The Ripper's Wife (23 page)

D
ouble event this time! The first bitch squealed a bit. The pony and cart were almost upon us. The driver reached out his whip and poked the dead whore with it. But he didn’t see me. I had to flee before I was done with her. I knew I was invincible—the name, the powder, the power—I knew they couldn’t stop me, but for a moment . . . How I trembled and my heart raced! I could not keep up with it! It was like a drum in my ears as I fled, beating faster and faster. The scent of blood was in my nostrils, on my hands, on my lips where I had lapped it up along with my medicine. The lust was hot upon me. I was not sated; like a man interrupted in the midst of fucking, I
had
to seek another, for the
full
satisfaction. I would know no peace until I did! It had been three weeks since my last kill. I could endure no more, stifling, bottling up the rage, holding it back, while my wife-whore fucked Alfred Brierley behind my back! I
had
to kill, to
purge
myself; I could not go home until I was free of it!

But first . . . the first . . . The tall, “fair” Swedish liar.

“You would say anything but your prayers,” I said, and kissed her.

I have her prayer book in my pocket now. It’s in Swedish so I cannot read it, but there’s a crude woodcut of the Devil stained with the whore’s own blood. Long Liz! Tall and lank. I wanted to yank her head back and
rip
that lying tongue out by its roots!

Nothing but a tired old whore now, but she must have been a blond beauty in her youth, the signs were still there, but you had to squint and look hard to see them. Haunting gray eyes—like tarnished silver left out in the rain. She claimed to have the second sight, but the bitch
never
saw what was coming or else she would have run from me and not
clung
to me. I couldn’t wait to
cut, Cut, CUT
her! Dark yellow hair, like burned butter, hanging down in stringy, greasy hanks, hair fit for a hag, framing a face haggard and gaunt. But what fine cheekbones! A sculptor would have loved them! Good bones tell. I traced them with my fingertip. I couldn’t wait to bare them down to the bone; I wanted to see it shining white as a pearl in the moonlight.
Who’s the poetic one now, Michael?
She had no upper teeth; she’d lost them, she said, in the
Princess Alice
steamship disaster. Her husband and nine children had been amongst the seven hundred who died when a collier rammed it. As she clambered up a ladder, always just a step above the rising water that threatened to suck her back down to a watery death, the man above her slipped and his heavy work boot kicked her in the mouth and knocked her teeth out, caved the roof of her mouth in, and cleaved her upper palate clean in two.

She seemed to mourn the loss of her teeth more than her family. It would be a
pleasure
to send this selfish whore to Hell! I would take my time and
savor
each moment! I couldn’t wait to start cutting, to plunge my knife in and
twist
it around, stirring her innards like some foul witch’s brew! I would show the bitch that there are worse things than losing one’s teeth.

Second sight, my arse, you silly bitch!
While I smiled and charmed her, inside I was taunting the vain fool:
Why ever did you let your family go aboard the
Princess Alice
? Why didn’t you save them and your precious teeth? Why don’t you now? You still could, you know! And now you’re promenading like a lady in the park with the man who’s about to take your sorry whore’s life—second sight indeed!

I saved her life. She thought that meant she could trust me, that I would
protect
her. What
fools
women are! They have no sense of danger; they never see it until it’s right in front of their faces and too late to run! The knife’s already at their throat before they even think to scream and then they’re paralyzed with fright! Women are born to be the victims of men like me.

It was a rain-sodden Saturday, a cold, dark night. I first saw her through a curtain of rain. She was standing in the doorway of the Bricklayers’ Arms pub, taking shelter from the rain, trying to keep warm, huddled and crammed in with several other men and women in the same plight. There was a man with her, dark haired with a droopy mustache.

“That’s Leather Apron you’ve got cozyin’ up nexta you,” one of the men nudged and teased her, jerking his head at her companion, but she just laughed and clung tighter to his arm. She seemed to know him well . . . well enough not to be afraid.

That remark about “Leather Apron” got my attention. I followed them. In Berner Street, they rested against a wall. He leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She put her palm against his chest, shook her head, and gave him a playful little push.

“Not tonight, some other time perhaps,” she said. A whore who said no; how intriguing!

To his mind, that was clearly the wrong answer. He tried to pull her through the gate. She kicked and fought him. He shoved her down. She screamed. He grabbed her head with one hand while the other fumbled past his heavy overcoat to unbutton his trousers. She screamed again.

“Lipski! Lipski!”
some fool, paused to light his pipe upon the opposite pavement, shouted, pointing at the man, who did have a distinctly Jewish appearance. It’s an insult they use in these parts; it was the name of a Jew who killed a girl a few years back. That stopped the man cold with his cock wilting and his trousers sagging.

The man with the pipe trembled and took off with the whore’s assailant in hot pursuit, running toward the railway station. I wonder what he did to him when he caught him? That would teach the fool to go around shouting,
“Lipski!”

Like the Good Samaritan, I helped the fallen woman up. I straightened her bonnet, tweaking the limp black crepe ruffles as though I were the finest milliner in Paris proud of my latest creation, and retrieved the brass thimble and wad of black thread that had fallen from her pocket. She stroked the diamond horseshoe on my black tie with a covetous gleam in her gray eyes—the bitch would nip it if I did not watch her!—and told me I had brought her luck. I was her hero, her savior; she could not thank me enough!

I gave her one of Edwin’s gay silk handkerchiefs—a green-and-yellow-checkered one. I knotted it playfully about her neck, wanting to
twist
it tight, but not yet, not yet.... With my own handkerchief I wiped the grime from her cheek where she had grazed it against the wet pavement. I gave her a pack of pretty pink cachous from my pocket; her breath stank of gin and rot and I hoped she would take the hint and make immediate use of them, but she merely held them in her hand, awkwardly, admiring them—“such a pretty pink!”—as though she didn’t know what to do with them and was afraid to ask. I bought her a red rose, backed with maidenhair fern, and pinned it on her shabby black jacket.

