Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

The adjacent river, once bustling with trade to and from Calcutta, trickled quietly now that the English had finished building the railroads for faster transport of opium and spices. Instead of the commerce of the past, men, women, and children now bathed and played there. Elders prayed and chatted as the children splashed about. Everyone in the village went outside at this early hour because later it would be even hotter.

Asking for directions from a group of near naked natives, Frank, stopping to wipe his brow and take water, reached a mud hut in a narrow lane. On the side of the house was a pile of dried plants, dead animals, and rubbish. An even stronger odor attacked him from higher up. Stuck to the walls of the house, clumps of cow dung were being heated in the sun and dried for use as fuel. Under the veranda, a striking young woman, bareheaded and barefoot, was preparing food. She had not lit a fire-a sign she was in mourning. A naked toddler held onto both of her legs for balance. Flies were swarming around the woman, the child, the grain, the ghee.

“You are the widow Narain?” Frank Dickens asked, stepping forward.

She nodded.

“It was my officers, some weeks ago, in the Bagirhaut province, that had him in custody after he and some partners stole opium.”

“We are a very poor village, sir,” the widow remarked, without any shade of apology in her strong voice. “He worked the fields until there were too many workers and no land left to work.”

The hut was surprisingly clean. Frank saw the articles of farming, a rough plow, a broken sickle, hanging from the roof, long in disuse. In the bedroom there was the bed, made of string and wood, and a single book on Hindoo gods in an indentation in the wall that had room for several more volumes. Using the bed as a sofa, Frank sat down and skimmed through the pages of the Hindoo book.

Returning to the widow, who was now nursing her child, he asked whether the book had belonged to her husband.

She nodded.

“He read often?”

“He was never without his books.”

After receiving directions to the bookseller where she had sold other books, Frank walked across the village and found the stall at the quiet end of the busy bazaar.

“The widow Narain has sold you some of her husband's books, I believe. Tracts on Hindoo mythology and religion. Do you remember this?”

The bookseller lowered his spectacles at the Englishman. “Indeed!”

“And you still have these in your stall?”

“I believe I do, good sir. But all the books are mixed together.”

“I will purchase all of the books on these subjects that you have.”

After his return journey in the wretched paiki , that evening Frank met the inspector who had questioned the captured fugitive.

“Oh, yes, Superintendent, he has confessed it all to the magistrate of his village. Not as tolerant of physical discomfort as the Thuggees I used to interview in past years, these ordinary dacoits. ”

“You believe he has told the truth?” asked Dickens.

“I do, yet…”

“What is it, Inspector?”

“Only that although he has told the truth, it seems to me there's more he's not saying, as though afraid, afraid in a different way than I can make him on the chabutra. The thief may have a secret he has yet kept from us. Your man Turner has been trying to find out what has happened all day. He is rather worked up over the affair.”

Dickens ignored this. “The thief has told you where we will find the stolen opium?”

“I warned him not to play games. He's drawn a map.”

“Recovering the opium shall be our first order of business. Then I shall see to his secret and to Officer Turner's.”

London, late at night, 1870

DATCHERY” WAS AT THE ABBEY THAT NIGHT WAITING. MADMAN or not, he could be trusted to be where he said he would, thought Osgood. Punctually mad. Datchery-for Osgood had no other name for the man than that preposterous one-took the publisher by the arm and they began to walk the damp streets. A sharp afternoon rain had driven people indoors. But as the two men gradually plunged deeper into the eastern districts of London there was more life; if the rest of London quieted when darkness fell, this place was just waking up. Contrasted with the frail, sputtering lamps of the streets, the public houses and dram shops provided blazing illumination through their windows. Bright signs advertised telegraph services to India to reach family or sailors; posters offered new watches and hats. Sailors came to spend every penny to their names before shipping off again.

It drizzled to a deviously slow rhythm as the two men continued on their journey. Murky liquid rushed through the gutter becoming something altogether different from water by the time the drain swallowed it. The men left wide streets for labyrinthine courts, lanes, byways, and alleys. There was Bloody Bridge, below which the water looked more like mud, named for the number of people who would regularly choose that spot to scuttle themselves.

“Is this near where you live?” Osgood asked.

“No, no,” said Datchery. “I live nowhere.”

“Come!” Osgood objected to the absurdity.

“I mean I'm as poor as Job's turkey, so I keep to rented rooms and lodging houses, mostly, so they will not find me.”

“So who will not find you, Mr. Datchery?” Osgood demanded, but the topic was pushed aside by Datchery's impervious disposition and the vague and inhuman moans and cries circling around them. Osgood tried a different question: “How far will we go?”

“When we are somewhere we should stop, we will,” said Datchery. “Though I am the guide, it is not I who guides us.”

“Then who does?” Osgood asked, knowing there wouldn't be an answer forthcoming, probably because none existed.

Sick men and women lay huddled in the corners. Agents from the charity homes picked up wanderers, mostly women with infants, some with three babies balanced in their arms. Osgood knew Dickens had taken this sort of walk-expeditions to every lost corner of London to observe and record its multitudes. Like the geologist, Dickens had built his books by digging up every layer of life underneath the city.

There were times when Datchery's expression would flatten and become dull-or when his eyes seemed clearer, sharper tools than just a moment before.

They were inside the roughest part of London Osgood had ever seen. In fact, the publisher's only comfort was in observing the fact that none of the cursing crowds of humanity-who, by all appearances, would have spent their daylight hours either on ships or as thieves-had approached them yet. Some offered sarcastic “good nights” from windows or open doorways. Then Osgood noticed that his guide was carrying a large club. In fact, it was more complex than a club. At the top, it had a spike and a hook coming out from the side.

Datchery, noticing Osgood's interest, said, “Without this, we'd be stripped to our shirtsleeves by now, dear Ripley. Dearest Ripley! This is Tiger Bay, and we are coming to Palmer's Folly!” The names themselves sounded like warnings.

THERE WAS A cul-de-sac at a narrow court, entered under a crumbling archway, that ended at a three-story building of blackened brick with a black door and sightless windows. On either side of it stood a public house and a thieves’ lodging house. As the two men walked, each step produced a brittle cracking. It took Osgood a few minutes to realize their path was littered with the bones of animals and fish. In front of the public house was a wretched column of people of both sexes and all races, trying to push past one another for a better view of the steps.