Yet that is not why I was there, not to admire the guts of one Huw Pickering Woodruff, but instead to check his spelling. And so I looked carefully, hoping there would be no anomalies, and for a time, so it seemed. But then: for henceforth, “huenceforth.” And for Matthews “Mattuwes.” And “simueltaneously” from simultaneously. Under certain circumstances, perhaps fear, fatigue, confusion, or other battle pressures, he insisted upon inserting a “u” for “e” and moving the “e” into the next available vowel position, or if none was available, sticking it in or forgetting it altogether. What would make such a thing happen? He couldn’t even see it. It was some bizarre crick in the mind, brought on by who knew what, meaningless except as an identifier.
And the rest: the hatred of the Afghan woman, easily generalized. The calmness in the face of the close-by cut to throat and the gush of crimson it produced. It was all there.
“And what have we learned?” asked the colonel.
“Nothing of note,” I lied. “He is indeed a brave man. Do you know much of his background, may I inquire?”
“Welsh-born, Sandhurst grad, third son of a Methodist minister, not much money in the family but a strain, clearly visible in the colonel, of brilliance. Now doing nothing but dictionary work, whereas in a sane world he’d be a cabinet minister.”
I nodded, though tried to hide how disturbed I was by the unassailable logic I had uncovered that the bravest of the brave was indeed Jack the Ripper.
“Now I shall be off, Mr. Jeb. Jeb, what kind of name is that, by the way? It seems I’ve given up some confidential information to a man whose name I do not even know. Come now, sir, at least explain yourself.”
“It’s a journalistic trope,” I said. “I was called as a youth various things, sometimes even Sonny. But I was in the register as a junior, even if my father was a drunkard and I cared not to be known by his name, so to some I went forth by his initials, which were G.B. My sister, a wonderful girl, could not keep the two letters apart, and in her mouth they elided into Jeb. So that is me, and for the record, sir, since you have asked, the moniker would be Shaw, George Bernard Shaw.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Diary
Undated
* * *
Egress
I slipped out of the court, down the narrow passageway
and took my right to whatever street it was.
I cannot remember
though it was but hours ago. Had a plague come
as I was to work, and had it taken the rest of humanity?
It seemed I walked for days through the gray drift of the inclement,
my eyes squinted against the sting of the dagger-like drops,
a shiver running through my body as it tried to adjust to the cold.
Emptiness and echo everywhere, bits of paper blowing loose and tattered,
a dog with slattern ribs and no hope in its rheumy eyes, the smell
of garbage, shit, piss, and of course blood riding the cold breeze.
But in time, I saw them. One, then two, then three or four,
humans, that is, gradually assembling to face the day and whatever hell that meant.
I saw a teamster drive six mighty steeds down the street to deliver barrels of whatever,
I saw a copper standing vigilant, on duty however ineffectual, I saw a scatter of children,
full of energy and long and fast of leg, perhaps off to school or mischief,
I saw a mum or two, in a hansom carriage I saw a gentleman, maybe that was a Judy off the next block, maybe the small hunched gentleman a barrister or a barrister’s clerk,
a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a tinker, a tailor, a beggarman, a thief.
None of them so much as acknowledged me.
And why should they? After all, I was one of them.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jeb’s Memoir
I told Professor Dare about my confirmation that the colonel had shown signs of the dyslexia condition that was the primal clue in his quest and that, as predicted, he had emerged from a morally nourishing humanitarian background.
“For my part,” I said, “I was not checking on you. I just had to know. It is unsettling to put such suspicion against so heroic a man. Something in me finds it unsavory.”
“Would you adjudge that physical bravery trumps deep moral evil? Is that your position?”
“No, of course. That not being so, however, does not make it anything to celebrate.”
“All right. I concur. Let us be sure, then. Have you another mechanism by which he may be tested?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that—” Then I said, “You would not say that unless you did.”
