The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  —TO THE RESPECTFUL titles in Winslow Slade’s library on the eve of Ash Wednesday, 1905, there should be added others, not alphabetized, but stacked on tables, that failed to capture Woodrow Wilson’s full attention: the unscholarly but much-perused Phrenological Studies of Dr. Phineas Lutz; Beyond the Gates of Consciousness of Stanislav Zahn; Heaven and Hell of Emanuel Swedenborg; and that rare and arresting treatise in quarto Gothic, the manual of a “forgotten church”—the Vigiliae mortuorum secundum chorum ecclesiae maguntinae; still more, volumes in French, by the controversial Jean-Martin Charcot, and a recent copy of The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research of Cambridge, Mass., in which an essay by a founding member of the Society, Professor William James of Harvard, appeared under the title “Is There a ‘Natural’ Barrier to Consciousness?”

  Yes, the reader is correct in wondering why, when Charcot and James were mentioned by Woodrow Wilson, Winslow Slade remained silent and did not suggest in any way that he was familiar with the work of either man.

  —WINSLOW SLADE’S PREOCCUPATION on the night in question.

  It was Dr. Slade’s custom to dine with his family before eight o’clock, then to retire to the bachelor solitude of his library, which few in the family ever visited; nor did Dr. Slade encourage visits from the children who, when young, would have poked and pried amid his special collections, like the (allegedly) Malaysian jade snuffbox, that had been a gift to Winslow Slade by a woman friend, a world-traveler of decades ago, and, of course, the invaluable Gutenberg Bible, one of but forty-eight copies remaining in all of the world, of that first monumental printing. (That Dr. Slade’s copy of the Gutenberg Bible was not complete scarcely diminished its worth, for very few of the original copies remained undamaged by the incursions of centuries.)

  Often, Winslow absorbed himself in fireside reading, of newer books (like those listed above); more recently, in the late winter of 1905, he had taken up the task of revising his sermons for a collection which a Philadelphia publisher of theological texts had pressed him into completing. (“Why would anyone want to read my old sermons?” Winslow asked wryly; and the publisher rejoined, “The mere name ‘Winslow Slade’ will assure quite a sale in New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic states generally.”) When this task proved too boring, Winslow turned with more enthusiasm to his translations of one or another book of the Apocrypha, upon which he’d been laboring for years, with the assistance of a Hebrew scholar at the seminary; his particular interest was “The Epistle of Jeremy” and the Books of Esdra and Tobit, and, in the New Testament, those curious gospels attributed to Thomas, Matthias, and Judas.

  “Of all Biblical figures, surely Judas is the most misunderstood, as he is the most condemned!”—so Winslow believed.

  For it had always seemed evident to him, Jesus adored his faithless Judas above the other disciples.

  As Winslow was frequently plagued by insomnia, but resisted taking the myriad “home remedies” favored in great doses by his young friend Woodrow Wilson, out of a fear of clouding his thoughts, so he reserved for the early hours of the morning his transactions with his journal: not a single volume but more than a dozen eight-by-twelve “scribblers.”

  The reader will naturally think that I have had recourse to Dr. Slade’s journals—would that were so! It is a tragic fact, all volumes of the journal were destroyed, with most of Winslow Slade’s personal papers, in a bizarre act of self-mortification that seemed to have occurred in late May 1906, shortly before Dr. Slade’s death.

  —WOODROW WILSON’S MYRIAD physical ailments.

  Why people are, or were, so intensely interested in Woodrow Wilson’s panorama of ailments, as in the ailments of U.S. Presidents generally, I am not so certain. It is not to be attributed to mere morbidity, I am sure—perhaps rather more a wish to peer into the private lives of exalted others, to compare with our more meager estates.

  In addition to what I have already mentioned, and to reiterate—among Woodrow’s medical complaints were gastric crises, raging headaches, neuritis, nervous hyperesthesia, arrhythmic heartbeat, “night sweats” and “night-mares,” and the like. In some quarters, as early as Woodrow’s first years as president of Princeton University, the question was raised, if the man was “entirely” sane, given his intense preoccupations and obsessions with enemies real and imagined; and his frantic need never to compromise.

