Hyde

by Daniel Levine

  He spent the morning and afternoon adrift on the sofa in his study. By evening, the hangover he’d kept at bay was beginning to ebb back into the body. His eyeballs felt gritty; his temples throbbed. He wanted another dose of morphia. I too wanted to continue floating weightless, thoughtless. Instead he bathed and dressed for dinner, forgoing a tie. He felt lightheaded as he sat down at the table. He could not eat; his bowels gurgled at the sight of his veal chop bleeding oil onto the plate. Is it not to your liking, sir? Poole asked. Shall I bring you something different? No, Jekyll said faintly, turning his head from the smell, no, I have no appetite, I’m afraid. Working too hard, I expect. Indeed, sir. Your character studies, is it? Jekyll looked up at him. Precisely.

  At that moment the front doorbell rang, chiming in the main hall. Jekyll stiffened. I’ll see who it is, sir. I’m not home, Jekyll said quickly. Whoever it is, I’m not home. Unless—The word dissolved off his tongue into suggestive silence. Poole held his gaze a moment, then bowed. Very good, sir.

  Georgiana was standing in the main hall removing her gloves when Jekyll entered from the corridor. Of course she would come back to us now. As she looked up, I saw a flash of Jeannie, a russet halo round her head, and my gorge rose in misery. Georgiana extended an icy hand. You’re having dinner, aren’t you? I can leave right now if I’m a disturbance. Jekyll repressed a shiver at her touch. Have you eaten? Oh, she said, I’m not hungry. I’ll sit with you, though, if I’m interrupting. I’m not hungry either. Come.

  In the cabinet he knelt before the stove, struck a match, and lit the coals. Georgiana, a white shawl around her shoulders, was looking at Father’s portrait again. Her belly was swelling now; one of her small hands rested absently upon it. Her eyes caught Jekyll watching, and he glanced away. I would have written you, Georgiana said, to ask if I could visit. But I didn’t know I’d be left alone in the house tonight. I saw an opening and I took it. She paused. How have you been, Henry? Oh, busy. Yes? Is that good? He lifted a shoulder. It keeps things interesting.

  I could feel her gaze as Jekyll strolled to the windows with a hand in his pocket. I could picture Jeannie’s narrowed examining eyes, the half-amused little smile, the vermilion forelock falling to her naked white shoulder. Jekyll was breathing hard through his nostrils. Henry, Georgiana said. Do you want me to leave? Jekyll looked at her, wearing a yellow dress let out at the seams for the ripening. You look well. She brought her other hand to her belly and glanced down. I am well. I’m feeling very—optimistic. Her ear was flushed, beneath a stray white-blond whorl. That’s the whole trick, isn’t it. She nodded. Yes, as a matter of fact, I think it is. She looked up, coyly. You know, I took your advice. When you said I should surprise myself. Take a souvenir. Oh? Yes, and I think you were right. It was very liberating. She hesitated. Would you like to see it? See what? The souvenir. What I took. I carry it with me sometimes, like a charm.

  Jekyll nodded. Georgiana reached into a pocket of her dress as she swished around the table toward the windows. With a mischievous grin she brought from her pocket something thin and silver, held it up. It was a tiny silver fork. A wave of queasiness swelled from our heart. What is that? I heard Jekyll say. It’s an oyster fork, Georgiana replied with a laugh, then looked concerned. Henry, are you all right? I’m fine, I simply—where did you get that? Well, it’s rather a long story. Do you really want me to tell you? Wouldn’t that, I don’t know, spoil it somehow? Jekyll stared at the fork and I through him: the minuscule beaded design around the rim, the three tapered tines. I could see Jeannie plunge it into a snail and twist. Jekyll’s hand lifted toward the fork, but before he could touch it, an electric twinge seized the fingers and he drew back. Yes, perhaps it’s best if you don’t. Chilled, sick, he turned to the window, reflecting the room. Henry, Georgiana said softly. Is there—anything I can do?

  Do. Do to what?

  To help you.

  To help me. He laughed, a harsh bark. Tell me, why is it you people think that I need your help? He moved his eyes to hers, widening, bewildered. What makes you think you can do anything for me, Georgiana? Oh, but I didn’t—she said. Henry, I didn’t mean to suggest—That I am some invalid? In need of care? Of rescue? No, of course not. Henry, you’re the least invalid person I know. But you seem—you seem so alone. He was sneering now. I’m not alone. Believe me, I am not alone. So understand this: You cannot help me. No one can help me. And I can’t help you. I have never been able to help you— But that’s not true! she cut in, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! You have helped me. A great deal. Do you think you had to make love—to become my husband to help me? We’re not going to talk about that, Jekyll said. He began to turn away, but she reached out and touched the back of his hand. He froze, half turned, her fingers lightly on his skin. You are a good doctor. And you have been a good friend.

