The Ripper's Wife Read online

  wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the

  red ink off my hands curse it.

  No luck yet.

  They say I’m a doctor now Ha Ha!

  Soon I will be more famous than the Queen herself. Now there will be no more talk about “The Knife” and “Leather Apron,” only Jack—the Ripper!

  I’ll no longer be an unknown killer, a knife plunging out of the pea soup fog and darkness, slashing at whores’ throats, sagging udders and hungry bellies, and filthy flea-crawling cunts; now I have a name. Mothers will caution their kiddies: Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t watch out; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t come inside right now; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t eat all your vegetables, mind your manners, and say your prayers. They’ll never forget me; they’ll forget Michael’s jolly jack-tar, but they’ll never forget me! You can take all your sea chanteys, sentimental ballads, and humble hymns, Michael, and shove them up your arse along with Fred Weatherly’s prick. This name, taken with my medicine, will make me invincible. NOTHING can stop me now! I’m Jack, Jack the Ripper, my knife is my scepter, and I reign as the Red King over this Autumn of Terror. Long live King Jack; long may he hack!

  Soon I shall get to work again, soon.... I stroke the sharp edge of my knife and my cock, sometimes the one with the other, but gently, oh so gently, and dream of what I shall do to the next. Ribbons of blood, rivers of blood. I want to take their heads, boil the skulls down to bare bones, and use them as vases. I want to fill them with bloodred roses or candles and arrange them on the altar at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly where we were married and BURN that cathedral of lies to the ground.

  Michael—damn, Damn, DAMN HIM!—is worried about me; the wife-whore has persuaded him that I’m taking “too much strong medicine” for my own good and am “always the worse for it after.” Well, I gave her worse for it after! When I found out she had betrayed me, I beat, Beat, BEAT her! I made the bitch BEG for mercy and then I didn’t give it to her. Oh, how the bitch cried, Cried, CRIED. She begged, Begged, BEGGED me not to hurt her. Like an angel of love, I caressed her bruised and bleeding face. I promised never again. But I lied, Lied, LIED.

  I’ve seen two more doctors, one of them Michael’s personal physician—Dr. Fuller. He’s a FOOL! He said I was a hypochondriac—ME!—how can I be a hypochondriac when I’m sick all the time? He cannot crawl into my skin and feel what I feel, the agonizing ache in my belly that sometimes bends me double and makes me cry out as though rats with fangs of fire were gnawing me, the pains in my head, sharp as spikes being hammered, the blazing burn in my bladder, stools like rice water, the maddening twitching of my eyelids, and the awful, terrifying icy numbness in my hands. Sometimes they tingle as though they are fighting, trying with all their might, to feel again, but always, always failing. I watch them move, but it is as though they belong to a stranger. I’m going to see another doctor tomorrow, and then, then . . . Oh, I cannot wait!

  18

  I should have known better than to trust Michael. Desperate as I was, I should not have looked for even an ounce of chivalry in his cold, arrogant soul. Michael told Jim all that I had confided about the drugs I believed were transforming him into a real-life Jekyll and Hyde.

  Jim came home from London and flung the front door open with such force it cracked one of the stained-glass panels and charged upstairs and beat me with his umbrella until it broke and then he threatened to put my eyes out with the finial. When I tried to crawl under the bed to escape him, he wrenched me out by my ankles, flipped me over, beat me with his fists and kicked me with his boots on, and raped me. I could not show myself in public for over a week even with paint on.

  That awful autumn, while the madman that was my husband consumed my waking hours, that unknown madman, Jack the Ripper, stalked my dreams; he seemed to dog my fitfully slumbering soul’s every step. I’d see myself as a fallen woman, pathetic, dirty, haggard, and raggedy. It was so real I could even smell my filthy flesh and taste my fetid breath and rotting teeth and feel the itch of fleabites beneath the rancid rags I was wearing. I’d catch my reflection in a window and see all my beauty gone, worn away by worry and want, and feel so very tired, as though I hadn’t slept in a thousand nights or more but had spent them walking aimlessly, lost in the fog, fear stabbing my heart every time I heard a sound or turned a corner, never knowing if it would bring me face-to-face with the faceless fiend none could recognize.

