The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Unless it wasn’t too late? Ex-Lieutenant Dabney Bayard tormented himself with such thoughts, except when such thoughts were mollified by whiskey.

  IT WAS A clouded night near the end of the university’s spring term when a young man named Tempe Kaufman left Chancellor Green Library to return to his rooming house on Mercer Street; later than was his usual custom, for the library had longer hours at this time of year preceding exams. Tempe made his way through the darkened campus, and to Mercer Street, headed for his rooming house at the intersection with Alexander; he was not lonely, but whistled thinly to himself, to lift his spirits; for he was concerned about his several courses, of which at least two were taught by professors who seemed to dislike, or to disdain him, and had graded him less generously than they’d graded his classmates. Like other undergraduates, Tempe Kaufman did not read, or care about, local news; he was from New York City, and found it difficult to take the village of Princeton seriously, as a place in which people lived apart from the university that so dominated it.

  The reader might wonder why Tempe Kaufman was living on Mercer Street and not with fellow undergraduates in one of the residence halls on campus. The twenty-year-old boy was, it appears, a Jewish person; and so thought it most politic to conform with the wishes of the university administration, and with the wishes of the majority of his classmates, by acquiring a room off-campus. (There was no eating club that would admit Jewish persons, it scarcely needs be said.)

  But Tempe was not lonely; for Tempe was accustomed to being alone much of the time. And Tempe didn’t give much thought to rumors spreading through Princeton, of a “killer”—a “Fiend”—who had killed several people, and had not been apprehended.

  As Old North tolled the dolorous quarter hour past 10 p.m., Tempe happened to notice a peculiar flitting shape at one of the gas lamps nearby (this was at the corner of Mercer and Alexander); the shape was bat-like, but larger than the ordinary bat; it appeared to be suspended in mid-air, without beating its wings, at a height of about eight feet above the sidewalk. A very large bat Tempe thought; or a common nighthawk—a bird not found commonly in Tempe’s hometown, with red-glowing eyes and claw-like talons.

  “Why, what is that?”

  Tempe stared, and blinked; he hesitated to come closer; yet was relieved that, within a few seconds, the curious shape had vanished; perhaps it was nothing but vapor. Tempe reproached himself for being alarmed for he knew this stretch of Mercer Street well: the cobblestone paving, the flickering gas lamps, the dignified old Colonial houses with their prim facades of white clapboards and dark shutters.

  Mrs. Donovan’s rooming house was at 77 Mercer.

  Tempe had not wanted to hear the lurid details of a recent murder at Lake Carnegie though the victim was a sophomore named Heckewalder, who had been in two of Tempe’s classes; one of those eating-club boys who, careless in his work, arrogant in his manner, yet managed to get grades higher than Tempe Kaufman. Indeed, Tempe had had the mean and unworthy thought, when he’d first heard that Heckewalder had been killed in a mysterious “undisclosed” manner, that Heckewalder deserved it, if anyone did; such a thought Tempe immediately censored, for he wasn’t that kind of person.

  Still, Heckewalder had not been friendly to Tempe Kaufman, in his careless, aristocratic manner; it was said that his father was one of the most trusted legal advisors employed by DuPont & Co., specializing in the manufacture of gunpowder, and that he’d made a fortune investing in DuPont stock. Naturally, details of the young man’s death were being withheld by his family, as by local authorities, and the university administration, who feared hysterical reactions and “bad publicity”; but Tempe had heard, or rather overheard, that in addition to having his throat slashed by the teeth of human, or animal, origin, the luckless young man had been made to endure an offense to his body, of an “unspeakable” sort.

  This, Tempe couldn’t help but think Heckewalder had brought upon himself for his excessive preening and strutting in female attire, in the recent Triangle Show, that had been hilarious, and yet in very bad taste, Tempe had thought. His people would never cavort in such a way, in such blatant sexual mockery, in public.

  So, Tempe continued along Mercer Street, with a quickly beating heart, though there was nothing to alarm him; and most of the houses on the street had lighted windows, at least on the second floor. Yet, he couldn’t help but think that Heckewalder had been an athlete, at lacrosse; a slender but wiry young man, not easily intimidated. Yet he had been unable to save himself, it seemed.

