“When Jack ate that hooker’s kidney,” my 7-year-old brother asks, “do you think he fried it or baked it?”

“Neither,” I offer, like the 9-year-old wit I am. “He made a kidney pie.”

I can still hear my mother groaning.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

I’d nearly forgotten my Jack the Ripper obsession (I once memorized the dates and details of each of the five unsolved murders attributed to him, but it never proved useful in real life), until I found myself in London recently, looking for something to do on a Sunday night. I picked up a brochure from the Original London Walks tour company and discovered that Donald Rumbelow, a former member of the City of London police force and “an internationally recognised expert” on the so-called Whitechapel Murders, was leading a walking tour through Jack the Ripper’s East End stomping grounds. “You want to go to this?” my boyfriend said, a little incredulously. “He killed girls, you know.”

I know. In fact, some theorists have even proposed that the Ripper was a girl — “Jill the Ripper” — though, as my brother and I concluded 20 years ago, a woman probably wouldn’t have had the upper body strength to slit a woman’s throat straight to the spine. For that you had to be a surgeon, a meat-cutter, an adrenalized whack-job or, at very least, an NFL running back. I looked forward to discussing the various conspiracy theories (Was it Queen Victoria’s fey grandson, the Duke of Clarence? Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have any inside poop?) with our guide, assuming that we’d be joining a small group of mystery buffs and perverts. But when we arrive at the Tower Hill tube station we find Rumbelow, a ruddy-faced fellow in the standard-issue waxed cotton coat taking money (4-and-a-half pounds each) from more than 100 other tourists: Japanese with video cameras, American kids in fraternity sweat shirts, ripely aromatic Germans, English ladies in tweed skirts and sensible shoes.

How can a serial killer who did his best work in 1888 still cast such a spell? I wonder. Or are all the hot plays just sold out?

The tour starts about a quarter-mile from the Tower of London at one of the
remnants of the old Roman wall that once surrounded the City of London. In
August of 1888, any misbehavior within the wall (or imaginary wall, since much
of it had crumbled away) fell under the jurisdiction of the City of London
police force; crimes on the other side were in the domain of Scotland Yard. No love was lost between the two department heads (think: Simone and
Sipowicz vs. the feds). By leaving bodies on both sides of the wall, Rumbelow
explains, and pitting rival forces against each other, the murderer managed to
avoid detection. His other stroke of genius was murdering five lowly
prostitutes in the worst part of London before the advent of fingerprinting
and DNA testing. None of us would be here, after all, if he’d been caught. And
judging from the number of ladies present, I’d guess a good number of us
wouldn’t be here if Michael York hadn’t once been cast as the elusive
eviscerator.

Rumbelow refers to these crimes as “the Jack the Ripper murders,” but he has
such a deliciously stentorian British accent that it comes out as “the Jahck
the Rippah murrr-dahs.” The creep show pronunciation makes us huddle a bit
closer against the setting sun. He warns us that we may have been a bit
misled by the media treatment Jack the Ripper has received (particularly the
“Star Trek” episode in which the Ripper’s evil spirit takes root in Scotty,
who beams down to a peace-loving planet and goes on a murder spree). For
instance, contrary to the notion I had conjured as a kid, his victims were not
milk-fed beauties in pastel silks who danced on pub tables and tossed back
whiskey shots with saucy abandon. Instead, they were hopeless women, bloated
from drink and bony with disease. They wore all the clothes they owned at
once, skirts piled upon skirts, their hems dragging through mud and dung. They
had very few teeth.

Which makes it all the more pathetic that his first
victim, Polly Nichols, had just several hours before her death been heard
boasting that her “jolly new bonnet” was sure to lure many new customers. I
realize with a shiver that this is the first time in my long association with
Jack that I’d spent more than a moment thinking about what he really did to
these women. Somehow I’d always been more riveted by the notion that he came
out of the shadows and sank back in again, undetected, an evil genius, a
modern-day Dracula. I wasn’t thinking body count.

As the tour starts, my cohorts and I seem to be viewing the events from a
comfortable distance. We laugh when Rumbelow describes a victim named
Catharine Eddowes, who had drunk so much the night of her death that she was
seen racing around a traffic circle and imitating a fire engine (“as one
does,” our guide adds, his comic timing dead on).

