The Book (13 page)

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013-29547

When Marion woke, she was relieved to see Holden on the couch beside her and wrapped herself around his neck. Her dreams had only increased the buoyancy of the building stress. Any calmness she exhibited had come from her enthusiasm over the details of the Pratt family estate. As Winston prepared their dinner, she took Holden by the arm and led him throughout the labyrinth of rooms. Holden recognized the hallways and much of the meticulously carved woodwork, but almost everything else seemed new to him. When he had installed the sprinkler system, Winston had most of the antique furnishings and paintings removed or covered in plastic so that nothing would get damaged. Now, walking through the house as a guest, with all the many detailed items displayed and free to the elements, it was quite amazing to absorb it all.

The numerous bedrooms were designed with an individual taste and walking past their doors was like silently stepping through a house museum with the red velvet ropes removed. Eras of furniture and accessories from the early 19
^th
century to their own greeted their eyes in a pristine, dust-free display. The only room unlike the rest was Winston’s. His bedroom was a mismatched collection of different styles, with bright colored furniture, animal print window coverings and post modern sculpture. But no matter how riotous the cacophony of color, print and shape had been to their eyes, none of this gathered their attention. What made them stop and accept that the bedroom had been Winston’s was the many books he had scattered throughout the space, like laundry in the room of a teenager. There were books on his bedside table; books on his sleek, black
Voido
rocking chair; books on his dresser and leaning against his lamp; books displayed proudly beside framed photographs and on shelves beside random items that no man would normally romanticize. The most beautiful of all was a single book filled with ten dollar bills that was encased in glass beside the cigar store statue of an over-dramatized Native American chief.

Holden edged into the room to see the book more closely. The dull brown cover had a blackened, print block image of a man standing over an open coffin with a lantern. It was curiously eerie. Although the rest of the cover was terribly worn, the structure held so strongly that the pages seemed almost unable to be torn from their binding. This seemingly precious book had the appearance of one that had been read often, and yet, Holden wondered if Winston even liked the story, since it was the only book in the house he couldn’t read. It made them wonder if Winston had meant to protect the book for a specific reason or to highlight it as a constant reminder of some larger purpose they would never comprehend. Holden and Marion attempted to garner some answers from the title, but it only confused them further.

The title of the book was
Mr. Weston’s Good Wine
and it was written by someone named T.F. Powys.

The rest of the second floor was divided into smaller reading rooms and short flights of stairs leading to even more reading rooms with books scattered on tables and shelves. After showing Holden the terrace and the conservatory, Marion brought him back to the room where she had been resting. It was the area of the estate that she most enjoyed. The great room. With its high ceilings and dark oak rafters that stood boldly upon the flattest white plaster, it provided the perfect shelter in a shelterless world. Her favorite detail was the thick stone wall that stretched to the chunky triangle support beam above. Carved into the stone was a craggy hearth with an immense railroad beam mantle, all darkened from years of warm fireside nights of reading and relaxation. Despite Marion’s utter fear of the outside world, she truly loved Winston’s home. If this was her jail, what a jail it would be.

When Winston finished cooking, they ate in the dining room, surrounded by conversations that were taking place in marvelous works of art. Painted people sitting in chairs across from one another, men and women eating a luncheon on the grass. Holden wasn’t a man of art, all those swaths of oil and varnish were a mystery to him, but he assumed that with the man’s wealth, the paintings hung around the table were priceless. And yet, they were beautiful to gaze at and, for Holden, it was a night of new experiences and stories yet to come.

Winston knew he had been testing their patience by choosing dinner as the time to discuss how Holden was able to find Marion, to gather the remaining bags of pages, and escape Chicago when she had been sought-after, but he couldn’t stop himself. At times, Marion had to remind the man to eat because he was so enraptured by the courage Holden had exhibited during the night. It recalled to Winston the long dormant character traits of his own and exposed what he had believed was no longer present in the hearts of men. He listened and ate with a constant, fancified smile.

When the deluxe dining experience of black cod and asparagus was finished they returned to the great room where, in the gloom of the consistent irritating rain, Winston asked Holden to start a fire and they sat around the gargantuan hearth drinking coffee and smoking – Winston with his pipe, Marion with her filter-free, thin-fabric cigarettes, and Holden, since he had recently quit, with nothing. The agitated sense of wishing he had a cigarette made Holden curb his manners and chuck his patience into the fire with the logs.

“Winston, I’ve been waiting a long time and I feel like I…”

“I know, Holden,” he responded in serene relaxation, “Ask me your first question.”

“Good. What I want to know is simple. What should I do now? Because from what I’ve gathered…it’s all controlled. Apparently, someone knows everything we do with The Book. Everyday it updates with new ways to suppress…something. Anyone who discovers the truth is seized. And Marion is stuck here for the rest of her life. The rest of
your
life, I guess. So, what should I do now? What can we do with all this information?”

Holden sat with his back to the growing fire and stared off into the dim light of his shadow. He had been expecting a solution. “How can I respond to that? You’ve given us a nice evening, but there’s so much hopelessness, man. How do you expect us to deal with such a harsh reality?”

“Just as I have. Through enjoying what elements of life they don’t have control over.”

“The government can’t just do this,” Holden declared to the gentle smoke at their faces. “Society won’t allow it if we go out and tell people.”

“I agree, Holden…but that time has passed. Maybe if we had caught the revisions within a few years, when independent publishers were still printing paper copies, when mankind still had a romantic obsession with the printed word. Maybe then we could have had a chance. But not now. Not after The Great Recycling.”

Marion swiveled on the leather couch to look at Winston. “Can’t you consider it for a moment, though? How could we convince people that they aren’t reading the truth?”

