Against the Day (132 page)

nd here came Neville and Nigel again, drinking opiated
highballs of British cough syrup and aerated water from a portable seltzogene
they had also been discharging at passersby, causing a spot of grumbling among
the T.W.I.T. membership. At the moment the two were on their way to see the
comic operetta
Waltzing in Whitechapel, or, A Ripping Romance,
based
loosely, and according to some reviews tastelessly, on the Whitechapel murders
of the late ’80s.

“Aahh!” Neville was peering at his
reflection in the mirror. “Bags!
Piggott’s
should have such ‘bags’!”

   
“Do
come along Lewis,” said Nigel, “we’ve an extra ticket.”

“Yes, and by the way,” said Neville,
“here’s something else,” but Lew easily dodged the stream of seltzer, which hit
Nigel instead.

That evening the Strand, as if by
some consensus, was exhibiting that sinister British craving for the dark and
shiny so well known to experts in erotic neuropathy, not to mention students of
the chimpanzee—crowds in mackintoshes, patent boots, and top hats, the
soiled allure of marcasite brooches and earrings, pomaded temples struck to
chill glitter in the public lighting
. . .
even
the pavement, slick with rain and oily exudations, contributing its own queasy
albedo. The streetlighting carried, for those, such as Neville and Nigel, who
could hear it, the luminous equivalent of a steady, afflicted shriek.

Up and down the street, buskers
pranced and spun before the theatre queues—conjurors produced small
animals from nowhere, tumbling routines featured skullandpavement clearances
running typically in the millimeter range, while just in front of the Duke of
Cumberland’s Theatre a ukulele quartet were playing and singing a medley of
tunes from
Waltzing in

Whitechapel,
including one intended to be sung Gilbert and Sullivan style
by a chorus of constables to a matching number of streetwalkers—

You know, it’s . . .

Only copper propa

gaaaanda, that

Policemen never woo, woo, woo!

                      
—You

Know I’d be just as cuddly as a

Paaaanda,

If onlyIknew,

You wantedtocuddleme too! E

ven in Kenya, Tanganyika and U

gaaaanda,

It’s not that unheard of
. . .

Coz it’s a

Proper crop o’
propa

gaaaanda, that

A flattie can’t fall in love!

In the theatre, Lew dropped a
shilling into the box on the back of the seat in front of him, took out a pair
of operaglasses, and began scanning the crowd. The moving field came to rest at
length on whom but the cotenant of Tarot card XV, Professor P. Jotham Renfrew,
apparently down from Cambridge taking in a show, his face flattened into a
lurid twodimensional chromo of itself, sitting in a box with somebody in a
foreign uniform, whom it took Lew only a moment more to recognize as his former
fellow Archdukeminder, the Trabant Captain, now regular K. & K. Landwehr
Colonel, Max Khäutsch, hardly changed from the Chicago days, unless perhaps
grown slightly more mineral, toward the condition of a statue in a park
frequented by the irregular of spirit.

 
Lew had little time to dwell on the past, however, for with a
great crash of cymbals the orchestra began to play the overture.

Waltzing in Whitechapel
turned out to be one of those modern
works in which a group of players are struggling to put on a musical comedy
about
Jack the Ripper, “Rather than letting old Jack just go carving about under
his own steam,” as Nigel began to complain during the applause for the first
number.

   
“But
honestly Nigel, it would be an actor up there in any case, wouldn’t it,”

objected Neville.

   
“Well
that may be so Neville,” furtively removing from his coat a silver flask

of Morphotuss cough preparation and taking a belt or two,
“but as it’s an actor playing an actor playing Jack, why that’s so artificial
don’t you agree?”

“Yes but it’s all artificial Nigel,
including the blood everyone’s come for, and one must simply get over that
mustn’t one.”

“If you’d prefer real blood,” advised
a quiet voice from a seat behind them, “I’m sure something could be arranged.”

   
“I
say,” Neville shifting in his seat as if to look back.

“For pity’s sake, Neville,” hissed
Nigel, crazed eyeballs flickering to and fro, “don’t turn round, it could be
Him.
”

At intermission, Lew headed for the
bar and found ~Colonnel Khäutsch already working on a brandy and soda. If he was
surprised to see Lew, he had grown professionally weary enough over the years
not to show it.

“Business, eternal business. One
would prefer two weeks’ furlough in Berlin, but
K. und K.
matters often
oblige one to postpone one’s entertainments
.
. . .
” Khäutsch shrugged with his eyebrows at different heights. “There
I am, complaining again.
Sowieso
. . . .
How
is your life progressing, Lewis? You are not still working as a ‘spotter’?”

“Not lately, more like a hired goon.
You’re not still riding herd on that Franz Ferdinand, are you?”

A
sour smile and shake of the head. “The feckless idiot who once drove us mad is
exactly the same as he was—how much can these people change, after all?
But the Imperium have since found, mercifully, other ways for me to serve
them— Ah, but here is someone you may wish to meet.” Making his way
toward them through the crowd came Professor Renfrew.

Well,
not exactly. Lew didn’t technically jump, but a number of muscle groups did
seem poised to. He resisted the urge to seize himself by the head and perform
some violent though as yet dimly imagined readjustment.

“Allow
me to present my German colleague, the ProfessorDoktor Joachim Werfner.”

The
German professor sure did look a hell of a lot like Renfrew, though maybe a
little more informally turned out, frayed cuffs, uncombed hair, eyeglasses
tinted a strange bruised green.

Careful
not to seem too impressed by the resemblance, Lew reached to shake hands.
“You’re visiting London, Professor? How’re you enjoying it?”

“Mostly
business, though Max has been so kind as to acquaint me with Piccadilly Circus,
where one can actually find a species of Munich beer.”

