The Map of Time Page 6

  Until on that cold night of November 7 Andrew watched her leave again for the tavern, and something inside him shifted.

  Whether it was the alcohol, which when consumed in the right quantity can, on occasion, clear some people’s heads, or simply that enough time had passed for this clarity to occur naturally, it finally dawned on Andrew that without Marie Kelly his life would no longer have any meaning, and therefore he had nothing to lose by fighting for a future with her. Filled with sudden resolve, his lungs suddenly cleared of the dead leaves that had been choking him, he left the room, slamming the door resolutely behind him, and strode off towards the place where Harold spent his nights waiting while his master took his pleasure, huddled like an owl on the coachman’s seat, warming himself with a bottle of brandy.

  That night his father was to discover that his youngest son was in love with a whore.

  5

  Yes, I know that when I began this tale I promised there would be a fabulous time machine, and there will be, there will even be intrepid explorers and fierce native tribes—a must in any adventure story. But all in good time; isn’t it necessary at the start of any game to place all the pieces on their respective squares first? Of course it is, in which case let me continue setting up the board, slowly but surely, by returning to young Andrew, who might have taken the opportunity of the long journey back to the Harrington mansion to sober up as much as possible, but who chose instead to cloud his thoughts still further by finishing off the bottle he had in his pocket. Ultimately, there was no point in confronting his father with a sound argument and reasoned thinking, as he was sure any civilized discussion of the matter would be impossible.

  What he needed was to dull his senses as much as he could, staying just sober enough not to be completely tongue-tied. There was no point even slipping back into the elegant clothes he always left judiciously in a bundle on the seat. That night there was no longer any need to for secrecy. When they arrived at the mansion, Andrew stepped out of the carriage, asked Harold to stay where he was, and hurried into the house. The coachman nodded his head in dismay as he watched him run up the steps in those rags, and wondered if he would hear Mr. Harrington’s shouts from there.

  Andrew had forgotten his father had a meeting with businessmen that night until he staggered into the library, and a dozen men stood gaping at him in astonishment. This was not the situation he had anticipated, but he had too much alcohol in his blood to be put off. He searched for his father amid the array of dinner jackets, and finally found him standing by the fireplace, next to his brother Anthony. Glass in one hand and cigar in the other, both men looked him up and down in utter astonishment. But his clothing was the least of it, as they would soon discover, thought Andrew, who in the end felt pleased to have an audience. Since he was about to stick his head in the noose, better to do so in front of witnesses than alone with his father in his study. He cleared his throat loudly under the fixed gaze of the gathering, and said: “Father, I’ve come here to tell you I’m in love.” His words were followed by a heavy silence, broken only by an embarrassed cough here and there.

  “Andrew, this is hardly a suitable moment to …” his father began, visibly irritated, before Andrew silenced him with a sudden gesture of his hand.

  “I assure you, father, this is as unsuitable a moment as any,” he said, trying to keep his balance so he would not have to finish his bravura performance flat on his face.

  His father bridled but forced himself to remain silent. Andrew took a deep breath. The moment had come for him to destroy his life forever.

  “And the woman who has stolen my heart … ” he declared, “is a Whitechapel whore by the name of Marie Kelly.” Having finally unburdened himself in this way, he smiled defiantly at the gathering. Faces fell, heads were clutched in hands, arms flapped about in the air, but no one said a word: they all knew they were witnessing a melodrama with two protagonists, and of course, it was William Harrington who must speak. All eyes were fixed on the host. Staring down at the pattern on the carpet, his father shook his head, let out a low, barely repressed growl, and put down his glass on the mantelpiece, as though it were suddenly encumbering him.

  “Contrary to what I’ve so often heard you maintain, gentlemen,” Andrew went on, unaware of the rage stirring in his father’s breast, “whores aren’t whores because they want to be. I assure you that any one of them would choose to have a respectable job if they could. Believe me, I know what I’m saying.” His father’s colleagues went on demonstrating their ability to express surprise without opening their mouths. “I’ve spent a lot of time in their company these past few weeks. I’ve watched them washing in horse troughs in the mornings, seen them sitting down to sleep, held against the wall by a rope if the could not find a bed …” And the more he went on speaking in this way about prostitutes, the more Andrew realized his feelings for Marie Kelly were deeper than he had imagined. He gazed round with infinite pity at all these men with their orderly lives, their dreary, passionless existences, who would consider it impractical to yield to an uncontrollable urge. He could tell them what it was like to lose one’s head, to burn up with feverish desire. He could tell them what the inside of love looked like, because he had split it open like a piece of fruit, he had removed its shell as you would the casing on a watch to see how the cogs inside made the hands slice time into segments. But Andrew could not tell them about this or anything else, because at that very moment his father, emitting enraged grunts, strode unsteadily across the room, almost harpooning the carpet with his cane, and without warning, struck him hard across the face. Andrew staggered backwards, stunned by the blow. When he finally understood what had happened, he rubbed his stinging cheek, trying to put on the same smile of defiance. For a few moments that seemed like an eternity to those present, father and son stared at each other in the middle of the room, until William Harrington said: “As of tonight I have only one son.” Andrew tried not to show any emotion.

