with an occasional trip to Central Park West to visit an aunt, and the Village sounded gay and adventurous. The city rushed by with unnerving speed, passing mysteriously above our heads. After Thirty-fourth Street, I kept expecting to get off, but Val made no move to do so.
“Where are we going?” I asked finally, unable to stand the suspense.
“Right here.” The train lurched to a stop, and she smiled mischievously. “Astor Place. Haven’t you ever been here?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“Oh. Well, now you have.”
We went up the stairs and out into a rather empty square, then walked west to Fifth. Val pointed to a park at the end, with a big archway leading into it.
“Washington Square,” she said. “Have you ever seen that before?”
“No,” I said truthfully.
“Heard of it?” She was grinning.
“Of course.” I looked at her and laughed. “Okay, so I haven’t seen anything in New York. So what?”
“So nothing.”
We went down Tenth Street almost to Sixth, and Val stopped in front of a brownstone. She capered down into the small areaway and thumped on the door.
“I wonder what lunch is,” she said. I smelled nothing but cabbage, and I hated cabbage. I tried to look through the glass part of the door, but there were curtains over it. Val thumped again. The door flew open, and Emma Hambler stood there.
“Ah, here she is, with the hair not combed as usual. And this is Marian? I am truly glad to meet you.” She was small and neat, with brown hair tied back in a bun, and a perfectly smooth, ageless face. She looked more like a good imitation of a Swiss Hausfrau than an authentic one, as though something, some time in her life, had jostled her out of her natural role and made her decide, with pleased relief, that she never need go back to it again. None of this occurred to me at the time, of course; I just thought that she was a nice woman who said pleasant things. Apparently she adored Val, and she swept us inside to a room on the right and told us to take off our coats. Everything smelled faintly of glue. She said that this was Val’s room, and she would call us when lunch was ready.
I looked around with interest. It was completely unlike any bedroom I’d ever seen; it contained simply a studio couch, a battered oak chest, and a piano. It was saved from complete barrenness by a figured rug upon the floor, stacks of papers in the corner, and a curious mass of wire and paper on a stand near the window. The room further interested me by the fact that it didn’t have four walls, but five. The fifth was very narrow and bore the window, which looked out on a tiny garden. I decided that it gave the room a pleasant informal look and that all rooms should be five-sided. I sat down on the couch. Val was wandering around the room, humming, and shifting things from one place to another—not that there was very much to shift, but Val seemed to create things out of nowhere, and soon the room had the look of havoc that she herself usually had when she wandered around with her armload of notebooks. Finally she sat down on the floor.
“How do you like the abstract?” she asked. I looked at it. It looked faintly human, with a piece of newspaper for the face and wire wiggles below. It looked tortured, most unhappy, and rather indecent.
“It’s me,” Val said. “Not really me, but the essence...my soul and all that.”
“It doesn’t look much like you,” I said hesitantly.
“It isn’t supposed to,” Val said, giving me a pitying look. “It’s an abstract. All of Charles’s things look like that. He’s groping for something.”
“Who’s Charles?” I asked.
“Emma’s husband,” she said. “You’ll meet him in a few minutes.”
I hadn’t thought of Emma as having a husband, for some reason, but as I sat digesting this fact, Emma called:
“Lunch!”
Val hopped to her feet. “Come on,” she said.
We went out into the hall. The rest of the apartment was quite as amazing as the bedroom. The hall was endlessly long, and lined with more abstracts on stands. Some were people, some were animals, but they all had newspaper faces and the air of writhing under unearthly burdens. I didn’t have time to comment on this as we were hurrying past them, past two or three rooms on the right, and finally into the living room (or so I supposed) at the end.
The living room was quite large, and was really more of a studio. The men and beasts were all around, and there was a large table in the corner covered with pieces of wire, bits of string, and other odds and ends. The smell of glue was overwhelming. There were two studio couches, and near one of the windows was a pull-out table set for four, with a bright red tablecloth.
“This is Charles,” Val said. I looked around, and a man rose from the far studio couch, where he had apparently been lying, though I hadn’t noticed him. Val seemed to consider this an adequate introduction, for she disappeared into the corner to examine one of the creations.