  A good doctor, Jekyll repeated. My patient in Paris killed himself. He hanged himself. Haven’t you heard? But that’s not your fault, she protested. How do you know that? You don’t know, so don’t say that you do. He moved his hand from her touch. You don’t know me, Georgiana. You don’t know what I am, what I’ve done. And I don’t know you either. What do you imagine we are anymore? Why did you come back here?

  She was shaking her head in slow vehemence, her widened eyes starting to shine. I don’t—I don’t know what I’ve done to you. Of course you don’t. You just come and go at your convenience. At my convenience? she cried. Henry, nothing about my situation is convenient. I thought you understood. But I came anyway, because I wanted to see you. To say thank you.

  Well, you’ve done both. Now you can go again.

  We could hear her tripping down the stairs and across the theatre, then crunching over the gravel yard. Jekyll stood rigid by the windows, eyes glazing with heat. He pressed the back of his fist to his lips, shutting his eyes. Then he turned and went to the press for the little brown bottle. He poured a glass of water and dripped in the amber droplets, each unravelling in the depths. He held up the tincture—and then his heart crushed into itself and he spun and whipped the glass at the wall, where it burst. You get nothing, he whispered through his teeth, you get nothing!

  No morphia, no food: for the following two days he indeed took almost nothing. He confined himself to his study, accepting only tea and otherwise lying with rumbling stomach on the sofa navigating a fine, hairline crack in the ceiling overhead. I could not access him; his thoughts seemed as distant as the grumbling of his hunger. What were we going to do? It struck even me as a futile, pathetic question. What could we do? My life was contaminated. This plot against me had polluted every aspect of my existence. Look how the Pig had been turned against me! They had never liked me in there, I’d known that, but they had taken my money, they had suffered my patronage until now. So what had changed? It was like the whole place had been bewitched. My life as Edward Hyde was finished. My name itself was tainted. How clearly I could hear Vic say, We don’t need yer business, Mr. Hyde—like the very echo of that final, terrifying letter I had burned! Where could I go with a tainted name? What could I look forward to? Lurking about my haunted house and waiting for the letterbox to clack with my tormentor’s latest riddle? I would never learn its author’s identity, assuming there even was an identity to be learned. The mystery would simply keep chipping away at my sanity until I’d been reduced to a paranoid wreck.

  Such was my turmoil that I hardly noticed when Jekyll at last left his study and descended the stairs. Only when he stepped from the conservatory into a blinding, balmy afternoon did I perk up, squint about. He crossed the courtyard, climbed up to the cabinet. For a moment, I thought he might be going for the morphia after all. But then he slid the E drawer from its slot in the press, set it on the table, shed his dressing gown, and rolled up his sleeve.

  He was setting me loose? Why? I was wary. Yet I could feel the heart unclenching from its stubborn fist as he drew the serum from the phial and flicked the glass barrel, then pushed out a glittery jet of palest green. Did he
have a solution? I was quaking as the needle zeroed in on the vein. Oh, Jekyll, I prayed, don’t lead me wrong.

  Ten minutes later I stepped from the Castle Street door onto the crusty stoop. I wore a clean shirt. My jacket and trousers smelt musty but were dry. I had nearly fifty pounds in my various pockets. From under my brim I sucked a noseful of the day’s late bouquet: coal smoke, horse dung, bread, sun on the stones. The light along the upper house fronts had started to thicken into a golden, yolky hue. A warm breeze moved up the lane, flapping my coattails. I had to lean on my stick for a moment, weak-kneed with delight. Then I pitched down the cement steps and the cobbled lane. South I was headed, not north toward Soho but south toward—I did not know what. But I was not going back to Ghyll. At Trafalgar Square I turned east, strolled along the Strand. The theatre crowd congested the pavement, all of them milling about in their stoles and silk scarves and cloying perfumes, and I slipped through them with a kind of increasing revelation. No one looked at me. No one noticed me. I was nobody to them. The light became denser as I continued east, the sky darkening to royal blue above the black rooflines, and hours later, the evening found me strolling along a dilapidated road in the light cast by shuddering gas lamps somewhere in the maze of Whitechapel. A dog was woofing, a man and woman shrieking at each other in one of the ragged tenements looming over the lane. Tipsy laughter cackled from a swollen-legged dolly sprawled drunk against a wall. Another girl staggered up and pawed my chest, cooing with rotten breath. At a corner stood a shriveled ancient who edged away from me and snarled, I ’aven’t got any! I ’aven’t got any, I tell you, don’t even ask! I marvelled at these mad, anonymous characters as if they had been invented solely to amuse me. I came to a pub, and went in.

