‘I’ve always wanted to see what one of these places looks like,’ he commented with a quite inappropriate jocularity.
Through the gloom we could make out contorted figures reclining in strange twisted poses; some muttered to themselves, others appeared to be in a trance, but all were possessed by a mental servitude to that merciless narcotic. In the corner a man lifted himself up from his bed and reddened eyes blinked against the vaporous light. He looked with a docile astonishment upon us, as if not sure if what he was seeing was real or a phantasm of his contorted imagination. He then gave a rasping and mirthless laugh. It was Pasero.
‘Ah!’ he called out to us. ‘Comrades! Citizen Marx, now you may prove the accuracy of your aphorism as to the anaesthetising effect of religion.’ He relit his pipe and taking a ghastly inhalation, held the glowing red bowl towards my friend. ‘Here is to oblivion, comrade.’
Marx pushed the foul object away.
‘Oblivion from guilt?’ he demanded. ‘Is that what you seek here?’
Pasero coughed and shook his head.
‘From sorrow,’ he croaked, mournfully.
‘Elizabeth Cardew, the fiancée of Lord Beckworth, seems convinced that you had some hold over your late master and believes that you were responsible for his death. What do you have to say to that?’ demanded my colleague.
‘That bitch!’ hissed Pasero. ‘It was her fault. It was she that drove him to his death.’
‘Explain yourself, man!’ Marx exclaimed. ‘And why you absented yourself from Beckworth’s household just after he had met his terrible fate.’
‘Because no one would understand. Do you think you could understand?’
This enigmatic query was, of course, a direct provocation to the great mind of my friend. He stroked his beard, thoughtfully.
‘Go on,’ he insisted.
Pasero sat up on the edge of the bunk and rubbed at his sore eyes. He sighed and shook his head, as if trying to rouse his dulled mind into some sort of coherence.
‘I was a young man when I joined Garibaldi’s Red Shirts,’ he began. ‘I hardly knew myself back then. But I was drawn, I know now, to the dear love of comrades. We were a band of brothers and, through danger and action, some of us could find comfort in each other, and secretly believed in that Ancient Greek ideaclass="underline" that we were an army of lovers. Ah, the Thousand! A true company of men. After Aspromonte I came here in exile, lost and alone in a cold city. I tried to involve myself in the political movements like so many other émigrés, but these dull meetings with their endless arguments and empty resolutions were nothing compared to the solidarity I had known with the Thousand. Then, one night, at a Chartist gathering in Bloomsbury I met with Beckworth. He was kind and generous. Although we were from entirely different worlds we were drawn to each other and we soon discovered the desire that held us in common. We shared another curse, as you would call it, like that of the first Lord Beckworth who was a king’s favourite. I strove to make Beckworth see it was a blessing also.’
‘You mean the abominable sin of sodomy!’ I gasped.
Pasero groaned.
‘Really,’ Marx chided me. ‘We are trying to understand the social circumstances of this case.’
‘Understand gross and unnatural vices?’ I retorted.
‘My dear Engels,’ my colleague went on, ‘I would have thought that you, as the author of The Origin of the Family, might have a more scientific curiosity concerning this problem.’
‘And encompass human perversion as part of my thesis?’ I demanded.
‘If you have both quite finished!’ Pasero declared boldly, his voice suddenly becoming clear and emphatic. ‘I am a man of action, I have little time for your analysis. You theoreticians, you have no idea what real rebellion is! We were revolutionaries of the heart, ours was the sedation of desire.’
Marx saw that I was about to make a reply to this and glared to me to keep quiet.
‘We had so many plans for our liberation. Utopian ideas maybe, but we both dreamt of a world where we could be free. When we were alone there was no servant and no master but equal souls, true comrades joined together in love. But she!’ he seethed through gritted teeth. ‘She ruined everything!’
‘How?’ asked Marx.
‘That Cardew woman’s designs upon poor young Beckworth were for securing herself a social position. She preyed upon his sensitive nature and his vulnerability. When she discovered where his affections really lay she tried to insist upon my dismissal. She threatened to expose His Lordship to open scandal if he did not honour his promise to elevate her to her long-desired status as Lady Beckworth. On the night of his death she had sent him a hateful letter and a green carnation.’
‘Oh, that,’ Marx interjected. ‘What is the significance of that flower?’
‘It is a symbol of our condemned nature. She wanted him to know that she knew the truth about him. He was utterly distraught, at his very wits’ end. He had so much to lose. We argued, we had drunk much and taken laudanum in an attempt to quell our anxiety. We ended up fighting and in a struggle Beckworth slipped at the top of the stairs and fell to his death.’
Just then came a loud banging on the front door of the squalid den. There was a chorus of groans as the pitiful wrecks roused themselves from their berths. The game-playing Malays stood up and started jabbering at each other. After two or more heavy thuds the door was broken down and a shrill whistle pierced the night air.
‘Police!’ a voice called out as a group of uniformed men, with a plain-clothed man at their head, stormed into the smoke-filled room.
‘Gentlemen,’ the leader hailed us. ‘I thought you might lead us to the quarry.’
It was Inspector Bucket of the Detective.
‘But where…?’ he went on.
We looked to Pasero’s bunk. In the commotion he had slipped out of the den through a back way.
‘I’ve men posted outside,’ said Bucket. ‘He won’t get far.’
We rushed out into the cold air. A figure could be seen making its way to the dockside.
‘There he goes, then. And get on, my lads!’ called Bucket to his men.
But it was myself and Marx that were closest to him as he reached the edge of the slippery quayside. He looked at us for a second, panting like a hunted animal, his breath steaming into the night. He gave a defiant laugh, then dropped out of sight. There was a muffled splash. As we reached the waterside we saw him flounder in the dank waters below. He struggled awhile, his body protesting against its fate, though there seemed a strange tranquillity in his countenance, as if his mind had already given up the ghost. The policemen arrived and made an attempt to drag him out of the dock with a boat-hook. But by the time he had been fished out of the dirty water he was quite cold and dead.
We gave our statement to the affable Inspector Bucket, whose curious forefinger wagged with increasing agitation at our strange testimonies. The ‘Case of the Ten Lords a-Leaping’ was, as they say, closed, and it seemed likely that the inquest into the death of the last Lord Beckworth would record a verdict of accidental death. A perturbing conclusion perhaps, but I must confess that our minds were reeling at the unfolding of events over the last few days. My friend’s great intelligence seemed particularly vexed at all these provocations of meaning; confounded, even.
‘Struggle,’ he murmured to me as we made out way back to his lodgings as the dawn broke. ‘It’s all struggle.’
A week later I was much relieved, when I met with my colleague as he came out of the British Museum, to see that he had been coaxed back to his great work after this strange diversion. A curious-looking young man was with him who bore an intense expression on his countenance, and wore some kind of tweed hunting-cap on his head. After the briefest of formalities the young fellow left us.