I lulled her with kind words; I soothed her with sweet deeds. I wanted her to trust me; I
needed
it. It would make the horror when it came so much the sweeter! I wanted to see the hurt and betrayal in her eyes as she died! I wanted this to be sublime, an experience I would
never
forget! I wanted this whore to close her eyes in rapture, to submit to me like the most willing lover, the one she had dreamed of all her life but never found. I wanted her to expect delights, to dream of them, only to awaken to a nightmare in my arms that was all
too
real as I plunged my knife in and
twisted
it around.

I strolled her down the street; I told her even though it was raining—a light and inconstant drizzle—the sun shone for me every time I looked at her. A fruiterer’s shop was still open though it was nearing midnight, with a tempting array of white and black grapes arranged in his window. He was yawning and about to close his shutters. I bought half a pound of black grapes and shared them with her, but the ungrateful bitch merely chewed them, then spit them out into the street. She said she didn’t like how they felt going down her throat. At least she had the decency to use her own handkerchief to wipe the juice from her chin and not the fine silk one I had just given her. The cheap and vulgar tart, she had no refinement at all!

The International Working Men’s Educational Club was having a meeting, a bunch of socialist Jews and armchair anarchists who used politics as an excuse to get a night away from their wives once a week, and music was coming from the open windows of their clubhouse, so we strolled up and down Berner Street listening to it, Long Liz sometimes singing along when she knew the words. Then I drew her close and whispered, “Will you?”

Coyly twirling a grape stem, she said, “Yes.”

They
always
say yes to a toff like me!

Stupid bitches, they think clothes make the man, that coarse clothes and manners means a brute and that they can trust a suit and spats, a fine black overcoat trimmed with astrakhan, a mammoth gold watch chain gleaming on a man’s vest, a diamond horseshoe twinkling in his tie, and a tall silk topper or deerstalker hat. Because a man is dressed as a gentleman they think he is a
gentle
man. They don’t realize it, but I’m dressed to kill! I don a deerstalker
only
when I go hunting.

I followed her through the gate, the same one that surly chap had tried to drag her through. This time she went willingly, leading me by the hand, looking back at me with bold eyes. Oh yes, she must have been beautiful when she was young! Eyes like a gray dove’s plumage; what a pity she was so soiled.

The night was cold; so were my hands, and even colder my heart. I am a man of ice,
angry
ice, through and through! My hands were numb, but they would soon be warm. She turned away, fussing with the fastenings on her jacket. I drew my knife out. Just then she happened to glance back. She opened her mouth to scream. I grabbed the knot of the checkered silk handkerchief and
twisted
it viciously tight. I silenced the bitch with scarcely a whimper. A little worn-down stub of a knife, the blade barely a nub, fell from her lifeless fingers. How
dare
the bitch even think of trying to fight for her life; didn’t she know it wasn’t worth it? I stuffed the knife in my pocket—another souvenir. I took her prayer book too. She had shown it to me earlier, to prove that she knew what the Devil looked like.

I lowered her to the ground. I drew my knife across her throat. I felt my fingers tingle as I bathed them in her hot blood. A horse neighed nearby—
too
nearby! I started and glanced back over my shoulder. Hooves flailed the air. A man shouted; a whip cracked; the pony kicked the air and shied, refusing to pass through the gate. They call horses “dumb animals,” but they are so much more sensitive than we humans are. The horse knew what his driver didn’t. I scrambled back into the shadows, tensely awaiting my moment as he leaned forward and poked at her hip with his whip. I could not be trapped here in this courtyard. I groped for my silver box. I licked my medicine from my bloody palm, I tasted her blood along with its power. I felt strength surge through me. I
knew
everything would be all right!

The driver got down and struck a match. It was a windy night and the match immediately went out. He tried again. It must have been enough for him to see the blood. He ran into the club, jabbering in his Jew tongue. I saw my chance and seized it. I drew my overcoat tight about me and stepped swiftly past the cart, out into the street, and walked calmly but quickly away.

The bloodlust was still upon me. It drove me relentlessly onward. I couldn’t stop! As I walked, I sprinkled more of my medicine onto my palm and licked it. I moved deeper into the city, losing myself in the dark labyrinth of tangled and decaying, stinking, rubbish-strewn streets.

My hands were numb again and cold, so
very
cold, like my heart. I was shivering. The blood cools so quickly; I
needed
its warmth, that feeling of release, to be reborn in a bloody baptism. I
had
to kill again, I needed to
rip,
to hear the flesh tear, the grotesque musical gurgle of burbling blood and air escaping from a severed windpipe. They’d never sing again; I always took their voices away, and then their lives. But a slashed throat was
never
enough. I
had
to plunge my hands inside and grope and plunder. I had to feel the life go out and the hot blood turn cold. I
had
to know that thrill again!

I’d romanced a young whore called Rosey in Heneage Court earlier that evening. We spooned, sitting on a dustbin, but we had been interrupted, by a bumbling fool of a bobby no less. I pointed to my black bag and said I was a doctor, and the girl backed me up—bless her sweet, trusting soul!—so I spared her. I kissed her brow and called her “a sweet young thing” as I gently took my leave of her. Now I almost wished I hadn’t. . . . The next bitch I would make pay for my thwarted kill; I would do
everything
I intended for Long Liz and more,
much more!
Her own mother wouldn’t recognize the whore when I was done with her.