by Ann Cro
Reason will not decide at last;
the sword will decide.
Robinson Jeffers
Professor Dillard Bain was returning home late one evening
from a campus entertainment at the small denominational college where he taught.
It was a chilly night in late October. A sliver of moon slipped in and out
behind the dark clouds and a cold wind rustled the dead leaves on the winding
driveway of the college. Bain drew up his overcoat collar around his neck and
set off at a brisk trot. The evening had gone well from Bain’s point of view.
The speaker, a minor Christian novelist, had been complimentary and, even more
satisfactory, Bain had been asked to give the prayer to open the meeting. Bain
was a
self-important little man who was anxious that everyone should share in the
good opinion that he had of himself.
It was late and the campus was poorly lit, but Bain had
followed the same road every night for ten years and could have walked it
blindfolded. But tonight he was nervous and uneasy. Only this morning he had
read about a series of killings on a southern campus. A woman professor had
shot and killed half a dozen colleagues and wounded several others because of
some imagined slight. That night at the dinner it had been a major topic of
conversation. The other professors had been pleasurably stimulated by the
occurrence, speculating whether or not it could happen at their college. Bain
had strongly negated the idea. This was a Christian
campus, he argued, and things like that didn’t happen here. First of all
because most of the professors attended
the same church and, second, because he, Dillard Bain, college dean, was
careful to weed out those misfits who, in his narrow little mind, were “unfit
to teach in a Christian college.” This phrase covered a wide variety of crimes,
including the crime of having offended Dillard Bain’s self-esteem,
inadvertently or otherwise. In the bright light of the dining hall, surrounded
by others, he had actually believed what he said; but here in the dark where
every bush or tree could hide a vengeful and very un-Christian professor seeking
to do him harm, he felt uneasy and less certain of the truth of his words. One really
didn’t know what someone might do if provoked. He didn’t really think that a colleague,
even one deemed “unfit to teach at a Christian college”, would actually do
anything violent, but then he didn’t
suppose that the colleagues of the woman shooter had ever dreamed that they
were going to be murdered either. It was very unreasonable of the shooter to
take the matter in that way. Academia was supposed to respond to different
rules.
The college was built in a little depression between two
roads and the grounds were still wooded except for a small oval of grass in the
center of the campus around which stood half a dozen neat red brick buildings.
But Bain’s path bypassed the open ground and wound through the trees. A ground
mist was rising and the wisps of fog floated around the trunks of the trees
like ghostly children at play. A chill wind moaned through the branches overhead
and caused the single street light to sway on its wire and cast weird patterns
on the road in front of him. Most of the buildings facing the College green
were in darkness save for one or two lighted windows where a student was up
late cramming for an exam. Bain walked briskly, anxious to get home as soon as
possible.
With the sound of the wind in the trees and the crunch of
his footsteps in the fallen leaves, it was some minutes before he became aware
of other footsteps behind him. Startled, he turned around and peered into the
darkness.
“Is anyone there?” he demanded in a quavering voice.
“Hello there neighbor!” a deep voice boomed and Bain emitted
a terrified squawk. Then he sighed in relief as he recognized a neighbor. Mrs. Slade
was a newcomer to the neighborhood. She was a heavyset woman with thin, graying
hair. She was supposed to be a writer but Bain had never heard of anything she
had ever written. She owned a French bulldog that Bain had evicted from the
campus a few days ago with a swift kick to its fat rump. The little animal recognized
him as unsympathetic and growled softly under his breath.
“Now, now, Beauregard,” Mrs. Slade admonished, “be nice to
the little man and he’ll be nice to you.”
Bain squirmed uncomfortably, sensing that Mrs. Slade had
seen and disapproved that kick.
“You’re out late tonight Professor,” Mrs. Slade observed.
“Yes, a dinner on campus for Fitzmartin Bailey the novelist.
You’ve heard of him of course?” Bain’s natural desire to demonstrate his
importance overcame his dislike for Mrs. Slade.
She looked at him. “No,” she said, flatly.
Annoyed by her lack of interest, Bain searched for something
to say that would annoy her in turn. “You do know that you are trespassing on
the campus, don’t you? I suggest that in future you walk that dog somewhere
else or you could be arrested!”
“Now, Professor,” she said humorously, “don’t get your
knickers in a twist.” Bain felt his face grow hot at the rude tone. He was
unused to hearing himself spoken to so disrespectfully.
“We can’t all know the important people that you do,” she
went on roguishly. “Let’s start over again and try to be friends. My house is
just across the street. Why don’t you come in for a nightcap?”
Bain hesitated. He disliked the woman, whom he considered
his social inferior, and suspected that she didn’t like him either. But tonight
the poorly lit, shadowy campus un-nerved him and he felt that any company was
better than none. So he agreed and, in spite of himself, was glad of her
companionship as they passed through the dark gate of the college and crossed
the road. In her matter-of-fact presence his fears seemed to melt away.
Her house was a long, low bungalow on a little rise
overlooking the campus. It had been vacant for several years and still had
about it an empty, uninhabited look. The living room was dark and cold, as if
it had not been used for a long time. It was furnished with only a few chairs
grouped around the fireplace. There were no family pictures or books, no
ornaments of any kind except for a rather dark painting over the mantel.
Mrs. Slade knelt down in front of the fireplace. “I’ll just
get a little fire started to take the chill off the room,” she said briskly. He
watched as she piled the wood in the fireplace and touched a match to it. What big, strong hands she had, he
thought, uncomfortably.
