Confessions of the Fox

by Jordy Rosenberg

  A crash as several of the gang rush’d down the stairs.

  The rank odor of unwashed blackguard as the gang approach’d. Jack, the Lion-Man, and Jenny seemed to syncopate their breathing, each of them existing only in this interstice of time rushing towards a conclusion. Jack wished helplessly that he had a working leg. Or a pistol. He conjured its loud Clap as he imagin’d aiming and firing it at Wild. The sooty smell of Powder blooming as he’d flee to the punt, Bess alongside. How they would dine tonight. On oysters and roast lamb’s foot.

  A puff of foul air rounded the threshold, and Henry Davis and Scotty Pool tumbl’d through, grease-spattered and grinning. Sporting a sharp assortment of brownish teeth, Hell-and-Fury.

  Then Bess was shov’d through the doorway by Wild. He had a dagger pressed to her neck, blistering the skin into a sharp Dimple.

  Bess looked Jack straight on. Her hair glistered in the umber Glow of the room. Her eyes were a mosaic. Ice-bright sparks of focus and precision wheel’d in her pupils as she assess’d the dire scene.

  “Davis,” Wild said, pointing with his chin towards the far wall of the room. “Open that door.”

  “What door?”

  Jack squint’d. The gunpowder room was necessarily very dark, portal-less—light having the capacity to heat the room to such a degree that ’twould denature the powder or ignite it. He hadn’t noticed a door.

  The Lion-Man whipp’d ’round with a surprised jerk. Evidently he was also not apprised.

  Henry Davis crossed the room and swung it open. “We’re all going to take a look now,” rang Wild’s voice.

  Then Wild was behind him, shoving him forward—dragging Bess. The gang was knocking into each other and banging their way back into the hold.

  “You too,” Wild said to the Lion-Man. “You’ll want to see this.”

  They all piled into the inner chamber. Which was darker even than the gunpowder room, and stenchier too.

  Davis, Pool and Hell-and-Fury jumbled into the center. Jack melt’d against the wall, wheezing in agony.

  A shape refin’d itself against the dark in the center of the room. The terrible scent was coming from the shape. The shape—Jack saw—was a body.

  Laid out on a marble slab, the body was stripped bare. There were tools on a ledge behind. Saws, broad sweeping metal hooks with handles attached. Clamps. Long arched scissors, three times the length of an ordinary scissor. Heavy iron hammers.

  All of these implements were Splatter’d with a brown crust.

  Bess was approaching the slab.

  She was whispering something—a prayer; a benediction; a battle cry*2—and Jack noticed the shelving running the perimeter of the room. Atop the shelving, a line of Bottles, empty, but marked with notes, printed carefully and wheat-pasted around their middles:

  Mr. Jonathan Wild’s Granulated Strength Elixir

  Extracted Direct from the Gonads of London’s Most Notorious Rogues

  Ye’ve Read the Ordinary’s Reports and Confessions, Now Taste the Vitality

  For Sale at Fleet Street Market in time for Christmas Holidays

  Available elixirs will include:

  Mac Shelton

  Steven Barnes

  Aesop Trammel

  And, most precious rogue and gaolbreaker general:

  Jack Sheppard

  Bess stared down, biting her lip. “Who is this Anglo?”

  “Barnes!” Wild shriek’d.

  She turn’d, defiant. “I knew Barnes. This isn’t him.”

  “What does it matter.” Wild’s face was beet red. And Jack was remembering the screaming in his office—Wild’s fury over Fireblood and Flanders’ loss of Barnes. Who had it been in the dead cart? Some Commoner they murdered in the mêlée?

  Whoever it was, Jack saw as he stared across the room, was missing his nutmegs*3. Next to the body were two flattened mounds lying on a set of gore-covered papers. Bess was considering it all with great Concentration.

  The narrative of what was happening—had been happening, had happened—assembl’d, de-assembl’d, and re-assembl’d itself in Jack’s head.

  The House of Waste.

  The Elixir.

  He had found it, hadn’t he.

  Well, it’d found him.

