Wicked Angel (12 page)

Alice put down her glass; her hand was trembling. She began to speak, but Mamie interrupted her almost fiercely. “I can see by your face! And I saw his face, yesterday, when we pulled you up.” She crossed herself, with simple honesty. “I can tell a murderer when I see one, and he ain’t no kid. He ain’t a kid at all, Miss Knowles! I’ve lived sixty years, and I know people. I’ve watched him for two months. I’ve stayed just because of Mr. Saint, who’s really a saint, in a kind of way. A foolish way.” She tried to smile, and her mouth quivered.

“You mustn’t—” said Alice, and looked at Mamie with terror.

“Oh, I won’t say anything to Mr. Saint.” She regarded Alice wisely. “You’re an awful good girl, Miss Knowles. One of the best I ever saw. Don’t ever be around that kid again; you’ll never know what he’ll do. Do you know something else? I think he killed that poor little dog, just because he was treating it rough, and it bit him.”

Alice stared at the breakfast tray emptily; she had no strength for denials.

“And that’s why, when you go this morning, I’m going with you,” said Mamie grimly. “I’m already packed. I’ll tell Mr. Saint. I won’t wait until she gets back. I’m afraid, now, to stay here myself. The kid can sort of read minds; he looks at you and it’s like mind-reading. And if he gets onto what I know about him, about yesterday and the dog, why, he might stick a knife in my back or something!”

Alice tried to laugh. “Oh, Mamie!”

Mamie shook her head with vehemence. “Miss Knowles,” and she lifted a solemn finger. “I don’t think it’s right not to tell Mr. Saint. Maybe there’s a hospital they can put that boy in; he’s a devil. Maybe they can cure him.”

Alice could not keep from saying, “No, he can’t be cured. He was born that way.” Her heart was shaking in dread. “The psychiatrists have a name for him. I know a young psychiatrist in the city; we’re friends. He’s not as dogmatic and ridiculous as some of the others. He told me once—and he never knew Bruce but described his kind to me—that the only thing to do with children like Bruce is to take them to a large city and abandon them in a crowd, and never see them again! But, of course, you can’t do that. You can’t even put them in hospitals, for they aren’t insane, not legally, not insane as the law regards it. You see, Bruce is a psychopath.”

“Words!” said Mamie, shaking her head. “I just say they’re devils.” She heaved a gusty sigh. “And kids like that boy grow up, and then they murder people.”.

“Not always,” said Alice sadly. “Not very often, I think. But they create misery and unhappiness among others. Deliberately.”

“And you can’t whale the devil out of them, when they’re little, and change them?”

“No, Mamie. You can’t change them. But the time will have to come when they’ll be recognized, and then—”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know, Mamie! I don’t know! We don’t even know what percentage of such children are born! Sometimes not even psychiatrists can recognize them, for they’re often very clever and very intelligent. You can only tell by looking at their families, and seeing how wretched they are that there is one among them, a husband, perhaps, or a wife, or a child. You see, Mamie, conscience is a new development in mankind. At one time, before the rise of civilizations, men had no more conscience than other animals; they were what we call primitives. And psychopaths, as that doctor told me, are resurgences of primitiveness, throwbacks as far as a lack of a conscience is concerned. It’s like being born color-blind, which is another form of primitiveness.”

“Dear God,” breathed Mamie. “Well, anyway, Miss Knowles, I’m leaving with you.”

Alice was glad of this, though sorry for Kathy. There would be, then, no private, no dangerous conversation with Mark in his car when he drove her back to the City.

Alice and Dr. John McDowell sat and smoked cigarettes after the excellent dinner they had had at the Tavern near the Parkway. The Tavern stood at a height, and looked down at the running river of lights going to and from the City. Alice felt drained; she smoked and sipped listlessly at her brandy, and glanced about the large rustic room in which she and her friend sat, and wondered, dimly, how so many people could be happy and full of laughter and without any sign of unhappiness in their faces. After following her wandering gaze, the doctor looked at her with affectionate curiosity, and yet he was very anxious and disturbed. He was very subtle, and he said, “Don’t let their faces deceive you, Alice. They’re probably as wretched and frightened as you are, many of them. No one could tell, looking at you, that you were upset.”

