602
SUSAN SONTAG
What Utterson is saying to a class of eager young disciples in the Study
House in this: "Remember our lost brothers and sisters."Jekyll, who thinks that
today is December 14th, remembers that last Sunday was his wife's birthday.
Richard Enfield, his wife's cousin, is visiting Jekyll, who has now been
moved out of solitary to the east wing where prisoners are housed in pairs.
Jekyll, whose right foot is in a cast because of an accident he had yesterday
jumping down from the upper bunk, has permission to receive visitors today
in his cell, instead of the normal place, the long rectangular visitor's room
divided by a floor-to-ceiling grille. "That was a pretty dumb thing you tried to
do there," says Enfield, trying to be casual. At first Jekyll thinks he is referring
to the stupid way he wrenched his Achilles tendon and broke a bone in his heel,
then realizes Enfield means the attempted murder of Hyde. But he isn't
offended. He has already had a loving visit, early this afternoon, from his wife,
who brought him a box of chocolates and a roast chicken in aspic. He has had to
share the chocolates with his cell-mate, a heroin merchant who cut a guard's
throat during the riot, but luckily the man turned up his nose at the chicken
and Jekyll got to devour it by himself. Jekyll has already put on a little weight
(he is up to one-fifty) and the cell is reasonably heated, but Enfield thinks he
looks terrible.
Jekyll imagines he is handcuffed and that a chain runs from his wrist to the
doorknob of Utterson's bedroom.
If
he jerks his hands, he could open Utter–
son's door--being careful not to bang Poole, the sleeping fourteen-year-old
acolyte, on the head as the door flies open-and actually see what obscene acts
take place in that room in the middle of the night.
"Anything I can bring you?" Enfield asks.
"Sure," says Jekyll. "You can bring me the news of someone's death."
Enfield turns away in pity and disgust, and asks the guard to open the cell
door. "Mind how you close the door," Jekyll shouts. "Softlyl There's a draft."
His cell-mate, now exiled to the upper bunk, presses his chocolate-stained
mouth into his pillow and grunts unpleasantly. Utterson, taking his afternoon
nap, rolls around in his large filthy bed, and shouts for Poole to bring him some
fresh coffee.
It
is time for him to get up and rejoin his pupils in the Study
House, to deliver another talk on inner discipline and the proper uses of
selfishness. Jekyll watches the door slam shut.
Finally, it is frail old Lanyon who brings Jekyll the news he is waiting for.
Hyde has committed suicide: hanged himself in his cellar.
Since it is two weeks later, Jekyll should have been able to receive Lanyon
in the visitor's room; but this morning he tripped on his crutches while hobbling
from his bunk to the slop pail and cleanly fractured a bone in his left ankle. The