  Jack bent over, one hand grabbing at the dissection counter, and commenced to shite through his teeth.

  And now he heard it again, clearer. No body. He remember’d the Plunk into the water at the Lighthouse. What Body part—what bit of offal and whose—was it that the Keeper toss’d after him? It had been—he now realized—a warning.*4

  He heard the Lion-Man moaning, “They’re making it from men.”

  “From scamps,” sobbed Jack. “From mates.”

  And now it was the Lion-Man who lean’d over to commence shiting through his teeth.

  And where was Wild? Jack heard the plodding of heavy feet. Wild was backing towards the door. And locking it.

  The Stench in the room intensify’d.

  “Gentleman and ladies.” Wild return’d to caress the dissection table. “Welcome to my dissection-ship. A glorious scientific chamber for the extraction and synthesization of elixir. Straight from the nasty bits of the world’s most famous rogues—London’s all the better off without ’em.”

  “The elixir’ll fizz up the stockjobbers into perfect merchanting passions!” chimed Hell-and-Fury.

  “Shares in elixir to profit off beyond all imagination,” nodded Wild. “Finally, my gang’ll be financially independent (not to mention bull-beefed).” He smiled a terrible smile. “No more fencing and scraping. No more scrawny clunches—” He gestured, frowning, at Hell-and-Fury. “My Relishing of this moment is—as you can imagine—Inexpressible.”

  Jack was sliding slowly—very slowly—along the back wall— Sweat pour’d in waves down his ribs— He released his file from up his sleeve—slid the tip into the lock, jiggling each time Wild spoke, and pausing when he paused. Bess saw. Flash’d him a flicker of a smile.

  And Wild was going on. “—Straight from Holland where she’s been kitt’d out with the very latest in dissection-technologies, thanks to a wonderful new mate of mine, Mr. Mandeville, who knows quite a few eminent surgeons at Leiden University.*5 It’s a perfect dissection chamber, really. Owned by no nation. Free to roam ports”—and here Wild clear’d his throat—“free of the Arm of the law. Or, more properly, free to become our own autonomous Arm of the law. We’ve only to establish an agreement with the body-snatchers of a local area to assure ourselves of the Freshest and most Virile specimens and the most notorious nutmegs we can find.” Here he looked at Jack.

  Wild’s gang idiotically took offense at this. Bellow’d out, Are we not notorious too? Only Sheppard, then?

  Jenny chortled in the dark—“You dumb fobs.”

  And now they direct’d a battalion of insults at her.

  Bess had sidled up next to him. “Take this.” She slipp’d him the packet of papers she’d nick’d from the table along with a metal rod—some sort of dissecting implement. Jack look’d at her quizzically.

  “How this ends, you might need it,” she said.

  She didn’t think he’d escape Wild.

  Not this time.

  He slid the papers and the rod into his trouser pocket.

  Wild’s gang were still leaping about, issuing Cruelties upon Jenny, and upon the Body.

  And Jack—under cover of the din of the gang, and realizing that Jenny had distract’d them just for this purpose—was working the file into the handle more aggressively. He felt it click in his hand. Then he breathed in, nodded meaningfully to Bess and Jenny, and swung it open, falling aside to let Bess rush through.

  Bess zipp’d out, follow’d by Jenny, who was trailed by the Ruckus of howling men, the blackguards swirling after her.

&
nbsp; But Wild had mov’d back into the room.

  “Jack,” called Bess. She was ahead of Jenny, the both of them caught in a tumult of men. Jack was crumpled on the ground. And now Wild had Jack’s wrist in his hand, holding it hard. Jack considered fighting back, but the exhaustion and pain bore down on him like a hot sun and his body had become as soft—as sapp’d of Resistance—as a cat at noonday. He would not make it off the ship a free cove. He could see that now. They would bring Bess and Jenny to St. Giles Roundhouse. And Wild would take him to Tyburn straightaway. Hang him immediately—and bring him back—dead—to the ship—pore over his body with tools—looking for—

  —He retch’d, unable to continue the thought.

  Bess’s nightmare would come true. The Policing operation. It was a closed circle. Bodies, Elixir, Profit. She’d been right all along.