“I
can sure sympathize, we probably share the same opinion of English beer, it’s
like drinking your evening dinner.”

For
a while they discussed what the penny press had been calling the “Ripperetta.”

“It
is curious,” said Khäutsch, “that these Whitechapel murders occurred not that
long before the tragedy at Mayerling, which to some of us in Austria has always
suggested a common origin.”

   
“Not
this again,” Werfner pretended to groan.

“One of those strong impressions from
youth,” explained Khäutsch. “I was in those days a lieutenant who fancied
himself a detective, and believed I could solve it.”

“Austrian Crown Prince and his girlfriend
had a suicide pact or something,” Lew tried to recall. “So we ended up with old
F.F. instead.”

“The world was given a
Liebestod
for
romantic fools. The harsher truth is that Rudolf was put out of the way.”

Lew looked around. “Should we be
. . .
?”

Khäutsch shrugged. “Only a little
harmless
Fachsimpelei.
Violent death in high places is of professional
interest to us all, not so? The case was closed long ago, and anyway the
‘truth’ was never as important as what lessons Rudolf’s successor, Franz Ferdinand,
might draw from it.”

   
“You’re
saying that somebody at the top—”

Khäutsch nodded solemnly. “Elements
who could never have tolerated Rudolf on the throne. He found so little in
Austria to admire, and his beliefs were simply too dangerous—he ranted
incessantly about our corruption, our worship of the military, especially the
German military—he feared the Triple Alliance, saw evidence of the
antiSemitic everywhere, in general he hated the whole Habsburg idea, and was
unwise enough actually to publish these opinions, naturally in the Jewish
newspapers.”

   
“And
the girlfriend—”

“
Ach,
die Vetsera.
Dumpy
little thing, no one’s idea of a grand passion, but just the sort of story to
divert an otherwisefatal public curiosity,
cherchons la femme,
always
useful in politics.”

   
“Then
who do you think did it?”

“For
a while my favorite suspect was the Emperor’s chamberlain, Count
Montenuovo—but then one day I had my illumination from above, and knew
that it must really have been Jack the Ripper”—general muttering—
“himself, working under contract. Considering that he disappeared from London
around November of ’88, and Mayerling was at the end of January ’89—time
enough for Jack to get to Austria and become familiar with his target, yes?”

“They were shot, Max,” protested
Werfner with exaggerated gentleness, “not butchered. Jack was not a firearms
person, the only similarity is that the list

of suspects in the ‘Ripper’ case is also long enough to
populate a small city, each more plausible than the one before, the stories,
one by one, convince

us utterly, that here, at last, must surely be the true
Ripper, inconceivable that anyone else
could
have done it—until
the
next
fanatic steps forward to

make his or her case. Hundreds, by now thousands, of
narratives, all equally valid—what can this mean?”

   
“Multiple
worlds,” blurted Nigel, who had floated in from elsewhere.

“Precisely!” cried the Professor.
“The Ripper’s ‘Whitechapel’ was a sort of momentary antechamber in spacetime
. . .
one might imagine a giant
railwaydepot,
with thousands of gates disposed radially in all dimensions, leading to
tracks of departure to all manner of alternate Histories
. . . .
”

Chinese
gongs, vigorously bashed, announced that the second act was about to begin.
They all arranged to meet afterward at a reception in one of the gigantic
hotels off Trafalgar Square and, when they arrived, found it seething with a
cosmopolitan throng whose elements could not always be easily identified, among
bushels of cut flowers, thoughtfully turnedout young women, valets on tiptoes
and Champagne on ice, deep carpeting, and electric chandeliers. A small dance
orchestra played, while couples experimented with the “Boston.” People in
turbans and fezzes were observed. Neville and Nigel after a quick survey chose
the most lethal drink at the bar, currently the rage in London, a horrible
combination of porter and Champagne known as a “Velvet.”

Being
good sports, they did put in with chitchat from time to time until, all but
invisible to the others, a certain Oriental Presence was detected going out the
door. “I say,” said one to the other, exchanging a meaningful look as, humming
together, in “Chinese” harmony, the widelyknown pentatonic theme

Tngtngtngtng tongtong

Tngtng tong

the two hopheads drifted off,
mindless as sailors. Soon after that a seraphic youth in a lounge suit came
gliding by, his nearer eyeball seeming to roll a fraction of a degree in
Colonel Khäutsch’s direction, and Khäutsch, likewise excusing himself,
disappeared into his own labyrinth of desire.

The ProfessorDoktor put in his
monocle and had a squint at Lew, which rapidly became a sort of
confidential
twinkle.
“You and Max actually looked after the Crown Prince at one time?”

“Oh, Chicago—back when the
Prince was a pup. I was in it only a week and a half, Colonel Khäutsch did all
the work.”

“You would be surprised, perhaps
appalled, at what has become of Franz Ferdinand. In somewhat indecent eagerness
to ascend the throne when

Franz Josef dies, he has set up his
own shadowstate at the Belvedere, the great palace once built for Prince Eugene
of Savoy. His circle are difficult people to admire, their motives do not
always coincide perfectly with those of the Ballhausplatz, the Crown Prince
himself entertaining most unwholesome fantasies, for example about Bosnia,
which Max fears will land us all in great trouble one day—and Max is
never mistaken, his grasp of the Balkan situation is unequaled in Europe.”

   
“He
says the same about you.”

Werfner
shrugged. “My market value tends to fluctuate. At the moment it is up, because
of the AngloRussian Entente. Germany spent years trying to keep the two
countries apart, and must now sit and watch all that careful work come
unraveled. So to anyone with a thought on the subject, the Wilhelmstraße,
perhaps ten minutes longer than customary, might be paying attention.”