  That, I think, was the most frightening part. He might appear benign and grandfatherly, like a genial old doctor, a priest with the most blessedly comforting countenance, or a favorite uncle. Surely he did not go about with the mark of evil clearly upon him like a tattoo on his brow or else none would ever steal into the shadows with him beside them.

  Those wretched women surely were not fools or they wouldn’t have survived on those hellish streets as long as they had. I thought so much about those women, I felt that we were, in some strange way, sisters beneath the skin, that though our lives had been very different, I would have understood them and they would have understood me. Maybe they could have told me how to break free? How to burst the shackles and chains of the comfort, luxury, and respectability that held me fast, to just let go of it all, of myself and the velvet cushion life I had always known and didn’t believe I could survive without. Perhaps they could have told me how to really not care anymore, not just to pretend not to. Every time I told myself I no longer loved or wanted Jim, that I was done with him, my conscience shouted, Liar! in a whisper that was also a scream.

  I thought about the Ripper too. What manner of monster was he? Are such men born evil, or do they become so? What could turn a man into a flesh-ripping monster? I sat and pondered in the parlor and speculated as I tossed sleeplessly in my bed at night or after being rousted out of yet another foggy nightmare in which I walked the streets of Whitechapel, knowing to the very depths of my soul exactly what it felt like to have lost everything that mattered, along with all one’s hopes and dreams, always awaiting the inevitable, the knife that flashed so fast it left me no time to scream. Would I know him when I saw him, or would I only recognize him when it was too late? Would anyone hear my dying screams? Would anyone come to save me or could only I save myself? I now wonder, decades too late, was that what these dreams were truly trying to tell me?

  Though I had sworn that I would never go back, I went back to Alfred Brierley’s bed. I can’t even offer a justifiable reason; even when my life hung in the balance I couldn’t explain it. It was just something I did. Maybe I was hoping it would be different this time? Maybe I was hoping that, in time, he would truly come to love me? Maybe I couldn’t let go of the dream that someday we would be together, living and loving in Paris or some other sophisticated city that took divorce in stride? Maybe I was just one more woman seeking some kind of comfort in a pair of arms that were willing to hold her while a cock nested inside her? Maybe it’s a fair price to pay for just being held? We all want some kind of love. Sometimes it’s not enough, and sometimes it is.

  All I know is that one day I was there at his door, in his arms, then naked in his bed once more. He was a kind, generous, and skillful lover; it was only when he talked that he showed himself insensitive. I still ask myself, Why wasn’t that enough? Why couldn’t I be content with his sensual finesse? Why couldn’t I be happy with what we had? Why did I let it make me so very sad? Why did I run to him when I knew all too well that icy cold sadness lay beneath the burning heat of passion? There really is a unique sort of sadness that goes hand in glove with the act so often called “making love,” though love often has little or nothing to do with it. Strange how being filled can leave you so empty, I’d think every time as I wandered through Woollright’s after leaving his bed, frittering the rest of the afternoon away making frivolous purchases before I had to go “home” again.

  19

  THE DIARY

  Double event this time! The first bitch squeal
ed a bit. The pony and cart were almost upon us. The driver reached out his whip and poked the dead whore with it. But he didn’t see me. I had to flee before I was done with her. I knew I was invincible—the name, the powder, the power—I knew they couldn’t stop me, but for a moment . . . How I trembled and my heart raced! I could not keep up with it! It was like a drum in my ears as I fled, beating faster and faster. The scent of blood was in my nostrils, on my hands, on my lips where I had lapped it up along with my medicine. The lust was hot upon me. I was not sated; like a man interrupted in the midst of fucking, I had to seek another, for the full satisfaction. I would know no peace until I did! It had been three weeks since my last kill. I could endure no more, stifling, bottling up the rage, holding it back, while my wife-whore fucked Alfred Brierley behind my back! I had to kill, to purge myself; I could not go home until I was free of it!

  But first . . . the first . . . The tall, “fair” Swedish liar.

  “You would say anything but your prayers,” I said, and kissed her.

  I have her prayer book in my pocket now. It’s in Swedish so I cannot read it, but there’s a crude woodcut of the Devil stained with the whore’s own blood. Long Liz! Tall and lank. I wanted to yank her head back and rip that lying tongue out by its roots!