“Ah, so you are Miss Marian,” said Charles, grinning and extending his hand. He looked a little wild, and I didn’t like him calling me “Miss” as though he were the valet. “Val has told us so much about you.” This surprised me, but if Val heard, she didn’t show it. I was trying to think of something to say next when Emma appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray.
“Okay,” she said, distributing the food on the table and getting everyone seated. Charles pulled out my chair with a huge gesture of servility, which made me nervous, and we all sat down.
The food was delightful, and not at all the sort of thing we ever had at home. Plates of cold meat, a basket of rye bread, bowls of mayonnaise and butter, lettuce and sliced tomatoes, and a kind of pie made out of cheese and bacon. The Hamblers drank beer and we had cold milk from a crockery pitcher. We all took some of everything, and as the others piled most of the food on the bread to make sandwiches, I did the same. It was delicious, the sun poured in through the window, and I began to feel as though I had stumbled on a small heaven. Most of the conversation was Emma’s. She talked a good deal about Val and how naughty she was, how smart she was, how messy her room, and what a sweet child she was, basically. She seemed to fancy that Val and I were better friends than we really were, as Val had apparently talked a good deal about me; after being initially surprised by this I grew pleased, and felt sure of myself and slightly superior. Val was a little embarrassed, giggling nervously every once in a while, but she seemed really more interested in the food than anything else, as I was. Charles had lapsed into some sort of torpor, and sat hunched over his plate, pushing a piece of ham around with the heel of bread. When we had all finished, Emma took the things away and reappeared with a chocolate cake. At this point Charles seemed to revive somewhat and talked for a long time about theories of art, none of which I understood. He seemed in a curious way to be appealing to Val in all this and asking for her opinions. If Val had any, she didn’t indicate it. He concluded by saying that great art came only through strife and unhappiness, and Val said he sounded like Mr. Drago. Charles gave up and lapsed back into his lethargy.
“Come on,” Val said suddenly. “Let’s go back to my room.” Lunch seemed to be over, so we got up.
“You two should go outside this afternoon,” Emma said. “It is a lovely day.”
“Yes, let’s,” I began, but Val was halfway down the abstract hallway. I followed her, and we resumed our places in the bedroom. Val sat on the floor, staring moodily out the window. Suddenly she said:
“Are your parents divorced?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “I just guessed. Was it a mess?”
“What, the divorce?” She nodded. “I don’t even remember,” I said. “I was only a baby. My father lives in Florida. Sometimes he comes to New York and I see him, but I never see both parents at the same time.”
“You don’t seem to be very bothered by it,” she said.
I hesitated. “Well, I never think about it very much. I’m just used to living with Mom and Boothy.” All this was a little painful, probably because I’d never talked about it before.
“Who’s Boothy?”
“Oh, an old friend who lives with us. She’s swell.”
She looked at me for a moment, slightly disappointed, then resumed her staring out of the window. There was a silence, and finally I could bear it no longer.
“Are your parents divorced?” I asked.
“No,” Val said, and lapsed into silence again. I was wildly curious, but even then guessed that I could accomplish nothing by prying. If she wanted to tell, she would. If not, nothing on earth could induce her to. Finally she said:
“Mom and Pop travel all over the place. Pop’s business is international trade, or something,” she said, with impressive vagueness. “They’d like to live in New York, but they can’t, for a while, anyway. Pop’s business takes him all over.”
“Where are they now?”
“Rio, I think,” she said. “Or Mexico. One or the other.” This all seemed beyond reproof, so I tried something else.
“How did you happen to come to Norton?”
“It was recommended by the last school I went to. Pine Valley, in Connecticut.” She grinned. “I was kicked out.”
I started. “What for?”
“I was ‘unmanageable.’” She giggled. “Everyone wrote long letters about me. I suppose they’d never had anything as interesting as me before. They decided I might thrive better in a city.” She was staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, and I felt slightly bewildered. “Before that I went to a boarding school in Maine. Not a very good one. It was too easy. I got A’s without doing anything, so people thought it was a waste of time.”