  Also, a certain “aura” hung over Mrs. Donovan’s rooming house at 77 Mercer, since, several years before, when Tempe Kaufman had been a high school student at Erasmus Hall, in Brooklyn, one of Mrs. Donovan’s young boarders, an allegedly brilliant student in mathematics, also Jewish, from Philadelphia, had been found hanging from his neck in his room, a suicide. (In the young man’s note he blamed the eating clubs that had “blackballed” him on account of his ancestry; and the university itself, in that he could count not one friend among the entire student body. So reckless a charge could not be taken seriously and must not be allowed to be publicly disseminated, the newly inaugurated president Woodrow Wilson quickly decided; and so the tragic affair was quietly “hushed up.”) Afterward it was claimed that a young Hebrew gentleman, of which there were invariably two or three in a class, always of the most superior intellect, might count on the fingers of one hand his friends, or friendly acquaintances; at this time, in 1906, there must have been as many as six or even seven young Jews among the undergraduate and graduate body of several thousand young men, seemingly content to mingle with their own kind and to avoid the distractions of Prospect Street social life for which the prestigious university was famed.

  Tempe did not think of these matters, much. For he too was rumored to be “brilliant” at math—and he had not so many friends, either.

  “Hello? Hello . . .”

  Suddenly a figure defined itself, to Tempe’s amazed eye, leaning against a lamppost like a nighthawk grown large. To Tempe’s relief he saw that the figure was that of a young man of about his age, or a few years older, in a U.S. Army officer’s uniform, his rank a mystery to Tempe who knew little of such things; but he saw that the young man had an agreeable, boyish face, and was smiling at Tempe as if to comfort him. Were they acquainted? Was this young man someone Tempe should know? In a playful gesture meant to mask his nervousness, or embarrassment, Tempe brought the edge of his hand smartly to the side of his head, in a salute: “Aye-aye, sir.”

  At which the young officer seemed to take offense. His smile vanished, and was replaced with a look of rage. He uncoiled himself from his position against the lamppost and, taller than he’d appeared, in a stride or two confronted the astonished Tempe, seizing hold of Tempe’s right hand with fingers of startling strength.

  “Are you mocking me?” the fair-haired stranger demanded, in a lightly accented Southern voice. “Are you showing contempt for an officer of the United States Army?”

  WHAT IS THIS?—while stationed at Camp Raleigh the lieutenant chanced to discover, in a handheld mirror, a crease between his eyebrows which had not been there previously, he was sure. Panic flared, then ire; then a sullen intention to inflict revenge. A certain boy, an enlisted private, curly-haired shy-seeming bright-eyed boy from the hill country beyond Norfolk, who has been Lieutenant Bayard’s nemesis these past few weeks, and feigning innocence.

  His pretty looks shall be slashed flat, Lieutenant Bayard thinks, else my own looks will suffer.

  “IF ONLY THEY would not struggle. It would be better for us both, and soon be completed.”

  FROM THE FIRST, Lieutenant Bayard knew: his prospective brother-in-law Josiah Slade distrusted him.

  Disliked, disdained, distrusted him. Him!

  While all of the Slades were warm to him, as to his parents and Bayard relatives, and pretty Annabel was shyly gracious to him, yet Josiah held himself just perceptibly apart; as Dabney had sometimes noted, in situa
tions of male camaraderie, like football, crew, lacrosse—there were those who did not quite take to him, despite his eagerness to be liked. You are not one of us really. You—an impostor!

  Dabney Bayard gave no sign of course. No sign that he was aware of Josiah’s coolness. In fact, Dabney ignored such coolness, and responded to Josiah as if Josiah was friendly with him, and there was no strain between them.

  “Shall we go hunting, one day soon, Josiah? There is much game in Hunterdon County.”

  “Maybe. One day soon.”

  So Josiah replied, with a frowning smile and evasive eyes.

  He is not a good dissembler. He has no skill at subterfuge.

  Dabney knew that Josiah had been accepted at West Point, had enrolled but stayed only a few months. The soldier’s life was not for this Princeton aristocrat, it seemed.

  How he hated Josiah Slade! The young man was a snob, a smug bastard, haughty son-of-a-bitch—he would one day pay for these insults, Lieutenant Bayard thought.

  THE REMEDY IS always the same, Lieutenant. And very simple, I wonder you have not gleaned it yourself.