  Nothing but a tired old whore now, but she must have been a blond beauty in her youth, the signs were still there, but you had to squint and look hard to see them. Haunting gray eyes—like tarnished silver left out in the rain. She claimed to have the second sight, but the bitch never saw what was coming or else she would have run from me and not clung to me. I couldn’t wait to cut, Cut, CUT her! Dark yellow hair, like burned butter, hanging down in stringy, greasy hanks, hair fit for a hag, framing a face haggard and gaunt. But what fine cheekbones! A sculptor would have loved them! Good bones tell. I traced them with my fingertip. I couldn’t wait to bare them down to the bone; I wanted to see it shining white as a pearl in the moonlight. Who’s the poetic one now, Michael? She had no upper teeth; she’d lost them, she said, in the Princess Alice steamship disaster. Her husband and nine children had been amongst the seven hundred who died when a collier rammed it. As she clambered up a ladder, always just a step above the rising water that threatened to suck her back down to a watery death, the man above her slipped and his heavy work boot kicked her in the mouth and knocked her teeth out, caved the roof of her mouth in, and cleaved her upper palate clean in two.

  She seemed to mourn the loss of her teeth more than her family. It would be a pleasure to send this selfish whore to Hell! I would take my time and savor each moment! I couldn’t wait to start cutting, to plunge my knife in and twist it around, stirring her innards like some foul witch’s brew! I would show the bitch that there are worse things than losing one’s teeth.

  Second sight, my arse, you silly bitch! While I smiled and charmed her, inside I was taunting the vain fool: Why ever did you let your family go aboard the Princess Alice? Why didn’t you save them and your precious teeth? Why don’t you now? You still could, you know! And now you’re promenading like a lady in the park with the man who’s about to take your sorry whore’s life—second sight indeed!

  I saved her life. She thought that meant she could trust me, that I would protect her. What fools women are! They have no sense of danger; they never see it until it’s right in front of their faces and too late to run! The knife’s already at their throat before they even think to scream and then they’re paralyzed with fright! Women are born to be the victims of men like me.

  It was a rain-sodden Saturday, a cold, dark night. I first saw her through a curtain of rain. She was standing in the doorway of the Bricklayers’ Arms pub, taking shelter from the rain, trying to keep warm, huddled and crammed in with several other men and women in the same plight. There was a man with her, dark haired with a droopy mustache.

  “That’s Leather Apron you’ve got cozyin’ up nexta you,” one of the men nudged and teased her, jerking his head at her companion, but she just laughed and clung tighter to his arm. She seemed to know him well . . . well enough not to be afraid.

  That remark about “Leather Apron” got my attention. I followed them. In Berner Street, they rested against a wall. He leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She put her palm against his chest, shook her head, and gave him a playful little push.

  “Not tonight, some other time perhaps,” she said. A whore who said no; how intriguing!

  To his mind, that was clearly the wrong answer. He tried to pull her through the gate. She kicked and fought him. He shoved her down. She screamed. He grabbed her head with one hand while the other fumbled past his heavy overcoat to unbutton his trousers. She screamed again.

  “Lipski! Lipski!” some fool, paused to light his pipe upon the opposite pavement, shouted, pointing at the man, who did have a distinctly Jewish appearance. It’s an insult they use in these parts; it was the name of a Jew who killed a girl a few years back. That stopped the man cold with his cock wilting and his trousers sagging.

  The man with the pipe trembled and took off with the whore’s assailant in hot pursuit, running toward the railway station. I wonder what he did to him when he caught him? That would teach the fool to go around shouting, “Lipski!”

  Like the Good Samaritan, I helped the fallen woman up. I straightened her bonnet, tweaking the limp black crepe ruffles as though I were the finest milliner in Paris proud of my latest creation, and retrieved the brass thimble and wad of black thread that had fallen from her pocket. She stroked the diamond horseshoe on my black tie with a covetous gleam in her gray eyes—the bitch would nip it if I did not watch her!—and told me I had brought her luck. I was her hero, her savior; she could not thank me enough!

