The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [210]
Miss Howard answered with a long, deep sigh. “I don’t know, Stevie. It’s the nature of people who are racked by feelings of powerlessness, I suppose, to try to exert power over whoever or whatever’s weaker than they are—and God help those weaker beings if they don’t play along. Drunken, frustrated men beat and kill women, women desperate to prove they can control something beat and kill children, and those children, in turn, torment animals…. Remember, too, babies may look charming to those of us who haven’t got any, but there are plenty of mothers who lose patience with all the noise, the sleeplessness, and the plain and simple work of nurturing.”
I was shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I meant. The actual killing, that part of it I’ve begun to understand. I think. But the way she makes other people act. How does she pull that off? I mean, look at what we’ve heard—and seen, too. Some people who worked with her in New York thought she was a saint; other people, in the same joint, thought she was a murderer. That poor fool husband of hers treats her like she’s his sole salvation—but then she goes around the corner and gets the likes of Goo Goo Knox more lathered up than any moll or streetwalker what’s ever been through the Dusters’ front door. Then we come up here and find out that in Ballston Spa people first thought she was a hussy, then a good woman—and then she got ranked as a hussy again. Now, we go to this damned place—Stillwater—and find out that the whole town’s scared to death of her! How the hell does one person pull it all off?”
“Well,” Miss Howard answered, with a slight smile, “I’m afraid that question’s a little more complicated.” She held her cigarette up and puzzled with a thought. “Try to think about all the things you’ve just mentioned, Stevie—what’s the one quality that they have in common?”
“Miss Howard,” I said, “if I knew that—”
“All right, all right. Consider this, then: none of those personalities, those different ways that people see her, are complete. None of them is a description of an actual person—they’re all simplifications, exaggerations. Symbols, really. The ministering angel—the fiendish killer. The devoted wife and mother—the wanton harlot and brazen hussy. They all sound like characters out of a story or a play.”
“Like the—whatever—the ‘myths’ you talked about? That day outside the museum?”
“Exactly. And like those myths, what’s amazing isn’t that someone can come up with such characters—anyone crazy or just imaginative enough could do that. It’s that so many people—not just the citizens of towns like Stillwater but whole societies—actually accept and believe in them. And I’m afraid all that gets back to something that may be a little difficult for you to understand.” Miss Howard must’ve read something like injured pride in my face, because she put a quick hand to my arm. “Oh, I don’t mean because you’re not educated enough or smart enough, Stevie. You’re one of the smartest males I’ve ever known. But you are male.”
“Yeah?” I said. “And what’s that got to do with the discussion?”
“Everything, I’m afraid,” Miss Howard answered with a shrug. “It isn’t really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn’t want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society—more important, even, than honest or decent—is identifiable. Even when Libby’s evil—perhaps most of all when she’s evil—she’s easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified lets them know who she is—it keeps them safe. Imagine how much harder it would be to say, yes, she’s a woman capable of terrible anger and violence, but she’s also someone who’s tried desperately to be a nurturer, to be a good and constructive human being. If you accept all that, if you allow that inside she’s not just one or the other, but both, what does that say about all the other women in town? How will you ever be able to tell what’s actually going