  His wrist was in Wild’s hand, and he was being dragg’d towards the door.

  And then he saw Jenny just beyond Wild. She had a sulfur stick in her hand.

  A thought came to him—a terrible, perfect thought.

  Gunpowder room, he mouth’d as he was tugg’d towards her, towards the threshold. He nodded at the sulfur stick. Throw it.

  In seconds he would be in the hall and it would be too late.

  Now, Jenny.

  She tossed him the stick. Yes. She smiled. Do it.

  Then he saw Bess, just beyond. She was watching him with a look of unpretended horror. “Don’t!” she shout’d.

  She’d said Don’t. Which was as good as saying I do love you, after all.

  It was enough. Just to know that she did.

  So he’d do it. He’d finish the scamp for her.

  He’d destroy the ship.

  * * *

  —

  As Wild tugg’d him out the threshold Jack summon’d a shred of Strength and threw the weight of his body back towards the gunpowder room. His leg snapped and bunched in Agony as he lung’d across the floor. He thought he might have pull’d his own shoulder out of its socket. The arm Wild held had gone slack and was twisted ’round at a queasy angle. With his free hand he scraped the sulfur stick against the floor. It flared up.

  The blackguards were surrounding Bess and Jenny like a filthy tide, shoving them down the narrow hallway.

  There was a second when all the air in the ship seemed to contract.

  And then The Blast took them.

  * * *

  —

  Jack was up in the sky, high above the shattering ship, and Wild was with him. And then they were plummeting back down and the water rush’d over his head and Wild was on him, scrabbling at him, clapping handcuffs on his wrists, and surfacing the two of them, dragging him through the water towards the shore.

  Jack saw Bess swimming for the opposite shore, her long skirts trailing behind. Black smoke plumed against the cold white sky.

  The Lion-Man was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Jenny.

  Wild pump’d hard and Jack was towed helplessly Behind.

  Then he was haul’d up the sodden, nasty coal-stuffed riverbank, and Wild threw him over his shoulder and walk’d up towards the Town.*6

  *1 We know that Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis a single page a day. Each page was taken from him by Nelson the prison governor at night. But was that all he wrote there? Here in the Stretches, I’ve learned of queers who passed between them in Reading Gaol a so-called Manuscript of Excarceration (aka Confessions of the Fox??). They taught themselves to slip their bars, roamed the halls of the prison by candlelight, fondled each other, embraced in shadow. Could Wilde have been set free one night to roam with them? In return, would he have “donated” an annotation to the manuscript? This “dog of shame and sorrows”?

  Surely he was leaving us clues. Something in the manner of De Profundis’s theory of queer art and fellowship. Wilde’s artist—the queer, martyred, Christ-like “Man of Sorrows”—leads us through the “season of sorrow.” The season to which we are consigned, but in which we create nothing short of the most extraordinary beauty.

  “Where there is sorrow,” says Wilde, “there is holy ground.”

  *2 Some queers believe the police or the military will save them from harm. Queers of the colonies, the postcolonies, those inhabiting the internal colonies of the U.S.A. and the diaspora know that this is a lie. This, of course, is sort of what Fanon meant when he said that certain so-called secret evils of capitalism were not secrets to everyone.

  For example, when, in 1990, France officially discontinued usage of the pesticide chlordecane to kill banana borer beetles, the government made an “exception” for overseas territories, and continued to promote its use elsewhere. Huge clouds bloomed over the banana fields of Martinique. An endocrine disruptor and a toxin, chlordecane seeped into the water system and the ground soil without regulation or warning.

  Gender does not mean the same thing in every context. Some genderings we fight for, stake our lives on. Some “gender” is a missile sent by the metropole.

  Who embedded this warning, wish and clue: Pa ni mèt ankô? I cannot say for sure—the archive is necessarily “disobedient” (Mignolo, again). None of us will be free unless all of us are free. Until there are No More Masters, and the entire edifice that began with the police and the Royal Navy (and the poisoning of the banana fields and the waters of the postcolony) is ground to dust.

