It was a dazzling New York that greeted them, cold but brilliant, a city of sparkling granite and shimmering glass. As they taxied into Manhattan, Janek was struck by the difference between this arrival and his arrival from Venice eight weeks before. That day he and Aaron had driven though a damp and noxious fog that matched the sorrow and confusion in his soul. today, with Monika, the air was clear. And now, too, he knew what he was up against. they settled into Janek's apartment, then at dusk went out to walk.
Upper Broadway was filled with Christmas shoppers. On Fifth Avenue all the stores were jammed. Santas with scraggly beards stood on comers rattling pails. At Rockfeller Center skaters glided across the ice, while above the golden statue of Prometheus, Christmas lights blazed upon an enormous spruce. they ate in a little Czech restaurant on West Twelfth Street. The owner, who had known Janek's father, embraced him when they walked in. After dinner they strolled through Greenwich Village. There were crowds of young people out on the streets, many walking briskly on their way to parties while others, grasping bags choked with gifts, attempted to flag down cabs. Foursomes stood on comers making jokes, waiting for traffic lights to change. A drunken old man, in a tweed suit and bow tie, stumbled past them mouthing the lyrics to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."
"I love this energy," Monika said. "New York's a fascinating town."
"It's no Venice, but it takes a bum rap," Janek said. "It's a cruel place, but it can be wonderful, too."
She nodded. "I've often wondered what it would be like to live here. I've been offered a visiting professorship of psychiatry.
Last month the Albert Einstein College of Medicine approached me again.
Perhaps I should accept, move here for a year," She looked at him. "A year of living dangerously."
"We could get to know each other pretty well over a year," he said.
She smiled, took his arm. "I wish I didn't have to go back so soon.
But sadly I do."
Later that night, at his apartment, he asked if she'd be willing to take a look at Beverly Archer.
"Just to observe her," he said. "She'll never know."
Monika thought about it, then agreed. "I'm not a forensic psychiatrist. I doubt I'll see anything. But I confess-I'm very curious."
Janek phoned Aaron, asked if he could set it up. Aaron thought he could. Beverly's schedule was so rigid, he said, there shouldn't be any difficulty arranging a covert surveillance. They'd park on Second Avenue down the block from her house and wait for her to come out after her last appointment. When she started on her round of errands, Monika could follow her and observe.
The plan worked. At exactly six fifty-five the following evening Beverly appeared. When she went into a dry cleaning shop, Monika got out of the car and followed. Sitting with Aaron, waiting for her to return, Janek started feeling nervous.
"This reminds me of one very bad night."
Aaron reassured him. "I know it's spooky, Frank, but your girl's terrific. Don't worry. Beverly's met her match."
When Monika returned, she was shivering. Janek took her hands, rubbed them to restore warmth. She seemed disturbed. "Let's go get something to drink," she said.
Aaron drove down Second to a cop hangout near East Seventy-first. The place was filled, cops full of holiday bluster toasting one another with mugs of beer. Janek and Aaron nodded to acquaintances; then the three of them squeezed into a booth.
"A strange woman," Monika reported after the waiter had brought her tea.
"A lot of people in my field are. The profession's always attracted troubled individuals. they often make gifted therapists."
"So she's just another weirdo shrink, is that what you're saying?" Aaron asked. Monika shook her head. "More than that. She functions, of course, very well from what you've told me. But I felt I was observing an extremely high-strung person, very tense, very tightly controlled. The way she moves, dresses, smiles at the sales clerks, tilts her head, tightens up her lips-it's as if there's a NO CONTACT! DON'T TOUCH ME! sign hanging on her back. Still, for all her smiles I could feel the rage coming off her. Sexual rage, too. She truly hates males.
It shows every time she deals with one. "
Aaron glanced at Janek. "Could she have done what Frank says?"
"Sent the girl out to kill her old enemies? I can't tell that from looking at her. But in theory, yes, it's possible."
"But by using a surrogate killer," Janek asked, "didn't she give up the pleasures of killing the old enemies herself?"
"Not necessarily. The pleasures might have been even greater for her. She'd have the satisfaction of knowing she had done them in fiendishly, and I think it would have been very exciting for her to hear Diana describe the glue mutilations, too. That would have been the best part of it, perhaps the only erotic excitement she's capable of having."
Monika went on to analyze the paradox in a person such as Beverly, who, though ostensibly asexual, could still take an intense sexual interest in her victims.
"The brain is more flexible than people think," she explained. "It can do a kind of somersault. What seems disgusting can suddenly become appetizing; what's repulsive can suddenly become erotic. In a flash a person can become addicted to the very thing he or she previously hated. It's a way to survive in the world, to turn pain into pleasure, to take the worst, most painful scenarios of one's childhood and, by controlling them, rewrite the script so that in the new final act there is victory rather than defeat."
"Beverly's victories are the exec I utions, right? Executions of the people who humiliated her in the past?"
"Again, we're talking theory, Frank. After only fifteen minutes of observation I can't tell you this woman did what you think. But yes, she could have done it, and if she did, I don't think her victories would have been just the executions. to me the neuterings are far more important. Killing an old enemy is one thing. Doing something to his body is quite another. Attacking the genitals, the seat of your enemy's sexuality, is the ultimate revenge. to have another person do it for you and then describe it is a way of distancing yourself while still enjoying your old tormentor's degradation. It's like hearing about something bad that has befallen a rival. You didn't do it, you didn't dirty your hands, but you have the satisfaction of knowing that the person has been dealt a devastating blow. We have a special word for that in German. Schadenfreude. It means taking joy in another's pain. If you're right, I think Schadenfreude may be what Beverly Archer is all about."
"Okay," said Aaron. "That makes sense. But could she have gotten Diana to kill and glue all those people? We know the girl killed her mother, grandmother, and sister. But except for Jess, the others all seem to have been perfect strangers."
"It's not that difficult for one person to gain control over another's mind," Monika said. "Behavioral methods, hypnosis, rote training, rewards and punishments, plain old-fashioned domination-there are many ways. The basic method is simple: get someone dependent and susceptible in your power; then circumscribe her world so that your commands have the power of laws. You see it all the time in cults, prisons, terrorist groups, pathological personal relationships. In Nazi Germany you saw it on the extraordinary scale of an entire nation.
There's a part in all of us that responds to force and craves to be controlled. We want to be led, commanded, told what to do. If it weren't for that particular trait, human society probably wouldn't work. But what is extremely difficult is to force someone to perform an act completely contrary to his moral nature. Here, however, you have a girl, still young and malleable, who had not only killed people before but afterwards attacked their sexual organs. The distance from ax to ice pick, from chopping at genitals to imprisoning them with glue, is not all that great. So, to answer your question, yes, everything Frank has theorized is absolutely possible. But whether it happened or not… I'm not the one to say."