The Trial of Elizabeth Cree (7 page)

“If I may say so, sir, murder is a bourgeois preoccupation.”

“Oh? Is it so?”

“We dwell on the suffering of one, and forget about the sufferings of many. When we ascribe guilt to one single agent, then we can deny the responsibility of all.”

“I cannot follow you there.”

“What is one murder here or there compared with the historical process? And yet, when we pick up a newspaper, what do we find but murder alone?”

“You throw the subject in a new light, certainly.”

“It is the light of world history.
Weltgeschichte
.”

We were close now to our journey’s end, and I could see the tower of St. Anne’s, Limehouse, with the fog swirling about it. What a good fortune for me that this Prussian philosopher lived in the theater of my operations; to dispatch him here, among the whores, would make a very neat piece of tomfoolery. “Let me take you to your lodgings,” I said. “It is too foul a night to walk far.”

“Scofield Street is my destination. It is close to the Highway here.”

“Yes. I know it very well.” I knew it to be in the Hebrew quarter, too, and I was more delighted still. To murder a Jew—it had the wonderful flavor of some blood-and-thunder play although, as I have had cause to observe in the past, the drama upon the stage is sometimes no more than an intensification of the rituals within our own hearts. And speaking of hearts, I yearned to see that of the old man with the glittering eyes. I could hold it and cherish it. And then, perhaps, make it a part of myself? What are the lines of that unjustly neglected poet, Robert Browning?

The cabdriver banged on the trap and asked for directions; he had taken us only reluctantly to this neighborhood, well known for its dens and its flash houses, and now wanted to leave us here as quickly as he could. “Scofield Street!” I shouted up to him. “Turn left at the next corner, and it is on our right hand.” I knew Limehouse so well that it had become my own Field of Forty Footsteps. That was the notorious field behind Montague House where so much blood had been shed that no grass would
ever grow, and, as I explained to my German scholar while we came up to his street, by curious coincidence that patch of fatal ground lies directly beneath the Reading Room of the British Museum. He did not find this of any great concern, and made ready to leave the cab. Well, my fine friend, I thought as I watched him gathering his coat about himself and wrapping his scarf around his throat, you will soon know for yourself how books and blood can be subtly joined together. We stopped on the dark side of the street, and I pressed half a crown into the driver’s hand before escorting my companion to the door of Number 7. I wished to be able to recognize it again, at the appointed time. We saluted each other, and then I turned on my heel towards the river. The tide was out and there was such a stench that the fog itself seemed like some miasma of filth and effluence. But the gay ladies were still at their game, and I sought for one who stood apart from the rest. I was crossing Limehouse Reach in the direction of the seamen’s mission, when I saw a shape ahead of me—whether of woman, or man, or something else, I could not tell; but I pressed my bag against my chest, and hurried after. It was a woman shivering with the damp and the cold, who looked at me gratefully enough.

“What is your name, my little bird?”

“I’m Jane.”

“Well, Jane, where do you go from here?”

“I have a room in that house, sir, with the yellow door.”

“All things look yellow in this fog, Jane. You will have to guide me there.” I took her by the arm, but then turned her about to face the river. “Shall we take a walk before we retire? I wonder if we can see the Surrey shore.” Of course we could see nothing whatever, and by the time we came to some old steps there was a silence so profound that it seemed to be some material element of the fog. “How do you take it, Jane?”

“I take it any way you care to give it, sir.”

“Will you say ‘when’?”

“Just as you like.”

“Let’s go down the steps a little way. My home is down below, you see.” She seemed reluctant to follow me, but I coaxed her. “I have something in my bag which might please you. Have you heard of the new protective sheath? Look here.” I opened the bag and then, with a quick movement, took my knife and cut her across the throat from left to right. It was a powerful start, although I say so myself, and she leaned back against the wall with an astonished look upon her face; she sighed and seemed eager for more, so I obliged her with a few deep cuts. Then, lost in the fog, I created such a spectacle that no eye seeing it could fail to be moved. The head came off first, and the intestinal tract made a very pretty decoration beside the womb. Along this part of the river, two centuries ago, malefactors were left in chains to rot with the movement of the tides—how rare an opportunity for a London historian such as myself to revive the old pastimes. What a work is man, how subtle in faculties and how infinite in entrails! Her head lay upon the upper step, just as if it were the prompter’s head seen from the pit of the theater, and I must admit that I applauded my own work. But then there came a noise from the wings, and I walked quickly by the riverside until I came out by Ludgate.

