The Alienist - Caleb Carr [111]
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