The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Of course, Todd’s handwriting was primitive, set beside that of any twelve-year-old Princeton schoolboy; it fell between script and “printing,” and was executed at great cost to the boy, who concentrated so fiercely, perspiration shone on his forehead, and his fingers sometimes gripped a pencil so tight that it snapped. One afternoon, while visiting Crosswicks Manse with his mother, Todd hid himself away in a corner of the drawing room and wrote out, in labored letters resembling Gothic—

  Vammovv ivanmcct omnomomiia

  —which no one could read; until, by chance, Woodrow Wilson dropped by to visit Dr. Slade, and was shown the curious printing, and, holding the sheet of paper at a slant, read straight out—

  AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

  —which thrilled Todd, very much.

  How delighted everyone was!—Todd’s first writing.

  And how nice it was of Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University, to take the time to decipher the boy’s writing and to very kindly speak to him of his own childhood, and the difficulties he’d had with reading and writing himself. “My family thought I was ‘lazy’ when in fact I could not ‘make sense’ of words as others did. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was at least your age, Todd, before I could read with any ease. I was always a poor student, and my undergraduate performance at Princeton was so undistinguished, I graduated fiftieth in my class, a fact I don’t know whether to hide or reveal, so that other boys may take heart from my example.” Seeing that Todd Slade was listening raptly to his words, and staring at him with his uncanny dark-liquid eyes, Dr. Wilson said: “I’ll tell you a secret, Todd—what seems a curse may prove a blessing. For those of us who begin our lives with ‘disabilities’ quickly learn to work much harder than those who find their studies easy; and as the race proceeds, we commonly pull ahead.” Dr. Wilson’s sallow skin glowed with an inner fervor.

  “ ‘Race’—like a horse-race? Are you a horse-race-rider, Mr. Wilson?”

  “No, Todd! I meant metaphorically. ‘The race is not to the swift’—it’s an old saying.”

  “But—is it a horse-race? Or just on foot?”

  “Neither, Todd. I’m sorry to confuse you.”

  “Why don’t you know, Mr. Wilson, if it’s a horse-race or a foot-race? Which did you do?”

  “A foot-race, I suppose.”

  Pointedly, Todd looked at Dr. Wilson’s feet, in narrow black shoes with neatly tied black laces.

  “A race,” Dr. Wilson said, with some feeling, “that never ceases, and with every sort of obstacle put in the runner’s path to make his victory, when it comes, all the sweeter.”

  THAT NIGHT, Todd woke the household at Wheatsheaf, that had settled in to sleep, with excited shouts.

  For it turned out, the restless boy had only pretended to go to bed; instead, he’d sat at his little desk with a single light burning, covering sheets of paper with hopeless scribblings, unintelligible even to him. When his mother hurried to him he told her that there was a “message” that was meant to come to him, through his fingertips, which he would record on paper; but the message was trapped inside him somewhere, and could not get free.

  Todd knew not why, but he understood that it was urgent to warn Mrs. Cleveland across the lane, and the Strachans, and the van Dycks, and Annabel’s friend Wilhelmina Burr, that something very bad would happen soon, he thought at the Rocky Hill school where Miss Burr taught.

  Oriana, wakened, quavered at her brother’s side; for it seemed that the little girl, too, had had a dream of something very bad.

  “Todd! Oriana! You are bad children, to be up at this time of night!”—so Lenora cried, in fear and dismay.

  Todd stood resolute; Oriana began to cry, so piteously that Lenora hugged the child, and assured her that all would be well.

  Lenora hurried to wake her husband to tell him of this development, but Copplestone had little patience for her.

  “Todd says we should warn these people. At least—we might warn Wilhelmina.”

  But irritable Copplestone thought not. “There are enough ridiculous rumors circulating about us, without inviting more. You will make fools of us. Go back to sleep.”

  In this way, no “warnings” were sent. It is a temptation for the historian to speculate what the effect of Todd’s premonition would have been, in Wilhelmina’s life, if the boy’s father had not responded so dismissively.