  I gave her one of Edwin’s gay silk handkerchiefs—a green-and-yellow-checkered one. I knotted it playfully about her neck, wanting to twist it tight, but not yet, not yet.... With my own handkerchief I wiped the grime from her cheek where she had grazed it against the wet pavement. I gave her a pack of pretty pink cachous from my pocket; her breath stank of gin and rot and I hoped she would take the hint and make immediate use of them, but she merely held them in her hand, awkwardly, admiring them—“such a pretty pink!”—as though she didn’t know what to do with them and was afraid to ask. I bought her a red rose, backed with maidenhair fern, and pinned it on her shabby black jacket.

  I lulled her with kind words; I soothed her with sweet deeds. I wanted her to trust me; I needed it. It would make the horror when it came so much the sweeter! I wanted to see the hurt and betrayal in her eyes as she died! I wanted this to be sublime, an experience I would never forget! I wanted this whore to close her eyes in rapture, to submit to me like the most willing lover, the one she had dreamed of all her life but never found. I wanted her to expect delights, to dream of them, only to awaken to a nightmare in my arms that was all too real as I plunged my knife in and twisted it around.

  I strolled her down the street; I told her even though it was raining—a light and inconstant drizzle—the sun shone for me every time I looked at her. A fruiterer’s shop was still open though it was nearing midnight, with a tempting array of white and black grapes arranged in his window. He was yawning and about to close his shutters. I bought half a pound of black grapes and shared them with her, but the ungrateful bitch merely chewed them, then spit them out into the street. She said she didn’t like how they felt going down her throat. At least she had the decency to use her own handkerchief to wipe the juice from her chin and not the fine silk one I had just given her. The cheap and vulgar tart, she had no refinement at all!

  The International Working Men’s Educational Club was having a meeting, a bunch of socialist Jews and armchair anarchists who used politics as an excuse to get a night away from their wives once a week, and music was coming from the open windows of their clubhouse, so we strolled up and down Berner Street listening to it, Long Liz sometimes singing along when she knew the words. Then I drew her close and whispered, “Will you?”
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br />   Coyly twirling a grape stem, she said, “Yes.”

  They always say yes to a toff like me!

  Stupid bitches, they think clothes make the man, that coarse clothes and manners means a brute and that they can trust a suit and spats, a fine black overcoat trimmed with astrakhan, a mammoth gold watch chain gleaming on a man’s vest, a diamond horseshoe twinkling in his tie, and a tall silk topper or deerstalker hat. Because a man is dressed as a gentleman they think he is a gentle man. They don’t realize it, but I’m dressed to kill! I don a deerstalker only when I go hunting.

  I followed her through the gate, the same one that surly chap had tried to drag her through. This time she went willingly, leading me by the hand, looking back at me with bold eyes. Oh yes, she must have been beautiful when she was young! Eyes like a gray dove’s plumage; what a pity she was so soiled.

  The night was cold; so were my hands, and even colder my heart. I am a man of ice, angry ice, through and through! My hands were numb, but they would soon be warm. She turned away, fussing with the fastenings on her jacket. I drew my knife out. Just then she happened to glance back. She opened her mouth to scream. I grabbed the knot of the checkered silk handkerchief and twisted it viciously tight. I silenced the bitch with scarcely a whimper. A little worn-down stub of a knife, the blade barely a nub, fell from her lifeless fingers. How dare the bitch even think of trying to fight for her life; didn’t she know it wasn’t worth it? I stuffed the knife in my pocket—another souvenir. I took her prayer book too. She had shown it to me earlier, to prove that she knew what the Devil looked like.

  I lowered her to the ground. I drew my knife across her throat. I felt my fingers tingle as I bathed them in her hot blood. A horse neighed nearby—too nearby! I started and glanced back over my shoulder. Hooves flailed the air. A man shouted; a whip cracked; the pony kicked the air and shied, refusing to pass through the gate. They call horses “dumb animals,” but they are so much more sensitive than we humans are. The horse knew what his driver didn’t. I scrambled back into the shadows, tensely awaiting my moment as he leaned forward and poked at her hip with his whip. I could not be trapped here in this courtyard. I groped for my silver box. I licked my medicine from my bloody palm, I tasted her blood along with its power. I felt strength surge through me. I knew everything would be all right!