The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, #1)

by Caleb Carr

I knew what was coming: a monologue that was a kind of catharsis for Kreizler, a restatement of some of his most basic professional principles, designed to relieve the enormous responsibility of helping send a man to his death.

He made some good-natured but pointed remarks about Laszlo’s “mystical mumbo jumbo concerning the human psyche” and how it was all the result of his European background; but he went too far when he spouted a jibe about “gypsy blood,” for Laszlo’s mother was Hungarian and he took great offense. Kreizler laid down the challenge for an affair of honor, and Theodore delightedly took him up, suggesting a boxing match. I knew Laszlo would have preferred fencing foils—with his bad left arm he stood little chance in a ring—but he agreed, in keeping with the code duello, which gave Theodore, as the challenged party, the choice of weapons.

Kreizler, on the other hand, believed that psychopaths were produced by extreme childhood environments and experiences and were unafflicted by any true pathology. Judged in context, the actions of such patients could be understood and even predicted (unlike those of the truly mad).

I glanced up to find Laszlo giving me a very puzzled look. “John, that is the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard you say,” he finally announced. “And to think that you wondered why you’d been brought along.”

“Don’t worry, John,” she said confidently. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” And with that she withdrew a .45-caliber Army Model Colt revolver, with a four-and-a-half-inch barrel and pearl grips. Sara was what you might call a firearms enthusiast; but I was not reassured.

“Commissioner Roosevelt assures me that your recent visit to Police Headquarters was entirely social. I trust that is true.” Kreizler didn’t answer, which irked Strong a bit. “I am surprised, however, to see you attending the opera with an employee of the Police Department.” He nodded rather rudely in Sara’s direction. “If you’d like to see my entire social calendar, Mayor Strong,” Sara said bravely, “I can arrange that.” Theodore clutched his forehead quietly but vigorously, and Strong’s anger grew, though he did not acknowledge Sara’s remark.

Lucius looked up at us with a grin. “I’m enjoying my food too much to talk anymore.” Marcus watched him, shaking his head. “You’re going to be sick tomorrow,” he mumbled. “And you’re going to blame me—but I warned you.”

Kreizler emphasized that no good would come of conceiving of this person as a monster, because he was most assuredly a man (or a woman); and that man or woman had once been a child. First and foremost, we must get to know that child, and to know his parents, his siblings, his complete world. It was pointless to talk about evil and barbarity and madness; none of these concepts would lead us any closer to him. But if we could capture the human child in our imaginations—then we could capture the man in fact.

Sara nodded wearily at the thought of this new responsibility, and I knew I’d better get her away from Kreizler, who was exhausting enough even on a full night’s sleep.

Such work, however, was especially hard on the nerves, even for an experienced alienist like Kreizler; add to this his general state of overworked exhaustion, and you produced a formula for trouble. On the morning in question, Sara and I—just coming into Number 808 Broadway as Kreizler went out—happened to be watching as Laszlo tried to enter his calash and very nearly fainted. He shook the spell off with ammonia salts and a laugh, but Cyrus told us that this time it had been two days since he’d had anything like real sleep.

“He’s always been that way,” I replied, shaking my head. “Even when we were boys, he was always at something, and always so deadly serious. It was somewhat amusing, in those days.” “Well, he’s not a child now, and he ought to learn to take care of himself.”

“Uhhh—” I droned, having thought of something but, like Lucius, unsure of how to phrase it in front of a woman. “The, uh—the—references, not only to dirt, but to—fecal matter—” “The word he uses is ‘shit,’ ” Sara said bluntly, and everyone in the room, including Kreizler, seemed to spring a few inches off the floor for a second or two. “Honestly, gentlemen,” Sara commented with some disdain. “If I’d known you were all so modest I’d have stuck to secretarial work.” “Who’s modest?” I demanded—not one of my stronger retorts.

At that Sara stood up, put one hand to a hip, and with the other produced her derringer from some nether region of her dress. “I would like to warn you all right now,” she said tightly, “that the next man who uses the word ‘lady,’ in that context and in my presence, will be shitting from a new and artificially manufactured hole in his gut.” She put the gun away and sat back down.

“You seem to think,” Laszlo replied, a bit snappishly, “that I suffer from blinkered vision. I remind you that I do have some experience with these things.” Sara studied him for a moment, and then quietly asked, “Why do you resist so strongly the notion of a woman’s active involvement in the formation?” Laszlo suddenly rose, slammed a hand down on his desk, and shouted, “Because her role cannot have been active, damn it!”

“Had a woman been actively involved in this man’s life, at any point, we would not even be here—the crimes would never have happened!” Kreizler tried to regain an even keel, but only half-succeeded. “The whole notion is absurd, there is nothing in the literature to suggest it! And so I really must insist, Sara—we shall presume a record of feminine passivity in the formation and proceed to the issue of the mutilations! Tomorrow!”

“And if it’s just envy, Doc, how come you ain’t out chopping off people’s arms?” I turned quickly to Kreizler, and could see that he hadn’t been ready for such a remark. But he’d long ago learned to control his reactions to anything a subject might say, and he only blinked once or twice without taking his eyes from Pomeroy. Jesse, however, was able to read into those blinks, and he sat back with a satisfied grin. “Yeah, you’re smart, all right,” he chuckled.

“It’s got to stop, Lasky!” he declared, in a voice so passionate that it made me rush over and stand between him and the prostrate guard, in order to prevent my friend from continuing his attack.

