He had calmed himself somewhat with this line of thought and decided to inquire about Cohen’s whereabouts of a group of men standing on the opposite corner, speaking animatedly in the Jewish tongue. The men were dressed in the conventional prayer shawls and skullcaps of the sect, perhaps waiting for sundown when they would hold their evening service. In the course of his research into comparative religion, William had been present for some of these ceremonies, which he had found at once exotic and familiar. All religion, as he saw it, was propelled by the same impulse: a need to believe in something larger than oneself. He saw the impulse, regardless of its manifestation, as an ennobling element in human nature, and the longer he lived, the less the various trappings that distinguished one religion from another made a difference to him.
He was about to cross over to talk to this group, but before he could do so, he found a figure blocking his way. The person was dressed, like the men across the street, in a fringed shawl and skullcap, but he was more than six feet tall, and his chest was so large that it pulled the coat that covered his vestments to bursting.
“What do you want here?” asked the sentinel pugnaciously. “Usually your kind comes round when it’s dark.”
William hadn’t realized that someone in a shawl and skullcap could look threatening, but this person did. He surmised that the man was assigned to keep watch on the street, a practical precaution, considering the level of crime in the area, not to mention the recent Ripper murders.
William pointed to the shop and mentioned the name of Benjamin Cohen.
“And what’s your business with him?” The man seemed to scowl more deeply.
“I’m not the police, if that’s what you think,” William explained quickly. “I’m a friend. Or at least, I’m someone in sympathy with…” He paused, trying to determine exactly with what he was in sympathy with regard to Cohen. “I am in sympathy with his position,” he finally finished vaguely.
The man eyed him with new interest. Perhaps he was sizing up the possibility that William might, after all, be a Jew of the exotic American variety. Or an anarchist. There had been mention of Cohen’s incendiary political activity, and William’s hair and beard were unkempt enough for that.
“My name is William James,” William clarified further. “I’m a professor of philosophy visiting from America.”
The man’s face cleared at once. As if thinking on the subject, he commented lightly, “‘Replace religion with philosophy,’ Ben says, ‘and the world will be a better place.’ That’s rubbish if you ask me. But it’s his soul, and yours too, for that matter. You’ll find him at the pub round the corner at one of his meetings.”
William nodded, wondering why the man had changed in his manner so abruptly, and turned the corner. The pub was indeed just a few yards down, although he would not have known it was there without being told. The sign hanging from the door was so ingrained with dirt as to be unreadable, and the establishment itself was located not on the ground level, which was occupied by some sort of pitiful shop—most of the merchandise of which seemed to consist of torn clothes and broken crockery—but at the bottom of a rickety set of steps in an area that resembled a dank cave. As he entered, William saw that a group of young men were seated toward the back, and that as soon as they saw him, they rose quickly and ducked out the door directly behind them. It was obviously a political gathering, possibly an anarchist cell that was plotting an act of defiance, if not outright destructiveness with regard to their society. He was again struck by the possibility that Cohen could have political reasons for having committed the murders, as Henry had originally suggested with his talk of cabals and Masonic societies.
Cohen remained at the table after the others dispersed, though, and rose with an expression of excitement on his face. “Professor James,” he said, his eyes bright. William noted what he had not noted at the police station, that the man was extremely thin and looked malnourished.
“You know my name?” asked William in wonderment. He recalled that the vigilante had also responded with immediate deference to his name.
“I might have recognized you from the photograph in some of your books,” Cohen explained, “but I had the additional help of seeing you at police headquarters this afternoon.”
When William looked puzzled, he continued. “There are members of our faith even on the London police force, and so news of your defense of me following my arrest came through those channels. I’ve admired your work for years. To have you to thank for intervening on my behalf makes me almost believe in God.”
As he spoke, he had taken William’s arm in an appropriating gesture and led him, without commentary, out of the pub. A kind of nervous energy emanated from the man, which William found at once endearing and unnerving. With Cohen’s hand on his arm, the two men walked briskly around the corner until he came to the closed shop that he had surveyed earlier. Cohen took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and motioned for William to follow him inside. The shop had indeed been stripped bare.
“You are leaving your business?” asked William.
“I have decided it is no longer worth trying to effect social change in this country,” said Cohen, waving a nervous hand at his ramshackle surroundings. “I am going east to abet the Revolution.”
There was a note of repressed hysteria in the man’s voice, and William wondered again if he were an unstable and possibly dangerous personality.
Cohen had by then opened a door at the back of the shop that led into a space hardly bigger than a closet. There were no windows; in the corner was a cracked washbasin and a small cot covered with a ragged blanket. The room would have been cramped and airless under any circumstances, but what made it more so was that every spare inch was piled with books. These were the remains of Cohen’s trade, books he had not been able to sell or with which he was not willing to part.
As the two men moved as best they could into the room, Cohen suddenly grabbed a volume at the top of one of the piles. “You must be familiar with the ideas of the German philosopher Marx,” he exclaimed, waving the book excitedly. “He exposes the oppression of church and family and calls for the transfer of economic control to the people.” He pressed the book into William’s hands. “Read his Capital, and you will be converted. You are a utopian, Professor James, though you may not know it.” He paused as if to scour his memory and then recited, “‘This universe will never be completely good as long as one being is unhappy, as long as one poor cockroach suffers the pangs of unrequited love.’ It’s from one of your essays.”
William laughed, surprised. “I had no idea I had a disciple who could quote me on the subject of cockroaches,” he noted uneasily, “but I fear you distort my ideas. I believe in social justice, but my political views are moderate—”
“But you haven’t given it enough thought,” Cohen interrupted impatiently. “As an American, you are removed from the kinds of misery that people like myself see on a regular basis.”
William nodded; there seemed to be no point arguing with Cohen. Passionate belief—whether religious or political—was a form of lunacy. One stayed sane by keeping passion in check and by refusing to feel too much about anything. He understood the trade-off; he had made it years earlier.
Cohen waited for William to put the copy of Capital into the breast pocket of his coat and then reached under his bed to retrieve another book, obviously placed there for safekeeping. “I was hoping you would come, not just so I could discuss philosophy with someone whose work I respect, but also to give you this.” He passed the book to William. “I believe it may be evidence in the case for which I was arrested, though what it means I have not been able to decipher.”