  “As you wish,” he replied coldly. Then, addressing the guests, he made as if to bow. “Gentleman, my apologies, I must leave this place forever.” With as much dignity as he could muster, Andrew turned on his heel and left the room. The cold night air had a calming effect on him. In the end, he said to himself trying not to trip as he descended the steps, apart from the unexpected audience and the angry slap, nothing that had happened came as any surprise. His disgraced father had just disinherited him, and in front of half of London’s wealthiest businessmen, giving them a firsthand display of his famous temper, unleashed in this instance against his own offspring without the slightest compunction. Now Andrew had nothing, except his love for Marie Kelly. If before the disastrous encounter he had entertained the slightest hope that his father, moved by his story, might give in, and even let him bring his beloved to the house in order to remove her as far as possible from the monster stalking Whitechapel, it was clear now they must live by their own means. He climbed into the carriage and ordered Harold to return to Miller’s Court. The coachman, who had been pacing round the carriage in circles, waiting for the denouement of the drama, clambered back onto the driver’s seat and urged the horses on, trying to imagine what had taken place inside the house—and, to his credit, based on the clues he had been perceptive enough to pick up, we must say that his reconstruction of the scene was remarkably accurate.

  When the carriage stopped in the usual place, Andrew got out and hurried towards Dorset Street, anxious to embrace Marie Kelly and tell her how much he loved her. He had sacrificed everything for her. Still, he had no regrets, only a vague uncertainty regarding the future. But they would manage. He was sure he could rely on Charles. His cousin would lend him enough money to rent a house in Vauxhall or Warwick Street, at least until they were able to find a decent job that would allow them to fend for themselves. Marie Kelly could find work at a dressmakers’, but he, what skills did he possess? It made no difference, he was young, able-bodied, and willing, he would find something.

  The m
ain thing was he had stood up to his father; what happened next was neither here nor there. Marie Kelly had pleaded with him, silently, to take her away from Whitechapel, and that was what he intended to do, with or without anyone else’s help. They would leave that place, that accursed neighborhood, that outpost of hell.

  Andrew glanced at his watch as he paused beneath the stone archway into Miller’s Court. It was five o’clock in the morning. Marie Kelly would probably have already returned to the room, probably as drunk as he. Andrew visualized them communicating through a haze of alcohol in gestures and grunts like Darwin’s primates. With boyish excitement, he walked into the yard where the flats stood. The door to number 13 was closed. He banged on it a few times but got no reply. She must be asleep, but that would not be a problem. Careful not to cut himself on the shards of glass sticking out of the window frame, Andrew reached through the hole and flicked open the catch on the door, as he had seen Marie Kelly do after she had lost her key.

  “Marie, it’s me,” he said, opening the door. “Andrew.” Allow me at this point to break off the story in order to warn you that what took place next is hard to relate, because the sensations Andrew experienced were apparently too numerous for a scene lasting only a few seconds. That is why I need you to take into account the elasticity of time, its ability to expand or contract like an accordion regardless of clocks. I am sure this is something you will have experienced frequently in your own lives, depending on which side of the bathroom door you found yourselves. In Andrew’s case, time expanded in his mind, creating an eternity out of a few seconds. I am going to describe the scene from that perspective, and therefore ask you not to blame my inept storytelling for the discrepancies you will no doubt perceive between the events and their correlation in time.

  When he first opened the door and stepped into the room, Andrew did not understand what he was seeing, or more precisely, he refused to accept what he was seeing. During that brief but endless moment, Andrew still felt safe, although the certainty was already forming in some still-functioning part of his brain that what he saw before him would kill him, because nobody could be faced with a thing like that and go on living, at least not completely. And what he saw before him, let’s be blunt about it, was Marie Kelly but at the same time it wasn’t, for it was hard to accept that this object lying on the bed in the middle of all the blood splattered over the sheets and pillow was Marie Kelly.