But as we move deeper into
London’s East End, and as the darkness falls, the evening grows grimmer. In
Mitre Square, an old patch of cobblestone now limned with corporate high-rises
and parking structures, we stop on the spot where Eddowes was found, the tip
of her nose sliced off, her intestines tossed over her right shoulder. “God, I
didn’t expect this to be so, like, gross,” I hear an American exchange student
tell her British boyfriend. As the bloody narrative builds (“Here the victim
was found like the others, ripped from the breast bone to the vagina!”
Rumbelow shouts over the car traffic), I notice that some of the other women
are looking just as uncomfortable as I feel, and we acknowledge each other
with grim little smiles. At the old doss house where at least one victim was
turned away the night she met up with Jack the Ripper, several Miss Marple-esque English ladies line up to take flash photos of themselves in front of
the women’s dormitory. “Barb, smile!” instructs one. “Just take the picture,”
Barb hisses.

Jack the Ripper tours have become so commonplace in this neighborhood
(another tour group of two dozen trails behind us all evening) that the locals
make sport of our puerile pastime. Near a brick doorway where the killer once
scrawled a clue in chalk, an apartment light turns on and a young man who
stands silhouetted against the window pantomimes a knife across his neck, and
drops to his knees. Pub crawlers join up at various intervals to share their
own theories (“I know who did it!” slurs one. “It was me!”), but our guide
tells us tonight is pleasantly uneventful. He says he is often trailed by a
blue-faced glue-sniffer who wants to hold his hand.

To give us an impression of the murky dark of 1888 London, Rumbelow leads us
down a one-horse-narrow street with a single flickering lamp, then through a
dark garbage-filled brick passageway behind the doss house. (“Oh, this is
authentic all right,” jokes one woman. “That smell is genuine human piss.”)
Having accounted for the violent deaths of the first four victims — Polly
Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes — we arrive at
Millers Court, the site of a flat belonging to a sometime prostitute named
Mary Kelly. Jack the Ripper was her last customer, and though some neighbors
heard a scream, no one came to investigate. In the morning, when the landlord
sent a boy to collect her overdue rent, Kelly’s body was found eviscerated in
such cruel detail that when Rumbelow recounts it, several men and women
cover their ears.

This leaves a bad taste in our mouths, one that Rumbelow suggests we wash down
at the Ten Bells pub down the street, thought to be a favorite watering
hole for at least two Ripper victims, and possibly the murderer himself. The
pub celebrates the association (it was once renamed “The Jack the Ripper”) by
creating a mini-murder museum with laminated newspaper clippings of the Ripper
murders, and an appropriately maudlin hand-painted placard detailing the women
who were killed and the dates of their deaths. Rumbelow quickly sets up behind a
table and begins selling copies of his out-of-print book “The Complete Jack the
Ripper” for 8 pounds a pop, and the barkeeps do a brisk business selling silk-
screened T-shirts of a top hat resting above devilish eyes.

The marketing is
fascinating to my boyfriend. “OK, you’ve got about 120 people who pay about
8 bucks for the tour, and then if you sell about 50 books for about $15 apiece,” he says, wondering if there is an equally grisly tour we could lead
back home in Portland, Ore., to supplement our income. “How about a tour
called ‘The Trailer Parks of Tonya Harding’?” he offers.

But as I sip my pint of stout and look around the room, it becomes clear
to me that this is the most ghoulish thing I’ve participated in since
attending junior high school. The sound system is filling the small smoky
room with eerily mournful celestial voices. The tourists who buy Rumbelow’s
book flip directly to a grisly police photograph of Mary
Kelly’s mutilated body. High school girls in platform shoes and pigtails take
turns snapping each others’ pictures on the sidewalk where Kelly is said to
have looked for customers, and several men hold their fists up in the air,
gripping imaginary knives, and aping the incisions the Ripper once made on
their delighted female companions. I feel I am in the presence of that weird
mechanism that makes girls write letters to convicts, and cry when Ted Bundy
got the chair. That makes us root, just a little, for Hannibal Lecter.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-

I wish I could tell you that that evening in London’s East End cured me of
this morbid fascination. In fact, it had just the opposite effect. A week
after I got home, I found myself in the public library, sitting on the
carpeted floor of the reference section, again poring over the “Unsolved
Murders” chapter in “The People’s Almanac.” I ordered Rumbelow’s book (which
cost twice as much as it would have if I’d bought it in the pub). I spent a
few dark and stormy nights reading through the suspect files and weirdly
fascinating Web page Casebook: Jack the Ripper. I went to Blockbuster for a copy of
“Murder by Decree.”

Last week a very sensible friend called to find out how my trip had gone, and
I confided to her the weird guilt I had been feeling since I’d resurrected
this morbid childhood hobby. She told me to cut it out, and I promised I
would. She hesitated for a minute. “But I’m just curious,” she asked, “what do
you think he did with that kidney?”