  The Count was smiling, his darkly-pale face aglow in the sunshine. Large deep-set intelligent/bemused eyes; the heat of a stranger’s breath on Dabney’s cheek; an odor of ashes overlaid with a stronger odor of alcohol and snuff.

  The remedy, my sweet young Lieutenant, is . . .

  “IT WAS A rabid bat, it’s thought, that attacked the boy. For a healthy bat would not attack a human being, and never in daylight. All the rest is foolery—this hysteria of ‘vampires.’ The attack of a bat against a human being may be a rare occurrence in New Jersey but is hardly rare in Europe. So, why this inordinate fuss on the part of the township authorities? And on the Princeton campus? An able-bodied young college boy should certainly be able to defend himself against a mere bat.”

  So Count English von Gneist spoke to guests in the drawing room at Mora House, his gaze moving lightly over that of Dabney Bayard’s, not many days after the murder on the canal pathway of Julian Heckewalder.

  AND THERE WAS the other, the Hebrew boy, the first of his kind in the Lieutenant’s experience, in the shadows of a lane between houses on Mercer Street: dark curls, Semitic hook to the nose, the rumored sensualism of the race, an ancient and sun-warmed race, replete with secrets!

  No he says but Yes I say, No please he begs but Yes I say, O help me God he prays, O dear God yes I say, But please he says, But yes I say, No he says, help he cries, No I say, no help I say, Come here I say, cease struggling I say, you will not be hurt, like this I say like this I say, and—THIS.

  “NO! MY GOD.”

  Awakened from one of his ugly dreams.

  Drenched in sickly clammy perspiration.

  Heart racing, and eyelids rapidly blinking; and parched lips like the mouth of a fish thrown upon the land, gasping for breathable air.

  “But only a dream. Thank God!”

  For some minutes paralyzed in the churned bedclothes. Unable to recollect where he was: officers’ quarters at Norfolk, or at Raleigh, or Camp Pendleton; or in his boyhood bed, or in Atlantic City, or in New York City, or—back in accursed Princeton?

  Ravenous with thirst and hunger he’d been tearing at the youth’s throat with his teeth, that he might suck the wholesome hot blood required for life; so overcome with passion, he could not resist plunging onward to the end, most savage indeed. Yet how is it his fault?—appetite is stronger than will, and both are stronger than the wish to do no harm. How, when the young Hebrew boy clearly mocked him with a salute, locking eyes with the Lieutenant—fatally.

  Isn’t it preferable, Lieutenant, to satisfy your appetite, and acknowledge the pleasure it gives you? And not, like most of those who surround us, enact a pious hypocrisy each day of your life?

  How much more noble to follow the caprice of your secret soul, than to play at parson; for didn’t one of your homespun American bards advise you should inscribe on your doorstep—WHIM?

  STILL, THE DREAM was very upsetting. So lucid in its details, such as the fine dark fluttering lashes of the boy’s face, and the gabardine jacket the boy was wearing; the succession of gas lamps on Mercer Street, leading north into darkness, beyond the village of Princeton; the chill, fragrant May air . . . So lucid, Dabney was afraid to close his eyes again and be drawn once more into that dank and fetid Hell.

  So he lay panting in the darkened room, which might have been a hotel room; a place unfamiliar to him; for all places were coming to seem unfamiliar to him, who traveled so far by night.

  Wiping at his parched lips with his knuckles, and swallowing, and swallowing, without seeming to cleanse his mouth; nor even to rid his lips of an encrustation, that tasted frankly of blood.

  POSTSCRIPT: ON THE MATTER OF THE “UNSPEAKABLE” AT PRINCETON

  As it is very difficult to speak of the “unspeakable,” so the historian is limited in his presentation of certain materials; in this case, the historian is in fact ignorant of what the “unspeakable” might be, despite a considerable effort of research over the decades.

  And, as this chapter contains much that is of interest only to those with a curiosity about Princeton University and its history of the “unspeakable,” the suggestion is that other readers skim rapidly through it, or skip it altogether, and move to the next chapter, which is more directly related to the unfolding story of The Accursed.