  All the following day, the children remained together, subdued and shivering. It was not like Todd to tolerate the presence of his much-younger sister, who was only nine; yet, this day, he seemed to take pity on her, for she was looking forlorn; and very shyly confessed to him, that Annabel had come to her, in her sleep—“She is very pretty, like before. She said to me, ‘Oriana, there is a place for you here—you must come to me!’ But when I tried to, I could not—there was something like a door in the way.”

  “Annabel is in Heaven, Oriana. You can’t go there.”

  “Yes I can. Annabel says so.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can.”

  “I said, stupid—you can’t.”

  At this, Oriana began to cry as if her heart had broken.

  IF CROSSWICKS WAS, as Winslow Slade accepted, an accursed household, so Wheatsheaf, close by, appeared to be cursed by ill luck as well. It was an open secret in Copplestone’s business life that over the past eighteen months he’d become ever more immersed in a scheme in which certain South American countries as well as Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, were to form a military and trade alliance under the auspices of an (unnamed) American company; the primary problem being, as Copplestone and his associates lamented, the “resistance of the little monkeys to being civilized.”

  Copplestone tried to appeal directly to Theodore Roosevelt, for (sub rosa) support; but Roosevelt was elsewhere engaged, in other political battles.

  And too, though this was certainly not known by Lenora, rumor had it that Copplestone had been several times sighted in the Hopewell area, in his Winton motorcar, in the company of a wanly pretty young woman twenty or more years his junior, a stranger to the West End entirely, with a Scots flush to her cheeks and the pert manner of one who has risen above her station.

  Accursed households, are they not!—so Josiah’s jeering voices assailed him, often out of nowhere, as his thoughts were attuned to other subjects entirely—that should be put to the torch, to purify Princeton.

  OBLIVIOUS OF HIS adult relatives’ preoccupations, Todd continued with his “studies,” more or less unaided; a young male tutor, hastily hired by Lenora, met with opposition in the boy, and quit after a few lessons. Though often alone, Todd did not appear lonely; he tramped about the Wheatsheaf estate in a heavy hooded jacket and boots, creating eerily lifelike snow-sculpted forms of human figures and animals, and “disappearing” as he’d often done, for hours at a time. When Lenora called for him, and sent a servant to find him, it was revealed that Todd’s footprints in the snow ceased abruptly, as if the boy had taken flight, or been snatched up, from the ground, by a great-taloned bird. Later, it was discovered that Todd had managed to escape over the twelve-foot stone wall at Wheatsheaf and hike to the Princeton Cemetery a mile away, to visit his cousin’s grave.

  Have I noted the engraved letters beneath Annabel Oriana Slade (1886–1906)—PAIN WAS MY PORTION, JESUS MY SAVIOR.

  And beneath this a single, brief line—BABY SLADE (1906).

  Returned home, Todd was silent, brooding; then irritable, and restless; when Lenora tried to comfort him he exploded in startling bitterness against his cousin, saying that “Todd will not forgive Annabel for leaving him and going to that place on the hill with the doors locked against him. Todd wants dynamite, to burst it open!”

  One day, in late winter, about eight weeks after Annabel’s funeral, Todd discovered a glass owl beneath one of the tall fir trees behind Wheatsheaf. He’d been shoveling snow with a child’s shovel, to fashion another of his lifelike figures, when the glass owl glittered at his feet, and he pried it free of s
now and ice to examine it in the bright winter sun.

  Here was an artifact of striking beauty and detail, the size of a barn owl, made of clouded milk-glass, with agate-eyes. Each feather was distinct, even the downy feathers in the creature’s pricked-up ears. The sharp talons were particularly life-like.

  “How did you know that Todd would find you, Owl? Can you see through the snow, Owl?”

  This curiosity the child brought back to the house to show to the servants, in great excitement, as he believed it must be a “good luck sign”; but the housekeeper and the cook believed it must be an omen of bad luck—possibly because Todd Slade had found it.

  “Better to take it away, Master Slade. Not keep it here.”

  Todd ignored the pleading servants, as he often ignored the pleas of adults. And the dark-skinned household staff was always so worried, that something terrible would happen because of Todd, or to Todd, and they would be blamed.

  The child was convinced that the glass bird was somehow “real”—an actual, living bird that had frozen in the cold—for were the feathers not precisely defined, snowy-white edged with pale gray; and the eyes lifelike, starkly open and staring, a milky orange with black pupils that seemed, uncannily, to possess sight?

