Dr Freud, if history is any guide. They will want to prove themselves superior, as the lowest always do. And they will kill to prove it. I picture bloodletting, great bloodletting, on a scale never seen before. You would pipe away civilized morality — the only thing that keeps man's brutality in check. What do you offer in exchange, Dr Freud? What will you put in its place?'
'Only the truth,' said Freud.
'The truth of Oedipus?' said Dana.
'Among others,' said Freud.
'A great deal of good it did him.'
A candle flickered at Nora Acton's bedside. The lamplight from Gramercy Park played palely at her curtains. The illumination was insufficient even to give a silhouette to the man whose presence Nora felt, rather than saw, inside her room. She wanted to cry out, but her mind would not operate on her body. It had somehow broken free, her mind, and was wandering off on its own. It or she seemed to float up from her own bed, rising toward the ceiling, leaving her small nightgowned body on the bed below.
Now she saw her assailant distinctly, but from above. Looking down on herself, she saw him remove the handkerchief from her face. She saw him dab a woman's red lipstick onto her sleeping, yielding mouth. Why would he put color on her lips? She liked how it looked; she had always wondered. What would the man do next? From above, Nora watched him light a cigarette in the flame of her bedside candle, place a knee against her supine form, and extinguish the glowing cigarette directly on her skin, down there, only an inch or two from her most private part.
Her body flinched against the knee that held her down. She saw it from above; she saw herself flinch. It was as if she were in pain. But she wasn't, was she? Observing everything from above, she felt nothing at all. And if she, watching herself, was not in pain, then there was no pain — there was no one else to feel it — was there?
Part 4
Chapter Sixteen
I will have to act as if I don't love her, as if I have no feelings for her at all. So I told myself while shaving Thursday morning. At ten-thirty I was to call at the Actons' to resume Nora's analysis. I knew I could have her. But that would be exploitation, manipulation, taking advantage of her therapeutic vulnerability — violating the oath of care I took when I became a doctor.
It is impossible to describe what ideas come to mind when I picture this girl, and I picture her nearly every waking moment. Well, not impossible, but inadvisable. What I literally cannot describe is the hollowness in my lungs when I am out of her presence. It is as if I were dying from the want of her.
I feel like Hamlet, paralyzed. With this difference: I feel I will die if I do not act, while Hamlet feels he will die if he does. For Hamlet, 'to be' is not to act. To take action is to die; it is 'not to be':
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die…
In other words, 'to be' is merely 'to suffer' one's fate, do nothing and thereby live, while 'not to be' is to act, 'to take arms' and 'die.' Because taking action means death, Hamlet says he knows why he has not acted: the fear of death, his soliloquy concludes, or of something after death,' has made him a coward and 'puzzled' his will.
Thus for Hamlet, 'to be' is stasis, suffering, cowardice, inaction, whereas 'not to be' is linked to courage, enterprise, action. Or so everyone has always understood the speech. But I wonder. Yes, in the end, when at last Hamlet acts against his uncle, he will die. Perhaps he knows this is his fate. But being cannot be equated with inaction. Life and action are too much one. To be cannot mean to do nothing. It cannot. Hamlet is paralyzed because, for him, acting has Somehow been equated with not being — and this false equation, this spurious equivalence, has never been fully understood.
But because of Freud, I can no longer think of Hamlet without thinking of Oedipus, and I fear something similar has begun to afflict my feelings for Miss Acton as well. If Freud is right about Miss Acton wishing to sodomize her own father, I believe I couldn't stand it. I know: this is wholly irrational on my part. If Freud is right, everyone has such wishes. No one can help it, and no one ought to be reviled for it. Nevertheless, the moment I entertain the conjecture in Miss Acton's case, I lose my capacity to love her. I lose my hold on love entirely: how can human beings be loved if we carry within us such repugnant desires?
Thursday morning began in uproar at the Acton house. Nora woke at daybreak, staggered out of bed, threw open her door, and fell headlong over Mr Biggs, who was asleep in his chair just outside her bedroom. The news was spread, the alarm sounded: Miss Acton had been attacked in the night.
The two patrolmen posted outside bumbled up the stairs, then down, storming about, accomplishing little. Dr Higginson was summoned once more. The well- intentioned old doctor, visibly distressed at Nora's having been victimized yet again and embarrassed by the location of her burn, gave the girl a soothing ointment she might apply as needed. He thereupon took his leave, shaking his head, assuring the family that she had suffered no other hurt. More policemen arrived on the scene. Detective Littlemore, who had fallen asleep at his desk the night before, got there at eight.
The detective found Nora and her distraught parents in the girl's bedroom. Uniformed officers were examining the carpeted floor and windows. Littlemore handed his dusting equipment to one of the men and instructed him to see if there were any serviceable fingerprints on the doorknob, bedposts, or windowsill. Nora was perched on a corner of her bed, the unmoving center of the whirlwind, still in her nightgown, hair disheveled, her eyes dazed and uncomprehending. Her statement was taken again and again.
It was George Banwell, she told them every time. It was George Banwell with a cigarette and a knife in the nighttime. Wasn't anyone going to arrest George Banwell? That question provoked anxious protests from Mr and Mrs Acton. It couldn't have been George, they said; it couldn't possibly have been. How could Nora be absolutely sure in the middle of the night?
Littlemore had a problem. He wished he had something else on Banwell other than the girl's evidence. After all, Miss Acton's memory was not exactly rock solid. Worse, even she admitted she couldn't really see the man in her room last night; it had been too dark. What she said, and Littlemore wished she hadn't put it this way, was that she 'could just tell' it was Banwell. If Littlemore had Banwell arrested, the mayor would not be happy. His Honor wouldn't like it if Banwell were so much as picked up- for questioning.
All in all, the detective figured he'd better wait for the mayor's orders. 'If you wouldn't mind, Miss Acton,' he said, 'could I ask you a question?'
'Go ahead,' she said.
'Do you know a William Leon?'
'I'm sorry?'
'William Leon,' said Littlemore. 'Chinaman. Also known as Leon Ling.'
'I know no Chinamen, Detective.'
'Maybe this will jog your memory, miss,' said the detective. From his vest, he withdrew a photograph and handed it to the girl. It was the picture he had removed from Leon's apartment, showing the Chinese man with two young women. One of them was Nora Acton.
'Where did you get this?' the girl asked.
'If you could just tell me who he is, miss,' said Littlemore. 'It's real important. He may be dangerous.'
'I don't know. I never knew. He insisted on having his picture taken with Clara and me.'
'Clara?'
'Clara Banwell,' said Nora. 'That's her there, next to him. He was one of Elsie Sigel's Chinamen.'
Both these names were acutely interesting to Detective Littlemore. Unless William Leon had a penchant for Elsies, he had just identified not only the other woman in the photograph, but the author of the letters found in the trunk — and, quite possibly, the dead girl found along with them.
'Elsie Sigel,' Littlemore repeated.' Could you tell me about her, miss? A Jewish girl?'
'Good heavens, no,' said Nora. 'Elsie did missionary work. You must have heard of the Sigels. Her grandfather
