There were murmurs from his audience. Nelson's lips twitched, and one side of his mouth curved upward in a smile. He liked shocking his students. Without this dark side, Lee thought, Nelson would not be Nelson.
A girl in the third row raised her hand. She was a thin blonde, with a pale, waifish face.
"Are you implying that there's no difference between a serial predator and a great artist?" Her voice quavered, though Lee couldn't tell if it was from nerves or anger.
"Not at all," Nelson replied. "I merely suggest that what drives them springs from the same source. The form of expression couldn't be more different."
The girl's pale face reddened, and her voice shook even more. "So it's just a question of form?"
"But form is content, on some very profound level. Consider the irreducibility of a poem, for example. It's like the artificial separation between mind and body, something eastern medicine has recognized for centuries. Is a migraine headache a product of too much red wine, a genetic predisposition, or a fight with one's husband? Who's to say? The doctor says it's the result of an expanded blood vessel in the forehead, the allergist claims it's an aversion to tannins and nitrate, the reiki healer claims it's an imbalance of the energies-and maybe they're all right."
He settled himself on the front of the desk again, his arms crossed.
"As to the difference between an artist and a criminal, I would maintain that van Gogh, who was actually psychotic, was lucky to have found an expression for his spirit, for his demons, that was socially acceptable. Or take Beethoven, for example, who was a famously eccentric and tortured soul. They were better adapters than your average criminal. On the other hand, there are people who are both criminals and talented creative artists-like the playwright Jean Genet, for example."
A boy in the second row raised his hand. "You said they spring from the same source-what's the source?"
"Libido-the life force. Passion. Without passion, there is no creativity-or destruction. Passion in Greek means 'to suffer,' as in the passion of Christ. But in our culture it has come to mean the force that drives sex, not creativity. I might remind you," he continued, "that Adolf Hitler was an aspiring artist before he became a dictator.
"In fact, it's been argued that had the art critics of Vienna been kinder to young Adolf, World War II might have been avoided. It was partly his frustration as an artist that turned him toward politics. As R. D. Laing points out, it is necessary for a person to feel they have made a difference-that they are being 'received' by others. So the ignored artist becomes the politician, and he ensures that he is listened to. Both his art and his political speeches were his attempts to impose his will-his self-upon the world. Like all cult leaders, he preys on his followers' fears and dreams-"
A dark-haired girl in the front row raised her hand. "The Nazis were a cult?"
Nelson cocked his head to one side. "Of course they were a cult-a very successful one, for a while. All cults eventually self-destruct, of course. But that's another topic."
Nelson stood up from his perch on the front of the desk and pulled himself up to his full height of five foot six inches. "The ignored artist, or son, or lover, can also become a serial offender." He clicked the remote in his hand and the slide of the young woman was replaced by a close-up of a smiling Ted Bundy.
"Most of you recognize this man. Handsome, intelligent, and charming, he was the sort of man your mother might wish you would marry." Lee wasn't sure, but he thought Nelson glanced at the blond girl when he said this. "But he was the very icon of the creature society fears most-the monster in its midst. And some deeply antisocial personalities, like Bundy, learn to imitate social behavior very, very well-you might even say they are masquerading as human beings."
Nelson put down the remote and stood facing his audience.
"But he was a human being, and our job is to understand him, not merely judge him. It is a profoundly more difficult and disturbing task, of course, but it is the one we have chosen."
A thin boy in the back raised his hand. "Would you say that Ted Bundy was evil?"
"That's just a label-irrelevant, for our purposes. Leave it to the professional philosophers and theologians. The profiler and psychologist have no need to answer that question."
The boy sat up in his seat. Lee couldn't see his face, but he was slight and blond, and had a thin, raspy voice. "So do you believe there is such a thing as evil in the world?"
Nelson ran a hand through his wavy auburn hair. "The most profound questions are the very ones we should never assume to answer conclusively. Learning to live in a state of uncertainty is one of the most difficult tasks we have as human beings, but one of the most important. As soon as we feel we have all the answers, something inside us begins to die. But that's for another lecture," he added, glancing at his watch. "Any more questions?"
The thin blond boy raised his hand again.
"Freud said that if the id is left unchecked, it can run wild."
Nelson flipped off the power switch to the slide projector. "The word for what we call the 'id,' by the way, in its original German, is 'das Es'-the It. A much bolder statement, I think, than the flaccid Latin word. Compare 'ego' with the Ich, the I. And Germans, as you may or may not know, capitalize all of their pronouns."
The blond girl raised her hand. "Their nouns, actually."
Nelson smiled. "Thank you for that correction, Ms. Davenport. Okay, everyone, see you all next week."
Lee smiled too-he wasn't sure if she was one of Nelson's admirers or not. As she gathered up her books and placed them in her knapsack, he thought she was sending lingering glances in Nelson's direction, though, and she was the last to leave the lecture hall. When the room was empty Nelson sauntered up the steps to where Lee sat in the back row.
"Well, well, just like old times. Drop in for a refresher course?"
Lee smiled. "Something like that."
"How about a drink? I'm buying. I need to wash the taste of undergraduate minds from my mouth."
"Sure, why not? As long as you're buying."
The bar at Armstrong's was one of Nelson's favorite watering holes on Tenth Avenue. The menu was capricious and varied-and, more importantly to Nelson, the draft pints of Bass were reliable and cheap. Armstrong's was one of Hell's Kitchen's best-kept secrets, known to locals but not to tourists, or to the bridge-and-tunnel crowd that swept down Ninth Avenue during rush hour.
"That was quite a far-ranging lecture," Lee remarked as the bartender set a pair of dripping amber pints in front of them.
"Mostly these days I just try to keep myself amused," Nelson replied, drinking deeply from the sweating glass. He wiped his upper lip and plunked the glass down on the bar. "Now that is what A. E. Housman was talking about when he said, 'Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.'"
"Still, we need our Milton as well as our malt."
Nelson dipped a hand into the bowl of fresh popcorn sitting on the bar. "True. It's funny, but I still remember reading Paradise Lost in school and thinking how interesting Satan was-and how boring Christ was."
"Satan is more human," Lee agreed. "He's conflicted, whereas Christ has everything figured out. Who can identify with that?"
"Or maybe we just like our villains," Nelson replied with a smile. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in the other direction. It smelled sharp and aromatic, like herbs.
"Clove cigarettes," he replied in answer to Lee's look. "Some of my students smoke them. Supposedly they're better for you."