Not long ago, a friend called to invite me on a cheap, off-season tour of Turkey. She promised that I would see the ruins of Ephesus and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, that I would wake each morning to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer and go to bed each night with a belly full of aubergine. Yeah, whatever, I said, just as long as I get to buy a rug. The truth was that ever since I bought my first car and was introduced to the delirious back-and-forth of negotiating, I had dreamed of going toe-to-toe with the guys who invented the dealer showroom. Since flying carpets were our first automatic conveyance — and if you’ve read “The Arabian Nights” or seen “Aladdin” you know this is true — rug merchants were actually the world’s first automobile salesmen.

And they’re outstanding salesmen, living as they do in the busy confluence between Europe and Asia, a ripe spot for studying humanity and perfecting the first salesman credo: Tell the customers what they want to hear. On my first day in Istanbul, I nearly fell prey to a green-eyed charmer who accosted me in the Kapali Carsi, the famous covered bazaar that holds more than 4,000 shops. (Take that, Mall of America!) “You are a great beauty,” he said so wolfishly that it was clear the antiseptic threat of harassment charges hadn’t drifted into this pungent corner of the world. “You must be Italian.” Actually, I’m a poster girl for the corn-fed Midwestern look, and was so pleased to be deemed continental that I was opening my wallet when my Turkish tour guide dragged me away.

After another half hour in Istanbul, I discovered that merchants’ flattery flew almost as quickly as the prices they quoted, but it was the numbers I had to pay attention to. At the time I visited, each U.S. dollar was worth about 35,500 lira, a complicated ratio, but one that gave me the heady thrill of announcing, “A million? No prob!” I spent the week learning, but it wasn’t until I passed the souvenir stands outside the ruins of Ephesus that I felt I had hardened myself to the Turkish marketing come-on. There, a young man bearing an armful of dolls and a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp deliberately bumped into me. “Excuse me, madame,” he said, his voice warm and rich as ripe olives in sunshine, “You dropped something.”

I looked to the ground and then to him. “What did I drop?”

He paused for a moment, searching my face soulfully. “It was my heart,” he dripped, but I kept walking. I was finally ready to buy a rug.

So we went to Oba, a veritable rug ranch of low-slung buildings and grassy courtyards, just down the road from the House of the Virgin Mary. A hawk-browed Turkish man in a double-breasted suit greeted us and gave a lesson about rug craftsmanship designed to dispel any notions we may have had that a good rug could be purchased on the cheap. He showed us baskets of tobacco leaves, onion skins and indigo used for dying fibers. He showed us the silkworms boiled alive for our textural pleasure — a sacrifice that Doublebreasted assured us the worms were only too glad to make. Same went for the young girls in the weaving room whose hands shuttled and knotted wool with the fluttering speed of hummingbirds. Doublebreasted promised that the girls got full health coverage, nutritious meals and a good wage, and that they didn’t complain when the small-motor demands of rug weaving forced them to leave the work by their late teens. “It is a privilege and an honor to make something so beautiful,” he said, but I couldn’t stop the piteous look that swept across my face as I watched a young girl squatting and squinting before an intricate Persian pattern. An equally sympathetic look crossed her face as she saw us herded into the carpet showroom, lambs to the slaughter.

We were led through a series of rooms where vibrant rugs and kilims were
layered like sheets, rolled into columns, and tacked to the walls — each room
duplicating and expanding upon the previous room’s treasures. At the end of
the procession was a ballroom-sized showroom where we were offered Turkish
apple tea, soda, beer and wine (American car dealers should reconsider the
popcorn and Coke routine, I thought).While we were served by a long-lashed
girl in harem pants, her counterpart — a sulky John Malkovich look-alike in
Western clothes — quietly shut the heavy wood door that was our only escape
route.

Like a Turkish kervanseray floor show in which a slim-hipped belly dancer
preps the crowd for the heftier model and finally for the cartilaginous
creature who shakes her extra-wide-load hips to tambourines and thunderous
applause, the rug show started slowly. Malkovich and Harempants lifted each
rug by the ends, walked to the center of the room and let gravity unfurl it,
the bright colors of Anatolia, Kars and Kayseri washing over us. As the
pacing built, the rugs started to cover the shining wooden floor, then
overlapped one another. Soon we had left our perches on the wooden bench that
lined the wall and begun crawling around on the rugs, examining their fine
weaves and lustrous textures. The climactic crescendo arrived with the
unfurling of a massive silk Persian of geranium reds and robin’s-egg blues.
Though we were already breathless, Doublebreasted clapped his hands and
Malkovich and Harempants, moving like choreographed game-show models, picked
up either end of the carpet and turned it by 180 degrees, shifting the rug’s
palette to crimson and cobalt. Amazing! we cried. Astonishing! we clapped.