  (See Vanessa Agard-Jones, “Bodies in the System,” Small Axe, 42, Nov. 2013.)

  *3 Testicles

  *4 A Note on “Nobody”:

  Karl Marx famously posed a counterfactual. “If commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest men, but it does not belong to us as objects. What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value. Our own intercourse as commodities proves it. We relate to each other merely as exchange-value” (Marx, Capital, Volume 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, “The Fetishism of Commodities, and the Secret Thereof”).

  Don’t worry too much about what this means.

  A commodity is an entity without qualities. It is without qualities because at its root, a commodity is simply something that can be exchanged for money. And, about this, Marx was saying: we know that these ciphers cannot speak, but if they could they’d tell us that what has meaning, for them, is their price.

  Or can they speak? The manuscript impels us to consider this possibility, and the work of the theorist Fred Moten, who has called Marx’s bluff. What of the slave, asks Moten. A human commodity possessed of speech, or—as Moten has it—of “a scream” (Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, University of Minnesota Press, 2003). Surely, says Moten, the commodity does speak. To say that it doesn’t is to blot out an entire bloody history—one without which any history of the West is partial, tendentious.

  There is nobody who is unmarked by this bloody history. Read Angela Davis (Women, Race & Class, Vintage, 1983) or Jasbir Puar (Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Duke University Press, 2007), if you don’t believe me. There is no body, no sexuality and, simply put, no sex outside the long history of Western imperialism’s shattering of the world. And once we understand this, we’ve got to go back and reconsider just how so-called “impossible” Marx’s speaking commodity is or is not.

  Whoever inserted the speaking commodities into this text—and really, it could be anybody, though my money’s on those radical grad students—knows this.

  (On the topic of speech and subjectivity, see also Ghassan Kanafani’s All That’s Left to You, narrated partially by the Gazan desert.)

  P.S. Of course we have Moten, Marx, Davis and Kanafani here in the Stretches!

  *5 Here is Mandeville’s proposition regarding the use of executed prisoners: “The University of Leyden in Holland have a Power given them by the Legislature to demand, for this Purpose, the Bodies of ordinary Rogues execu
ted within that Province….When Persons of no Possessions of their own, that have slipp’d no Opportunity of wronging whomever they could, die without Restitution, indebted to the Publick, ought not the injur’d Publick to have a Title to, and the Disposal of, what the others have left?” (AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF THE FREQUENT EXECUTIONS AT TYBURN: AND A PROPOSAL for some REGULATIONS concerning FELONS in PRISON, and the good Effects to be Expected from them. To which is Added, A Discourse on TRANSPORTATION, and a Method to render that Punishment more Effectual, 1725).

  Please note, with E. P. Thompson, that capital offenses in England at this time included “wearing a disguise” while committing a crime, and harvesting turf (cf. E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, Penguin, 1990).

  *6 On the topic of Prison Quackery. I have reason to suspect that some details of the narrative of Wild’s dissection-ship were added at a later date to highlight the history of nefarious collaboration between the medical and penal institutions.

  See, for example, Ethan Blue, “The Strange Career of Leo Stanley: Remaking Manhood and Medicine at San Quentin State Penitentiary, 1913–1951”: “Dr. Leo Stanley served as San Quentin’s chief surgeon for nearly four decades….Throughout, Stanley fixated on curing various crises of manhood. Under Stanley’s scalpel, prisoners became subjects in a series of eugenic treatments ranging from sterilization to implanting ‘testicular substances’ from executed prisoners—and also goats—into San Quentin inmates. Stanley was convinced that his research would rejuvenate aged men, control crime, and limit the reproduction of the unfit. His medical practice revealed an underside to social hygiene in the modern state, where the lines between punishment, treatment, and research were blurred” (Blue, Pacific Historical Review, 2009). Note also the following, from The New York Times, 1919:

  SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17.—Thomas Bellon, a young murderer, was hanged today at San Quentin Penitentiary, and after his death, interstitial glands from his body were transferred to a man of sixty, also a prison inmate, to test the efficacy of the theory of restoration of youth.