The Last Days of a Rake

the Poppy
    Lankin left London, though he did not know where he was going. Italy was too cultured and cynical for him, he found, Germany too cold and ascetic. Russia too grim, Turkey too lavish, France too broken. He drifted to India, where a fine balance existed between English reserve and Eastern pleasure seeking. It suited him, he found, and he wandered the country, sitting with low-caste outcasts sharing a hookah, and visiting with the son of the Mughal ruler, (with whom he debated Hindu and Mussulman philosophy) enjoying the deliciously spicy food, so refreshing to a jaded palate, and learning about Hindu history.
    The women were gorgeous, sinuously beautiful, doe-eyed and cultured in ways no Englishwomen ever would be. The Mughal believed that multiple wives were a blessing, and Lankin was intrigued. However stifling one wife, in the English tradition, seemed, would having many wives be more or less restrictive? Unfortunately for Lankin, the ladies were also well-guarded. As curious as they seemed about him, they were never allowed to be alone.
    Finally, though, he tired of traveling and became weary of his cultural exploration. At a little entrepôt along the Indian coast, Lankin found other like-minded Englishmen, weary of the world, bored with their privileged lot in life. He became curious about their habits, especially after coming across a fellow he knew in school, who now spent most of his days in an ecstatic trance. He was one of the infamous opium eaters.
    Lankin joined him, finding in opium an antidote for the tedium of life. In this endeavor Lankin was a more original De Quincey, for he took to opium eating in the garden of its creation, rather than the squalid streets of London. But that originality was barren of meaning, for at least De Quincey produced a great literary work out of his habit. All Lankin did was smoke, eat opium, drink and carouse with frowsier and frowsier expatriate Englishwomen—runaway wives, penurious prostitutes—sickly sybarites all. He became thin, wasting away in his addiction to the spell of the poppy.
    To understand that time and place, one must know that all who became slaves to the wretched flower were looking to soothe pain, whether physical or spiritual. Lankin’s pain stemmed from his resolute refusal to accept his deficiencies. He was intent on protecting his view of himself as a fine fellow indeed. Any evidence to the contrary was stifled, and inevitably that layer upon layer of suppressed truth caused immense suffering.
    Opium is a delicious deceiver. It gives the eater the illusion of wealth, of endless time, of years and years of life in one night that stretches on for eons. Lankin contracted the illness that would ultimately end his life, for consumption follows naturally upon addiction. But the nature of opium is such that he had wasted to a hull of his former self before he even recognized he was ill. He forgot to eat for days at a time, forgot anything but the sweet narcotic haze, during which he would walk for hours, marveling at the palaces and splendor, only to finally lose the illusion as the drug wore off, when he would find himself in a slum of truly horrifying depravity.
    He spiraled deeper and deeper, funding not only his own addiction, but that of others. Hangers-on flattered and curried favor with him. They were his friends until he ran out of money, when they drifted away, only to show up again when a draft came in from his bank.
    Then one day he awoke, as if from a dream, and discovered that seven years had passed. How had it happened? It seemed just a few minutes ago he was wandering some riverbank and thinking how lovely India was on first look, and now he had spent over one-fifth of his life as if in a dream. It was a horrible moment, but worse was in store when he gazed at his ravaged face in the mirror and saw the truth in his eyes. He was dying.
    It is strange how in the face of such knowledge the heart and soul returns to the past and the comfort of old philosophies, old beliefs. Did God—Lankin’s God, not the pantheon of Indian lore—love him, even when he had strayed repeatedly so far from the safe shores of Christian hope? Could he return to the breast of the Savior, or was he lost forever? It was not that Lankin thought the Indian religion diabolical, but it was not suited to an Englishman who felt the need for some recognizable comfort, that of the pulpit and the pastor, the scolding of the wretch, the reassurance of the