  It had been a passionate belief of the Campbells of Argyll, that battle was preferable to peace, if that peace was determined by compromise.

  There was not a conspiracy exactly, but certainly an understanding, among Woodrow’s intimates, that talk of the man’s ailments should be curtailed. With much justification, Woodrow felt that if it became generally known that his health was erratic, confidence in his leadership might be undermined.

  In fact it was impressive how Dr. Wilson soared above such shackles of the spirit, frequently climbing out of his sickbed to attend to university affairs, or to travel by rail to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, even so far as Chicago and St. Louis, to give a speech. “The flesh may be weak,” Woodrow quipped, “but the spirit is willing.” As a precocious young boy Woodrow had sent away for a mail-order chart depicting the postures and declamatory gestures of classical oratory, in order to learn the art of public speaking; as a result, he had unwittingly become imprinted with a set of mechanical gestures, and in times of stress and fatigue he was likely to lapse into them, as his students had soon discovered, in his lecture courses at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton. (In those days, students suggested discontent and boredom by shuffling their feet. How Woodrow had come to dread, and to abhor, that shuffling sound, as of brooms being swept along floors, maddeningly; and when students were reprimanded by university proctors at Princeton for shuffling their feet during chapel sermons, Woodrow was not at all sympathetic, and refused to mitigate expulsions from the university.)

  Yet, audiences felt positive about him: for he was so very earnest, and so idealistic. He had hoped to be loved by multitudes, he said, but, failing love, to evoke admiration, awe, and even fear in audiences was not such a bad thing.

  Sow yourself in every field of the world’s influence; knead yourself into its every possible loaf of soul-nourishing bread. Be vitalizing wheat, indeed—hide not your talents. So Woodrow’s father Joseph Ruggles Wilson had warmly advised him.

  —THE KU KLUX KLAN lynching in Camden, New Jersey, on March 7, 1905: had Woodrow Wilson entirely forgotten about this, and his impetuous kinsman’s request, when he visited Winslow Slade; or had Woodrow Wilson, in the heat of his greater concern, simply brushed all thought of the terrible incident from his mind?

  And did Winslow Slade know of the incident?

  Could Winslow Slade not have known of it?

  NARCISSUS

  Excuse me—hello?”

  On a sun-warmed morning in early spring she saw him, at a little distance: a man of indeterminate age, his face turned from her, who seemed at first to be one of her grandfather’s gardener’s assistants, as he was gripping in his gloved hand a small hand-sickle, cruelly hooked and gleaming in the sun; and, at his feet, stricken flowers, presumably past their prime, and a heaping of last-year’s grasses, that had been cut down.

  Annabel had never seen this man before, she was sure. Though often there came to Crosswicks Manse, to visit with Grandfather Slade, individuals not known to her, of significance.

  She supposed that the stranger, not in gardening attire but in formal, just slightly old-fashioned clothes, like clothes Winslow Slade had worn decades ago, was one of her grandfather’s visitors: possibly a Presbyterian minister, or seminarian, who’d wandered out of Dr. Slade’s shadowed library to breathe in the freshness of the April morning; and, out of restlessness perhaps, had decided to try his hand here, with the sharp little sickle.

  “Hello! Are you a friend of Grandfather’s?”

  There was laughter in Annabel’s voice, as there was so often a light sort of laughter, or joyousness, in her fa
ce.

  The reader must not think that nineteen-year-old Annabel Slade was accustomed to addressing strange men, even in her grandfather’s garden; she was not a bold girl, still less a brash girl; but some sort of childish elation had come over her, on this perfect April morning, with her diamond engagement ring—(square-cut, fourteen carats, surrounded by miniature rubies, an heirloom of the Bayard family)—sparkling on the third finger of her slender left hand, in the sun. When Woodrow Wilson had spoken critically of “headstrong” young women born in the North, lacking the natural graciousness of his daughter Margaret, as of his wife, Ellen, both Southern-born, he would certainly not have included Annabel Slade in this category!

  Strange it seemed to Annabel, yet not alarming, that the mysterious visitor didn’t seem to hear her, or to acknowledge her—“Hel-lo?”—as with childlike persistence she called out to him again, though shyly too, smiling as her mother might smile, or her grandmother Slade, in the feminine role of welcoming a guest to the house.

