The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ be tragic if you were not feeling ‘altogether well’—as a consequence of my unwelcome appeal.”

      In a part of Woodrow’s mind, or of his heart, which was hardly so calloused as Yaeger Ruggles seemed to be implying, Woodrow was deeply wounded, that the young man he so cared for seemed now scarcely to care for him. Stiffly he said:

      “There is some mystery here, Yaeger, I think—as to why you are so very—so very concerned . . .”

      “ ‘Mystery’? D’you think so, Woodrow?” Yaeger spoke with an insolent smile; all this while he had been smiling at his elder kinsman, a mirthless grin, like the grimace of a gargoyle. He too was agitated, and even trembling, but he could not resist a parting riposte as he prepared to leave the president’s office, “You have never looked at me closely enough, ‘Cousin Woodrow.’ If you had, or if you were capable of such insight, you would know exactly why I, and others like me in this accursed United States of America, are so very concerned.”

      As Yaeger turned away contemptuously yet Woodrow saw, suddenly—saw the young man’s facial features, his lips, nose, the texture and tone of his skin, even the just-perceptible “kinkiness” of his hair—saw, and, in a rush of sickening horror, understood.

      PRESIDENT WILSON! OH—President Wilson!

      Are you all right? Did you injure yourself? Let us help you to your feet—back to your desk . . .

      Shall we summon Dr. Hatch? Shall we summon—Mrs. Wilson?

      NEITHER DR. HATCH nor Mrs. Wilson was summoned. For Woodrow was quite recovered, within minutes.

      Yet, he had had enough of Nassau Hall, for the day.

      Though unsteady on his feet, and ashen-faced, yet President Wilson insisted upon walking unassisted to the president’s mansion, Prospect, located at the heart of the university campus: an austere example of Italianate architecture built by the architect John Notman, that was the president’s home.

      Something of a fishbowl, Woodrow thought the house. And Ellen and their daughters were made to feel self-conscious there—for prankish undergraduates could circle the house at will, in the dark, peeking into windows beneath blinds.

      Still, Prospect was a very attractive and imposing residence. And Woodrow was unfailingly grateful that he lived in it; and not, as fate might have devised, another man.

      Fortunately, Ellen was out. The girls were still at school. Clytie and Lucinda were in the cellar doing laundry—the smells of wet things, a deeper and harsher smell as of detergent and even lye soap provoked in Woodrow one of his memory pangs of childhood, that increased his sense of excited unease and dread.

      It was a household of females. So often, he could not breathe.

      Yet this afternoon he was allowed unimpeded to ascend to the dim-lit atmosphere of the master bedroom where, in the privacy of his step-in closet, he was free to select a pill, a second pill, and a third pill from his armamentarium of pills, medicines, and “tonics”—that rivaled his mother’s armamentarium of old.

      Woodrow’s dear mother! How he missed her, in his weak moods especially.

      She could guide him. She could instruct him in what course to take, in this matter of his nemesis Dean West.

      As to the matter of the ugly Klan lynching—Mrs. Wilson would not have spoken of so obscene an event, if she had even heard of it.

      For there are some things too ugly for women to know of. Genteel Christian women, at least.

      A man’s responsibility is to shield them. No good can come of them knowing all that we must know.

      Woodrow’s Southern relatives would have pointed out that mob violence against Negroes was a consequence of the abolition of slavery—blame, if there be blame, must be laid where it is due, with the abolitionists and war-mongers among the Republicans.

      The defeat of the Confederacy was the defeat of—a way of civilization that was superior to its conqueror’s.

      Hideous, what Yaeger Ruggles had revealed to him!—he who had liked the young man so much, and had, precipitously perhaps, appointed him a Latin preceptor.

      That appointment, Dr. Wilson would have to rethink.

      And perhaps too, he must have a private conversation with Reverend Shackleton, head of the Princeton Theological Seminary.

      Unfair! And very crude! The charges Yaeger Ruggles had brought against him.

      In such times of distress it was Woodrow’s usual routine to soak a compress in cold water, lie on his bed and position the compress over his aching eyes. Soon then he felt a shuddering voluptuous surrender to—he knew not what.

      The Bog Kingdom. Bidding him enter! Ah, enter!

      There, all wishes are fulfilled. The more forbidden, the more delicious.

      He had not had the energy to undress. Only his black-polished shoes had been removed. Carefully placed side by side on the carpet.

      So unmoving Woodrow was in sleep, he hardly risked rumpling his white cotton shirt, his vest and neatly pressed trousers. So still did he sleep, at such times, he did not risk sweating and dampening his clothing.

      Yet, his thoughts raged like hornets.

      Never can I tell Ellen. The poor woman would be distraught, appalled—the deceptive young “cousin” has come into our house, at my invitation; he has sat at my dining room table, as my guest; he has exchanged conversations with my dear daughters . . .

      Now the full horror of the revelation washed over Woodrow—the danger in which he’d put, in all ignorance, his Margaret, his Jessie, and his Eleanor.

      2.

      It was a secret late-night meeting on the very eve of Ash Wednesday, recorded in no document except, in code, in the diary of Woodrow Wilson for March 1905.*

      It was, one might say, a clandestine meeting. For so Woodrow Wilson, troubled in spirit, considered it.

      I will implore him. I will humble myself, and beg for help.

      I am not proud—no longer!

      This meeting, more than the earlier meeting between Woodrow Wilson and his impetuous young kinsman Yaeger Ruggles, marks the first true emergence of the Curse; as an early, subtle and easily overlooked symptom marks the emergence to come of a deadly disease.

      As, one might say, the early symptoms of Woodrow Wilson’s breakdown, stroke and collapse of May 1906 were prefigured here, in the events of this day, unsuspected by Woodrow Wilson, his family and his most trusted friends.

      For that evening, after dinner, feeling more robust, though his brain was assailed by a thousand worries, Woodrow decided to walk a windy mile to Crosswicks Manse on Elm Road, the family estate of the Slades. It had been his request to see Reverend Winslow Slade in private, and in secrecy, at 10 p.m. precisely; Woodrow, who had a boyish predilection for such schemes, as a way of avoiding the unwanted attention of others, was to enter the dignified old stone house by a side door that led into Reverend Slade’s library, and bypass СКАЧАТЬ