  So, Todd busied himself with “bringing the owl back to life”; fussing and crooning over it in the warmth of the kitchen, and rubbing it vigorously with his hands; until, after an hour or more, the “glass” owl did in fact revive, and came suddenly to life, to the terror of the servants. For now, the owl was a sharp-taloned bird, with a sharp beak; its snowy feathers edged with gray were wet, and smelled. Except that Todd gripped it tightly, the owl would have flapped its wings and risen into the air.

  “Get it away! Get it away!”—so the servants begged, as Todd laughed at their discomfort; boasting that he’d heard the owl’s heartbeat as soon as he’d pried it out of the snow. Before anyone could stop him Todd ran back outside coatless and hatless to release the bird, which was now struggling in his hands, flinging it into the air crying, “Fly away! Fly away! Go to her, and bid her come back, Todd is waiting for her.”

  The servants talked of nothing else but Master Todd’s “devil-owl” but not in the hearing of their employers. So, when Lenora saw that Todd’s hands were covered in fresh scratches, of which some were still bleeding, she was utterly astonished. “Todd, what has happened to you? What have you done?”

  “Who? ‘Todd’ done—what?”

  Lenora could get no straight or coherent answer from her son, whom she hurried to a bathroom, that she might wash his wounded hands, and affix bandages where she could, all the while sobbing beneath her breath, for indeed pain was Lenora Slade’s portion no less than Annabel Slade’s, she understood; even as the restless twelve-year-old squirmed and laughed at her.

  “Fly away! Fly away! One day Todd will join you!”

  “RATIOCINATION OUR SALVATION”

  Late one afternoon in March 1906, Josiah Slade visited his former professor Pearce van Dyck at his home on Hodge Road, having been invited For a particular purpose, Josiah! Please come.

  In his retreat from social life, since Annabel’s death, Josiah had several times declined invitations from the van Dycks, as from other Princeton residents; though he’d been informed of the birth of a son and had sent a congratulatory note to Professor and Mrs. van Dyck, he had not seen either in some time.

  (The birth of a son, to Johanna van Dyck! All of Princeton was buzzing But Mrs. van Dyck is not young!)

  (For the record, Johanna van Dyck was forty-one years old at the time of the birth, in February 1906. Pearce van Dyck, forty-six.)

  (Yes, and for the record, too: I will say no more about this birth, or the unexpected pregnancy that preceded it. Where my objectivity as a historian is an issue, I must err on the side of caution.)

  Josiah was greeted at the door by Professor van Dyck, who was looking somewhat sallow-skinned, and whose starched white cotton shirt was open at the collar. Where ordinarily Professor van Dyck was impeccably groomed, his gray-streaked goatee trimmed short and his thinning hair faultlessly parted on the left side of his head, this afternoon he appeared just slightly disheveled, and seemed to be breathless.

  “Josiah! Thank God, you are safe.”

  “Safe? Why would I not be—safe?” Josiah laughingly replied, though perhaps Pearce’s remark was not meant to be amusing.

  “Come in, quickly! Please.”

  Dr. van Dyck shut the door behind Josiah, and ushered him into the dark interior of the house, to his study overlooking a topiary garden of dripping evergreens, that had overgrown to partly shadow the windows. Josiah was struck by the silence of the austere old house, where he’d been half-expecting to hear a baby’s excited babble.

  When Henrietta Slade learned that Josiah was going to visit the van Dycks, she’d persuaded him to take a gift for the baby, which she’d purchased at the Milgrim Shop in town, and which was wrapped in charming pale-blue paper; Josiah had not seen the gift, but had been told it was a cashmere baby blanket. When Josiah handed the box to Dr. van Dyck, with murmured congratulations, the elder man took it from him distractedly, and set it on a table, atop The Journal of Metaphysics.

  “If you are wondering where Mrs. van Dyck is, the fact is—Mrs. van Dyck is not here. She has gone.”

  “ ‘Gone’? Where?”

  “Wherever it is women go, with their newborn infants. To avoid ‘contamination’—it is said.” Pearce laughed almost gaily. “Will you sit down, Josiah? And will you have some sherry?”