  Low-ceilinged and a cosy sulphurous glow. The barman was bald with a giant glossy moustache. He poured me a brimming glass of gin and pushed it over with a friendly nod. Three bristly heavies stood farther down the bar, watching me. Heart in my gullet, I raised my glass to them. After a pause, they lifted their beers and turned back to their talk.

  I felt like bursting into laughter. How foolish I had been! How hidebound and narrow! Here I was, imagining my life as Edward Hyde was finished, when there was all this undiscovered country to be explored. Soho was not my life, and Ghyll was not my home. It was just a rotting old house I’d leased for thirty lousy quid. I could lease a hundred houses at that rate—what did it matter? Even my poor tainted name—it was just a name! I hadn’t even chosen it; Jekyll had given it to me when he’d given me the five thousand pounds and a world of problems to go with it. I had existed for months without a name, without a house and without so much money, and I had been perfectly happy. Happy! I had lost track of something since those early days, something I had known innately when Jekyll first let me loose, more than half a year ago. This was my life. I carried it with me wherever I went. This was my home. Right here.

  I spent the night in a rundown hotel by the river. From the caving bed, I could smell the water lapping the pylons, its fishy, womanish stink. I could feel Jekyll inside me, branching through my blood, stiffening from the root of my groin. Shivering as if with cold, I unbuttoned my flies and worked delicately toward the crest. I had never done it like that before, drawing it out like torture, nearing the burning brink and then ebbing back, over and over, its sensitivity toward the end so exquisite that I held our rigid life at the lowermost stem, kept in excruciating limbo, like that paradox of halving and halving forever without ever reaching the mark—and when I crushed out the climax at last, the whole body bucked in rapture. I could not open my eyes; a brilliant grid of phosphorescence cast its tracery across the darkness. Jekyll was fused to my every nerve, welded to me. Oh God. I did not need a house, a canopy bed, satin sheets. I did not need servants, dolly, neighbours, friends. I did not need a bank account; I did not need a name. All I needed was this.

  In the morning, I continued east, strolling along the river, watching the ragpickers wade in the mucky banks and feel about the bottom for bits of sunken treasure. An androgynous scrap of muddy child straightened with something that it put in its mouth, sucked on, and then removed, clean for inspection. A gull careened down and landed on a wooden mooring post filmed green with algae. A low-slung boat piled with netting skimmed by, leaving in its wake ripples like silk on the oily water. By dusk I had reached the inlet and docks of the Isle of Dogs and joined a rowdy crowd of workers shouting and cursing at two men fighting shirtless for money. Later on, in a clapboard shanty groaning over the water, pitch-black but for knotholes gleaming here and there, I felt my way into a low-cushioned berth, and a frail Chinese boy lit the long slender pipe extending from my lips. A bright ball of opium burned in the gloom as I drew in its milky, mesmerising smoke.

  Yes, Jekyll urged me toward the opium. The miraculous black, sticky tar was kin to his laudanum in the brown bottle in the press—yet so much more potent when drawn into the lungs and absorbed into the alveoli. I imagined I could actually feel the smoke dispersing through my capillaries like a healing milk, a magical balm, anointing my nerves. My fingertips were especially affected. I could spend hours caressing my splintery beard, enthralled by its electric crackling, or rubbing my fingertips together and deciphering the secret contained in their whorls. An opium hour is infinitely elastic, and when the wan pink dawn pierced the shanty walls, it would seem to me—goggle-eyed, transported—that the night had lasted for days. I did not always keep to my wooden berth, though. Often I would wake in the queerest places—a broad rubble lot by the railroad tracks, an empty trough in a muddy pen where pigs sprawled in a pile asleep and snoring, the tumbled bed of a middle-aged wench—with no recollection of how I’d arrived there. I didn’t particularly care if I could not remember these hallucinatory tours. We were on an adventure! I was not Edward Hyde; I was the dark, nameless hero travelling incognito far from my troubles at home, where I was a hunted man, unjustly pursued. I was a fugitive playing the tramp, and it gave me crafty pleasure to move amongst the citizens and vagabonds of the slummy east-side warrens as though I were one of them.

