The City of Dreaming Books (26 page)

Went over to a shelf.

Took out a book at random.

Weighed it in my hand.

Was it unusually heavy? Could I hear something rattle inside it?

No.

Or was it too light because it contained a cavity filled with lethal gas?

No, it wasn’t too light either.

I shut my eyes and averted my head.

And opened it.

Nothing happened.

No explosion.

No poisoned arrow.

No cloud of splintered glass.

Gingerly, I touched the pages.

No cold sensation in my fingers.

Could I detect any signs of incipient madness?

Hard to say.

I glunked my teeth. No, they didn’t fall out either. Everything seemed firm enough.

Vertigo? Nausea? Fever?

Nothing of the kind.

I opened my eyes again.

Phew! It was a perfectly normal, harmless book. No explosive device, no cylinder of lethal gas or hypo filled with acid. It was just a book like most other books: paper covered with print and bound in hoggskin. Pah! What else had I been expecting, paranoid simpleton that I was? The odds against encountering a Toxicotome out of all the works down here were probably ten thousand to one.

I looked at the title. Hey, I actually knew this book, though only superficially! It was
Nothing of Importance
by Nemo de Zilch, the founder of Grailsundian Equalitism, a school of philosophy dedicated to total indifference.

‘
It is wholly immaterial whether or not you read this book
.’ Zilch’s opening sentence had always deterred me from reading on, just as it did this time. I replaced the book on the shelf unread - a reaction that would have delighted the Equalitists because it precisely complied with the aim of their sect, which was to be utterly ineffectual.

Nevertheless, the book had supplied me with some important information. It could only have hailed from the Zamonian Early Middle Ages because the Equalitists were active at that period and it was a first impression of the first edition.

I walked on past innumerable bookcases without bestowing any attention on their contents, leaving passage after passage behind me. Then I paused, took out a book at random and opened it.

‘
“Life, alas, is all too short,” Prince Summerbird remarked, heaving a big sigh.

Madame Fonsecca looked amused. “Ah,” she interposed, “I see you gentlemen are once more discussing the regrettable fact that our sojourn on earth is subject to shocking constraints from the temporal aspect.”
’

No doubt about it: this was a
Plethoric novel
, one of Zamonian literature’s more grotesque aberrations, in which variations on a single basic theme were repeated ad nauseam. And when had the Plethorists been active? In the
Late
Middle Ages! I was heading in the right direction, therefore, having progressed from the Early to the Late Middle Ages.

Quick! Go on! Again I passed countless shelves and bookcases without heeding their contents. I saw two variegated jellyfish clinging to each other in their death throes, but the sight no longer dismayed me. I was filled with hope once more. Then I paused.

‘
Water cuts no bread
’ were the first words I read on opening a book of verse. What was that called? Of course, it was an adynation, a natural impossibility. And what school of poetry had traditionally begun its poems with natural impossibilities? The
Adynationists
, of course! And when was the heyday of the Adynationists? Before or after that of the Plethorists? After, after! I had left the Middle Ages behind and come to Zamonian High Baroque!

From now on I checked at ever shorter intervals, allowed myself more time, examined several books in many bookcases and deployed all the literary knowledge Dancelot Wordwright had instilled in me. Had Horatio Senneker been writing before or after Pistolarius Grenk? When had Platoto de Nedici introduced
Adaptionism
into Zamonian literature? Had Glorian Cucurbit belonged to the Grailsundian Pastellists or the Tralamander Circle? Did Fredda the Hirsute’s oxymoronic verses hail from her Blue or her Yellow Period?

I thanked my authorial godfather in retrospect for the relentless way in which he had drummed all these facts into my head. How I had cursed him for it, yet now they might possibly save my life! I felt I was sailing across a dark sea in which countless lighthouses stood on little islands. The lighthouses were writers beaming their lonely messages across the centuries - I was sailing from island to island, guided by those literary beacons. They were the thread that would lead me out of the labyrinth. Hunger and thirst forgotten, I snatched book after book off the shelves, deduced my progress from them and hurried on, then paused once more and took out another.

‘
The Universe imploded
’ were its opening words. Definitely an
Anticlimacticist
novel, a genre whose exponents began their books at the most exciting and spectacular juncture. Thereafter they allowed the storyline to relapse, becoming steadily duller and more inconsequential until it petered out halfway through a casual remark. The Anticlimacticists were assigned to the Zamonian Romantic era, so I had come a stage further.

‘
He desquelched his lips from hers and creakled down in a decrepit old armchair. Holding up the crustling sheet of paper, he examined it peeringly. “Is this really his will?” he surprasked.