  Pearce hastily tidied up a clutter of papers, books, monographs, and sheets of stiff white cardboard on his desk and surrounding tables. Josiah perceived that the philosophy professor was immersed in a project of some kind involving diagrams and geometric figures.

  “In fact, Johanna has gone less than a mile—to her mother, on Battle Road. And it will not be a permanent move, I am confident.”

  Josiah could think of no reply to this announcement. He had no idea what his former professor meant by “contamination” and could not bring himself to ask.

  Dr. van Dyck’s manner was curiously ebullient, though his eyes were red-rimmed and his color distinctly unhealthy; repeatedly, he coughed, and held a handkerchief to his mouth. There had been a rumor that Pearce van Dyck had succumbed to bronchitis, or emphysema, or a sub-tropical disease originating in South Asia; but Josiah was too reserved to ask a former professor about anything so intimate as his health.

  The van Dyck house did seem darker than Josiah recalled, unless this was a consequence of the overcast late-winter afternoon, already shifting to dusk. One of the smaller mansions on Hodge Road, set back behind a grim cobblestone wall, the van Dyck house was an austere French Normandy house, with a steep front roof like a frowning brow, and shaggily overgrown trees and shrubs surrounding it.

  “It’s kind of you to congratulate me, Josiah,” Dr. van Dyck said, with a smiling sigh, “on the birth of a son, I think you must mean? Yet—as you may one day discover—it is not so much to do with me, as with her. So much less the father, than the mother.”

  Josiah smiled uncertainly. Was his former professor being riddlesome, in the way of Socrates?

  “Well, there is nothing to be embarrassed about. I have gone through all that—I have worked my way through it. Whatever the ‘infant son’s’ origins—it is a fait accompli now. In any case, it is all only natural—that is to say, Nature. As the Thomists would elaborate—a manifestation of natural law.” Dr. van Dyck poured sherry into two glasses, and handed one to Josiah. On a low marble table was a silver platter heaped with tiny crustless sandwiches, chocolate crescents, and the like, that the housekeeper had prepared, Dr. van Dyck said, with “particular enthusiasm,” knowing that his young friend Josiah Slade was coming to visit.

  “It’s well that Johanna is away, so that we men can speak frankly for once. This phenomenon of the Curse in our midst—that stares us all in the face, like a deadly basilisk—this, we must discuss.”<
br />
  “ ‘Curse’—?”

  “Of course, Josiah. What otherwise is it, erupting in our midst, since last June, except a Curse?”

  Dr. van Dyck spoke in a lowered voice. Suddenly overcome by a fit of coughing, he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth.

  Josiah had accepted the glass of sherry from his companion, but had not lifted it to his lips. A sensation of heat rushed over him; he felt both shame and dismay; thinking what a blunder it had been, to emerge from his monkish seclusion, for this.

  Many times, Josiah had thought in such terms. A curse had fallen upon his family. No doubt, others had been thinking so, too. Yet Curse had not yet been uttered, in his hearing at least. He didn’t know if he felt relief, or a stunned sort of shock.

  “But here, we have help, Josiah. The possibility of help.”

  Dr. van Dyck was showing Josiah several books, volumes of short stories—Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Homes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. And a single volume—The Hound of the Baskervilles. At first, Josiah couldn’t comprehend what his former professor was saying with such urgency, that the ratiocination of Sherlock Holmes was needed in Princeton, to combat the “curse,” or the “horror.”

  “Since you last visited me, Josiah, much has changed in my life. I’ve set aside my philosophical speculations in favor of a Holmesian pragmatism, which has produced exciting results, I think. I’ve made a close study of all of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories, which overlap, to a degree, on the biographical profile of the detective, and present a remarkable vision of the world, as a forest of ‘clues’—not an underbrush of gnarled ‘philosophies’ in hopeless competition with one another. What is required is pragmatic logic, that seems to be missing in daily life.”

  Dr. van Dyck was leafing through the collections of stories, speaking to Josiah in the way of a distracted lecturer, who drifts from his subject, and returns to it, with a startled smile; as Josiah made an effort to listen politely, for he could not behave otherwise with his former, so much admired professor.