At that, a cluster of salesmen who had been gathering in the room suddenly
converged on us and pulled us to separate corners. Three men whisked me into
another room. Their leader was a raven-haired fellow with cheap shoes and a
wistful expression. His name, Ogun, means “That Day” in Turkish, a fact that
was the source of huge laughs for his two squat henchmen who clearly
understood my English, but spoke only in Turkish with Ogun. I started to say
that I was in the market for a 5-by-7 kilim with a lot of red in it, but Ogun
shot me a pained look that suggested such a request was as déclassé as
demanding that an Old Master painting match my sofa. Instead, he ordered the
henchmen to unroll a series of rugs at my feet. When I shook my head at the
choices, the henchmen tossed their arms up in disgust, but Ogun had a more
courtly approach. With each selection I dismissed, he nodded appreciatively
and moved closer to me, as if irresistibly drawn to my aesthetic.

Soon he
began dismissing rugs for me — “Can’t you see she won’t like that? She wants
real beauty,” he would scold the henchmen. He asked if my husband would like
my choice of rug, and I said I didn’t have a husband. He shouted in Turkish
to the henchmen, who eyed me up and down, and again tossed their hands up in
disgust. “They think this is a tragedy,” Ogun said, and then sighed toward
his cheap shoes, “and so do I.” At this point he asked if I had a credit card
with me. I said yes. The haggling began.

The rug I selected, or that Ogun had selected for me, was a jewel-toned
affair of blacks, pomegranate reds, jade greens and deep blues. Ogun
explained that normally he would start the bidding around $1,000, but since
this was the end of the season, and since I had no husband, he would start at
$500. I shook my head at the price, and though my blood was racing, I
couldn’t coax out a counter-offer. Ogun strode away from my side with his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He nodded his head
and Henchman No. 1 scurried to the other room. Ogun smiled, puffed out one side
of his cheek, and slowly blew out a low whistle of air. A few minutes later,
the henchman returned and whispered in Ogun’s ear. Ogun told me that
Doublebreasted had insisted that I leave with a rug today — how did $260 sound?
Well, it sounded pretty good to me, now that my lust for bargaining had
flagged. Ogun wasn’t a shrewd creep, I thought, he was a fellow connoisseur.
Just then, my friend walked in and saw me handing off my credit card.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, and I explained the situation. “No way,”
she said to Ogun. “Two of ‘em for $260!”

Quickly, my friend’s bad-cop display
made me realize I had allowed myself to be swept along too easily. Ogun
looked to me. “Two for $260?” he asked, and I nodded. He held his hand to his
heart. He walked to the corner of the room and sighed. “We are friends,
Laura?” he said, coaxing a small tear to the corner of his eye. “Why do you
hurt me like this?” Finally, I understood the theatrics required here.

“Ogun,” I said, so forcefully I convinced myself I was truly affronted. “I
don’t think you’re being honest with me …” and I snatched back my Visa card.

At that there was a very pregnant pause in which Ogun and the henchmen bored
their Turkish eyes at me. They huddled and Henchman No. 2 threw his hands up in
the air and pointed at me. Henchman No. 1 made a spitting noise. Ogun looked
over his shoulder. “So you want two rugs?”

“If the price is right,” I said. Henchman No. 2 sniffed and gestured again.
Ogun came back to my side and put his arm around me, hand to his collarbone
in a gesture of sincerity. “My friend, you know that I must make a living?” I
clenched my fist around my plastic. He let out a heavy sigh. “My friend, you
may have two for $400. No lower please.”

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three sixty,” he said.

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three twenty-five,” he said.

“Sold,” I said, and at that there were cheers from the henchmen and from the
small crowd from my tour bus that had gathered for the final negotiation. As
I handed off my Visa, Ogun took my hand and wrapped it under and over his
forearm as though we had been wedded by this exchange of currency. He
lovingly folded and packed my rugs in brown paper and then in a nylon case he
promised would fit nicely under my plane seat. It did.

Now I come across my two rugs, one in my living room, the other in my
bedroom, and I feel a wave of pleasure at my purchases. But the souvenir that
pleases me most is a photograph I have of Ogun and me. We are standing in the
courtyard of the rug ranch — I have my hands clasped and my head tossed back in
laughter; he gazes at the camera with the smallest trace of a smile. We both
look so satisfied — like we each ripped off the other just a little bit.