Wilde West

by Walter Satterthwait

  No matter. One would be found. Or, if necessary, constructed.

  The audience would learn, from the passengers conversation, that one of them was a murderer; but, like the passengers themselves, it would not know which.

  A Poet, a German Officer, a Countess, a Journalist, a Businessman, another Poet—no, too many poets spoil the broth: make him a Disciple of the Poet.

  A nicely representative selection of humanity. Commerce and Art. Europe and America. Aristocracy and Commoner. (Hamlet might be beyond Vail, but surely a Commoner was something he could manage.)

  Six different perspectives, six different points of view brought together in a passenger carriage trundling through the vastness of the American West.

  It would be the Poet, of course, who dominated the conversation, whose intelligence would illuminate the darkness, whose flashing wit would leaven the obligatory solemnity. And perhaps, by following his brilliant but infinitely subtle lead, so subtle as to pass unnoticed by its participants, the conversation would slowly, inexorably, reveal the identity of the killer?

  THE POET: Herr von Hesse? Excuse me.

  The German Officer lowers his copy of Chuang Tsu. (That would never do; no West End audience would have any idea what a Chuang Tsu was; change it to a copy of the Bible.)

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: Yes?

  THE POET: I’ve been mulling over your theory.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER (raising his eyebrows slightly): Yes?

  The Poet looks around the carriage, smiling fondly at the other passengers.

  THE POET: Colonel von Hesse has come up with really quite an interesting theory about these murders. He believes that if Marshal Grigsby is correct, that if one of us is the killer, then perhaps this man is himself unaware of his homicidal urges. He kills without consciously knowing that he kills.

  The response is a good deal less dramatic than the Poet had hoped for. The Countess merely tilts her blond head slightly to the side, her French mouth moving in a small moue of … what? Concern? Distaste? The Businessman continues to stare balefully at the floor of the carriage. The Disciple continues to slumber. Only the Journalist reacts in a way that could be considered theatrical, although not greatly so: he loudly snorts, and then he reaches into his coat pocket for his flask of whiskey.

  THE POET(turning back to the German Officer): Yes. Well. As I say, I’ve been thinking about this, and it occurred to me that perhaps the force that has caused a separation within the man may be a kind of fear.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: Fear? How so?

  THE POET: Is it not possible that this “hidden being,” as you put it, might be a part of himself that our murderer actively fears? A part which frightens him so badly that he has, in effect, walled it off from himself?

  THE GERMAN OFFICER(nodding with a slow deliberate Teutonic thoughtfulness): Possible, yes, I should think. You have in mind a particular aspect of his personality?

  THE POET: Yes. That seems to me obvious from the nature of his crimes. His sexuality.

  THE BUSINESSMAN(looking over at the Poet in alarm): Jeez, Oscar, we got a lady present.

  He nods toward the Countess and, from the exuberant blush that washes even beneath his gray toupee, a puddle lapping beneath a doormat, he is clearly embarrassed.

  THE COUNTESS(smiling at the Businessman as though to reassure him): A lady, perhaps, but also a woman, Mr. Vail, and a French one. In France we are, I think, more open to discussing sexuality.

  THE JOURNALIST (leering): More open to having it, too. But I guess that’s only in France, eh, Countess?

  THE BUSINESSMAN (blustering): Now just a minute there, O’Conner—

  THE JOURNALIST (wearily): Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Countess. Look, Wilde, are you saying you agree with Grigsby? You think it was one of us who killed those women?

  THE POET (smoothly, refusing to be drawn): I say, only, that Herr von Hesse’s theory has merit. If one of us is the killer, and if the killer is in fact unaware of his identity, this would explain why none of the others have suspected him.

  THE BUSINESSMAN(shaking his head): That’s crazy.

  THE POET: Precisely. The situation I describe would be a form of insanity.

  THE JOURNALIST (heatedly): I’ll tell you who’s crazy. Grigsby’s crazy.

  THE POET: How so?

  THE JOURNALIST: Yesterday he pulled a gun on me.

  THE POET (shrugging lightly): He “pulled” one on me, as well. It’s an old western tradition, I believe. Very much like shaking hands.