  On this April morning several weeks after Woodrow Wilson’s visit to Crosswicks Manse, Winslow Slade’s beloved granddaughter Annabel was picking flowers for the dining room of Crosswicks Manse. In her hands was a small gathering of jonquils, Grecian windflowers, daffodils and narcissi—how fragrant, narcissi!—almost, Annabel felt light-headed. It seemed probable to her, this stranger would be dining with them at lunch, which gave to her task an added urgency.

  She recalled now, she’d heard it mentioned at breakfast, that an emissary from the highest echelon of the Presbyterian Church was coming to visit with Winslow Slade that day, and to enlist his support in the awkward matter of a “heresy trial” within the ranks of the Church.

  (Poor Grandfather! Annabel knew that he wanted very badly to be totally retired from his former life, yet fervently his “former life” pursued him!)

  Annabel knew little of such matters but understood that, through his many years of service in the Church, Reverend Winslow Slade had participated from time to time in such closed trials; for heresy was a terrible thing, and must be combated at the source, though such disagreeable matters upset him deeply. Josiah had told her that in such actions, their grandfather was not to be distinguished from any responsible Protestant clergyman of his day, charged with the mission that the “special character” of Anglo-Saxon Christianity be protected from “anarchist” assaults arising both within, and without, the Church.

  “Of course,” Annabel had said to her brother, in an undertone, so that no adult could hear, “these are not real trials—no one is imprisoned, or sentenced to death, I hope!”

  “Not in our time,” Josiah said. “Fortunately.”

  Annabel knew that, fierce as Protestants might be in their zealous protection of their Church, they were not nearly so fierce, or so bloodthirsty, as their Roman Catholic predecessors had been in the time, for instance, of the Inquisition; or the Thirty Years’ War, or the Crusades.

  So, judging the attractive stranger by his outward attire, and a certain air of good breeding in his manner, the innocently naïve Annabel Slade was led to believe that Axson Mayte was a gentleman of her own social station: a friend of her grandfather’s, in short.

  A profound misreading, as the historical record will show.

  VERY ODD, HOWEVER, Annabel was beginning to feel, how the stranger continued to hold the hand-sickle, at his side; now he’d turned to her, seeing her, yet without an air of surprise, as if he’d known she was there, observing him; he smiled, in a rapt sort of silence, as no gentleman would ever do, in fact; as if he and Annabel Slade had met by chance in a public place, or in some dimension in which the sexes might “meet” impersonally, like animals, with no names, no families—no identities. In that instant, Annabel felt both chilled and flushed with warmth; and somewhat faint; and had to resist the impulse to hide her (burning) face in the little bouquet of flowers she had picked, that the bold stranger would not stare so directly upon her with his penetrating gaze.

  A tawny-golden gaze it was, like a certain kind of beveled glass.

  Disturbing it was to her, that they had not been introduced, he had not said a word to her, yet the stranger smiled more insidiously at her, with thin, yet strangely sensual lips!

  I will ignore him. I will walk away, as if I were alone. We will be introduced at lunch, maybe—and if not, that can’t be helped.

  Yet Annabel failed to leave the garden, as she might have done, but only moved to another corner, where she reasoned she wouldn’t be so clearly observed by the strange bold visitor. Here was a lavish bed of wind-rippled daffodils that made her smile; for words of a favorite, memorized poem ran through her thoughts: “ ‘And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.’ ”

  In times of unease, excitement or dread, what comfort in rhyme!

  As poets of old well knew, and poets of our vulgar and atonal contemporary life seem to have forgotten.

  Unfortunately for Annabel, her brother Josiah wasn’t at home this morning, nor did anyone from the Manse appear to be taking notice.

  Annabel could not resist glancing back at the stranger with the hand-sickle. What a shock, he was still observing her.

  He is rude. I don’t like him. Dabney would not like him!

  If he is one of Grandfather’s associates, he must be older than he looks. His clothing is—old. Or, it may be—he is one of Father’s younger business associates—“brokers.”

  For his part, the stranger was drifting in Annabel’s direction, yet not very deliberately. As if, in some way, he were being drawn to her, by some (unconscious) motion or motive of Annabel herself.

