Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [31]
“That’s just a label—irrelevant, for our purposes. Leave it to the professional philosophers and theologians. The profiler and psychologist have no need to answer that question.”
The boy sat up in his seat. Lee couldn’t see his face, but he was slight and blond, and had a thin, raspy voice. “So do you believe there is such a thing as evil in the world?”
Nelson ran a hand through his wavy auburn hair. “The most profound questions are the very ones we should never assume to answer conclusively. Learning to live in a state of uncertainty is one of the most difficult tasks we have as human beings, but one of the most important. As soon as we feel we have all the answers, something inside us begins to die. But that’s for another lecture,” he added, glancing at his watch. “Any more questions?”
The thin blond boy raised his hand again.
“Freud said that if the id is left unchecked, it can run wild.”
Nelson flipped off the power switch to the slide projector. “The word for what we call the ‘id,’ by the way, in its original German, is ‘das Es’—the It. A much bolder statement, I think, than the flaccid Latin word. Compare ‘ego’ with the Ich, the I. And Germans, as you may or may not know, capitalize all of their pronouns.”
The blond girl raised her hand. “Their nouns, actually.”
Nelson smiled. “Thank you for that correction, Ms. Davenport. Okay, everyone, see you all next week.”
Lee smiled too—he wasn’t sure if she was one of Nelson’s admirers or not. As she gathered up her books and placed them in her knapsack, he thought she was sending lingering glances in Nelson’s direction, though, and she was the last to leave the lecture hall. When the room was empty Nelson sauntered up the steps to where Lee sat in the back row.
“Well, well, just like old times. Drop in for a refresher course?”
Lee smiled. “Something like that.”
“How about a drink? I’m buying. I need to wash the taste of undergraduate minds from my mouth.”
“Sure, why not? As long as you’re buying.”
The bar at Armstrong’s was one of Nelson’s favorite watering holes on Tenth Avenue. The menu was capricious and varied—and, more importantly to Nelson, the draft pints of Bass were reliable and cheap. Armstrong’s was one of Hell’s Kitchen’s best-kept secrets, known to locals but not to tourists, or to the bridge-and-tunnel crowd that swept down Ninth Avenue during rush hour.
“That was quite a far-ranging lecture,” Lee remarked as the bartender set a pair of dripping amber pints in front of them.
“Mostly these days I just try to keep myself amused,” Nelson replied, drinking deeply from the sweating glass. He wiped his upper lip and plunked the glass down on the bar. “Now that is what A. E. Housman was talking about when he said, ‘Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.’”
“Still, we need our Milton as well as our malt.”
Nelson dipped a hand into the bowl of fresh popcorn sitting on the bar. “True. It’s funny, but I still remember reading Paradise Lost in school and thinking how interesting Satan was—and how boring Christ was.”
“Satan is more human,” Lee agreed. “He’s conflicted, whereas Christ has everything figured out. Who can identify with that?”
“Or maybe we just like our villains,” Nelson replied with a smile. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in the other direction. It smelled sharp and aromatic, like herbs.
“Clove cigarettes,” he replied in answer to Lee’s look. “Some of my students smoke them. Supposedly they’re better for you.”
“I don’t think Christ’s virtue is what makes him so opaque,” Lee remarked. “It’s his certainty. But even virtuous people are full of doubts and uncertainty. That’s what we relate to about Satan: he’s in pain, his soul is in torment. Christ is just so damn serene! Who can identify with that?”
“Not me, my lad, not me,” Nelson answered with a wave to the bartender. “Another for me, my good man. You’ll have to catch up,” he added, seeing Lee’s half-full glass.
Lee was concerned over the pace of his friend’s drinking. Nelson evidently picked up on this, because