Hyde

by Daniel Levine

  Gradually the delusion dissipated, and I began to accept that there was no escape from the body. If the body died, then we would die. This notion was increasingly comforting. Already the world of Jekyll’s bedroom seemed pleasantly distant: the people moving blurrily through, ministering to the body, lifting it, rolling it, wiping it down. None of it seemed to relate to us. It was like peering upward from a deep sheltered well. Sometimes the bedroom appeared to be swarming with people, all jostling to peer down into the well shaft where we lolled at the bottom, a tombal darkness through which we drifted together like shipwrecked sailors on a raft. There was no resistance at this stage. We were beyond conflict, floating serene toward death, our well-earned respite.

  When we opened our eyes, I thought we really were dead. The room glowed, shining glorious whiteness. We shut our eyes, and woke later to cooler, clearer light. A man stood at the window, a nimbus about his head. He turned and approached the bedside, his red elfin face coming into focus. Lanyon. He touched our forehead with the back of his hand, then our cheek. Deliciously sensitive, the skin. Harry, he was saying, Harry, can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me. We dipped the eyelids shut, pulled them open. Good! Lanyon said. That’s very good, Harry. He lifted our hand from the bed. It did not seem attached to us, the dumb appendage. He gave it a squeeze and bent to kiss the knuckles. You made it, Harry. You made it back.

  Soon we could sit up and sip tea from a cup Poole held to our lips. We could squeeze Lanyon’s hand until he patted our wrist and laughed, saying, That’s enough, that’s enough, very good. But we did not feel back. The bedroom still seemed illusory, as if this were not life but its hovering reproduction, its afterimage. Lanyon was elated by our progress, and even stoic Poole could not suppress his tender relief as he served us tea and lukewarm soup. Utterson came to visit too, and he stood at the foot of the bed with a sheepish smile, shaking his shaggy head. Damn it, Harry, must you always be so dramatic? Lanyon laughed and grasped our shoulder, and Utterson chuckled, and a dry, coughing sound rattled from our throat. But we did not yet speak. Lanyon gently pressed us to respond to his questions so he could determine if we could indeed still talk. We knew we could talk. But silence was tranquillity. To speak was to answer questions. Our left elbow, we had noticed, was wrapped with a white bandage, a wad of padding in the inner crook, where the abscess had budded. One day Lanyon rolled up our pajama sleeve and began to unwind the wrapping, keeping his eyes briskly down on his work. The arm was stained yellow from the tincture of iodine, but the abscess had drained and deflated, and the purpling vein looked better, the pockmarks fainter. In silence we watched Lanyon dab on more gluey unguent and wrap the arm in fresh bandage. His eyes flicked upward, pale blue, with a little vein burst in the white. He gave a shadow of a smile, reassuring and sad.

  Lanyon seemed to be staying at the house. Every morning he came in and checked our vital signs, fed us spoonfuls of medicine from the litter of bottles on the bedside. While we dozed during the day, he often read a book in the armchair. One afternoon we woke and watched him awhile, a hard ache in our throat. His flaxen hair was aglow in the crisp lemon light; his studious profile was stamped in radiance. Jekyll wet his lips. Hastie. Lanyon set his book aside and came to the bed. He took our hand. Harry. Good Harry. Tell me something, tell me anything.

  Hastie. What’s the day?

  Lanyon’s brow creased with sympathy. It’s a Thursday, I believe. September tenth, Harry.

  September tenth. It had been . . . July, last we knew. Two months, we had lost.

  Harry, Lanyon said, I’d like to tell you something. His faded eyes were clear, unwavering. I’d like to tell you that I’m sorry. About Winnie. I should have let her see you. Let you talk to her. You wanted only to help, and I should have seen that, and instead I insulted you. We have wasted so much time with our stubbornness, our principles. And I’m damned sorry for it. A new leaf, now, yes? A new leaf for us both?

  Lanyon laid his hand upon our left arm and gave us again that sad, consoling smile.

  Agreed?

