Speaking of Lust - the novella by Lawrence Block Page A

horrible story,” the policeman said.
    “ Dreadful,” the priest agreed, wringing his hands, and the doctor nodded his assent.
    “ I’m sorry,” said the soldier. “I apologize to you all. As I said, it wasn’t my own story, for which I must say I’m heartily grateful, nor was it a story I heard directly, and I daresay I’m grateful for that as well. It may have been embroidered along the way, before it was told to me, and I suspect I added something in the telling myself, inferring what went through the poor bastard’s mind. If I were a better storyteller I might have made a better story of it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told it in the first place.”
    “ No, no!” the doctor cried. “It wasn’t a bad story. It was gripping and fascinating and superbly told, and whatever license you took for dramatic purposes was license well taken. It’s a wonderful story.”
    “ But you said---“
    “ That it was horrible,” the priest said. “So Policeman said, and I added that it was terrible.”
    “ You said dreadful,” said the doctor.
    “ I stand corrected,” the priest said. “Horrible, dreadful---both of those, to be sure, and terrible as well. And, as you said in your prefatory remarks, awful and wonderful. What do you make of young Luke, Soldier? Was he in fact a casualty of war?”
    “ We gave him a gun and taught him to kill,” the soldier said. “When he did, we pinned medals on his chest. But we didn’t make him like it. In fact, if his instructor had suspected he was likely to have that kind of a visceral response to firing at the enemy, he might never have been assigned to combat duty.”
    The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You find a lad who qualifies as Expert Rifleman and you shunt him aside for fear that he might enjoy doing what you’ve just taught him to do, and do so well? Is that any way to fight a war?”
    “ Well, perhaps we’d have taken a chance on him anyway,” the soldier conceded. “Not so likely in a peacetime army, but with a war going on, yes, I suppose we might have applied a different standard.”
    “ What passes for heroism on the battlefield,” said the priest, “we might otherwise label psychosis.”
    “ But the question,” the soldier said doggedly, “is whether he’d have found the same end with or without his military service. The bullet that killed that first sniper put him on a path that led to the jail cell where he emasculated himself. But would he have gotten there anyway?”
    “ Your lot didn’t program him,” the policeman said. “You didn’t have a surgeon implant a link between his trigger finger and his dick. The link was already in place and the first killing just activated it. Hunting hadn’t activated it, though who’s to say it wouldn’t have if he got a cute little whitetail doe in his sights?”
    The priest rolled his eyes.
    “ Sooner or later,” the policeman said, “he’d have found out what turned him on. And I have to say I think he must have at least half–known all along. You say he didn’t have sadistic sexual fantasies before the first killing, but how can any of us know that was the case? Did he state so unequivocally in this confession he wrote out? And can we take his word? Can we trust his memory?”
    “ Sooner or later,” the doctor said, “his marital sex life would have slowed, for one reason or another.”
    “ Or for no reason at all,” the policeman said.
    “ Or for no reason at all, none beyond familiarity and entropy. And then he’d have found a fantasy that worked. And someone some day would have paid a terrible price.”
    “ And the origin of it all?” the soldier wondered.
    “ Something deep and unknowable,” the doctor said. “Something encoded in the genes or inscribed upon the psyche.”
    “ Or the soul,” the priest suggested.
    “ Or the soul,” the doctor allowed.
    There was a rumbling noise from the direction of the fireplace, and the doctor made a face. “There he goes again,” he