The Alienist

Marcus shrugged. “First-generation American. The parents were immigrants.”

Sara drew a quick breath. “‘Dirty immigrants’!”

Kreizler’s face filled with gratification again. “Indeed,” he said, writing IMMIGRANT PARENTS on the left side of the chalkboard. “The phrase resounds with loathing, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of hatred that generally has a specific root, obscure though it may be. In this case, he probably had a troubled relationship with one or both parents early on, and eventually grew to despise everything about them—including their heritage.”

“Yet it’s his own heritage, too,” I said. “That might account for some of the savagery toward the children. It’s self-loathing, as if he’s trying to clean the dirt out of himself.”

“An interesting phrase, John,” Kreizler answered. “And one we shall return to. But there is one more practical question to be answered here. Given the hunting and the mountaineering, and now the supposition that he has not been abroad, can we say anything about the geographical background?”

“Same thing as before,” Lucius replied. “Either a rich city family, or the countryside.”

“Detective Sergeant?” Laszlo said to Marcus. “Would any one region be better than another for this training?”

Marcus shook his head. “You could learn it anywhere that had appreciable rock formations—which means a lot of places in the United States.”

“Hmmm,” Laszlo agreed, with some disappointment. “Not much help there. Let’s let it lie for now and go back to that second paragraph. The language itself would seem to support your theory concerning the ‘upper-zone flourishes’ of the handwriting, Marcus. This is indeed an imaginative tale.”

“That’s a hell of an imagination,” I said.

“True, John,” Kreizler answered. “Without doubt, excessive and morbid.”

Lucius snapped his fingers at that. “Wait,” he said, again going for his books. “I’m remembering something —”

“Sorry, Lucius,” Sara called, with one of her curling little smiles. “I’ve beaten you to it.” She held up an open medical journal. “This fits in with the dishonesty discussion, Doctor,” she went on. “In his article ‘A Schedule for the Study of Mental Abnormalities in Children,’ Dr. Meyer lists some of the warning signs for predicting future dangerous behavior—excessive imagination is one of them.” She read from the article, which had appeared in the Handbook of the Illinois Society for Child-Study in February of 1895: “‘Normally children can reproduce voluntarily all sorts of mental pictures in the dark. This becomes abnormal when the mental pictures become an obsession, i.e., cannot be suppressed. Especially pictures that create fear and unpleasant feelings are apt to become excessively strong.’” Sara emphasized the final sentence of the quotation: “‘Excessive imagination may lead to the construction of lies and the irresistible impulse to play them on others.’”

“Thank you, Sara,” Kreizler said. MORBID IMAGINATION then went up on both the CHILDHOOD and ASPECTS sections of the chalkboard, which puzzled me. To my request for an explanation Laszlo replied, “He may be writing this letter in his adulthood, John, but so distinctive an imagination does not spring to life in maturity. It’s been with him always—and Meyer is borne out here, incidentally, for this child did indeed become dangerous.”

Marcus was tapping a pencil into one hand thoughtfully. “Any chance this cannibalism business was a childhood nightmare? He says he’s read it. Any chance he read it then? The effect would have been greater.”

“Ask yourself a more basic question,” Laszlo answered. “What is the strongest force behind imagination? Normal imagination, but also and particularly the morbid?”

Sara had no trouble with that: “Fear.”

“Fear of what you see,” Laszlo pressed, “or of what you hear?”

“Both,” Sara answered. “But mostly what you hear—‘nothing is as terrible in reality,’ et cetera.”

“Isn’t reading a form of hearing?” Marcus asked.

“Yes, but even well-to-do children don’t learn to read until many years into childhood,” Kreizler answered. “I offer this only as a theory, but suppose the cannibalism story was then what it is now—a tale designed to terrify. Only now, rather than the terrorized party, our man is the terrorizer. As we’ve constructed him thus far, wouldn’t he find that immensely satisfying, even amusing?”

“But who told it to him?” Lucius asked.

Kreizler shrugged. “Who generally terrifies children with stories?”

“Adults who want them to behave,” I answered quickly. “My father had a story about the Japanese emperor’s torture chamber that had me up for nights, picturing every detail—”

“Excellent, Moore! My very point.”

“But what about—” Lucius’s words became a bit halting. “What about the—I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I still don’t know how to discuss certain things with a lady present.”

“Then pretend one isn’t,” Sara said, a bit impatiently.

“Well,” Lucius went on, no more comfortably, “what about the focus on the—buttocks?”

“Ah, yes,” Kreizler answered. “Part of the original story, do we think? Or a twist of our man’s invention?”

“Uhhh—” I droned, having thought of something but, like Lucius, unsure of how to phrase it in front of a woman. “The, uh—the—references, not only to dirt, but to—fecal matter—”

“The word he uses is ‘shit,’ ” Sara said bluntly, and everyone in the room, including Kreizler, seemed to spring a few inches off the floor for a second or two. “Honestly, gentlemen,” Sara commented with some disdain. “If I’d known you were all so modest I’d have stuck to secretarial work.”

“Who’s modest?” I demanded—not one of my stronger retorts.

Sara frowned at me. “You, John Schuyler Moore. I happen to know that you have, on occasion, paid members of the female sex to spend intimate moments with you—I suppose they were strangers to that kind of language?”

“No,” I protested, aware that my face was a bright red beacon. “But they weren’t—weren’t—”

“Weren’t?” Sara asked sternly.

“Weren’t—well, ladies!”

At that Sara stood up, put one hand to a hip, and with the other produced her derringer from some nether region of her dress. “I would like to warn you all right now,” she said tightly, “that the next man who uses the word ‘lady,’ in that context and in my presence, will be shitting from a new and artificially manufactured hole in his gut.” She put the gun away and sat back down.

The room was as quiet as the grave for half a minute, and then Kreizler spoke softly: “I believe you were discussing the references to shit, Moore?”

I gave Sara a rather injured and indignant glance—which she thoroughly ignored, the wretch—and then resumed my thought: “They seem connected—all the scatological references and the preoccupation with that part of the anato—” I could feel Sara’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. “And the preoccupation with the ass,” I finished, as defiantly as I could manage.

“Indeed they do,” Kreizler said. “Connected metaphorically as well as anatomically. It’s puzzling—and there’s not a great deal of literature on such subjects. Meyer has speculated on the possible causes and implications of nocturnal urinary incontinence, and anyone who works with children finds the occasional subject who is abnormally fixated on feces. Most alienists and psychologists, however, consider this a form of mysophobia—the morbid fear of dirt and contamination, which our man certainly seems to have.” Kreizler chalked the word MYSOPHOBIA up in the center of the board, but then stood away from it, looking dissatisfied. “There seems, however, more to it than just that…”

“Doctor,” Sara said, “I’ve got to urge you again to broaden your concepts of the mother and father in this case. I know your experience with children past a certain age is as extensive as anyone’s, but have you ever been closely involved with the care of an infant?”

“Only as a physician,” Kreizler answered. “And then rarely. Why, Sara?”

“It’s not a time of childhood that men figure greatly in, as a rule. Do any of you know men who have played a large part in raising children younger than, say, three or four?” We all shook our heads. I suspect that even if one of us had known such a man he would have denied it, just to keep the derringer out of sight. Sara turned back to Laszlo. “And when you find children with an abnormal fixation on defecation, Doctor, what form does it generally take?”

“Either an excessive urge or morbid reluctance. Generally.”