  Within days, Jekyll was sitting up by the open window, wrapped in shawls. He could sip tea and spoon soup for himself. Poole carried Jekyll’s razor and scissors from the dressing room on a folded towel, like religious implements. He draped Jekyll with a cloth and set about clipping the beard down to stubble. He lathered the cheeks and throat and meticulously scraped them clean, grimacing with concentration. He combed the long tangled hair and snipped with the scissors, his fingers cool and light, with a trace of caress. Then he produced a hand mirror, and Jekyll regarded his reflection, gravely awed. His face was stretched tight across the sharp cheekbones and brow, luminously pale. His blond hair was silvered almost entirely through with fine, glinting strands of sterling. His eyes burned like core ice from hollowed sockets. He looked as if he’d survived an Arctic winter locked within a ship frozen fast in the wastes. He could not put the mirror down: a rapt, ravaged Narcissus. Quite the improvement, he murmured hoarsely. By the end of the week, he was limping up and down the corridor with a walking stick. Lanyon had reluctantly returned home, leaving Poole with a catalogue of instructions as to diet and continued treatment, which Poole enforced with strict rigour, watching Jekyll take his odious medicines as if he were a child who might try to trick his old uncle. The bandage on Jekyll’s arm, he did not touch. Jekyll unwound it himself one afternoon and let the arm breathe. He did not cover it again, and by the next day the once-open sore was reduced to a raised bruise in the cleft, and the punctures down the vein had faded to crimson pinholes.

  I noted the arm’s improvement with neutrality, a sign of the body’s healing. But it did not mean anything. At some point Jekyll would need me again. We had not died. Our troubles had not vanished. Yet as September chilled the windowpanes and left a fragile overnight frost on the grass in the square, I found that I was not afraid. That illusory quality still clung to the world, the relativity of everything. We felt only a placid expectancy, a readiness for the inevitable.

  At last the doorbell chimed below.

  You have a visitor, sir, Poole said. Carew, Jekyll replied, without turning from the windows. Yes, sir. I will turn him out directly, but he asked me to deliver a message first. The message is: If he leaves now, he will not be returning.

  Well. We wouldn’t want that, would we. Show him up. He won’t stay long.

  In a royal-blue dressing gown and embroidered slippers, we sat listening to two sets of footsteps cross the main hall and climb the carpeted stairs. The window was partly ajar, and I could smell a tang of autumn smoke on the air. Jekyll drew it in through his nostrils and held it as Poole entered with our visitor. Sir, he murmured, and pulled the door shut on his way out. Carew stood behind us in silence. I could hear the rusting leaves in the square rustling in the light breeze. Jekyll turned in his chair.

  Carew wore a yellow checkered waistcoat and a chocolate velvet jacket. He strolled toward the desk with his hands behind his back and that apologetic grimace on his bloodless lips. I see that Mr. Poole wasn’t exaggerating. You have been through the wars, haven’t you, Doctor.

  He seemed to be holding something behind his back, but when he reached the chair across from the desk, he laid one hand atop the back of it and slid the other into his pocket. He regarded Jekyll almost contritely, head tilted. I don’t wish to tax you or impede your convalescence in any way. But it is necessary that we speak, I’m afraid.

  So speak.

  Carew drummed the top of the leather chair with his fingers. You know, I almost envy you. I’d rather have spent the last two months sick in bed than wrangling with committees and petitions and recalcitrant Tory opposition. It has been a circus, all right; I shall have a nice nervous collapse myself at the end of it. You might be interested to hear that Mr. Stead will likely be facing charges for abduction, as will his conspirators. Those in charge wish to make an example of him. Buying a young girl is buying a young girl, even if one does it only to prove that one can. Mr. Stead is quite kee
n about the prospect, actually, of grandstanding in court. Though I don’t imagine his accomplices will share his enthusiasm. Prison is nothing to look forward to. I’ve made a study of them, English prisons. Horrifying places, like dog kennels. No one in his right mind would care to spend even a night.