Alice, in her dark-blue linen suit, and her small blue hat, looked very beautiful, the doctor thought, for he loved her and wanted to marry her. He glanced down at her right wrist; the cast had been removed two weeks ago, but the wrist was still discolored and swollen. Alice had told him the long and terrible story while they ate dinner, and he had listened in silence.

“There are things you have to accept, no matter how horrifying,” he said. “They’re part of reality, Alice. If you’d told me about that boy earlier, informing me he was your nephew and that you hated each other, I’d have warned you to keep a big distance between you. Now, don’t jump to conclusions; you’re thinking of other children like him, and there may be millions—we don’t know—in the world, and being born every day. It’s a rare intelligent psychopath who commits murder, for they love themselves too much and want to protect themselves. When they do commit murder, it’s after long, cool months, and perhaps even years, of consideration and weighing the dangers. I think that most unsolved murders are committed by intelligent psychopaths. The stupid psychopaths are usually petty criminals, or drug addicts. There is one thing about the intelligent ones: they very rarely commit crimes impulsively, and that’s why the law makes a distinction between those who kill on furious impulse and those who premeditate murder. The boy has been thinking of destroying you for a long time.”

He smiled at her, but she regarded him gravely. “So, keep away from him. I’m sorry, for my own sake, that you’re going to Boston, but I can understand.” Now he stopped smiling. “And I can have some hope, then, that you’ll forget Mark Saint and begin to think about me.”

But Alice said, “And there’s no hope for Angelo? Shock treatment, or something?”

“No. Except reducing him to a sort of vegetable existence through lobotomy. And that would be as terrible as the way he is now. Cheer up, Alice. I know half a dozen brilliant and successful and respected men, in the professions and in business, who are psychopaths. As far as any of their friends know, they’ve never committed a crime in their lives, and it’s possible they never did, and never will. Angel is now about to enter another stage in his development: he will have to pretend to have a real conscience—and he must make many friends. You’d be surprised to discover how many devoted friends psychopaths have! So, within a few months, perhaps a year, you’ll see a change in him. He will imitate all the virtues of others, for his own purposes. Virtue rises out of conscience; psychopaths have no conscience, but they watch and see what is socially desirable and approved, and then they do it. They normally have uncontrollable fits of passion; they learn to restrain themselves among strangers and friends, and give way to their rages only when safe among their husbands and wives, who won’t betray them. They are violent, but to strangers they appear the most agreeable and affectionate and cooperative and helpful people in the world, and only among their families do they become tigers of greed and cruelty. They appear absolutely lovable, but they are incapable of selfless love, just as they are incapable of respecting virtue and goodness. All these are civilized attributes, and the psychopath, as I’ve told you, is absolutely uncivilized in the nobler meaning of the term, ‘civilized.’”

“Yes,” said Alice. “You once told me they were the best of imitators, for their own purposes. You think, then, that Angelo won’t try anything violent again?”

The doctor looked at her hopeful face, and hesitated. “I don’t know, Alice. You see, he knows he can’t deceive you, and that’s why he hates you. His parents are safe—unless,” and his voice dropped, “one or both of them catch on to him. And even then, and don’t look so frightened, he won’t use violence against them because he needs them to support and protect and cherish him. His father means money for his comfort; his mother means adoration and service. And within a little while he’ll realize that it will be for his good not to show hostility or hatred or violence even toward those who suspect him. He will begin to learn about law, which could threaten, imprison and destroy him. And, to live, the psychopath needs the affection, assistance and loyalty of others, whom he can exploit.”

“What’s bred in the spirit is born in the flesh,” murmured Alice.

“Yes. We don’t know whether the psychopath is developed by way of a sudden mutation of genes in the embryo, or whether he is a true throwback.”

“Would you say the Russian people are atavists, throwbacks?” asked Alice.