  All of Princeton was aghast, and terrified: on a May morning, only a few days before the end of term, the body of a young college student, twenty years of age, was found in the paludal wilderness between Princeton and Princeton Junction, in a swampy area beside the railroad track; as if the abused body had been thrown from the local train.

  This, the second body of an undergraduate to be found, in a similar setting, and with similar injuries, within a week.

  The first, a sophomore member of Cottage Club; the second, a twenty-year-old junior, living “off campus” at a rooming house at 77 Mercer Street.

  For those who believed that the “curse” was related specifically to Crosswicks, to the Slades and other prominent families, these deaths presented clear anomalies: for both Heckewalder and Kaufman appeared to have been assaulted and killed purely by chance, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time; the one at the shore of Lake Carnegie, in a secluded area, in midday; the other in or near a lane off Mercer Street, past 10 p.m. of a weekday. Neither young man was a Princetonian by birth and his death very likely had nothing to do with ancestry or fate.

  Like Heckewalder, Kaufman was said to have suffered “grievous”—“bestial”—“savage”—injuries to his throat, torso, and lower body; his death was of “exsanguination”; and he had suffered “unspeakable insult.”

  Though I am not a theologian, or a philosopher, I think it is most helpful here to follow the admonition of St. Thomas Aquinas in his discussion of “that abominable and detestable crime against Nature, not to be named among Christians.”

  THROUGH THE HISTORY of Princeton University the alert historian might trace a thread, or chain, of “unspeakable” incidents involving the abrupt dismissal of certain faculty members, preceptors, and students, and their immediate decampment from town; the ostracizing, by their fellows, of undergraduates suspected of partaking in the “unspeakable,” or possessing the potential for such; from time to time, otherwise inexplicable acts of cruelty inflicted upon “unorthodox” individuals, particularly with regard to freshman hazing. Bicker, a time of much anxiety, was a favored time for such cruelty, in the form of boyish pranks; for a boy who very badly wanted to belong to an eating club might be led to believe that he would be invited, only to be confronted with the fact that not a single club wanted him. (Not that this sort of prank was limited to those boys suspected of the potential for the “unspeakable”—for of course it was more general.)

  Connected with this, we have the unfortunate suicides: young men whose self-loathing came to match the loathing of their peers, leading them to the (unforgivable, by C
hristian standards) sin of self-destruction. That this sin is, in its way, “unspeakable,” adds to the mystery.

  For instance, isolated “unspeakable” episodes were whispered of during the administration of James Carnahan (1823–1854), at which time eating clubs were being formed, spontaneously; these arose from the students’ need for meals, as the college was unable to provide adequate dining facilities for its ever-increasing student population. (President Carnahan’s tenure was tumultuous, for near-anarchy reigned when boys rebelled, as often they did; administrators and faculty could not control gangs of roving boys who set fires, smashed windows, and vandalized the campus; the beleaguered president considered shutting down the college, until he was dissuaded by James Madison, a loyal alum.) At this time, such eating clubs were formed as “Knights of the Round Table”—“Knights of Hudibras”—“King’s Court”—“Knickerbockers”—“Epicureans”—“Alligators” (this was to be Woodrow Wilson’s club, or substitute for a club, as Wilson was seemingly blackballed by his first-choice club, Ivy, in 1879). Later, these names would be changed, and the eating clubs dignified by the construction of very handsome, mansion-like houses along Prospect Avenue, built by prosperous alums. In their origins the eating clubs were quite innocent, and it was only later, in the time of Woodrow Wilson’s undergraduate years, for instance, that the situation radically altered: inspiring in underclassmen a frenzy of anxiety and apprehension at “bicker”—“pledge week”—as to who would be invited to join which club, and who would not be invited to join any club at all—(that is, the majority of students).

  Hence, Woodrow Wilson’s pledge to “shut down” the eating clubs—and the opposition to him, by a strong coalition of alums.

  Whatever the “unspeakable” was, or is, these incidents escalated at hazing and bicker-time. One can imagine the inevitable consequences of fevered adolescent “courting”—“horsing”—“disciplining”—“hazing.” (It was not unusual for freshman boys to be so violently “disciplined,” they had to leave college, some of them hospitalized; yet none of these boys ever testified against the upperclassmen who harassed them. Deaths following “hazing” and “horsing” were not common, of course—yet those that did occur were kept quiet, by university decree.)