  Of course, I was not. I had almost fifty pounds tucked into my various pockets, as I said. The large banknotes, the fivers and tenners, were in a sense worthless, for no one could change them. Everything was too impossibly cheap; I could hardly keep track of the insignificant coins required to actually pay for things. By the time the honeyed moon had made its complete cycle, I had spent less than a single pound. I could have lived for years on fifty pounds in the East End and south of the river. But, inevitably, I was robbed.

  One night in foul-smelling Bermondsey, I stumbled upon a tiny den with a gypsy proprietress, wild-haired and, it seemed, blind in one pale blue clouded eye. I had an uneasy feeling about the place, which was empty except for the gypsy, who reminded me of someone I could not place. She ushered me into a bunk and lit the pipe for me herself, and when I drew in the first draught, it struck me with a cold jolt: of course, the witch who had read my cards back in my other life. The two women could have been sisters! I stared at her hooked fingernail as the gypsy traced a corkscrew pattern into the swirling smoke, whispering something to herself, and like an echo I heard the other croon in my ear: Wheel of Fortune. It was a bad omen, this reincarnation, this empty shack—I wanted to leave. But her drugs were quick; already my limbs, my eyelids, were leaden.

  When I swam back to consciousness with a dragging gasp, I found myself alone in the bare room with a single window at the back ablaze with menacing sunshine. I staggered out into the harsh morning, into the bustle of commerce, shielding my eyes. The overwhelming stench of turpentine and leather tanning sharpened my wits as I blundered along, smacking my mouth, absently patting my pockets. Then I stopped and dug through my jacket, my trousers, my waistcoat in bafflement. Where was all—? My eyes widened. I turned and reeled back the way I’d come, shoving through the busy masses, but the lanes were labyrinthine, and all the hovels looked the same—scrap metal and spare lumber—and I couldn’t reme
mber how I’d found the gypsy’s den to begin with. Disoriented, bathed in icy sweat, I came to a halt and plunged through my pockets again. But in vain. I had been picked clean.

  My boots were falling apart, the heels run down and one sole flapping loose. My blisters hurt. My back was stiff and my neck tweaked from assorted hard lodgings. An itchy rash had invaded my anus, and I could swear I had lice crawling around my scalp. All at once I was tired of tramping, tired of playing fugitive. I missed my bed. I wanted to go home.

  I hobbled northwest all day, crutching with my stick. (It had clung to me, that stick! I should’ve lost it dozens of times, befuddled and dumb as I’d been, but the trusty stick had kept by my side, waiting to satisfy its terrible destiny.) By the time I reached Ghyll a ragged lid of cloud was clamping over the last silvery light in the sky. I stood across the street, not quite believing the house was still here, unburned by a mob and as I had left it. I edged across the road into the courtyard and, bracing myself, peered over the rim of the fountain. I frowned in astonishment, then poked around with the cleat of my stick. The basin was empty. No birds, no cat, no bones, just the stone hollow and some dried leaves. In the entrance hall, I leant my stick against the wainscoting and eased off my boots, then limped to the drawing-room doorway. I stood just within the room, staring at the round table agleam under the window. It too was empty. Very still I stood, waiting to wake up with a lurch in that wooden berth all over again to find the whole day had been a dream.

  Mrs. Deaker found me the following morning in the lavatory on the third floor. I had been sitting in a brown tepid bath examining my face in a shard of broken mirror I’d extracted from a mysterious pile of such slivers in the sink when the knob squeaked and the door swung inward. The lady was holding a fireplace poker and wore a grimace that was almost comical; I had to gulp back a giddy laugh. Hello, old girl, I cried with a surge of fondness. The sound of my own voice startled me—I felt as if I hadn’t spoken in weeks. Mrs. Deaker sighed, poorly disguising her relief, and thumped the hooked poker down on the tile. She regarded me with a shrewd well-well-well playing upon her wrinkled lips. Master returns, eh? I offered. Home from his long travels. She was silent. The leaky tap went plink, plink, plink. I cleared my throat, glancing down at the rusty water. Look. I’m sorry. Plink, plink from the spigot. You’re sorry, Mrs. Deaker said at last, musingly, as if she had never heard the expression before. It was the first time I’d ever uttered it. The old lady shrugged one bony shoulder. Well, then.