“You mean your parents?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, and...people,” she said evasively. “Before that, we lived in Oregon. I vaguely remember a ranch and a lot of horses, and riding in the mountains with Pop. There’s the story of my life.” I felt it was full of holes, but nevertheless it was far more interesting than mine.
“What do you think of Norton?” I asked curiously.
She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s peculiar. It’s just about the best school in the country, you know.”
“Is it?” I had never thought of Norton that way.
“Sure. If you graduate from there, any college will take you. A lot of people say so.” Val seemed to have a group of omniscient people around her to whom she constantly referred. She began drumming on the floor. We said nothing for a few moments, then suddenly she got up and went to the piano. She sat there for a minute, staring at the keyboard. Then, with no further ado, she began to play.
When I think over all the time I knew Val, it seems that this moment was the most astonishing and rewarding thing she ever gave me. It was so unexpected; my own feelings were so completely unprecedented that I wondered where they had been all my life. It was not only the music. She played wonderfully, but wonderfully for a thirteen-year-old only. I can’t say even now whether she was a child prodigy, for at the time I had no way of judging. All I knew was that hearing the music was like seeing the ocean for the first time, or suddenly realizing there was a sky, or catching the first glimpse of New York from the top of a skyscraper. It was the first wash of beauty, and with it came a strange and unexpected insight into myself and all other human beings, unformed thoughts that shocked me with their importance. I believe it was the first time I ever felt any real connection with the human race. For a moment, I was no longer different; Val had done that for me.
She finished the first piece, which had been wild and wonderful, and then, as though to show me the other side of the picture, she played one that sounded both complicated and childish at the same time. I didn’t like it half as well, and felt disappointed.
“It’s Mozart’s ‘Turkish March,’” she said, when she’d finished. “Cough medicine music, Drago says. It’s good for you. Stupid, isn’t it?” And she tinkled on with something else. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, now. She didn’t bother to finish anything, but just played a bit here and a bit there, her favorite parts, all tantalizing and incomplete. I stood beside her, watching her fingers on the keys; white child’s fingers, with dirty nails, but very strong-looking. Finally she stopped and looked up at me, as though for approval.
“I think it’s beautiful,” I said. I meant more than that; she had completely captivated me. I was her friend forever, if only she would play for me again. And looking at her, I suddenly realized that she needed me.
Emma appeared in the doorway.
“Good, Val,” she said. “But I like to hear you play the things through. Just playing your favorite parts is like only eating the dessert. It is a discipline you must learn.” She turned to me. “She charms us with music, this child. When Charles is working and I am in my room reading or sewing, and when this little one plays, we stop everything and listen. She has more power than she knows.” Val was picking at the piano with one finger.
“As soon as I learn discipline,” Val said, waving her arms in imitation of Mr. Drago. “I must suffer and be disciplined all at once!” she said, mimicking a tortured music teacher, and we laughed. “Come on,” Val said. “Have you ever wandered around the Village? No, of course you haven’t. Let’s go out.”
The spell was broken, and we hurried about for our coats. I told the Hamblers good-by since I had said I would be home by five. Charles shook my hand and bowed, saying it had been an honor to have me, and Emma said I was a nice girl and a good influence and to come back soon. Val ran about collecting her tennis balls and notebooks, which she stuffed about her person.
Just before we left, Val said she had to get her mittens from Emma’s closet. I followed her in there, and as she burrowed through the clothes and shoes, I began to read the titles of the books in a small wooden bookcase. They all seemed to be by three authors, Freud, Jung and Adler. Val emerged from the closet with the mittens and saw me looking at them.
“The big three,” she said. “Emma’s a bug on the stuff.” I heard Emma laugh from the hallway.
“Val is always teasing me,” she said. “It is my hobby. Jung is a fellow-countryman, and I keep my loyalty.”
That was all, and we were out the door. I looked at Val’s face in the shadow of the areaway, and if there was a look of fear there, it quickly disappeared. We went out into the glorious cold afternoon, and with a sudden burst of freedom started running at top speed up the street toward Washington Square.