  THE JOURNALIST: He shot at me.

  THE POET: Perhaps he was especially pleased to see you. He seems a very demonstrative man.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER (to the Journalist): Why would he do such a thing?

  THE JOURNALIST: Because he’s crazy!

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: Troubled, perhaps. I think he is a troubled man. But insane? I think not. I found him very reasonable. (He turns to the Countess.) You spoke to him, did you not, Mathilde? What did you think?

  THE COUNTESS (smiling softly and, under the circumstances, inexplicably): I found him most sympathique.

  THE POET (ignoring, for the moment, the unlikelihood of anyone finding Grigsby sympathetic, and deciding that it was time for him to begin his infinitely subtle direction of the conversation): Grigsby’s personality doesn’t really enter into this. The fact is, women have been killed in precisely those towns in which we stayed, and I think that this is something we should all address. THE JOURNALIST: Coincidence. How do we know some other women didn’t get killed, the same way, in some other town hundreds of miles away?

  THE POET (who had himself brought up this precise point with Grigsby): Presumably Grigsby will be looking into that possibility.

  THE JOURNALIST: I wouldn’t count on it. Grigsby’s got a bee in his bonnet.

  THE POET: That bonnet of his has room for an entire hive of bees. But, as I say, I think we should discuss this matter. Countess, it suddenly occurs to me that your presence here brings up an interesting question.

  THE COUNTESS: And what is that, Oscair?

  THE POET: You’ve spoken, you say, with Grigsby. You understand the possibility that one of us may be a murderer. And yet you continue to travel with us. Should we take this to mean that you disbelieve in Grigsby’s notion?

  THE COUNTESS (after a fetching moment of deliberation): I think that Marshal Greegsby is most probably correct.

  THE JOURNALIST (scornfully): You think one of us is a killer?

  THE COUNTESS (turning to him with her chin upraised, a small smile on her lips, very nicely done indeed): Regrettably, yes.The Businessman shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The German Officer looks upon her earnestly. The Journalist snorts and takes a swallow of whiskey from his flask. The Disciple continues to slumber. (Perhaps later we could enliven this particular role.)

  THE POET: And yet you continue to travel with us.

  THE COUNTESS: From what Marshal Greegsby has told me, the murderer seems to prefer women of only a certain type.

  THE JOURNALIST (leering): He could always branch out. Diversify.

  THE COUNTESS (smiling again): A de la Môle fought beside Charlemagne. De la Moles have fought beside the kings of France ever since. I have committed myself to making this journey. I will complete it.

  THE JOURNALIST: TOO bad the king of France isn’t coming along. The German Officer looks at the Journalist curiously, as though he were a novel species of water bug.

  THE DISCIPLE (finally opening his eyes): Just where is Grigsby anyway? He told me he’d be watching us like a hawk.

  THE POET: I shouldn’t worry about Grigsby. I have a feeling that he’ll turn up at some unexpected and probably inopportune moment, like the chaperone at a costume ball.

  The Disciple laughs merrily. The others smile their appreciation of this flash of wit.

  THE POET: But returning, Herr von Hesse, to this interesting little idea I had. That our hypothetical murderer has walled off the sexual side of his nature. Do you think that his denied sexuality might
provide a motive force for these killings?

  Once again the Businessman shifts in his seat. Nervously, he glances at the Countess.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER (nodding thoughtfully once again): Yes, of course. We know from de Sade that sexuality and violence can become intimately connected, yes? But even granting your point, Mr. Wilde, how does this bring us any closer to the identity of the murderer?

  THE POET: If we could somehow establish the psychological characteristics of the man, then perhaps we will have gone some way toward identifying him.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: But this is all speculation. We do not know that his sexuality is the cause of his bifurcation.

  THE POET: Nor do we know that he is in fact bifurcated. We know nothing about him. If we did, we shouldn’t need to speculate.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: But I believe that this exercise of yours could become a dangerous undertaking. To add one unverified—and unverifiable—hypothesis to another is not, I think, the way to discover truth.

