Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

It never occurred to me. Covering the killer was enough; the idea of generating news, presumably of some sort of fabricated nonsense, struck me as appalling. Yet again, because I am who I am and lack certain moral strengths, and because I had gotten so much out of the killer’s campaign against Whitechapel’s Judys, I said nothing.

Dam mentioned something about a special edition that put the pictures of the two victims on the front page, to be run in black borders, with comments from the various children.

“Not going to do it, I’m afraid,” said O’Connor. “Our readers don’t want maudlin, they want mayhem. They want the red stuff sticky on their hands.”

We batted it around for a bit, nice and easy-like, and I popped up with a few absurdities – what would the day’s leading intellectuals, such as Mr. Hardy, Mr. Darwin, Mr. Galton, think, for example.

But the chat ran down sadly, and gloom filled the room. And then – hark, the herald angels sing!

“I got it,” said Harry. “Yes, I do. Okay, what’s this missing? It’s even missing here in this room, and we’re talking around it.”

Silence, not of the golden sort.

“It’s a story,” said Harry finally. “It needs a villain.”

“Well, it’s got a villain,” I said. “We just have no idea who it is.”

“But he’s not a character. He’s an idea, a phantom, a theory, an unknown. Sometimes he’s ‘the fiend’ and sometimes ‘the murderer,’ but he has no personality, no image. We can’t get a fix on him. It’s not enough that he’s an Ikey, even if the folks do hate their Ikeys. He’s still blurry, indistinct.”

“I don’t—” I started to say.

“He needs a name.”

It was so absurdly simple, it brought conversation to a halt.

O’Connor sucked the cigar, Harry tossed down more brown and looked up, smiling. I sat there, feeling like a conspirator against Caesar, but then remembered I hated Caesar, so it would be all right. I also hated Harry for coming up with such a great idea. He was not without ability.

He was so positive. It’s an American trait. Doubt is not in their vocabulary, nor half-speed ahead, nor anything that smacks of consideration, context, contemplation. They leave that for the poofs. For them it’s always Dam the torpedoes!

Harry went on. “It can’t just be any name, like Tom, Dick, or Harry. It needs to be special, clever, the sort of catchy thing you remember and that sticks in your mind. It’s got to have that ring to it. I thought of ‘Ike the Kike,’ but that’s too ridiculous.”

“And suppose he turns out to be a High Church Anglican bishop,” I said. “How embarrassing.”

“Good point,” said Harry. “That’s why it has to be a good name. We need a genius to figure it out.”

“I’ll drop in on Darwin,” I said, “and if he’s not busy, I’m sure he’ll pitch in. If not he, perhaps Cousin Galton will join our campaign.” Sarcasm: last redoubt of the utterly defeated.

“I don’t know those guys, but I get your point. We need something thought up by someone who’s got a big talent.”

“Harry,” said O’Connor, “do go on. I like this, even if I can’t yet see where it’s going. And I’m confused how to make it happen.”

“Okay,” said Harry. “Here’s how I see it. We come up with a letter from the guy, and he signs it with a name that will ring bang-on through the ages. No advert can top it, it’s so perfect. Now, we can’t run it ourselves, because everyone would sniff a phony. So the letter goes to the Central News Agency. You know, they’re such hacks, they won’t think twice about spreading it throughout the town. And now he’s got a name, he’s hot again. It bridges the gap until he strikes.”

“Suppose it makes him strike again,” I said.

“Come now, man,” said O’Connor. “You saw the wounds. This darling rips them up so bad, he’s obviously mad as a March hare. Nothing we do is going to influence that degree of insanity a whit.”

I did see the wisdom in this. After all, I had seen the gutting of Annie Chapman, and I believed no sane man could do such a thing. It was hard for a sane man to even look upon it.

“Since it’s your idea, Harry, perhaps you should write it,” said O’Connor.

“Wish I could, boss,” said Harry. “But I’m not what you call a poet. Words come out of me like little tiny rabbit turds. Grunting, oofing, and pushing. I’m a reporter, not a writer.”

Again silence, but this time it was accompanied by stares, which came in a bit to rest on me. They both bored into me. It dawned on me where this was going, and I had to suspect it had been set up this way to make it seem spontaneous.

“Jeb’s the best I’ve ever read. He can’t put a sentence together that doesn’t sound like music. He’s the poet we need,” Harry proclaimed.

“Ah—” I started to object, but being hopelessly addicted to praise, I didn’t object too violently, for I wanted a few more gallons to come slopping down the chute onto my head.

“I wish I had his talent,” continued Harry. “My energy, his talent, his, uh, genius, no telling how far we’d go.”

“I think you’re right,” said O’Connor.

These fellows obviously thought it was something that could be turned on like a spigot. All I had to do was crank my genius faucet fully to the right and out would gush words for the ages. They had no idea that the faucet was rusty and temperamental, and the more you twisted it, the more you fretted and forced, the less likely it was to arrive on schedule. In fact, there was no schedule. It happened when it happened, and sometimes that was never.

“Now, listen here, Jeb,” said O’Connor. “Let’s think this through carefully. Indeed, yes, it’s built around a name, a name that clangs like a fire bell. But it’s also a tone. You’ve got to find something new. It has to play with words in an uncommon way, strike a chord that hasn’t been heard, affect an attitude new to the world. It has to be coldly ironic, for a start.”

“I don’t get ironic,” said Harry. “Never have. Iron, the ore? It has to have iron in it?”

“No, no, Harry, not the ore. It’s got to have a deft way of saying something A, so absurd and preposterous, that it decodes to something B, the exact opposite. When you asked Jeb about the shooting, he said, ‘Quite jolly.’ Lacking much sense of how we speak over here, you thought he meant ‘Quite jolly.’ But in his voice was that elusive tone of which I speak, nuanced, coded, subtle, a series of inflections meshed perfectly with little facial expressions such as slightly lifted left brow, slightly snarled upper lip, and a kind of trailing, dissipating rhythm, by which he communicated to me and far more to himself that he considers such action as blowing little birdies out of the sky with twelve-dram blasts, so that there’s nothing left but feathers and gristle, positively ghastly. That’s irony. That’s what this letter needs. That will make it last.”

Harry took an excellent lesson from this. “He doesn’t like hunting?” he asked incredulously.

We ignored him. He’d never get it, even if the initial impulse had been his.

“I’m not sure I’m up to this,” I said.

“Jeb, you’re halfway to a fine future. I’ll play you big in recompense, and in a bit you’ll be able to jump to a posh rag like the Times , where your gifts will make your fame, and they’ll send you all over the world and all the publishers will be beating down your door for a manuscript.”

I knew I was doomed. He had me cold. I was the birdie in the sights of his four-dram. The man was a genius.

And so, my first masterpiece. Like any piece of great writing, it has no autobiography. You cannot segmentize it and say, This came from there, and then I figured out that, and then from somewhere else that arrived, and there it was. No, no, not like that at all. It is more a process not of writing, I suppose, even less of willing, but somehow of becoming. You become what you must become.