J
ohn Cree was wrong in assuming that the German scholar lived in Scofield Street. On that foggy night in early September, Karl Marx was simply calling upon a friend. He visited Solomon Weil once a week for an evening of philosophical discussion. They had met in the Reading Room of the British Museum eighteen months before, when they had found themselves sitting side by side: Marx had noticed that his neighbor was studying Freher’s
Serial Elucidation of the Cabbala
, and all at once remembered reading it himself when he was a student at the University of Bonn. They had started speaking in German together, perhaps because they recognized some familial resemblance (Solomon Weil had been born in Hamburg, coincidentally in the same month and year as Marx himself), and soon enough they discovered a similar interest in theoretical inquiry and subtle disputes of learning. It is true that in his published writings, and in particular in the earliest of them, Karl Marx had condemned what he described as a degraded Judaism. In one of his first essays, “On the Jewish Question,” he had concluded “
ist der Jude unmöglich geworden
” or “the Jew becomes impossible.” But Marx himself sprang from a long line of rabbis and was deeply imbued with the vocabulary and the preoccupations of Judaism. Now, at the end of his life, the sudden glimpse of a commentary upon the Cabbala was enough to launch him into a torrent of German conversation with Solomon Weil, and an almost inexplicable affection for this scholar who was studying one of the books of his youth. He had spent most of his life in
persistent invective against all forms of religious belief but, as he sat beneath the great dome of the Reading Room, he was strangely moved and excited. They left the Museum together that evening, and agreed to meet the following day. It must be said that Solomon Weil himself was a little perplexed. He had heard of Marx through other German émigrés, and was surprised to find this atheist and revolutionary so charming and erudite a companion. He had, perhaps, been even too polite; but Solomon Weil assumed, correctly, that Marx was trying to atone for his vindictive assaults upon his own old faith.

During their second conversation, held in a small chophouse off Coptic Street, Solomon Weil mentioned to Marx that he had acquired a large library of cabbalistic and esoteric learning: he had some four hundred volumes in his lodgings, and at once Marx asked if he might examine them. That was the origin of their regular weekly suppers in Limehouse, where the two men would exchange theories and speculations as if they were young scholars again. Weil’s library was remarkable—many of the books in his collection had once belonged to the Chevalier d’Éon, the famous French transsexual, who had lodged in London in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The Chevalier had been particularly interested in cabbalistic lore, largely because of its emphasis upon an original divine androgyny from which the two sexes sprang. D’Éon bequeathed his collection to an artist and Freemason, William Cosway, who in turn had left it to a mezzotint engraver with whom he had collaborated in certain occult experiments. This engraver then converted to Judaism, and in gratitude for his newly awakened faith left his entire library to Solomon Weil. So the old books were now shelved in his rooms at 7 Scofield Street, together with some of Weil’s own acquisitions such as
A Second Warning to the World by the Spirit of Prophecy
and
Signs of Times, or A Voice to Babylon, the Great City of
the World and to the Jews in Particular
. Weil had also purchased a collection of material devoted to the life and writings of Richard Brothers, the visionary and British Israelite who believed that the English nation represented the lost tribe of Israel. But there was one less predictable element in his library: he also had a passion for the popular theater of London, and had acquired a collection of sheet music from a printer’s in Endell Street which specialized in the newest songs from the halls.

