The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs. C. had told me & begged me not to repeat; thus we shivered, & gripped each other’s chill hands, & giggled in fright, over the “phenomena” of ghosts, spirits & apparitions that surround us. Throughout the visit Caroline was behaving strangely I thought—as if, when I was not observing, she were rocking an invisible baby in her arms—a most distracting sight; for almost, I could see the infant in its swaddling clothes, its eyes queerly pale & lacking in focus & lips wetly slack; a pathetic little creature, perhaps lacking a soul. & in this way I came to understand that Caroline had “had” such a baby, sometime in her life; & had “lost” it; & was now childless as Puss, but not nearly so content as Puss in this condition.

      Though laughing with me, too—for Caroline is no fervent admirer of our ex–First Lady—then breaking off & clasped her (invisible) baby to her bosom saying chidingly Adelaide! It is wicked for us to mock, we must pray to God for forgiveness.

      _____ . Horace who reads most voraciously in scientific journals as in the Atlantic & Harper’s has said, the invisible spirit world is akin to the pathogene-world as hypostatized by Joseph Lister some decades ago, to account for disease. As you would not voluntarily venture into the pathogene-world for fear of great harm, so you would not voluntarily venture into the spirit-world.

      _____ . Lower Witherspoon Street it is being said—a wild uninhabited area said to be a marsh—a most snaky, evil place—where the body was discovered. A young girl—it is said—& how horrific the words, that leave me faint—Where the body was discovered. This was several nights ago, it is being revealed at last. & all of Princeton whispers of nothing else save of course we ladies of the West End, & in particular we invalid Ladies above all, who are spared.

      _____ . News has come to me, through Mandy & Caroline, of a “most ambitious if indiscriminate” tea at Pembroke House where Mrs. Strachan evidently spoke of the “new man” in Princeton—one Axson Mayte—whom it seems that everyone has met, for President Wilson has been introducing him to favored members of the faculty. Mrs. Strachan praised the man as “impressive, with a strong intellect”—especially for the law; Mrs. van Dyck thinks the man “cold & studied & not altogether a gentleman”; though my aunt Jennifer was adamant in declaring him a most judicious young man, in his verdict on the duel of Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr, Jr.—a legitimate duel in all ways, fought on New Jersey soil. (Our poor ancestor Aaron, Jr., whom the world condemns as having shot down “in cold blood” the revered Founding Father & Federalist Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury! Yet it was Hamilton who had hoped to “rig” the dueling pistols, thus to allow him to shoot Aaron, Jr., through the heart; as fortune would have it, Hamilton fired quickly, & first; yet not accurately; so that, taking his time, the grievously insulted Aaron, Jr., could return his shot accurately. For which, why is Aaron, Jr., to be blamed? Had Hamilton shot him, would the world mourn? We Burrs have suffered enough calumny I think! It is time to defend our good name.) Praise to the stranger Axson Mayte who spoke quite reasonably along these lines, without the slightest knowledge, it is believed, that there were descendants of Aaron Burr in the company. I dearly regret I have not met this man, said to be a “most distinguished lawyer” from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

      _____ . Sickly & faint-headed & suffering from palpitations. Dr. Boudinot has prescribed another medication, that leaves my mouth quite dry & my heartbeat quickened. Read Mrs. Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan & felt quite strange afterward—as if the fever’d voice of the author were murmuring in my ears; grew quite restless with Mrs. Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses; could not make sense of a single paragraph of The Secret Doctrine. VERY NAUGHTY PUSS slipped into Horace’s library to take up the receiver of the “telephone”—our very new Bell ’phone—dialed the number of the Princeton police department & asked in a hoarse whisper if they had apprehended the “murderer in our midst” but quickly then slipped the heavy receiver into the cradle panting & gasping for air—my poor heart hammering. (For by this time I am reasonably certain, there was a murder, & doubtless worse perpetrated upon the body; & the body found in the marsh of lower Witherspoon, unless the wilds of Kingston by the canal & Millstone River; & the victim was female—but am not certain as to her age or other details of her life; having been still as a churchmouse overhearing the Negro servants chattering, as they will when they do not believe we are around. Horace must not know.

      To cheer me, Horace read from The Gentleman from Indiana. He & Booth Tarkington having been in the same eating club at Princeton & the Glee Club & Triangle Club. I lay back laughing in the chaise longue, till suddenly I began to feel faint; then, suddenly vexed; I know not why, swept from the table all my medications, & a pitcher of water Hannah had only just brought me; half an accident, & half not. Horace was astonished as I wept, & wept; & Horace comforted me; though I thought him somewhat stiff & startled; & an air of weariness in his limbs, as he carried me to my bedchamber. When I inquired of him about Axson Mayte whom he had met that day at lunch at the Nassau Club, he spoke curtly: saying only that Mayte was not, in his eyes, a gentleman. And there was something in his complexion & the shape of his nose, that was not quite right. But when I begged him to explain, he would not. “You are in a state of nerves, Adelaide. I will give you your nighttime medication, it is time for bed.” Gravely my husband spoke, & I knew not to confound him. For it is wisest not to confound them, at such times. Yet how unfair, when all of Princeton is buzzing with excitement, & every sort of news & gossip, at only 9 p.m. poor Puss’s eyelids are drooping & soon—all spark of what Madame Blavatsky calls the divine spark of being is extinguish’d.

      _____ . Disguising my handwriting to emulate that of Frances Cleveland, & using a dark-purple ink for which the lady is known, I wrote to PRESIDENT & MRS. WILSON, PROSPECT HOUSE, PRINCETON: Dear President & Mrs Wilson you are very foolish people to believe that any in the community might favor you over the virile Andrew West. & you are not of good breeding tho’ you persist in putting on “airs.” & your daughters homely & “horse-faced” like their father & of most dowdy figure like their mother & in addition “buck-toothed.” Sincerely, A Friend.

      This missive, in a plain envelope, stamped, I entrusted to Hannah, to run out & post in a box on Nassau Street, while on errands in town.

      _____ . Horace in the city, visiting our broker at Wall Street; for there is some complications in his will, or in our joint will; of which I never think, for Dr. Boudinot has told me not to worry, in the slightest—“You will outlive us all, Mrs. Burr!” & by stealth & shy questioning like that of a maiden lady of ample years I put questions to Minnie, & to Abraham; as to Hannah, & one or two others; for it is known when a Negro lies to a white person, you can see deceit in their eyes for they are childlike & without guile, in their hearts. In so querying, I think that I have learned that the murdered girl was but eleven years old; father not known & mother a slattern who works at the Bank Street dairy. So there it is, after all my speculation! Poor child! Poor innocence!—for I am sure the child must have been innocent, being so young. Yet she was of a rough background & (it was hinted) of “mixed” blood. Such things will happen to such people, God have mercy on their souls.

      _____ . “Mrs. Burr, please do not ask, no more, Mrs. Burr, please”—so Minnie begged, just this morning; when I summoned her to my bedchamber, to speak frankly to me as to the circumstances of the murder; & whether the child was “tampered with unnaturally.” For this is crucial to know, for the well-being of all in the community. Tho’ it is too beastly, & will only make me ill to learn. “All right then, Minnie, don’t tell me,” I said, wounded; adding, “But if some grievous harm befalls me, it will be on your head.” Minnie began to quiver, & to shake; she is not so strong a woman as you would think, though the daughter of slaves out of Norfolk, & thus strong & reliable stock; yet, it is said she has not been well, with some sort of female illness of which it is best not to speak. Enough to know, I suppose, that there is monstrousness in our midst, in Princeton Borough.

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