  Why else, that smile? A smile of—was it recognition?

  Not wanting to betray her unease, and resisting the impulse to flee, Annabel continued picking flowers, though not liking it, how the narcissi broke between her fingers, and wetted them with a syrupy sort of liquid, she had to refrain from wiping on her skirt. And when she straightened, feeling just slightly light-headed, as if she were very hungry, she saw to her surprise that the stranger had somehow advanced close to her; he could not have been more than twelve feet away where, a moment before, Annabel would have sworn he was on the farther side of the garden.

  Why, he has moved in silence, seemingly without effort.

  Now, Annabel dared look at the visitor more openly: as she had surmised, he was in his early thirties perhaps; he was of more than medium height, as tall as her brother; slender in the shoulders, with a noble, well-shaped head, and very dark, silken, tight-curled hair. His skin may have been just slightly coarse, of a curious darkish-olive hue, that yet contained a sort of pallor, as if, beneath his robust masculine exterior, he was not entirely healthy. His eyes were large, and both slumberous and piercing; possessed of a fiery topaz glow that was not obscured, but the more enhanced, by the deep-shadowed sockets that enclosed them. The forehead was prominent, the eyebrows thick, of that hue of blackness of the raven’s wing; the teeth small, and pearly, and almost overly white, of a uniform regularity—except for one incisor, which jutted a half-inch below its fellows, to give an impression somewhat carnivorous.

  Though the stranger’s attire was in very good taste—a silk-and-woolen dark-blue suit, in a light texture; with wide-padded shoulders and a tight-waisted coat; white dress shirt, with silver cuff links, striped necktie, polished shoes—yet Annabel had begun to think the mysterious stranger was somehow foreign, exotic. A Persian prince perhaps, exiled in America; or, one of the Hebrew race—for is there not something most noble and melancholy about him? And his eyes—why, those are basilisk-eyes! *

  Descriptions of female beauty are tedious, and often unconvincing. Is a young woman really so beautiful as her admirers claim? Would Annabel Slade with her conventionally pretty, pleasing features—her shyly downcast eyes of blue, or deep violet; her perfectly shaped lips, untouched by cosmetics; her nose, the Roman nose of the Slades, but snubbed—have been so celebrated a Princeton beauty, were she the daughter and granddaughter of
more ordinary Princetonians? What is the distinction, in fact, between beauty and prettiness—the one rare and austere, the other commonplace? It is frankly beyond my writerly powers to suggest the delicate and unstudied charm of Annabel Slade, unless by summoning the image of the narcissus—the most exquisite of spring flowers with its fragile, fluted petals and its miniature center, all but invisible at a glance, and its just-slightly-astringent perfume, in which resides the quicksilver essence of spring: fresh, unsullied, virgin.

  For if beauty is not virgin, it is despoiled. In the Princeton of 1905, such a sentiment was hallowed as a love and fear of the Protestant Almighty.

  The previous year, Annabel had “come out” at a number of balls and parties in Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Princeton; it was said of her, as perhaps it is said of many debutantes, that she was the most “beautiful” of the crop, along with being, to speak bluntly, one of the wealthiest. (The Slade wealth was in railroads, real estate, manufacturing, and banking; for some decades in the late 1700s and early 1800s, until high-minded Slades insisted upon divestiture, there was considerable revenue generated by the slave trade. Even divided among a number of heirs, it remained one of the great fortunes of the nineteenth century, having virtually doubled its worth in the era known as the Gilded Age. But Annabel, like her brother Josiah, gave little thought to the Slade fortune, not even to their probable inheritances which they took for granted as they took for granted the very air they breathed, which was not the coarse and smoke-sullied air of Trenton, New Brunswick, or Newark.)

  So famously sweet-tempered was Annabel, she could not bear to hear ill of anyone, and often became downcast when an unkind or a thoughtless word was uttered in her presence; profanities, still more obscenities, of the sort undergraduate carousers scrawled on walls in white chalk, for all to see in the bright daylight, truly shocked her, as if she were personally attacked. (Though, fortunately, Annabel had but the vaguest notion of what these crude words and expressions actually meant.)