In fact he had just been looking over the lyrics of “That’s What Astonishes Me,” made famous by the male impersonator Bessie Bonehill, when on that foggy evening in September he heard the tread of Karl Marx upon the stairs. They greeted each other with a firm handshake, in the English fashion, and Marx apologized for arriving after the customary hour but, on a night such as this … They both employed an agreeable argot of German and English, with the occasional use of Latin and Hebrew terms for an exact or particular sense; that is why certain elusive textures and atmospheres of their conversation must necessarily be lost in an English reproduction. Their meal was simple enough—some cold meat, cheese, bread and bottled beer—and as they ate Marx was describing his failure to make progress on the long epic poem about Limehouse which he had recently begun. Had he not, as a young man, written nothing but poetry? He had even completed the first act of a verse drama when he was still at university.

“What did you call it?” Weil asked him.

“
Oulanem
.”

“It was in German?”

“Naturally.”

“But it is not a German name. I thought it was perhaps related to
Elohim
and
Hule
. Between them they represent the conditions of the fallen world.”

“That never occurred to me at the time. But, you know, when we look for hidden correspondences and signs …”

“Yes. They are everywhere. Even here in Limehouse we can see the tokens of the invisible world.”

“You will forgive me, I know, but I am still more concerned with what is visible and material.” Marx went over to the window, and looked down into the yellow fog. “I know that, to you, all this is considered to be the
Klippoth
, but these hard dry shells of matter are what we are forced to inhabit.” He could see a woman hurrying down Scofield Street, and there was something about her nervous haste which disturbed him. “Even you,” he said. “Even you have an affection for the lower world. You have a cat.”

Solomon Weil laughed at his friend’s sudden metaphysical leap. “But she lives in her own time, not in mine.”

“Oh, she has a soul?”

“Of course. And when you live as much in the past and in the future as I do, it is good to share lodgings with a creature who exists entirely for the present. It is refreshing. Here, Jessica, come here.” The cat uncurled itself among some scattered books and papers, and slowly advanced towards Weil. “And it impresses my neighbors. They think I am a magician.”

“In a sense, you are.” Marx came back into the room, and resumed his seat by the fireside opposite Weil. “Well, as Boehme taught us, opposition is the source of all friendship. Tell me now. What have you been reading today?”

“You would not believe me if I told you.”

“Oh, you mean some hermetic scroll long hidden from the sight of men?”

“No. I have been reading the song sheets from the music halls. Sometimes I hear them sung in the streets, and they remind me of the old songs of our forefathers. Do you know ‘My
Shadow Is My Only Pal’ or ‘When These Old Clothes Were New’? They are wonderful little ditties. Songs of the poor. Songs of longing.”

“If you say so.”

“But there is also an extraordinary gaiety within them. Look at this.” On the front of one sheet was a photograph of Dan Leno dressed as “Widow Twankey, a Lady of the Old School.” He had a vast wig of curled brown hair, a gown that swirled down over his ankles, and he was holding a very large feather in his tightly gloved hands. The expression was at once domineering and pathetic; with his high arched eyebrows, his wide mouth, and his large dark eyes, he looked so droll and yet so desperate that Marx put down the music sheet with something like a frown. Then Solomon Weil took out from a pile of sheets another photograph of Leno beside a song entitled “Isabella with the Loose Umbrella” in which he was dressed as “Sister Anne” in
Bluebeard
. “He is what they call a screamer,” Weil explained as he placed the sheet neatly back in its place within the pile.

“Yes. I might well scream. It is the
Shekhina
.”

“Do you believe so? No. It is not the shadow female. It is male and female joined. It is Adam Kadmon. The Universal Man.”

“I see there is no end to your wisdom, Solomon, if you can make a cabbala out of the music hall. No doubt the gas lamps in the gallery become the
Sephiroth
of your vision.”

“But don’t you understand why they love it so? For them it is so sacred that they talk of the gods and of the pit. I even discovered, quite by chance, that many of these halls and little theaters were once chapels and churches. You were the one who talked of hidden connections, after all.” So Karl Marx and Solomon Weil continued their conversation into the night and, while Jane Quig was being mutilated, the scholars discussed what Weil
called the material envelope of the world. “It can assume whatever shape we please to give it. In that respect it resembles the golem. You know of the golem?”