The document was a report filed by one Roundsman O’Bannion, who, on a September night in 1862—when Laszlo was a boy of only six—had investigated a domestic disturbance at the Kreizler home. The yellowing report contained just a few details: it spoke of Laszlo’s father, apparently drunk, spending the night in the precinct house under a charge of assault (the charge was later dropped), and then of a local surgeon being brought to the Kreizler home to treat a young boy whose left arm had been badly shattered.

Familiar conceptions die hard, and their passage can be damned disorienting; for a few moments the trees and buildings of Madison Square looked strangely different. Then an image of Laszlo as a boy suddenly flashed through my head, followed by another of his big, outwardly gregarious father and his vivacious mother. As I saw these faces and forms I simultaneously remembered the comment that Jesse Pomeroy had made during our visit to Sing Sing about chopping off people’s arms; and from there my mind leapt to a seemingly meaningless remark that Laszlo himself had made on the train ride home: “‘The fallacy, damn it all,’” I whispered. “What did you say, John?” Sara asked quietly. I shook my head hard, trying to clear it. “Something Kreizler mentioned tonight. About how much time he’s wasted in the last few days. He spoke of ‘the fallacy,’ but I didn’t get the reference. Now, though…” Sara gasped a little as she, too, realized the answer. “The psychologist’s fallacy,” she said. “In James’s Principles.” I nodded. “The business about a psychologist getting his own point of view mixed up with his subject’s. That’s what’s had him in its grip.”

“Sara,” I said. “Have you discussed this with anyone else?” She shook her head slowly. “And do they know at headquarters that you took the report?” Another shake of the head. “But you’ve realized what it suggests?” She nodded this time and I reciprocated; then, slowly and deliberately, I tore the report into pieces, and set them on a patch of grass. Pulling a box of matches from my pocket and striking one, I started to light the bits of paper, saying firmly, “No one is to know anything about this. Your own curiosity’s been satisfied, and if his behavior becomes erratic again, we’ll know why. But beyond that, no good can ever come of its getting out. Do you agree?” Sara crouched by me and nodded once more. “I’d already decided the same thing.”

“I’ve told you once,” Laszlo said, his teeth starting to grind. “I know nothing about any Lohmann boy. And as for your daughter, Herr Höpner, she asked to be removed from your home, because you could not refrain from beating her with a stick—a stick not unlike the one you now hold.” The crowd drew breath as one, and Höpner’s eyes went wide. “What a man does in his own home with his own family is his own business!” he protested. “Your daughter felt differently about that,” Kreizler said. “Now, for the last time—raus mit dir!” It was a command to move, such as one might give to a servant or some other underling. Höpner looked like he’d been spat on.

Kreizler had staked his reputation on his theory of context, the idea that no adult’s personality can be truly understood without first comprehending the facts of his individual experience. Boas’s anthropological work represented, in many ways, the application of this theory on a larger scale: to entire cultures.

Boas had reached the conclusion that history is the principal force that shapes cultures, rather than race or geographical environment, as had been previously assumed. Different ethnic groups behave as they behave, in other words, not because biology or climate forces them to (there were too many examples of groups that contradicted this theory to allow Boas to accept it) but rather because they’ve been taught to. All cultures are equally valid, when seen in this light; and to his many critics who said that certain cultures had obviously made more progress than others, and could thus be considered superior, Boas replied that “progress” was an entirely relative concept.

Scientists’ minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another.

Odd how fear can cure exhaustion. I was suddenly aware of a new burst of energy, all of it directed at my feet. But flight was out of the question—Connor was quite serious, I knew, about his willingness to shoot us. So I pulled Kreizler, who struggled and objected all the way, to the rear of the ambulance.

Laszlo was utterly astounded. “One doesn’t really know what to say in such a situation. Do you have any particularly gruesome confessions you’d like to make, Moore? I’m not a cleric, of course, but—” “Kreizler, did you hear what I just said? This is not a joke!” Just then, we whipped around a corner and were thrown with a crash to one side of the ambulance. “Hmmm,” Kreizler noised, pulling himself up and checking for damage. “I begin to see your point.”

“Before I sit in your house, Mr. Morgan,” Laszlo said, “may I ask if it is your general custom to compel attendance with firearms?”

“But that is a matter for the police, surely,” Archbishop Corrigan said. “Why involve such questionable work as your own in it?” “Because the police can’t solve it,” I threw in, before Laszlo could answer. These were all fairly standard criticisms of my friend’s work, but they were making me a bit hot, nonetheless. “And, using Dr. Kreizler’s ideas, we can.”

During dessert Kreizler nearly choked to death when he came across a report that Henry Abbey and Maurice Grau, managers of the Metropolitan Opera, had announced the failure of their company and debts of some $400,000. Laszlo’s composure was partially restored by the additional news that a group of “private backers” (undoubtedly headed by our host of the previous evening) were organizing to put the company back on a solid footing. The first step in this process was to be a high-priced benefit performance of Don Giovanni on June 21st. Kreizler and I determined that this was an event we must attend, no matter what state our investigation might be in at the time.

“Laszlo,” I said quietly, studying his wide eyes by the orange light of the match. “What is it, what’s happened?” The knuckle of his left forefinger was rubbing against his mouth. “The morbid imagination,” he mumbled.

Do you think you can run with that arm?” Kreizler groaned once sharply. “As easily as I can lie here, damn it!”

I grabbed Laszlo’s jacket. “When you get into the open,” I said, “try not to run in a straight line.” We both turned and crawled to the other side of the carriage. “Keep your movements irregular. Go on ahead, and I’ll follow in case you have trouble.” “I’ve a rather unsettling feeling,” Kreizler said, scanning the fifty yards of open space, “that such trouble is likely to be permanent, in this case.”