The doctor smiled, and shook his head. “No. Otherwise the Soviet concentration camps would not exist; they’d all be psychopaths, and serve what would advance them through conformity. But secret observations, and reports, have shown that conscience is as inbred just as much among the Russian people as it is among any other people. However, their leaders are true psychopaths. Hitler was one; Stalin and Lenin and Khrushchev were others. You will notice that these men hated goodness and virtue and kindness and religion. Above all, religion, which is the nurturer and guardian of man’s inborn conscience, which the psychopaths despise; they think those who are restrained by conscience are fools. They honestly believe that.”

Alice sighed. “Now that I’ve introduced you to Mark and Kathy, and Mark is already very fond of you, you’ll keep track of things for me, and let me know, Jack?”

“Yes, dear. I’ve met the boy, too. After I talked with him a few minutes I saw that he is the very prototype of the psychopath. And I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he grew up to be a very successful and very loved man, active in community causes, even a pillar of the church. The only ones who will really know about him will be the unfortunate woman he will marry, and perhaps his children. By that time, he wouldn’t try to destroy them for knowing, as he tried to do to you. That would injure him, you see. By the way, psychopaths, unless they are restrained by the moral disapproval of the community, which could ruin them, are chronic divorcers, or the chronic divorced. You’ll notice that each of their subsequent marriages leads to more money or a better position.”

Alice was silent, and her friend knew she was thinking with aching yearning of Mark Saint. He said humorously, “Now, if you married me, Alice, we could adopt Kennie Richards, and give him a real home.”

Alice laughed faintly. “That’s a real inducement! No, Jack. I’m awfully fond of you, and if I didn’t love Mark I’d love you. But it wouldn’t be fair to marry you under the circumstances. Besides”—and she faltered—“perhaps we’d give birth to a psychopath as Kathy did.”

“The chance of that is two million to one,” said the doctor. “It’s not an inherited trait; it’s a sport. It could happen to any parents. It doesn’t ‘happen in families,’ as the homely term is. It’s true that when a psychopath is in a family the other members frequently become neurotic because of strain and suffering and anxiety. But removed from the presence of the psychopath, they regain their mental health and become normal again. When we find a neurotic, in our profession, who is in a state of awful anxiety and who is suffering a psychosomatic illness, we look discreetly to see if he is living with a psychopath, or working for one. Unfortunately, it very often happens that a normal and healthy child is born to a psychopath, and is so injured in his mind and spirit and emotions in consequence that he never recovers his full health and zest in life. I’ve investigated a few neurotic suicides, and I differ with my colleagues about the causes of many. I’ve found that in quite a number of cases the neurotic has been driven, in despair, to killing himself because he could not free himself from a psychopath, either because he loved him or was responsible for him, or couldn’t escape from him, or the memory of him or her.”

“We couldn’t round them up, even while they’re still children?”

“No. And that would be dangerous; too many neurotic children, suffering from a psychopathic father or mother at home, would superficially show traits of psychopaths and would be branded by people who were not fully capable of finding out the truth. The only thing we can do, if cursed with them, is to get away from them as fast as possible, if adults. If children, we can teach them early to conform to civilized mores, for their own good. And they’re so lovingly self-protective that they understand!”

“Would you say that all the inmates in prisons were psychopaths?”

“On the contrary! I’d say very few were. They know how to disguise themselves; they never impulsively put themselves in danger, even the dullest of them. The crimes they commit, when they do commit crimes, are secret, and well thought out. The great crime they commit against others is spiritual. Except when they’re children, as in the case of your nephew. The value in detecting them early is to show them that open violence will destroy them themselves, and that to profit they must imitate virtue. And you can never restrain them through religion, or change them through religion, for what religion could work on is absent in them. But they are frequently supporters of churches; that’s part of their disguise.”

“Poor Kathy. Poor Mark,” sighed Alice, almost crying.

“Oh, don’t say that. Your sister will probably never find out about her son, unless, if she ever becomes a widow, she lets him take away her money from her. He’ll probably even make her very proud, as a man—if she’s discreet about her money and keeps it. He’ll be the most affectionate of sons to his mother. As for Mark,” and the doctor brooded, “I’m afraid he’s already found out to some extent. But there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s not a mental hospital anywhere who’d take Angelo in. All the tests would show he was eminently sane. And he is. Much more sane than the neurotics he’ll create later when he has a family of his own.”