The Alienist - Caleb Carr [113]
“Either an excessive urge or morbid reluctance. Generally.”
“Urge or reluctance to what?”
“To go to the toilet.”
“And how have they learned to go to the toilet?” Sara asked, keeping right after Kreizler.
“They’ve been taught.”
“By men, generally?”
Kreizler had to pause, at that. The line of questioning had seemed obscure at first, but now we could all see where Sara was going: if our killer’s rather obsessive concern with feces, buttocks, and the more generalized “dirt” (no subjects were, after all, mentioned more in the note) had been implanted in childhood, it was likely that contact with a woman or women—mother, nurse, governess, or what have you—had been involved in the process.
“I see,” Kreizler finally said. “I take it, then, that you have yourself observed the process, Sara?”
“Occasionally,” she replied. “And I’ve heard stories. A girl does. It’s always assumed that you’ll need the knowledge. The whole affair can be surprisingly difficult—embarrassing, frustrating, sometimes even violent. I wouldn’t bring it up, except that the references are so insistent. Doesn’t it suggest something out of the ordinary?”
Laszlo cocked his head. “Perhaps. I’m afraid I can’t consider such observations conclusive, however.”
“Won’t you at least consider the possibility that a woman—perhaps the mother, though not necessarily—has played a darker role than you’ve yet allowed?”
“I hope that I am not deaf to any possibilities,” Kreizler said, turning to the board but writing nothing. “However, I fear we have strayed too far into the realm of the barely plausible.”
Sara sat back, again disappointed at the result of her attempts to make Kreizler see another dimension in the imaginary tale of our killer. And I must confess, I was somewhat confused myself; after all, it had been Kreizler who had asked Sara to come up with such theories, knowing that none of us could. To dismiss her thoughts in such a manner seemed arbitrary at best, especially when those thoughts sounded (to the semitrained ear, at any rate) as well reasoned as his own hypotheses.
“The resentment of immigrants is repeated in the third paragraph,” Kreizler said, plowing on. “And then there is the reference to a ‘Red Injun.’ Other than another attempt to make us think him an ignoramus, what do we make of it?”
“The whole phrase seems important,” Lucius answered. “‘Dirtier than a Red Injun.’ He was looking for a superlative, and that’s what he came up with.”
Marcus pondered the question: “If we assume that the immigrant resentment is family-based, then he himself isn’t an Indian. But he must’ve had some kind of contact with them.”
“Why?” Kreizler asked. “Race hatred doesn’t require familiarity.”
“No, but the two usually do accompany each other,” Marcus insisted. “And look at the phrase itself—it’s fairly casual, as if he naturally associates filth with Indians and assumes everyone else does, too.”
I nodded, seeing his point. “That’d be out west. You don’t usually hear that kind of talk in the East—it’s not that we’re more enlightened, by any means, but too few people share the point of reference. What I mean is, if he’d said ‘dirtier than a nigger,’ you might guess the South, right?”
“Or Mulberry Street,” Lucius suggested quietly.
“True,” I acknowledged. “I’m not saying the attitude’s confined. After all, this could just be somebody who’s read too many Wild West stories—”
“Or someone with excessive imagination,” Sara added.
“But,” I went on, “it might work as a general indication.”
“Well, it’s the obvious implication,” Kreizler sighed, piquing me a bit. “But someone somewhere said that we must never overlook the obvious. What about it, Marcus—does the idea of a frontier upbringing appeal?”
Marcus thought it over. “It has attractions. First of all, it explains the knife, which is a frontier weapon. It also gives us the hunting, recreational and otherwise, without the need for a wealthy background. And while