She sobwept snufflingly.
’

Good heavens,
Onomatopoeic Dynaprose
! The authors of the period had presumably lost faith in their readers’ powers of imagination and felt they had to beef up their writing with gimmicky neologisms of this kind - which ruined its dramatic impact by modern standards. People like Rolli Fantono and Montanios Trumper had written such stuff in the belief that it was terribly modern, whereas all a modern eye could discern in such fatuities was that their authors were terribly old hat. For all that, these were the beginnings of the Zamonian
nouveau roman
, the first experimental essays in a new form of literature. I was heading briskly for the modern era.

‘
Count Elfensenf? May I introduce Professor Phlogisto La Fitti, the inventor of anoxygenic air? Perhaps the three of us could play a hand of rumo together?
’

Ah yes, I had definitely reached modern times, that little snatch of dialogue was proof enough for me. It came from a
Count Elfensenf
novel, the precursor of all Zamonian detective stories, of which Minolo Hack had written dozens just two centuries ago. Although hardly great literature, his books were almost as popular as the
Prince Sangfroid
novels, especially with younger readers. This one was
Count Elfensenf and the Breathless Professor
, which I had read probably half a dozen times in my boyhood. The same shelf held all the other novels in the series from
Count Elfensenf and the Iron Potato
to
Count Elfensenf and the Piratical Zombie.
I wouldn’t have minded reading them all again, but this wasn’t an appropriate time.

Instead, I took a book from the shelf beside them. It was small, untitled and bound in black leather. Opening it, I read:

Bingo! This was a really recent publication. Rongkong Koma . . . Wasn’t he the one who had hunted Regenschein so relentlessly? A contemporary, no less! I dipped into the book as I walked on.

Sombre stuff. Still, it was by a Bookhunter and they couldn’t all be as brilliant as Colophonius Regenschein.

Hm, a really likeable individual, this Rongkong Koma. Not exactly the type of person one wanted to bump into down here in the dark.

This, it seemed, was the intellectually limited philosophy of a professional murderer. Hardly my favourite kind of reading but a contemporary work, that was what mattered. I tossed it over my shoulder and pulled out another volume, a particularly striking specimen bound in glittering steel and sumptuously adorned with silver, gold and copper fittings. Imagine my astonishment, dear readers, when I opened it to reveal a complicated mechanism in place of printed pages! At the same time I felt relieved because, had it been a Hazardous Book, I would have been standing there headless or transfixed by an arrow between the eyes. But what was it?

I saw cogwheels revolving, springs tensing, miniature pistons sliding back and forth. And then, at the top of the book’s interior, which resembled a peep-show or puppet theatre, a copper curtain rose and some little metal figures appeared on the tiny stage. Although as two-dimensional as the puppets in a shadow theatre, they were impressively lifelike and clearly represented Bookhunters whose martial accoutrements had been reproduced with great skill and accuracy. They proceeded to duel with axes and fire arrows at each other until all sank lifeless to the ground. Despite the bloodthirsty nature of the performance, it had been staged with loving care and considerable artistry. Then the copper curtain fell and, to my great disappointment, the little theatre’s show was over.

It was an amazing invention - an intelligent toy for adults! For the first time, in spite of my perilous predicament, I felt the desire to own a book from the catacombs. I had only to take it with me, after all. As things now stood I would be bound to find an exit soon and a rare item like this would surely be worth a fortune up in Bookholm.

But wait! Something was moving in the lower part of the mechanical book! A dozen tiny windows had appeared, a whole row of them with letters of the Zamonian alphabet rotating inside them like the cylinders in a one-armed bandit. Then, with a click-click-click, the letters came to a halt and, when read in succession, formed a sentence. It ran:

‘Eh?’ I said foolishly, as if the book had spoken to me, and in reply I heard a musical box in its mechanical innards strike up a tune. It was the traditional Zamonian funeral march we had played at Dancelot’s cremation. I looked again.

A disappointingly meaningless message after that brilliant puppet show. Or was it a riddle?

One moment: Goldenbeard the Hairsplitter - wasn’t that the Bookhunter claimed by Regenschein to have made a habit of eliminating his competitors with book traps of exceptional subtlety? Yes, Goldenbeard was a former watchmaker who used his knowledge of precision engineering to . . .

It was only then that I noticed a fine silver wire running from the spine of the book to the shelf. It had gone taut and was vibrating violently. I dropped the book in a hurry. It clattered to the floor, still playing the funeral march, but I was far too late. I heard more wires twanging, heard them go taut all along the passage like the strings of a gigantic harp being tuned, followed by a rumble like distant thunder. I glanced over my shoulder in dismay.

At the upper end of the passage the massive wooden bookcases were toppling over one by one. By disturbing this cunning book trap I’d activated a hidden mechanism. The bookcases were felling each other in turn like dominoes. Hundreds and thousands of volumes cascaded on to the steeply inclined floor, and the bookcases came crashing down after them. Wood, paper and leather piled up into a huge wave that bore swiftly down on me like an avalanche of mud speeding along a dried-up river bed.