The Map of Time. Felix J. Palma
to arouse his cousin’s attention by showing too much interest in the affair, but the truth was he longed to know every detail of the crimes, apparently confined to the area where his beloved lived. How would his cousin react if he told him he had bumped into that brutal murderer in a murky Whitechapel alleyway? The sad fact was that, even so, he was unable to describe the fellow except to say he was enormous and evil-smelling.
‘In any case, regardless of Scotland Yard’s involvement, all they have are suspicions, some of them quite preposterous,’ his cousin went on, plucking a grape from the bunch and rolling it between his fingers. ‘Did you know they suspect one of the Red Indians from that Buffalo Bill show we saw last week, and even the actor Richard Mansfield, who is playing in Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the Lyceum? I recommend it, by the way: Mansfield’s transformation on stage is truly chilling.’
Andrew promised he would go, tossing the remains of his apple on to the table.
‘Anyway’ Charles concluded rather wearily, ‘the poor wretches in Whitechapel have formed vigilante groups and are patrolling the streets. It seems London’s population is growing so fast the police force can no longer cope. Everybody wants to live in this accursed city. People come here from all over the country in search of a better life, only to end up being exploited in factories, contracting typhus fever or turning to crime in order to pay an inflated rent for a cellar or some other airless hole. Actually, I’m amazed there aren’t more murders and robberies, considering how many go unpunished. Mark my words, Andrew, if the criminals became organised, London would be theirs. It’s hardly surprising Queen Victoria fears a popular uprising – a revolution like the one our French neighbours endured, which would end with her and her family’s heads on the block. Her empire is a hollow façade that needs progressively shoring up to stop it collapsing. Our cows and sheep graze on Argentinian pastures, our tea is grown in China and India, our gold comes from South Africa and Australia, and the wine we drink from France and Spain. Tell me, cousin, what, apart from crime, do we produce ourselves? If the criminal elements planned a proper rebellion they could take over the country. Fortunately, evil and common sense rarely go hand in hand.’
Andrew liked listening to Charles ramble in this relaxed way, pretending not to take himself seriously. He admired his cousin’s contradictory spirit, which reminded him of a house divided into endless chambers all separate from one another, so that what went on in one had no repercussions in the others. This explained why his cousin was able to glimpse, amid his luxurious surroundings, the most suppurating wounds and forget them a moment later, while he found it impossible to copulate successfully after a visit to a slaughterhouse or a hospital for the severely injured. It was as if Andrew had been designed like a seashell: everything disappeared and resonated inside him. That was the basic difference between them: Charles reasoned and he felt.
‘The truth is, these sordid crimes are turning Whitechapel into a place where you wouldn’t want to spend the night,’ Charles declared sententiously, abandoning his nonchalance to lean across the table and stare meaningfully at his cousin. ‘Especially with a tart’
Andrew gaped at him. ‘You know about it?’
His cousin smiled. ‘Servants talk, Andrew. You ought to know by now our most intimate secrets circulate like underground streams beneath the luxurious ground we walk on,’ he said, stamping his feet symbolically on the carpet.
Andrew sighed. His cousin had not left the newspaper there by accident. In fact, he had probably not even been asleep. Charles enjoyed this kind of game. It was easy to imagine him hiding behind one of the many screens that partitioned the vast dining room, waiting patiently for his stunned cousin to fall into the trap he had laid.
‘I don’t want my father to find out, Charles,’ begged Andrew.
‘Don’t worry, cousin. I’m aware of the scandal it would cause in the family. But tell me, are you in love with the girl or is this just a passing fancy?’
Andrew remained silent. What could he say?
You needn’t reply’ his cousin said, in a resigned voice. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t understand either way. I only hope you know what you’re doing.’
Andrew, of course, did not know what he was doing, but could not stop doing it. Each night, like a moth drawn to the flame, he returned to the miserable room in Miller’s Court, hurling himself into the relentless blaze of Marie Kelly’s passion. They made love all night, driven by frantic desire, as though they had been poisoned during dinner and did not know how long they had left to live, or as though the world around them were being decimated by the plague. Soon Andrew understood that if he left enough coins on her bedside table, their passion could continue gently smouldering beyond the dawn. His money preserved their fantasy, and even banished Joe, Marie Kelly’s husband, whom Andrew tried not to think of when, disguised in his modest clothes, he strolled with her through the maze of muddy streets.
Those were peaceful, pleasant walks, full of encounters with the girl’s friends and acquaintances, the long-suffering foot-soldiers of a war without trenches; a bunch of poor souls who rose from their beds each morning to face a hostile world, driven on by the sheer animal instinct for survival. Fascinated, Andrew found himself admiring them, as he would a species of exotic flower alien to his world. He became convinced that life in Whitechapel was more real, simpler, easier to understand than it was in the luxuriously carpeted mansions where he spent his days.
Occasionally, he had to pull his cap down over his eyes in order not to be recognised by the bands of wealthy young men who laid siege to the neighbourhood some nights. They arrived in luxurious carriages and mobbed the streets, like rude, arrogant conquistadors, in search of some miserable brothel where they could satisfy their basest instincts for, according to a rumour Andrew had frequently heard in West End smoking clubs, the only limits on what could be done with the wretched Whitechapel tarts were money and imagination. Watching these boisterous incursions, Andrew was assailed by a sudden protective instinct, which could only mean he had unconsciously begun to see Whitechapel as a place he should perhaps watch over. However, there was little he could do, confronted with those barbarous invasions, besides feeling sad and helpless, and trying to forget about them in the arms of his beloved. She appeared more beautiful to him by the day, as though beneath his caresses she had recovered the innate sparkle of which life had robbed her.
But, as everyone knows, no paradise is complete without a serpent, and the sweeter the moments spent with his beloved, the more bitter the taste in Andrew’s mouth when he recalled that what he had of Marie Kelly was all he could ever have. Because, although it was never enough and each day he yearned for more, the love that could not exist outside Whitechapel, for all its undeniable intensity, remained arbitrary and illusory. And while outside a crazed mob tried to lynch the Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, Andrew quenched his anger and fear in Marie Kelly’s body.
He wondered whether his beloved’s fervour sprang from her own realisation that they had embarked upon a reckless love affair, and that all they could do was greedily clasp the unexpected rose of happiness as they tried to ignore the painful thorns. Or was it her way of telling him she was prepared to rescue their apparently doomed love even if it meant altering the very course of the universe? And if that was the case, did he possess the same strength? Did he have the necessary conviction to embark upon what he already considered a lost battle?
However hard he tried, Andrew could not imagine Marie Kelly moving in his world of refined young ladies, whose sole purpose in life was to display their fecundity by filling their houses with children, and to entertain their spouses’ friends with their pianistic accomplishment. Would Marie Kelly succeed in fulfilling this role while trying to stay afloat amid the waves of social rejection that would doubtless seek to drown her, or would she perish like an exotic bloom removed from its hothouse?
The newspapers’ continued coverage of the whores’ murders scarcely managed to distract Andrew from the torment of his secret fears. One morning, while breakfasting, he came across a reproduction of a letter the murderer had audaciously sent to the Central News Agency, assuring the police they would not catch him easily and promising he would carry on killing, testing his fine blade on the Whitechapel tarts. Appropriately enough, the letter