  Carew lifted the leg of his trousers and lowered his lean haunch onto the edge of the desk, crossing his hands on his thigh. His eyes moved cautiously up. You should not think, he said in a new, lower tone, that because I did not receive your agreement last time we spoke, I have been neglecting the protection I offered. If the papers contain no mention of Edward Hyde, I can tell you that this is due in no small part to me. On behalf of the committees I serve, I have taken on the investigation of certain claims that reach our attention. Mr. Hyde’s name was submitted to us in August by a lady of some influence who maintains social connections in Soho. People have been talking, speculating, about their illustrious neighbour Mr. Hyde. It’s the common Londoners whom this story has affected most. It has them riled and in an uproar—for these are their children, their maidens being devoured by Stead’s Minotaur. They are angry and eager to lay blame, and Mr. Hyde in his castle makes for a very tempting target. Much of what I am hearing on my interviews is fourth- or fifth-hand and possibly fabricated at the source, but there is a general consistency that is difficult to ignore. It has been ignored, but only because I am suppressing it, thereby committing a crime and opening myself to liability. I have been doing this, perhaps incredibly foolishly, to protect you. To protect what I think you are capable of. Tell me, am I mad?

  Yes.

  Carew made a tolerant smile, which gradually faded as Jekyll said nothing more. And you, Doctor? Do you believe yourself to be a healthy man? Jekyll said nothing. Carew was close enough for him to touch. Carew’s eyelids grew hooded, reptilian. I wonder if you would do something for me. It is a small thing next to what I have done for you. Would you mind if I asked you to roll up the sleeve of your robe to the elbow?

  The left hand gripped the chair by reflex. Carew lifted his eyebrows, waited. No? Is that too much to ask? To roll up your sleeve?

  He held the innocently incredulous look another moment. As I thought, he said quietly. As I thought. I haven’t been devoting the entirety of my time to this Maiden Tribute business, you see. Two weeks ago I took a little holiday to Paris. Dr. Petit had agreed to meet with me at the hospital. He put up a decent pretence of a struggle, you should know, refusing at first to speak about you and Mr. Verlaine, honouring whatever pact of silence you established with the board before you left. But even silence can be instructive, don’t you agree? And in the end, people always talk. They yearn to talk. We all long to tell our secrets. We simply must wait for someone to come along and ask the right questions.

  Carew swiveled round on his perch and peered across the study at the fireplace mantel and the black, ghoulish painting. That picture, for instance, he said. Dr. Petit showed me the others. But do you know, I think I like this one best. The violence is so—palpable. Dr. Petit said that L’inconnu mixed his own feces into the paint. Hardly something a man would choose to display in his study. Yet there it hangs, for all to see. Does anyone ever ask what it is?

  No.

  Of course they don’t ask. And that is the problem. Here we are, all of us dying to reveal our secrets, yet no one asks the right questions. Carew turned back and fixed his eyes on us with languorous, cunning inspection. You will not find a better audience than me. I am the very man you have been waiting for all this time. Are you willing to let me help you?

  Jekyll forced the left hand to relax, release the arm of the chair.

  Where would you like to begin?

  Carew settled back on his bony haunch on the desk. He lifted his chin, victory playing upon his lips. The injections, he said carefully. The injections you were administering to Mr. Verlaine. Dr. Petit did not see the system in your method. He chose to believe you were experimenting with a haphazard range of narcotics over the course of that year. It is the way of mediocre men, to blind themselves to the brilliance of their betters. My presumption is that you had two distinct injections. The first turned Emile into Pierre, and the second transformed him into L’inconnu. They would have acted as triggers, these injections, summoning whichever personality you wished to access at whatever time you chose. Am I correct thus far?

  You are.

  Carew held his speculative pose. The second injection, he continued, would have been a modification of the first. The core chemical ingredient would have been altered, perhaps to encourage a more aggressive effect befitting the third’s hostile personality. You would have had to induce Emile to associate this effect with L’inconnu, like a reflexive, conditioned response. If Emile believed that the injection would change him, then it would do exactly that. The personalities would willingly switch places. It is an ingenious theory. Mr. Verlaine, unfortunately, was simply not strong enough, and the experiment was cut short. So you continued it on yourself. The result, I can only assume, was this being you have named Edward Hyde. This is how you shed yourself. How you become him.

  Bravo. Jekyll lifted his hands from the armrests and clapped, a dry and hollow sound.

  If that is the case, Carew said, then I want to watch it happen. Watch you self-administer the injection and become Mr. Hyde. We may begin our collaboration there. Does that suit you?

  Jekyll nearly smiled. Splendidly. But I will need a little more time. It would kill me, weak as I am, to become Edward Hyde at the moment. I’ll need my strength.

