Part 32 (1/2)
”I do not wish to be reminded of that.”
”Perhaps if your son hadn't been so eager to get away from you, he would still be alive.”
”You keep bringing my family into this.”
The coach thumped over a hole in the road. The impact jostled them.
It also aggravated the grip of the handcuffs on De Quincey's wrists.
”When I pulled you into the coach,” Brookline said, ”I felt something in your coat pocket.”
”I have nothing.” De Quincey was very conscious of the key that Emily had put into his coat. His heart cramped.
”But you do. I felt it.” Brookline reached toward his coat. ”Surely you don't believe you can sneak something into prison.”
De Quincey held his breath, trying not to betray his apprehension.
”And look at this,” Brookline announced victoriously.
He yanked the flask from De Quincey's pocket and shook it, listening to the liquid inside. ”Could this be cough medicine, or perhaps some brandy to ward off the night's chill? Let us investigate.”
Brookline unscrewed the cap, sniffed the contents, and grimaced. ”Why am I not surprised that it's laudanum?”
He unlatched the window and threw the flask into the street. ”Even mixed with alcohol, its odor is disgusting.”
In the dark, the flask clattered across paving stones.
”That's where filth belongs. In the gutter.”
”You're familiar with the odor of opium, Colonel?”
”The lime used to process it reminds me of the quicklime that is dumped into ma.s.s graves. In both warehouses and battlefields, I encountered the deathly odor of lime almost every day of my many years in India. When I arrived there, I was eighteen, the same age as your son who fled to India to avoid you.”
”Perhaps you were fleeing your own father.”
”If you are trying to bait me, you won't succeed,” Brookline said. ”My father has no relevance. I never knew him. My mother lived with a former soldier. He never complained about the military, so after he died in an accident, I decided to give his former profession a try. In India, I was trained by a sergeant who explained about the British East India Company and the opium trade. The sergeant said that if he caught any of us using opium, he would break our bones before he killed us. He called it the devil.”
”He was right.”
”That is not the impression you give in your Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. You praise the drug for increasing your awareness. You claim that music becomes more intense, for example, almost as if you can see what you're hearing.”
”Yes. But as I make clear in my book, the effect lessens with each taking. An increasing amount must be ingested in order to achieve the same effect. Soon, ma.s.sive amounts are necessary merely to feel normal. Attempting to reduce the quant.i.ty produces unbearable pain, as if rats tear at the interior of my stomach.”
”You should have emphasized that in your Confessions,” Brookline directed.
”I believe that I did.”
”The sergeant who warned me about opium owned a copy of your book. He made all his trainees read it so that we would understand the devil. In fact, he ordered me to read your foul confessions to those soldiers who could not read. I read it so often that I memorized your offensive text. But he was mistaken to order us to read it. Your book is an encouragement to use opium rather than a caution.”
”That was not my intention.”
”How many people became its slave because of you, do you suppose? How many people did you trap in h.e.l.l?”
”I can easily ask the reverse. How many people took my advice to stay away from the drug once they understood its false attraction? There is no way to know either answer.”
”In India and China, every battle I fought, every person I killed, was because of opium. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands died in conflicts because of it. Millions of people in China were corrupted by it. In England itself, how many slaves to opium are there?”
”Again, there is no way to determine that number.”
”But with laudanum available on every street corner and in every home, with almost every child being given it for coughs or even for crying, there must be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who require it without realizing the hold it has on them, do you agree?”
”Logic would say so.”
”Fainthearted women who seldom leave their homes and keep the draperies closed and surround themselves with a swirl of patterns in their shadowy sitting rooms-do they not seem to be under the influence of the drug? Laborers, merchants, bankers, members of Parliament, members of every stratum of society-they too must be under the influence?”
”An argument can be made that you are correct.”
”An influence that you encourage.”
”No.”
”My disgust for your opium-eating Confessions led me to investigate the rest of your vile work.”
”I'm impressed. Some editors complained that I myself should have read my essays before submitting them.”
”Everything is a joke to you. Not content with advocating opium abuse, you praised the Ratcliffe Highway killer, John Williams. 'All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his,' you said. You described Williams as an artist.”
”Yes.”
”The Ratcliffe Highway murders were 'the sublimest that were ever committed,' you said.”
”Those are indeed my words.”
” 'The most superb of the century,' you described them.”
”Your research is thorough.”
”Extremely so.”
” 'Obsessive' is the word that comes to mind.”
”Opium abuse, killing, and death are not things to be mocked. In Coldbath Fields Prison, I shall demonstrate that truth to you.”
Brookline lurched as the coach struck another hole in the road.
De Quincey had been praying that it would happen again. He had primed his reflexes, knowing that this might be his only opportunity. He had thought it through carefully, antic.i.p.ating precisely what needed to be done.
As the impact jolted Brookline and the other man, De Quincey lunged toward the door.
The force of the wheel coming out of the hole knocked Brookline against the back of his seat. He grabbed for De Quincey too late. The Opium-Eater was already out the door, jumping into the darkness.