“Something has occurred to me. It’s somewhat dangerous, I suppose, and neither of us is particularly heroic.”
“Enter his rooms and search when he is absent?”
“I haven’t the spice for that, and I doubt you do, either. We are not cracksmen but amateurs, particularly in the action department.”
“True enough. So have you come up with something Sherlock Holmes might have conjured?”
“That damned fellow again. I must read that book you seem to think so highly of. As for this trick, it’s rather too basic for this Holmes’s elegant genius. You must merely ask yourself. It’s there, if you ponder rigorously. When is he vulnerable? When might his guard be down? When would he be unlikely to pull knife and cut his way out of an issue?”
I thought. I thought. I thought.
“His opium habit,” I finally said. “The drug puts him in a dream state. He may babble or confess or scream in guilt or cry in remorse. We do not force it upon him, he welcomes it and sees it as routine. But I could be there.”
“Is it in you to do so?”
I knew nothing of opium, its element, its practices, its dangers. But at the same time, I could not proceed with leverage against a man who had a VC without more proof that I believed in.
“I will find it in myself,” I said.
* * *
I was not without resources. I tutored with Constable Ross, assuming correctly that in his experience on the streets and within London’s lowest dives, rookeries, brothels, beer shops, gambling halls, and dogfighting arenas would be an acquaintanceship with opium dens. I was right, and thus armed, I waited outside and down the street on a bleak block on the margins of the Dockland for the colonel to show up, as the professor had insisted he would. Indeed he did, his banty stride giving him away, his energy in contrapuntal rhythm to the grimness of the spot somewhat amazing.
It was so West End melodramatic that I felt I was viewing something lit for the boards. He slid against a wood door in an otherwise blank brick wall and knocked, and just like onstage, a slot opened in the door, his identity was confirmed, a code was exchanged, and he was admitted.
“All right,” said Ross, who’d accompanied me on this trip to the demimonde as a buttress against my own terror, “now wait for him to get his pipe going, for the first calming effects to take hold, and then approach.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Damn, it’s cold.”
“It is, but soon you’ll forget the outer world. Now repeat to me what I have said.”
“I must partake of the first and even the second draw. The Chinaman will be watching. If I don’t, thugs will beat me and toss me out. From that point on, I can choose to not inhale but merely hold and release the vapor into the air and cut my consumption remarkably and only half descend into madness. I will feel effects, no doubt, dizziness, mild hallucinations, color exchanges, shape-changing, but nothing a man with a strong mind can’t handle.”
“What else?”
“Ahh”—drawing a blank, and then—“oh yes, the drug will hit me like a rugby tackle. I cannot avoid that, as I have no tolerance. It’s not Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup. I must not panic and instead let it take me. The stuff liquefies under heat, so one must be careful not to spill the pipe, as it will be a giveaway.”
“Very good, s
ir,” said Ross.
“And you’re sure I’ll write ‘Kubla Khan’ when I emerge?” I said.
Ross didn’t get my little witticism and only said, “I don’t know about that, sir.”
We waited another twenty minutes and no more customers arrived.
“All right, sir, now’s the time, there’s the good chap.”
“See you in a bit, or so I hope,” I said.
“You’ll be fine.”
I drew my mac tight, my hat low, and headed across the cobblestones to the doorway, pushing my way through low drifts of fog that had blown in from seaward. It was getting more West End by the moment. Excellent job on the dry ice for fog, Mr. Jones!
I slid in the doorway and rapped three, then two, then waited. The police intelligence was good, and in a few seconds the slot opened and I saw a pair of slanted eyes.
“Bawang hua,” I said, which means, I believe, “flower king.”
More good intelligence. The slot snapped shut, the door opened. I slid in, hammered immediately by the drifting pall of fume in the red air, as all the lanterns were tinted in that hellish shade.
