Marc Olden - Poe must die

“Loo? Loo is a place where a man pisses.”

Poe sneered. Figg the thickheaded. “Louvre, not loo. Louvre is the name of his licentious and lively dance hall, to which we are being carted by this most slow pair of horses. A famed Paris museum has some prior claim to that title, but no matter. Mr. Baker is a lively, Irish-”

“Thief. All the bloody thieves in this ‘ere city is Irish.”

“A thesis not worth contesting. Take care you do not mock Mr. Baker.”

As the wooden cab wheels bounced over a poorly cobbled street, Figg jerked upright in his seat. “Now why would I want a giggle at Mr. Baker’s expense? Ain’t ‘e the one whats goin’ to place us in contact with Mr. Hamlet Sproul?”

“Mr. Baker is pleasant looking though unfortunately cursed with crossed eyes. He is said to have killed men who find this deformity a laughing matter.”

Figg turned up his coat collar at the cold night air. “I will remember that. Take care not to laugh at a man whats lookin’ at both sides of ‘is nose at the same time. My gawd, the smell!” Figg held his nose with fingers Poe thought were the size of bananas.

“Slaughterhouses, stables, buildings where liquors are made and the mountains of garbage. Like the poor, Mr. Figg, these odors are everywhere.”

Ahead of them, Figg watched the gaslights that brightened the streets and shop windows on either side of Broadway. Wagons, coaches, sleighs all carried burning lanterns on the back and Figg had never seen so many people clogging a street at night.

So many lights. Like polished jewels. And people. Weren’t any of them bothered by the smells?

More bonfires. Almost on every street corner. Figg asked why.

“Epidemics, Mr. Figg. Cholera and yellow fever strike this filthy city every year and it is the belief of some that a burning fire will clean the air of such plagues. Look at your boots.”

Figg did, squinting in the darkness. “Stuff on ’em. What-”

“Coal dust mixed with quicklime. Spread throughout the streets also in the belief that it will prevent disease.”

Figg frowned, a sight Poe would never regard as reassuring. “’Ere now, I don’t want to be catchin’ no plague, you understand.”

“I am not the one to speak to about that. Considering your eating habits, you may expire of kitchen excess long before the plague succeeds-”

Figg growled, “What’s so displeasin’ about me eatin’ habits, squire, if I might make so bold?”

Poe leaned right as the cab turned sharply, its back wheels sliding on snow-covered cobbles. Figg had eaten three omelettes, four dishes of chocolate ice cream and an entire loaf of bread, washed down with two pots of coffee and all of it swallowed in record time. The man ate like a Hun.

“Your eating habits,” said Poe, “are Paleolithic.”

“What’s that ‘spose to mean?”

“It means you approach food with an enthusiasm unseen since man first learned to walk upright.”

“I gets the impression you are being sarcastic.”

Poe turned to him. “Bravo. It gets impressions. Fan that tiny flame of sensitivity and eventually it will grow into a veritable blaze of mediocrity.” Poe sneered.

Figg’s smile was slow and he kept it in place for a short time before speaking. “Squire, if I didn’t need you, I would give some thought to punchin’ yer big ‘ead down deep twixt yer shoulders.”

“Am I to assume that this represents your mind functioning at its subtle best?”

“Squire, assume that you are still livin’ and that you are a most fortunate gent.”

“’Let there be light! said God, and there was light!’’ Let there be blood! says man, and there’s a sea.'” Poe snorted. “Before you ask, it is a quote from Lord Byron, a poet of some note.”

Figg removed his top hat, running a thick hand over his shaven skull. “Fancied hisself a boxer, Byron did. Never saw a gent what pulled more ladies. Everytime I meets him, he has three or four ladies-”

Poe’s voice was barely a whisper. “You met Byron?”

Figg looked out of his side of the cab at the strolling nighttime crowds. “Tried teachin’ him a wee bit of boxin’, but he had that club foot and he was always eatin’ boiled potatoes drowned in vinegar to give him that pale complexion he thought the ladies all loved, so he didn’t have the strength to-”

“You met Byron ?” The English poet, dead for twenty-four years, had been the most dashing and romantic figure of his time, the most controversial poet to emerge from England in this century and he had been a major influence on Poe.

“I see you are impressed, squire. Yes, I met him and a right sorry lot he was, too. Him and me was both young men but he was throwin’ away his life chasin’ the ladies or lettin’ them chase him and he owed money and he gets hisself into some kind of scandal concernin’ his half-sister.” Figg shook his head sadly. “Wasted life, if you ask me. Dies in Greece fightin’ somebody else’s war. Damn stupid, I say.”

“A glorious way to die,” said Poe, eyes on Figg.

“Squire, we all are goin’ to end up as food for the worms but I think it’s better to die fightin’ for somethin’ that’s your own, get me meanin’?”

Poe nodded. This ape sitting beside him with the bulldog face had actually met Byron. And Dickens. Thackeray. Carlyle. Tennyson. And damn little of it had rubbed off, it appeared. He was still rude, crude and not one to take to the palace. Change that. He had been to the palace. Poe shook his head.

“Mr. Figg? Mr. Figg?”

But Figg had slumped down in his seat, top hat covering his face.

“Gots to gets me beauty nap when I can squire, when I can. Long night in front. From the Irishman it’s back to them Renaissance travellin’ players. Wake me when we gets where we’re goin’.”

Poe wanted to talk about Byron and Figg wanted to sleep. The poet sighed. The ape sleeps in ignorance of the greatness around him. He absorbs it not. Surely God is a buffoon to have created so many buffoons in his image.

Poe, shivering in his greatcoat, licked his lips and thought of the taste of gin. And rum. And wine. He hadn’t had a drink in almost two days. Forty-eight hours. His mouth tasted of ashes yet his head felt clear and he was functioning. But he was writing little and giving no thought to his job at the Evening Mirror, or the fifty cents a page he earned there for scribbling anything that came to mind. He smiled. No money, no liquor which was not unusual. Rachel. The thought of her was enough. He smiled again.

The cabdriver flicked the whip and both horses strained against their harnesses. Poe breathed in the cool night air and thought of Jonathan, demons and Dearborn Lapham. And the very dead, still immersed in ice somewhere on this stinking island, Justin Coltman.

TWENTY-ONE

HAMLET SPROUL SAT on the floor, Ida Sairs’ cold hand pressed against his cheek. He had never known such terrible sorrow in all his life. He wept, moaned, rocked back and forth and he vowed revenge.

Jonathan. Mr. Poe. Yes, even the Englishman with the ugly bulldog face, who had climbed down the ladder to kill Chopback and Isaac Bard. Him, too. They would all die for what had happened here this night. Hamlet Sproul would have his revenge for the killing of his boys and Ida. Dear little Ida, who had hurt no man and who had been hurt by all men. Ida, who had brought a welcomed sweetness into the hard life of Hamlet Sproul.

He screamed at the top of his voice, a wordless cry torn deep from his pained soul.

What kind of beast would carve the heart and liver from small boys and a gentle woman? And burn them.

Jonathan. With help from that bastard Poe. This was his vengeance for trying to kill him in the stable. To do this to a woman-