“That’s a good question. How do you convince the entire population of the world that the device they trust more than any other, the mechanized manuscript of propaganda they willingly enjoy on a daily basis, is false? Tell me, Holden. In fact, you don’t even have to answer this question. Have you been tempted to re-open The Book? Have you found yourself wanting to believe in it again, despite all I have told you and what you have been shown in the last twenty-four hours?” Winston paused to pack more tobacco into his pipe. “There are reasons we trust what we read, regardless of the source. And there are reasons we exist in a world that still shackles itself to The Book.”

Holden furled the skin on his nose as he looked down on Winston for the first time with disappointment. “I think you’re wrong. I think you’re a frightened old man who knows the truth, but hides away in his castle of books when the rest of the suffering world needs to read them. Well, I’m not hiding away. And you can’t stop me from telling people.”

“Holden,” Marion booed, attempting to correct his rudeness.

Winston seemed unaffected by the outburst, almost accustomed to such a response. After allowing Holden a chance to catch his breath and cool down, he replied. “You may be too young to remember this…well, I know you’re too young to remember the event, but I believe they may have been trying to erase this story from our memories as well. Thankfully, some things are a little harder to delete than others, but I guess we’ll find out. Do you recall the story of the British Prince?”

Holden shook his head and shrugged indifferently. Marion was nodding. “Yeah, there was some failed assassination on Prince John like fifty years ago or something.”

Winston cleared his throat as the rain began to fall harder and louder on the roof. The window panes around them were like the rocks below a waterfall, splashed and drenched in perpetual water, and it was difficult to hear his timid voice through the downpour. “That’s correct. I was your age when that happened. The man behind it all was named Dennis Wayne Conrad. He infiltrated Buckingham Palace in London with the sole task of capturing Prince John. The standoff was long, I believe. I would later find out that this was the intention. Conrad wanted that day to last as long as possible and for his deed to achieve the most media attention it could. The sheer planning that went into it is mind-boggling because he had entire sections of Buckingham Palace quarantined. It was obvious, although no one heard much after that day, that the man had been part of a much larger team. And yet, like so many other times in our history, it appeared, to the public eye, as one man with a grudge.”

“But he failed,” Marion protested, “They shot him from the window.”

“Yes. He failed, but not in the way you imagine. At the end of many hours, Conrad brought the prince to the window and spouted off a statement that grew more famous than ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’. Standing in the windows of the White Drawing Room, he exclaimed…
To breathe is to live, but to write unimpeded is to breathe eternal
.”

“That’s beautiful.” Holden said, relishing the old language.

“More than you realize. More than any of us realized.”

Marion was bobbing the cigarette in her hand, looking confused. “See, I knew the story of Prince John from school, but…this is the first time I’ve ever heard about him standing at the window and speaking.”

“Then his failure, as you say, is complete,” Winston rose from his seat to stoke the fire and remained standing for the rest of the story. The shadows cast from the flickering flames created a moving statue of boldness that seemed to speak of the spirit inside Winston rather than the haggard old man hunched before them. “After his declaration, he allowed the prince to dodge away from the window. In the moments following, Conrad was shot and killed. What no one understood was that Conrad had gone there with the intention of being killed.”

“What?” Holden asked, scooting closer to Marion along the shag rug. “Why would he go through all that trouble just to die?”

“Because of words,” Winston answered with simple pride. “Conrad was quoting a line from the novel
The Valiance of Raphael Petitto
. Have you heard of it?” They both shook their heads. “In the story, which took place in the 16
^th
century, Raphael was part of a rebellion of commoners under the oppression of a prince in the King’s absence. The people of the town were surrounding the castle, restless and enslaved. Bent on revolution, Raphael Petitto infiltrated the castle surreptitiously and captured the prince. He then brought the frightened little man to the window, where all the commoners could see, before bellowing out his legendary phrase. Almost immediately an arrow runs him through and he plummets to his death. But, seeing this, the people of the town rise up and overthrow the kingdom.” Winston paused. “I can tell by the look on your faces that it still doesn’t make sense. That’s because I’m leaving out a key detail. In the story, when Raphael brings the prince to the window, he cries out…
To breathe is to live, but to act unimpeded is to breathe eternal
.”

“You said
to write
before,” Marion exclaimed. “To
write
unimpeded is to breathe eternal.”

“Correct. Although Raphael died in the story, he succeeded in defeating the powers that were enslaving them all. Conrad had hoped his death at the window would spur on the same revolution. Clearly it did not.” Winston struck a match along the stone wall and brought the flame to his pipe. “This makes sense when you take time to understand the common folk. They were so enlivened by Petitto’s courage and angered by his death that they stormed the castle. Never before had they realized that their sheer numbers could easily overtake any government fortification. Dennis Wayne Conrad went to London with the goal of getting the rest of the world to realize the same thing. He willingly sacrificed himself for the sake of this.” Winston took a book from the end table and held it high in the random luminance of the fire.

“Only the commoners didn’t react,” Marion finished with a grim expression.

“Exactly. Our ability to understand what happened and to spread the word to one another had been stunted…quickly confused by the government-sanctioned media. None of us knew that he wasn’t going there to assassinate an innocent prince. That he was going there to die in the hope of making people realize that what they were reading was a lie. To free the world from The Book. Soon after, as was just displayed by you Marion, his courageous words were lost upon society.”

In the pleasant crackling of the fireplace and the sober reality of someone else’s failure to stop The Book, Holden started shaking his head in confusion. “But someone must have known what he was doing. Known the quote from that story and realized what he was trying to say. Someone must have done something.”