Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

“Then, Jack must be invisible. Not in the physical sense but in the social sense: He must be someone whom all could look upon, of high station or low, of fine education or none, and see nothing. This is partly that aforementioned slightness, but it is also his demeanor. Such a demeanor, carefully calibrated, is again exactly the sort of behavior the raider, a scout in mufti among an enemy population, must achieve. He must pass for the banal poor, unremarkable of aspect and unsurprising of presence; he must be part of the wallpaper. But that accounts only for witnesses on the to-or-from. More pertinently, none of the victims screamed or gave evidence of having fled or fought. They identified Jack, from the first time they saw him to his approach to all that passed between them before the incidence of the knife, as being without threat, which is why he was able to close to cutting range on them and finish them so devastatingly.

“Now let us talk of vision. His must be extraordinary, not a mere 20/20, as is normal, but at least the rare but infinitely superior 20/200. He sees farther into the dark and retains more precision from the quarter-moonlight he prefers—”

I could not but interrupt. “Professor, Annie Chapman, the second, was not slain in quarter-moonlight but in full dark.”

“Indeed. That was his exception. And why? Because he had already performed reconnaissance, like the good raider, and knew from observation that she would guide him to 29 Hanbury Street, through the passage, and into the yard. He knew there would be illumination from still-lit windows on the backsides of 29 and 27, next door. The moon’s light was not a consideration on that one. He made adjustments; he struck outside the range of his vision requirements. That, too, is what a soldier does, or he dies. He must adapt. So he found the generally correct range of illumination, when there’s enough to commit but not enough to give one away. He must have been on campaign in these conditions and gotten used to it and feels capable and more than equal to the police in the circumstance. On the other hand, being both resilient and inventive, he is supple enough to violate the dogma when he finds he must do so.”

I was writing this all down in the twisted dashes and swoops that formed the Pitman method; at the same time, I was hearing interpretations that fascinated me. He had seen so deeply into it! Was he the world’s greatest detective? Or was I the world’s greatest boob?

“Let me sum up: He is a very special sort of Britisher. He is comfortable among wild tribes and in desert or jungle wilderness. He loves desolate spaces. He yearns to be free of the filaments and silken bonds of our Victorian society, with its rigid caste system and its terrible hypocrisies, yet he’s willing to risk his life for those alone. He can live, even thrive, amid a native element, which means he has a quick ear for language. He is what might be called a pathfinder for empire. He was the first boyo to go beyond the frontier and reach out and open communications. He was a quick study on the intricacies of tribal politics and could play faction off against faction, all while keeping the agenda rolling to the queen’s good. He must have been adept, it follows, at the tricks of espionage, such as coding, signaling, assassination, subterfuge, camouflage, gambits of deceit, disguise. He must have a love of adventure and tire quickly of the nonsense that is spoken at balls and soirees and in Whitehall or Parliament or Buckingham. He has friends in intelligence or political circles, so he’s a public school man, where he met those he would be serving, and where they learned him to be a good man, reliable, loyal to the throne.”

“That plus his dyslexia,” I said, so excited I could hardly contain myself, “and by God, sir, we’ve got him.”

“Oh, I left out his most salient aspect,” said Professor Dare. He paused, for he was not without theatrical guile.

“What, dammit?” I said.

“As I said, the spiritual.”

The man was a sphinx with his mystery, playing me like a fool. And like a fool, I could not resist. “What, Professor? What are you—”

“Why, man, is it not obvious? The man indeed has a faith, and he has expressed it every time he has struck. It is his bedrock, his religion, his God. He is a true believer.”

The look on my face must have amused him. He finally took pity. “The man, above all else, is humanitarian.”

Humanitarian? A humanitarian throat cutter? At that point, I thought: Farewell, Sherlock Holmes!

Ipulled my weapon. It was my cock.

“Here, then,” she said, “let Suzie put you to me and make you feel all good and warm, that’s what Suzie does, she does.”

Her hands upon me were indeed an angel’s. I felt each of them against my stout member. As she guided me into her, her fingers were gentle yet firm, kind yet serious, ideal yet sensual. I felt some wiggle as she found opening, acquired proper angle, pushed, pulled, guided, adjusted, corrected, bringing herself to me as much as me to her, and then she had me full in, set, and into her center I plunged. I felt it as satin on silk with some hint of lubricity, the surfaces meshing against a whisper of friction for the thrill of tightness, and we formed perfectly into a dynamo of smoothness, a sense of gliding, gliding, gliding until, in so far I felt I’d die, either she ran out of channel or I ran short on instrument.

“Oh, God,” she said, “oh, sir, how wonderful you feel inside of me.” Was this malarkey she gave all the boys? Who cared at that point, for my hips took up a natural rhythm and we began the dance, the ritual, the tribal ceremony. I felt her heart, her thin-boned chest against my heavier issue, the damned interference of our clothes, but soon, in the plunging and partial withdrawing to plunge again, there was a magic in her hips, and she found the primal rhythm, she was able to arrange her body and her hips as if on a sustaining armature, and it freed her hips to begin to move as if alone in space, propelled by a reptile brain unacknowledged by higher functions, and that is why it was so magical and that is why men and women in circumstances high and low, mortal or humane, decent or desperate, sell their souls in a trice for its exquisite anarchy.

I lost all sense of clothes at all, two bodies in a church, the church in the city, the city in the nation, the nation on the planet. With my hands I pressed her against me, believing I could feel her shudder, knowing I could feel her hips find and match my speed and urgency. I kissed her hard, and it was a tongue-tongue thing, all thrash and suck and slurp and mash, feeling our breath combine as it poured from engorged nostrils. There remained but the spasm, and it occurred when it should occur, too soon yet too late, which is to say perfection, as there seemed no point of postponement, to say nothing of the will. My release was cataclysmic. I have heard of of a chemical called dynamite that can explode anything, and it was as if I’d been packed with this wonder stuff. The details are banal in the telling, but not in the remembering, and not in the actual.

I pulled back, breathing hard, sucking for God’s oxygen to fill my depleted lungs and bring vigor to my exhausted limbs. I felt the great, satisfied emptiness. I saw her in candle flicker, skirts dropped again, smiling almost as if it had been more than a performance, shaking her head to release her fair hair from the tangles that the dampness of her sweat had ensnared it within. She dipped into her purse and pulled out some muffinlike piece with which to powder her face.

“There now,” she said, “feeling all better, are we?”