“Don’t bother with a fire on my account,” said Bain,
sounding ungracious even to his own ears. “I mean, I really can’t stay long.”
His voice drifted off into silence and he stared at the painting.
It was a reproduction of an oil painting of a man lying on a
bed, his writhing limbs partially covered by a rich crimson coverlet, while two
women seemed to be . . . Bain blinked and looked more closely. Surely, they
couldn’t be—but they were!—decapitating the man. One woman was holding the
victim down while the other, her hand firmly clutched in his hair, was cutting
off his head with a sword. The older woman who was wielding the sword was
richly dressed and wore a stern expression. There was no pity in that face. She
looked like an executioner. And there was blood spurting from the neck of the
wounded man. Bain wondered how the women escaped being covered in blood.
“Do you like it, Professor?” Mrs. Slade asked, watching him.
“Oh—uh—yes. Uh, very nice indeed,” Bain babbled. “Uh, I
don’t seem to, uh, recognize it.”
“No? It’s really rather famous. It’s the story of Judith and
Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi. A Roman by birth. When she was nineteen
she was raped by an artist in her father’s workshop. It’s said that her
paintings reflect the trauma of the rape. You can feel that in the painting.
Anger, rage, hatred. Yes, it’s all there. She worked out her anger through her
art,” Mrs. Slade said reflectively.
Bain frowned. “Judith? That’s not in the Christian Bible, is it?” He looked at
Mrs. Slade suspiciously. Of course, he thought contemptuously, she’s not a
Christian, probably a Catholic!”
“Well Professor, that sort of depends on which version of the Christian Bible you
consult,” the woman said good-humoredly. “The story is in the Catholic Bible
and in the Greek Septuagint but, you’re right, we Protestants regard it as
apocryphal. It’s usually excluded from our Protestant Bibles. Do you know the
story?” she asked.
When he shook his head, she explained, “Judith was a devout
Hebrew widow who saved her city of Bethulia
Bain startled himself by exclaiming, “That’s a hell of a
story!”
Mrs. Slade chuckled. “Maybe. But stories like Judith have
inspired a lot of great art.”
She motioned him to sit down. “Come and have your drink,”
she said, indicating the tray which held two glasses and a beautiful cut-glass
decanter filled with a warm, amber liquid that glinted in the firelight.
Bain said nothing. He sat down and accepted the glass that
she offered him. “You know,” he said after some thought, “I just don’t buy it.
I don’t think that anybody could hate
that much. I mean, the motivation would have to be something tremendous.” He
drank some brandy.
“Do you think
so?” Mrs. Slade asked. “What would you consider tremendous enough?”
“I don’t
know,” he mulled it over while pouring himself another brandy.
“What about
envy? Envy as black as a well and as deep as the pit. Fed on pride and
self-love, it breeds a hatred so bitter that the envious person would risk
anything to destroy the object of his envy.”
“No, now that
I don’t believe,” Bain said a little drunkenly. “Nobody kills somebody else
just because they’re envious of them.”
“What about
Saul and David?” Mrs. Slade suggested. “Saul
has struck down his thousands, but David his tens of thousands!” she
quoted. “And, afterwards, the king watched David and all the while the envy
grew and grew in his heart until he could no longer contain it and Saul tried
to kill David.”
Bain
continued to shake his head. His eyes went from the painting to Mrs. Slade,
seated on a low chair beside the fireplace. What a strange woman she was, he
thought vaguely. Her eyes were the color of the brandy in the decanter with the
same little gold flecks. They seemed to stare right through him as if they were
looking into his soul.
“Yes,” she was
saying in that same quiet, conversational tone, “envy is a very powerful
emotion. The envy of a little, insignificant man for a better one. A little man
with a shrivelled soul, dishonest, deceitful, untrustworthy. That kind of man
is a parasite that sucks the life out of a healthy tree. He is unfit to teach
at a Christian college! He must be rooted out, exterminated, done away with, to
prevent his doing more harm.”
Bain stared,
startled by the passion in her voice. They were just talking about art, weren’t
they? He looked at the empty glass in his hand but his eyes seemed out of focus.
Surely he hadn’t drunk that much. He felt weak, unable to move. Only then did
he realize that there must be something wrong with the brandy. Mrs. Slade bent
over him and took the glass out of his hand. He shook his head, trying to clear
his thoughts.
“Yes,” she
said thoughtfully, “you are right, of course, it does need something
tremendous. But murder takes many different forms and character assassination
is one of them. For a man who lives by his reputation, malicious slander is as
dangerous as a loaded gun. It takes very little to tear down a reputation. A
lifetime of work destroyed wantonly.
Don’t you think that is an evil action that should be severely
punished?”
He watched in
a fog as she drew out a long knife whose blade gleamed in the firelight. “I’m
afraid that you will have to excuse the substitution of the knife for the
sword. I couldn’t get enough power behind the sword, it was too heavy. Now this
is perfect. It is very, very sharp, Professor, one slash, that’s all it takes.”
She moved
toward him slowly, like a lioness stalking a terrified goat. The knife flashed
in the firelight, reflecting the dancing flames on the shining blade. There was
a rushing noise in his ears and he heard again the words, “Unfit to teach in a
Christian college.” And then it was all over.
© 2010 Ann
Cro. All rights reserved.
Ann Cro holds a Master's degree from
East Tennessee State University and is currently setting up a language
school in sunny Italy with her husband of thirty-six years. She is the
author of the series, The
Bones Under the Oak, previously published in Black Lantern.