  THE POET: And yet we do it every day, all of us. We live our lives amid a wilderness of unverified hypotheses. About the world, about our fellow man, about ourselves. I merely suggest that for a moment we do so deliberately, and see where it leads us.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: Into great troubles, I fear.

  THE POET (smiling, unfazed): Those are the only sort worth troubling over. So, let us assume that the man is unconscious of this other self. And let us assume that this other self is, in some way, his own tormented sexuality. Let us assume that he has walled it off because he is positively terrified of the sexual side of his nature.

  THE JOURNALIST (rudely interrupting): Well, that lets me out. He slaps his stomach vulgarly and leers at the Countess.

  THE POET (suavely ignoring all this): The question then becomes, what would cause him to take such an extraordinary psychological step? What would cause him to so fear his own sexuality?

  THE DISCIPLE (blurting it out):His parents.

  All heads turn toward the young man, who blushes and flutters his eyelashes, as though himself startled by his statement, or as though embarrassed at having interrupted the Poet’s methodical Socratic presentation.

  THE DISCIPLE (rather defensively): Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, they’re the ones who give approval from the start. Or who don’t. And if they disapproved strongly enough, of the way he was, if they were really vicious about it, wouldn’t that somehow change him?

  For an embarrassed moment no one says a word. It is as if all the others share, with the Poet, the feeling that the Disciple has revealed more about himself and his own family life, and more about his own sexuality, than he intended to. It is the Countess who comes to the young man’s rescue.

  THE COUNTESS: I think that I should agree. I spoke of this yesterday with Marshal Greegsby. I think that madness of this sort, perhaps of any sort, can be traced back to the early years of life. But I believe that the important element in this matter is viciousness. The more physically brutal are the parents, the more likely they are to produce brutality in their offspring. I have seen this happen, many times.

  THE POET: What, then, of Gilles de Rais? He appeared perfectly normal until the death of Joan of Arc. It was only after this that he embarked upon a life of utter wickedness and depravity.

  THE BUSINESSMAN (looking confused): Who was Jeels da Ray?

  THE POET (lucidly explaining): A knight of France. He was evidently in love with Joan. After the English burned her at the stake—an old English tradition, one that they have never really forgiven themselves for abolishing—Gilles retired to his estate and began a career of really quite astonishing cruelty. He tortured young peasant boys, hundreds of them, apparently, and then, with the help of his servants, savagely raped and murdered them.

  THE BUSINESSMAN (looking ill): Aw, jeez. Aw, come on, Oscar.

  THE COUNTESS: But we know nothing of the early years of Gilles de Rais. Perhaps he had been brutally ill treated himself. Perhaps his madness lay dormant until the shock of Joan’s death.

  THE POET: I’ve always believed, about Gilles, that after Joan’s death he became not so much mad as unmoored. What sort of a world was it, I think he asked himself, whose God could allow the execution of a woman he loved, a woman who had saved France, a woman he believed to be a saint? I believe that by his wickedness he was trying to determine the limits, the boundaries, of this new universe. And perhaps the same might be true of our murderer. Perhaps he too is testing for, probing at, the limits of his world.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: Murder as a philosophical inquiry? But Mr. Wilde, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot on the one hand assume an insane hidden self, and then assume that this hidden self is conducting an investigation into the nature of reality.

  THE POET: I assume nothing. I merely, for a time, play with an idea or two. (Ideas being, at the moment, all the Poet has to play with.)

  THE JOURNALIST: This is garbage. (Heads turn.) First of all, you don’t know anything about this murderer. You said so yourself. You haven’t got a single fact to start making up theories with.

  THE POET: Facts would only confuse us.

  This clever sally is met with a gratifying set of smiles from the Countess, the German Officer, and the Disciple. The Businessman still looks fairly ill.

  THE JOURNALIST: Second, it looks to me like you’re all forgetting that what you’re talking about here is one of us. Me, or von Hesse, or Vail, or Ruddick, or you, Wilde. Everyone’s being real civilized and sophisticated about it, but what you’re all saying is that one of us is a murderer. A killer. You can really believe that after we’ve been together all this time?

