Read Online Arkansas by David Leavitt - Free Book Online

Mormon?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, in the church we have this very clear-cut conception of sin. And so I always assumed that if I ever committed a really big sin, like we’re doing now ... I don’t know, that there’d be a clap of thunder and God would strike me dead or something. Instead of which we’re sitting here in this courtyard and the sun’s shining. The grass is green.”
    â€œBut what’s the sin?”
    â€œYou know. Cheating.”
    â€œIs cheating really a sin?”
    â€œOf course. It’s part of lying.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “then maybe the fact that the sun’s shining and the grass is green means God doesn’t really care that much. Or maybe God doesn’t exist.”
    Ben’s face convulsed in horror.
    â€œJust a possibility,” I added.
    Ben leaned back in disillusion. “So you’re an atheist,” he said. “I suppose I should have expected it. I suppose I should have guessed most homosexuals would be atheists.”
    â€œOh, some homosexuals are very religious. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out one or two were actually Mormons.”
    â€œEx-Mormons.”
    â€œA lot more than two of those. But to get back to what you were saying, I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. Instead I’d say I’m a skeptical lapsed Jew, distrustful of dogma.”
    â€œTony’s Jewish too. Last night he was telling me about his circumcision—”
    â€œHis
bris.”
    â€œâ€”and how in Israel they use the foreskins to make fertility drugs.” He shook his head in wonder.
    â€œAre you circumcised, Ben?”
    â€œNo, actually.” Blushing, he checked his watch.
    We got up and walked toward the library. “Well, back to the salt mines,” Ben said at the main doors. “By the way, I hope you realize I’m working my butt off too. I really bit off more than I could chew this quarter.”
    â€œOh, I’ll bet you can chew more than you think.”
    â€œProbably. Still, I wanted to make sure you knew. I mean, I wouldn’t want you thinking that the whole time you were sweating out this paper, I was playing pinball or something.” He wiped his nose. “By the way, have you decided who did it yet?”
    â€œNot yet. The problem is, everyone has a different theory about the Ripper, and every theory has a hole in it.” Which was true. Indeed, looked at collectively, the theories ramified so far afield that the actual murders began to seem beside the point. For if you believed them all, then the Ripper was Prince Eddy
and
Walter Sickert. The Ripper was Frank Miles
and
M. J. Druitt
and
Sir William Gull. The Ripper was an
agent provocateur
sent by the Russian secret police to undermine the reputation of their London brethren. The Ripper was a Jewish
shochet,
or ritual slaughterer, suffering from a religious mania. The Ripper was a high-level conspiracy to squelch a secret marriage between Prince Eddy and a poor Catholic girl. The Ripper was Jill the Ripper, an abortionist betrayed by a guilt-ridden client and sent to prison, and therefore bent on avenging herself on her own sex.
    Not to mention the black magician and the clique of Freemasons and (how could I forget him?) Virginia Woolf’s cousin (and possibly Prince Eddy’s lover), the handsome, demented James Stephen.
    But which one? Or all of them?
    Saying goodbye to Ben, I returned to my carrel. As it happened I’d left the photograph of Mary Kelly’s corpse lying open on the desk. And how curious! As I sat down, that “butcher’s shambles” no longer made me nauseated. Perhaps one really can get used to anything.
    And upon this degraded body of the late nineteenth century,
I thought,
some real demon swooped, ransacking its cavities like a thief in search of hidden jewels, and finding instead only a panic, an emptiness, a vacancy.
    But what demon? Who?
    I looked