  Andrew could not compare what awaited him in that room with anything he had seen before, because like most other men he had never been exposed to a carefully mutilated human body. And once Andrew’s brain had finally accepted that he was indeed looking at a meticulously destroyed corpse, although nothing in his pleasant life of country house gatherings and fancy headwear would seem to offer him any clues, he had no time to feel the appropriate revulsion, for he could not avoid following the terrible line of reasoning that led him to the inevitable conclusion that this human wreckage must be his beloved. The Ripper, for this could be the work of none other, had stripped the flesh off her face, rendering her unrecognizable, and yet, however great the temptation, Andrew could not deny the corpse belonged to Marie Kelly. It seemed an almost simplistic, not to say improbable approach, but given its size and appearance and above all the place where he had found it, the dismembered corpse could only be that of Marie Kelly. After this, of course, Andrew was overcome by a terrible, devastating pain, which despite everything was only a pale expression of what it would later become, because it was still tempered by the shock paralyzing and to some extent protecting him. Once he was convinced he was standing before the corpse of his beloved, he felt compelled by a sort of posthumous loyalty to look tenderly upon that ghastly sight, but he was incapable of contemplating with anything other than revulsion her flayed face, the skull’s macabre, caricatured smile peeping through the strips of flesh. And yet how could that skull on which he had bestowed his last passionate kisses, revolt him now? The same applied to that body he had worshiped for nights on end, and which, ripped open and half skinned, he now found sickening. It was clear to him from his reaction that in some sense, despite being made out of the same material, this had ceased to be Marie Kelly, for the Ripper, in his zeal to discover how she was put together inside, had reduced her to a simple casing of flesh, robbing her of her humanity. After this last reflection, the time came for Andrew to focus, with a mixture of fascination and horror, on specific details, like the darkish brown lump between her feet, possibly her liver, or the breast lying on the bedside table, which, far from its natural habitat, he might have mistaken for a soft bun had it not been topped by a purplish nipple. Everything appeared incredibly neatly arranged, betraying the murderer’s grisly calm. Even the heat he now noticed suffusing the room, suggested the ghoul had taken the time to light himself a nice fire in order to work in more comfort. Andrew closed his eyes: he had seen enough. He did not want to know anything more. Besides showing him how cruel and indifferent man could be towards his fellow human beings, the atrocities he could commit given enough opportunity, imagination, and a sharp knife, the murderer had provided him with a shocking and brutal lesson in anatomy. For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life, went on soundlessly inside our bodies, flowed like an underwater stream, occurred like a silent miracle of which only surgeons and pathologists were aware, and perhaps ruthless killer, too. For they alone knew that ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organs, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God.

  This is a detailed analysis of what Andrew experienced during those fleeting moments when he stood before Marie Kelly’s dead body, although this description makes it seem as if he were gazing at her for hours, which is what it felt like to him. Eventually a feeling of guilt began to emerge through the haze of pain and disgust overwhelming Andrew, for he immediately held himself responsible for her death. It had been in his power to save her, but he had arrived too late. This was the price of his cowardice.

  He let out a cry of rage and impotence as he imagined his beloved being subjected to this vicious butchery. Suddenly, it dawned on him that unless he wanted to be linked to the murder he must get out before someone saw him. It was even possible the murderer was still lurking outside, admiring his macabre handiwork from some dark corner, and would have no compunction about adding another corpse to his collection. He gave Marie Kelly a farewell glance, unable to bring himself to touch her, and with a supreme effort of will forced himself to withdraw from the little room, leaving her there.

  As though in a trance, he closed the door behind him, leaving everything as he had found it. He walked towards the exit to the flats, but was seized by a feeling of intense nausea and only just made it to the stone archway. There, half-kneeling, he vomited, retching violently. After he had brought up everything, which was little more than the alcohol he had drunk that night, he leaned back against the wall, his body limp, cold, and weak.

  From where he was, he could see the little room number 13, the paradise where he had been so happy, now hiding his beloved’s dismembered corpse from the night. He tried taking a few steps and, confident his dizzy spell had eased sufficiently for him to walk without collapsing, he staggered out into Dorset Street.

  Too distressed to get his bearings, he began wandering aimlessly, letting out cries and sobs. He did not even attempt to find the carriage: now that he knew he was no longer welcome in his family home there was nowhere for him to tell Harold to go. He trudged along street after street, guided only by the forward movement of his feet. When he calculated he was no longer in Whitechapel, he looked for a lonely alley and collapsed, exhausted and trembling, in the midst of a pile of discarded boxes. There, curled up in a fetal position, he waited for night to pass. As I predicted above, when the shock began to sub
side, his pain increased. His sorrow intensified until it became physical torment.

  Suddenly, being in his body was agonizing, as if he had turned into one of those sarcophagi lined with bristling nails. He wanted to flee himself, unshackle himself from the excruciating substance he was made of, but he was trapped inside that martyred flesh.

  Terrified, he wondered if he would have to live with this pain forever. He had read somewhere that the last image people see before they die is engraved on their eyes. Had the Ripper’s savage leer been etched onto Marie Kelly’s pupils? He could not say, but he did know if that rule were true he would be the exception, for whatever else he might see before he died, his eyes would always reflect Marie Kelly’s mutilated face.

  Without the desire or strength to do anything except remain doubled up in pain, Andrew let the hours slip by. Occasionally, he raised his head from his hands and let out a howl of rage to show the world his bitterness about all that had happened, which he was now powerless to change. He hurled random insults at the Ripper, who had conceivably followed him and was waiting knife in hand at the entrance to the alley, then he laughed at his fear.