“A pipe, old man, and none of that for-shite Turkish sludge. Your finest Persian silk, if you please.” It was gibberish to me, but again Ross had advised well. The Chinaman looked me up and down, but I’m guessing to him occidental faces were as formulaic as Oriental faces are to Englishmen, and at any rate he could not classify me as miscreant, so had only the density of my brown tweed to go on, which he found acceptable. Then he led me down the hall where a Laskar brute who looked as if he chopped heads for a hobby sat grimly under a sign that said PIPES AND LAMPS ALWAYS CONVENIENT. A beaded curtain hung in a doorway to the left, and he led me through it.
I beheld the glare of red lanterns, and in that illumination I saw supine men and heard the shift and sigh and squirm of their presence, and my eyes adjusted. The reddened vapor drifted in the air; the place seemed squalid and damp and dry and hot at once; groans, low moans, giggles, and coughs rose softly. The smell, oddly, of toasted nuts was present, though it had disturbing undertones. Glow worms burned against the dark, reddening with the draw, diminishing as put down. My eyes found better focus, and what I beheld was a hall of profound stupor, men beyond movement or care, spilled across wicker divans, their bodies lackadaisical as rag dolls, all pretense of rank and show completely abandoned, all jaws flaccid, all eyes fixated on eternity or infinity or the place where the two somehow met. I could not make out the colonel, but I could not make out anyone.
The Chinaman poked me and jibber-jabbered, small paw out. When I placed in it the standard three and six for a thimbleful, he looked disappointed, so I passed over another tuppence to show goodwill. He led me, I shed myself of hat and coat, and he bade me go supine on my own divan. There were four of them placed about a red lantern glowing in the center on a brass-plated table. I lay for a few minutes, letting my eyes further refine, not daring to peer about, as it wasn’t the sort of place where friendly eye contact was encouraged.
In time, my host returned with a long clay stem, slightly curved, which at its end held a small cup. Ross had provided me with a veteran’s retinue of tricks, so I drew the cup close to eye for a check, scraped the brown paste inside, drew off a little under my thumbnail, and brought it to nostril for sniff and to tongue for taste, as if I were capable of discerning the difference between Turkish and Persian. It had neither odor nor taste, as far as I could tell, but I nodded and winked at the deliverer and he sped away.
I placed the pipe cup atop the lantern and waited for it to absorb enough concentrated energy to begin to smolder. I had been instructed that it was impervious to live flame; only the application of pure heat, as passed through the conduit of soft metals, ignited it and began its alchemical magic. Obviously I was being watched, so when I saw tendrils of vapor, I put it to mouth and applied suction.
Nothing happened. Odd, Coleridge had seen far-off lands, his imagination liberated by the stuff’s mythical ability to provoke, but I saw nothing. I blinked again, thinking, Opium: overrated.
And then . . . My, my, isn’t this interesting. It was a sense of pleasure that can only be called acute. My skin felt soft, my body warmed pleasantly. In a few seconds the acute metamorphisized to the chronic. Pleasure was general. I seemed to forget who I was and why I was there. I lay back and for a second believed I had found paradise. Drat! Too early to make such a claim, for the next second completed my journey through the upper levels of poppyland and brought me to the destination the opiate had selected for me.
I was in a concert hall, alone, though well dressed. Upon the stage was my sister. The applause was tumultuous, although again I was by myself in the ranks of red-plush seats, and I was not clapping. Lucy, the adored one, accepted the enthusiasm of the invisible crowd with grace. She was quite lovely, in a rather low silk gown, a small but firm bust with a string of pearls about her swan’s neck. There was serene confidence on her beautiful face.
She sang. An aria from Wagner, I think, though one of his gentler, more romantic ones, nothing with dark clouds and northern war gods bashing each other with sword and hammer. Her voice was exquisite, but the odd thing was that each note emerged shimmering from her throat and found a place in midair above her, moreover then transfiguring into a bird of bright plumage. I saw nightingales, peacocks, blue parrots, proud ocher hawks and falcons, even some prehistoric saurian birds festooned in the colors of the rainbow. In time an aviary of dazzling brilliance had taken grip on roosts above her beautiful head, and the radiance of the color had a kind of translucent sparkle to it, so that it caught, refracted, redirected, and amplified the lights of the hall.