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: It has not been actually for long, Mr. O’Conner. A few weeks is hardly time enough for any human being to know another. An entire life, perhaps, is not time enough.

  THE JOURNALIST (speaking with a vehemence and a venom that seem uncalled for): I don’t buy that. I think you can size a person up, good or bad, in a couple of hours. And I don’t buy this “hidden self” thing either. I think this guy, whoever he is, and I don’t think he’s one of us, is killing these women just because he wants to. You don’t need any fancy psychological theories to figure him out. Killing is what he does. It’s what he wants to do. But if you really buy the idea that he’s one of us, then you’d be better off forgetting theories, and start trying to decide what you’re going to do about it. And it looks to me like there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER (quietly): There is one possibility. (Heads turn once again. The Poet is reminded of spectators at a tennis match.) We could divide ourselves into pairs. Each of us would remain, at all times, with his assigned partner. This way, at least, none of us would have an opportunity to commit any further atrocities.

  THE JOURNALIST (with another leer): Great. I’ll take the Countess.

  THE BUSINESSMAN: Hey!

  THE GERMAN OFFICER(faintly smiling): What you suggest is impossible. And Countess de la Môle is of course beyond suspicion.

  THE JOURNALIST: Why? You don’t know anything about this killer. If it could be one of us, it could just as easily be the Countess.

  THE BUSINESSMAN: Listen, O’Conner, I’m warning you—

  THE JOURNALIST (disgustedly): Ah, forget it. Pairing up is a crazy idea anyway. Think about it. Who wants to spend the rest of the tour shackled to anybody here? (Yet another leer.) Except to the Countess, naturally. And the other thing is, if I really believed that one of you was a murderer, I for damn sure wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room with any of you.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: The killer has never struck against a man.

  THE JOURNALIST (once again speaking with an untoward vehemence, as though interpreting the German Officer’s remark asa personal attack): How do we know that? Maybe there are dead men rotting away back in El Paso and San Francisco. Maybe they haven’t been found yet, or maybe Grigsby just doesn’t know about them. And even if this guy hasn’t killed a man, so far, how do you
know that he’s not gonna start? How do we know that one night he’s not gonna go even crazier and kill his roommate, just so he can go out and kill another woman? You don’t know it. Like I said, you don’t know anything. Do any of you really want to take a risk like that?

  The Disciple and the Businessman look at one another and then, in unison, their glances fall away.

  THE GERMAN OFFICER: I would of course accept this risk.

  The Journalist snorts and opens his flask to take a drink.

  THE JOURNALIST: Yeah, but who’s gonna accept it with you? More silence. No one moves. The German Officer looks at the others and, after a moment, sadly frowns. And the Poet abruptly realizes that although the trip may continue, although they may all remain together over the countless miles that stretch from here to New York City, the tour as it has been constituted—seven people sharing meals and transport and time and also a simple, a commonplace, really a rather banal belief: a belief in the essential humanity of one another—all that is over. The killer, whoever he is, has killed this as well.

  And killed, too, this particular dramatic piece. Pity. Exeunt the Poet, pursued by a bear.

  AFTER DOCTOR BOYNTON LEFT Grigsby’s office, Grigsby walked out into the anteroom and strapped on his gun. Behind him, Carver Peckingham swung his long legs down to the floor and lowered his chair—quietly, maybe thinking that if he did it softly enough, Grigsby wouldn’t notice that his feet had been perched atop the desk.

  “You goin’ out again, Marshal?” Carver asked him.

  “Yeah.” He pulled the sheepskin coat up over his shoulders and turned to the deputy. “I’m not gonna be back again today, prob’ly, and tomorrow I’m goin’ outta town. You mind the store for me, okay, Carver?”

  Carver was leaning forward eagerly in his chair. “Sure, Marshal. Where you goin’?”

  “Not sure yet.” Best that Carver didn’t know. The deputy couldn’t tell a lie to save his life, and tomorrow, one way or another, Greaves would be looking for Grigsby.

  Grigsby looked around the anteroom, glanced at the door to his office, and wondered whether he’d ever see any of it again.