had walked up to the black door and knocked. A man stretched out on a crusty, ragged couch granted them admission into a corridor, after which they ascended a narrow stairs where every board groaned at their steps; perhaps out of disrepair, perhaps to warn the inhabitants. The building smelled of mold and what? It was an odor that was heavy, drowsy. They made a wrong turn into a room where there sat a piano and a small audience before it; everyone turned to look at them and would not move a muscle until they were gone. Barmaids and ballet girls sat next to or on top of sailors and clerks. One man in the audience seemed to be balancing a dagger in his teeth.
Osgood could only imagine what demonstration would happen after they left, as he never heard any piano music while in the building.
They continued upward through the smoke and mist. “Here,” Datchery said with eerie finality. “Take care, Mr. Osgood, every door in life can lead into an undiscovered kingdom or an inescapable trap.”
The door opened into darkness and smoke.
“No weapons!” This was the greeting, in a gravely voice that seemed to belong to a woman.
Datchery put his club down in the hall outside the door.
Only after some slight, slow commotion was a candle lit. The small room showed itself crammed with people, most coiled together on a collapsed bed. Several were asleep and several more looked as though they could fall asleep at any moment. At the foot of the bed sat a gaunt, careworn woman with silver hair holding a long, thin piece of bamboo.
“Remember, pay up, dearies, won't ye?” she greeted the newcomers. “Yahee from across the court is in quod for a month for begging. He don't mix well as me, anyhow!”
Over a small flame she was mixing together a black treacly substance. Sprawled on the bed was a Chinese man in a deep trance, and a Lascar sailor with an open shirt mumbling to himself-both with glossy, vacant eyes. Across the Lascar's mouth, drool escaped from between rotten teeth and ran down the craterlike sores on his lips. Rags and bedclothes hung from a string to dry in the smoke. The smoke! As the woman held out the bamboo pipe, Osgood recognized the reeking smell as opium.
Osgood thought about the narratives of Coleridge and De Quincey, both of whom, like almost everyone else including Osgood, had taken opiates from the pharmacist to quell rheumatism and other physical ailments. But the writers had indulged heavily enough to experience a swirl of ecstasy and fatigue that were opium's powerful effects on the brain. As De Quincey wrote in a series of published confessions, before it became the motto of thousands, “Happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket.” Osgood thought, too, about the accusation of the police against Daniel Sand that he had left so far away in Boston, that Daniel had given up everything for the thrill and ease of opiate entertainment.
“Sally's is better than Yahee's brand-you'll pay accordingly, won't ye, dearie?” the manager of the establishment repeated. “Have a whiff. After payment, of course.”
As she recited her slogans, a petite young woman on the other side of Sally's grisly bed slid to the floor with a moan.
“Is she unwell?” asked Osgood. Sally explained that the young woman was in a peaceful dream state and would be better than if she were in the terrible, unclean grog-house where the girl's mother used to take her.
Then Osgood realized. He could suddenly name the feeling he had experienced upon entering the building. It was a word he would have never guessed.
Witnessing this squalor was like seeing photographs of scenes from
Osgood's hope had been proven right! Datchery, consciously or not, must have absorbed something about the writing of the novel if he knew of this place. Then, a less settling feeling touched his nerves as he looked back at Datchery, standing behind him. Datchery and Sally were eyeing each other with the familiarity of a suitor and his former love.
A sudden and unexpected movement pulled away Osgood's attention: four white mice had scurried across a dirty shelf and over the occupants of the bed. Sally assured them they were very tame pets and, after a few clumsy attempts, managed to light another candle as if to demonstrate the highly civilized nature of a two-candle colony. The light revealed a ladder running up into a hole in the ceiling. In the time they had been standing there, a Malaysian sailor had left the room and a Chinese beggar had entered, left, and entered again. Sally spoke to the beggar-apparently her usual plea for advance purchase of her opium but now in Chinese. She also berated a ship's cook from
Bengal, whom she called Booboo, who was apparently not only a drug purchaser, but her lodger and servant.
THERE WAS REPETITION in the operation. After being given a shilling from a customer, the dealer would toast a thick black lump, which she had been mixing slowly with a pin, over the flame of a bro-ken lamp. When it was hot enough, the black mixture was inserted into the cup of the bamboo pipe, which was just an old glass ink bottle with a hole pierced in its side. The customer would then suck the end of the whistling pipe until the opium had been used up-usually after only a minute at the longest.
As Sally prepared the concoction, she gave a hard stare at Os-good-impatient with the lack of payment. Even one of the half-sleeping opium eaters now seemed to take a curious interest in the well-dressed publisher. Osgood, meanwhile, under the wet rags at his feet, noticed a small booklet or pamphlet among other soiled papers. Though the lighting was too dark to make out the details, the booklet's battered cover looked like he had seen it before.
“Well, dearies,” Sally the opium manager said, scowling a little, “is there something more ye want here, if it isn't any whiffs?” The Lascar meanwhile had now managed to stand and was also gazing at them.
Osgood felt a second wave of nausea from the newly thickened fumes. As he kneeled down to take a breath in the clearer air near the floor, he also slipped the booklet into his pocket. Datchery asked if he was all right.
“Some air,” Osgood responded, woozy from bending over. He found the door and climbed down one flight of stairs to an open window at the landing. Leaning his head out, he closed his eyes, still burning from the smoke. He realized when he opened them again that his vision was blurry from painful tears, and he tried to dry his eyes with a handkerchief. The air felt soothing on his face-though it was hot, it seemed like an ocean breeze compared with that cauldron upstairs.
He now removed the booklet from his pocket, and his suspicion was confirmed. He was holding the latest installment
“Drood!” he said to himself. How in the land had it come to be here, too? Charles Dickens truly was read in every corner of the earth.
Returning up the stairs, gripping the handrail very firmly, Osgood felt his vision blur again as he neared the dark opium room. The entrance now seemed to be one solid block of smoke. He felt blind as he took two steps inside and then stumbled over something. Looking down as he plunged forward, he realized he had just tripped over Datchery, sprawled out on the floor. Osgood was caught and pushed against the wall, where he was held erect by the Lascar sailor, who threw a fist into Osgood's stomach.
“Stop! Ripley!” This cry came from Datchery, who pulled himself up from the floor and stumbled toward Osgood's attacker. Datchery wrestled with the Lascar, but Booboo, the Bengalee, shook him away and threw him back to the floor, where Datchery landed on his head and was knocked out cold.
Osgood, blinded by tears and blood, tried to feel his way out of the room, but the Lascar grabbed him and pitched into him with his fists, again and again, left then right, crushing him against the wall. Then the Lascar ripped open Osgood's waistcoat and frisked his pockets. Osgood could hear Booboo squatting on the floor similarly ransacking the unconscious Datchery.
As his body slumped down, Osgood felt himself slam against the wall and his head hitting it hard. Then, suddenly, it all came to a halt. Screams. The Lascar collapsed, his head rolling limply on the side of his neck.