She stood, crowned. The glory of the music was enshrined in the pigment of feathers above her, the whole thing rather awesome. It seemed to be a scene from some sort of devotional. It was whoever God may be, adoring her formally.
I had always hated her. Where I struggled, she soared. Where I bumbled, she triumphed. Where I was unloved, she was worshipped. She had been sent here, I was convinced, to make mockery of my many failings, my lack of talent and industry, my crude ways, my slithery mendacity, my awareness that the music that was the river of life in our family would not be my destiny, while it would be hers in diamonds.
The astonishment was how proud I felt. Shorn of my fury at her position of supremacy in the family, I felt the cascade of love. That was my sister, my flesh, my family, my blood up there, and it reflected so well upon me that I could not but take immense contentment from it.
Yet into this demi-paradise—my true expression of love for Lucy, which I have heretofore hidden from all, most especially myself, the depth of her talent, the perfection of her beauty unsnarled by jealousy and fear—came at last the snake, except it wasn’t a snake, it was a large brutish boar (an opium pun? bore? boor? brother?), horned and snuffling, grunting, leaking filth and offal, his unorganized ways suggestive of violence.
He wandered, sniffing, munching, probing his way across the stage. Lucy did not panic nor race to safety. Her love abideth. She reached to his hideous head and stroked it, knelt to it and switched to Brahms, something delicate and soothing. She tamed the savage heart of the beast, which happily went to knees and then full supine, placed its great snout upon the floor, and began to snore rapturously, lost, perhaps, in its own opium dreams. These images, I might add, were as vivid to me as any in reality. What they symbolized, I have no idea, if anything at all. Yet they have stayed with me and will, I believe, forever.
I blinked and found myself back in the den, in the drifting pall of red haze, watching as now and then someone drifted this way or that. I was sure my trip had lasted but a second or two. However, once reality more or less returned, I became bored. If one does not smoke opium in an opium den, what is there to do? There is otherwise no entertainment, so the answer is nothing, and I did nothing for an hour or so, pretending to draw a lungful of the gas into my system now and then. Generally, however, I was quiet, and after mo
re than a bit of time, I felt secure enough to look about in the low light.
I could not see him, but I could not see anyone or anything except the seething red vapors. At a certain point, a fellow across from me decided he’d been voyaging through the universe enough for one evening, and rose and stumbled out. That opened a vantage, and across the room, at another grouping of four divans, I made out the silhouette of the colonel’s derby, read the shortness of his form, and by that method identified him. His face was still, somewhat blocked from view by a large bat that hung off his nose. He seemed oblivious, as oblivious as all of them, and I wondered if he were dead. But now and then I’d detect motion, see a pipe rise, its stem put to mouth, and the glow suffusing the air above the cup signifying a deep inward draw. He must have had big lungs, as his ingestions were heroic in their length and depth. He also must have had terrible dragons in his brain, if it took that much to soothe them.
More eons passed. In other words, ten minutes went by, even if those ten had no place in real time, and two of the smokers from the colonel’s little collection of four got up to stumble out. As they shambled toward the door, the Chinaman attended them, and in this brief little circus of activity, I slipped off my divan and took up one next to the colonel.
Finally I got a good look at him. His face was rather dour, as if gravity had a special grudge against him and pulled his flesh downward at twice the going rate. Morever, the large bat that dominated his lower half turned out to be a spectacularly droopy mustache. It must have weighed a stone three. His eyes were lightless, he stared at nothing, he looked at nothing, he said nothing. He was utterly still.
I lay next to him. He was in a very deep place. I did notice one hand was closed into a tight fist, suggesting it gripped something, proof of tension unusual for this place, since the point seemed to be languor as an expression of collapse and escape.