Free In the Absence of Angels by Hortense Calisher Page A

chores, and pets are encouraged. There was a tank with a couple of turtles near the window, beside it another, full of newts, and in one corner a large cage of well-tended, brisk white mice. Glass cases, with carefully mounted series of lepidoptera and hymenoptera, showing the metamorphic stages, hung on the walls, and on a drawing board there was a daintily executed study of Branchippus, the ‘fairy shrimp.’
    “While I paced the room, trying to look as if I wasn’t prying, a greenish little wretch, holding himself together as if he had an imaginary shawl draped around him, slunk into the half-dark room and squeaked ‘Hallowell?’ When he saw me he started to duck, but I detained him and found that he had had an appointment with Hallowell too. When it was clear, from his description, that Hallowell must have been the redhead I’d seen leaving, the poor urchin burst into tears.
    “ ‘I’ll never get rid of it now!’ he wailed. From then on it wasn’t hard to get the whole maudlin story. It seems that shortly after Hallowell’s arrival at school he acquired a reputation for unusual proficiency with animals and for out-of-the way lore which would impress the ingenuous. He circulated the rumor that he could swallow small animals and regurgitate them at will. No one actually saw him swallow anything, but it seems that in some mumbo-jumbo with another boy who had shown cynicism about the whole thing, it was claimed that Hallowell had, well, divested himself of something, and passed it on to the other boy, with the statement that the latter would only be able to get rid of his cargo when he in turn found a boy who would disbelieve him .”
    The visitor paused, calmer now, and leaving the window sat down again in the chair opposite the doctor, regarding him with such fixity that the doctor shifted uneasily, with the apprehension of one who is about to be asked for a loan.
    “My mind turned to the elementary sort of thing we’ve all done at times. You know, circle of kids in the dark, piece of cooked cauliflower passed from hand to hand with the statement that the stuff is the fresh brains of some neophyte who hadn’t taken his initiation seriously. My young informer, Moulton his name was, swore however that this hysteria (for of course, that’s what I thought it) was passed on singly, from boy to boy, without any such stances. He’d been home to visit his family, who are missionaries on leave, and had been infected by his roommate on his return to school, unaware that by this time the whole school had protectively turned believers, en masse. His own terror came, not only from his conviction that he was possessed, but from his inability to find anybody who would take his dare. And so he’d finally come to Hallowell. ...
    “By this time the room was getting really dark and I snapped on the light to get a better look at Moulton. Except for an occasional shudder, like a bodily tic, which I took to be the aftereffects of hard crying, he looked like a healthy enough boy who’d been scared out of his wits. I remember that a neat little monograph was already forming itself in my mind, a group study on mass psychosis, perhaps, with effective anthropological references to certain savage tribes whose dances include a rite known as ‘eating evil.’
    “The kid was looking at me. ‘Do you believe me?’ he said suddenly. ‘Sir?’ he added, with a naive cunning which tickled me.
    “ ‘Of course,’ I said, patting his shoulder absently. ‘In a way.’
    “His shoulder slumped under my hand. I felt its tremor, direct misery palpitating between my fingers.
    “I thought …maybe for a man …it wouldn’t be ...’ His voice trailed off.
    “ ‘Be the same? …I don’t know,’ I said slowly, for of course, I was answering, not his actual question, but the overtone of some cockcrow of meaning that evaded me.
    “He raised his head and petitioned me silently with his eyes. Was it guile, or simplicity, in his look, and