  Would a week be sufficient? Jekyll lifted his shoulder. A week, then. We do it here? Carew glanced around the study. No, not here. Somewhere more . . . neutral. I was thinking, as a matter of fact, we might meet at Cornelius Luce’s house. Surely you’re joking. Carew frowned. Why would I be joking? Forgive me, but you can’t expect me to meet your Mr. Hyde entirely on my own. He is too unpredictable. Mr. Luce does not need to be in the room, but his presence in the house will assure me of some security. He needn’t know anything more than that you and I require a private room in which to talk.

  Jekyll moved his eyes to the window, pretending to consider the terms. I knew we weren’t actually going to go through with any of it. But I understood we needed the time. A gust of wind leant into the glass. All right, Jekyll said wearily, as if worn down. At Luce’s. In a week.

  Carew’s expression was strange as he gazed down at us: a veiled pride, laced with pity, as if Jekyll were some brave soul confined to a wheelchair. I’ll send word as to the details, he said gently. I am glad, Dr. Jekyll, very glad indeed that you have decided to save yourself. I will not fail you. He stood up and extended his hand. Jekyll weakly slipped into his grip, and a flicker crossed Carew’s face, a stricken twinge of realisation. Mr. Hyde can’t— he blurted. I mean, he can’t— He paused, mouth parted. Hear us? Jekyll suggested. Right now, you mean? Jekyll’s grip closed tighter around the man’s hand. No. He can’t hear us. He goes to sleep when I don’t need him. He released the hand, and Carew withdrew it to his chest. That’s good. It is good, Jekyll said, for you. He let a beat go by, then chuckled amiably, a joke. Carew gave a halfhearted smile, gingerly holding his own hand. Yes, he murmured. I’ll send word.

  Oh, Carew, you should have heeded that premonition. I could see it on your face as the shadow of your destiny slipped over you. You should have listened, should have left us alone. Jekyll sat by the window, his breathing steady. He knew what we had to do. So did I. It hovered just beyond our acknowledgement. Jekyll pushed up from his chair and spread his wings in a grunting stretch, rotating his wrists. Then he went into the corridor and called down the stairs for Poole, who appeared at once. I’ll take my dinner downstairs tonight, Jekyll said airily, then he strolled to his bedroom and drew a bath. He dressed in the cream linen suit he had ordered before his sickness; it hung loose on his atrophied frame. He cinched his belt and buttoned the double-breasted jacket and threw back his shoulders, raising a debonair eyebrow at himself in the
mirror.

  Jekyll eased down the stairs and found the entire staff of Big House gathered in the main hall. They all held flutes of champagne. Poole stood at the banister with the bottle, a linen towel draped over his arm. He handed Jekyll a sparkling flute, and in unison the staff lifted their glasses and called, To your health, Dr. Jekyll! Poole bowed and said, To your health, sir.

  Jekyll stood supporting himself on the railing, his eyes travelling over the upturned, eager, inquisitive faces. He lingered on Bradshaw, standing a full head above everyone else, his copper comb-tracked hair agleam. Again I saw him across the conservatory with that suave, stranded smirk on his lips. The footman tipped his master a covert nod, raising his flute a bit higher.

  Jekyll only picked at his chop and boiled vegetables. At last Poole carried the plate away, and Lizzie came forward with a silver urn. Tea, sir? Jekyll nodded, watched her pour a steaming stream into the cup. Her pale, averted profile beneath the mass of tied-back hair, a trace of dusky shadow down her cheek. Glad to see yer better, sir, she said, and turned away with the urn. Jekyll said quietly, Lizzie, and she paused. Are you happy here, in this house? Her eyes rose, coal-black, fierce in their shyness. Yes, sir. Very happy, sir.

  That night we dreamt we were back in Father’s room at Bagclaw Hospital, kneeling by his wheelchair and rolling up his sleeve, a syringe on the little table nearby. Lizzie sat beside Father patting his other arm. The needle, for some reason, would not slide properly into the vein; it seemed as if it was hitting something hard, the steel point scraping off. Father watched us working on his arm with a graceful mien of forbearance.

  I knew the dream’s origin. I remembered Father regarding us from his wheelchair, yellow-nailed hands dangling. Didn’t bring me anything, did you? he had asked in his ruined voice. Finish me off? Clever doctor like you could mix something up in a trice. Make it look natural.