Raul quietly said no.
“I didn’t think so.” He paused. “It doesn’t seem very reasonable to me either. I don’t know if it’s that you don’t like Cabot or that, uh, well,” he said hurriedly, “is it your parents who are insisting you go here?”
Raul looked, and was, surprised. “No. No, not at all.”
Mr. Henderson looked down, intently studying his trouser legs. He brushed them casually with his right hand. “It could be,” he said, “it could be that you’re trying to get away from something, that you’re doing this unconsciously…” He looked at Raul and paused.
Raul smiled. “It’s quite conscious.”
“It is,” he said, laughing. “All right then, let’s find out. Why have you been cutting?”
Raul looked down, thinking of how he could phrase his reasoning politely. Mr. Henderson waited respectfully.
“I have,” Raul began, his voice tremulous, “I have, though I’m perhaps too young for it to be taken seriously, very specific goals.”
“You want to be an actor.”
“And a writer.”
“Mr. Miller only told me about the acting. I’m sorry, go on.”
“I think he only knows about the acting, that’s probably why. But, in any case, I’ve found that the school, in many ways, interferes with this.”
“In what ways?”
“Just in a very elemental sense, it consumes eight hours a day and usually leaves me exhausted. But, in another sense, it helps tremendously. The theater, for example.”
“But you haven’t been neglecting that,” Mr. Henderson said, smiling.
Raul laughed. “That’s true. However, it allows me hardly any reading time, and certainly no time in which to write.” Here he stopped rather abruptly, because he was afraid he had said too much, and because there was nothing to add. An uneasy silence followed, while Henderson decided what approach he should take. There were good arguments available to him, none of which he had any faith in. But he knew, from the boy’s tone, that it would be fruitless to argue that the school’s courses were relevant to his needs. He chose instead to play upon Raul’s need for the theater.
“I can understand,” he said solemnly, “your feeling that many of the courses are irrelevant.” He shifted in his chair. “It seems to me you’re more advanced than most third formers. Usually, boys aren’t that sure of where they wish to direct themselves until they’re seniors, or when they reach college.”
“That’s true.”
“But the theater is available to you now, and we do have the best theater, as far as I know, that any high school can offer.”
Raul nodded.
“And as for your interest in literature, do you know about the Colloquium?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And that wouldn’t interest you?”
“It would.”
“Well, you won’t be able to get into it until you’re a junior, but you’ll have to stick it out. That’s the point. I know it’s unpopular with your generation to bring up the idea of compromise…”
Raul smiled.
“…but it isn’t, in this case, a question of compromise so much as it’s a question of means and ends. Do you believe the end justifies the means?”
“It depends upon the end.”
Mr. Henderson smiled in his turn. “That’s true, but in this case?”
Raul hesitated. “Yes,” he said.
“Well then,” Mr. Henderson said, still smiling, “you’ll have to stop cutting to accomplish your end.”
Raul smiled resignedly.
“Now I don’t think it would be enough to leave it at that,” Mr. Henderson said. “But I know from Mr. Miller that he intends to keep you busy for the rest of this year, and I hope that by next year we’ll be able to work out a special schedule for you.”
Raul’s face mirrored his satisfaction.
“And I’d like to make a suggestion,” Mr. Henderson continued. “Mr. Alexander, I don’t know if you know of him…”
“Yes. I’ve heard of him.”
“Mr. Alexander has a creative writing course, a good one, and he sometimes takes on fourth formers. I think it would be a good idea for you to speak to him.”
Raul nodded. “I’ll do that.”
“Good. He and Mr. Simpson handle the Colloquium. They’re two valuable teachers to have.” Mr. Henderson paused, the late afternoon light giving his face a profound sorrow — he looked weary, and his voice, when he spoke, echoed his impotence. “You know, many members of the faculty simply don’t think you should be trusted, but Mr. Miller’s banking on you, and I am too. You aren’t the only student to whom I want to give a special schedule. In many ways, you’re a test. There hasn’t been a student at Cabot who has been given the chance you’re being given now. If you live up to all our hopes, it may mean that leniency becomes the rule, rather than the exception. I want you to remember, also,” he said, looking at Raul, “that from now on you’ll have a responsibility to the cast of Paul I. I’m sure you understand that.”
Raul, with the seriousness of taking a marriage vow, said, “I do.”
Mr. Henderson rose. “Well, I don’t want to keep you from tryouts.” Raul got up and shook hands with him, moving toward the door. Mr. Henderson turned and said to him, “You know, of course, that if anything like this happens again I’ll be forced to expel you. I can’t talk the faculty out of it a third time.”
His words sounded too harsh to him and he continued, “I was glad, in any case, to have a chance to speak to you. And please feel free to come to me with any problem you have.”
“Thank you, sir, I will.”
“Good.”
Raul left.
Regardless of the bureaucratic phraseology, Raul was overjoyed by the interview, not only by Henderson’s promises, but by the sensitivity he communicated with his voice. Both threats and condescension were absent — Henderson pleaded his own impotence as well as showing Raul his.
Raul was all power now. Henderson had accomplished more than his parents or Mr. Miller or any of his teachers had been able to in countless arguments. There was the theater, and, if he could wait, the school would be a haven for his art by next year. An ecstasy seized him as he walked in the gray light of Porshe Hall, his defiant joy expressed by the threatening sky. He howled loudly while the tempestuous wind tangled his hair, and he listened to the stampeding of students as school was let out. He twisted about in another gust of wind, his face distorted by high triumphant laughter, and he cried, “ ‘Hide fox, and all after!’ ”
5.
Raul paused for breath in the lobby of the school auditorium. Though it was only four o’clock, all the lights had been turned on, and outside the sky broke loose in a torrential rain. From this bright, and loud, area, Raul entered a subdued, hushed theater. The stage crew was lining the rear of the stage with collapsible chairs, forming a semicircle. Raul went down the aisle to the far right to reach Miller’s office. Going up a short flight of stairs to a platform, he faced Mr. Miller, who was speaking on the same phone he had used to speak to Mr. Henderson’s secretary. Raul stopped and smiled. Mr. Miller smiled and nodded, saying into the phone, “He just arrived.”
Raul continued up the stairs, reaching the dressing room and stepping into Miller’s office. Alec, who was sitting in Miller’s swivel chair, looked anxious on seeing Raul; he ignored a conversation he was having with an important-looking young man and asked Raul, “What happened?”