The City of Dreaming Books (5 page)

The next morning I decided to leave Lindworm Castle. Having spent the whole night running through various ways of overcoming the crisis - hurling myself from the battlements, taking refuge in drink, abandoning my literary career and becoming a hermit, cultivating cauliflowers in Dancelot’s garden - I resolved to follow my authorial godfather’s advice and set out on a longish journey. I wrote my parents a consoling farewell letter in sonnet form and made up a bundle containing my savings, two jars of Dancelot’s jam, a loaf of bread and a bottle of water.

Leaving the castle at dawn, I slunk through the deserted streets like a thief and did not breathe easier until I reached open countryside. I walked for many days, seldom resting because I had but one objective: to get to Bookholm and pick up the trail of the mysterious author whose artistry had filled me with such exaltation. In my youthful optimism I imagined him taking Dancelot’s place and becoming my tutor. He would, I thought, bear me upwards to the sphere in which writing such as his originated. I had no idea what he looked like - I didn’t know his name or even if he was still alive - but I was sure I would find him. Ah, the boundless confidence of youth!

That is how I came to Bookholm. So here I now am with you, my undaunted readers. And it is here, on the outskirts of the City of Dreaming Books, that my story really begins.

O
nce I had grown accustomed to the overpowering smell of mildewed paper that arose from the bowels of Bookholm and survived some allergic sneezing fits occasioned by the ubiquitous clouds of book dust, and once my eyes had stopped watering in the acrid smoke from a thousand chimneys, I could at last begin to take stock of the city’s countless marvels.

Bookholm had more than five thousand officially registered antiquarian bookshops and roughly a thousand semi-legal establishments that sold, in addition to books, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and intoxicating herbs and essences whose ingestion was reputed to enhance your pleasure and powers of concentration when reading. There was also an almost incalculable number of itinerant vendors with printed matter of every conceivable kind for sale in shoulder bags or on handcarts, in wheelbarrows and mobile bookcases. Bookholm boasted over six hundred publishing houses, fifty-five printers, a dozen paper mills and a steadily growing number of factories producing lead type and printer’s ink. There were shops offering thousands of different bookmarks and ex-libris, stonemasons specialising in bookends, cabinetmakers’ workshops and furniture stores filled with lecterns and bookcases, opticians who manufactured spectacles and magnifying glasses, and coffee shops on every street corner. Open for business twenty-four hours a day, most of the latter had inglenook fireplaces and were venues for authors’ readings.

I saw countless fire stations in Bookholm, all extremely spick and span, with gigantic alarm bells above the entrances and horse-drawn engines towing copper water tanks. Disastrous fires had destroyed a substantial proportion of the city and its books on five separate occasions, for Bookholm was accounted the biggest fire hazard in Zamonia. Because of the strong winds that were constantly blowing through its streets, the city was cool, cold or icy depending on the time of year, but never warm, which was why its inhabitants preferred to remain indoors, heat their houses well and - of course - read a great deal. Their ever-burning stoves and the sparks that flew in the immediate vicinity of old and highly combustible books created a truly dangerous state of affairs in which a new conflagration might break out at any minute.

I had to resist the impulse to dash into the nearest bookshop and root around in its stock, for I would not have emerged before nightfall and first I had to find somewhere to stay. So I strolled past the windows with shining eyes, endeavouring to make a note of the shops whose wares seemed especially promising.

There they were, the ‘Dreaming Books’. That was what the inhabitants of this city called antiquarian books because, from the dealers’ point of view, they were neither truly alive nor truly dead but located in an intermediate limbo akin to sleep. With their existence proper behind them and the prospect of decay ahead, millions upon millions of them slumbered in the bookcases, cellars and catacombs of Bookholm. Only when one of them was picked up and opened by an eager hand, only when it was purchased and borne off, could it awaken to new life. And that was what all these books dreamed of.

I spotted a first edition of
Tiger in My Sock
by Caliban Sycorax!
The Shaven Tongue
by Drastica Sinops - with Elihu Wipple’s celebrated illustrations!
Hard Beds and Soiled Sheets,
Yodler van Hinnen’s legendary, humorous travel guide - in mint condition!
A Village Named Snowflake
by Ivan Palisade-Honko, the much admired autobiography of an arch-criminal written in the dungeons of Ironville and signed in blood by the author himself!
Life Is More Terrible than Death
, the despairing maxims and aphorisms of Parsifal Gunk, bound in batskin!
The Ant Drum
by Semolina Edam - the legendary mirror-writing edition!
The Glass Guest
by Zodiak Glockenspiel! Hampo Harrabin’s experimental novel
The Dog that Only Barked Backwards
! All these were books I’d longed to read ever since Dancelot had sung their praises to me. I flattened my snout against each window in turn, groping my way along like a drunk and progressing at a snail’s pace until I finally pulled myself together. I forbade myself to take note of any more titles and resolved to gain a general impression of Bookholm. I had failed to see the wood for the trees, or rather, the city for the books. After my cosy, dreamy existence in Lindworm Castle, which was enlivened at most by an occasional siege, the streets of Bookholm bombarded me with a hailstorm of impressions. Images, colours, scenes, sounds and smells - all were novel and exciting. Zamonians of every species passed me and each was a stranger. The castle had had nothing to offer but the same old procession of familiar faces, friends, relations, neighbours, acquaintances. Here, everything was alien and unfamiliar.

I did, in fact, run into one or two visitors from Lindworm Castle. When that happened we paused for a moment, said a polite hello, exchanged a few empty phrases, wished each other a pleasant stay and bade each other goodbye. We all cultivate this stand-offish manner when travelling, if only because no one goes abroad in order to meet others of his own kind.

On you go, I told myself, explore the unknown! Haggard poets were standing everywhere, loudly declaiming their own works in the hope that they would capture the attention of some passing publisher or wealthy patron. I noticed some singularly well-nourished individuals prowling round these street poets: corpulent Hogglings who listened attentively and made occasional notes. Far from being generous patrons of the arts, they were literary agents who bullied budding authors into signing cut-throat contracts and then subjected them to merciless pressure, using them as ghost-writers until they had milked them of their last original idea. Dancelot had told me about their kind.

Members of the Bookholmian constabulary were patrolling the streets on the lookout for illegal dealers operating without licences. Whenever they hove into view, handcarts were hurriedly wheeled off and books stuffed into sacks.

Live Newspapers
- fleet-footed dwarfs dressed in their traditional galleys - hawked the latest literary gossip and scuttlebutt through the streets and charged passers-by a modest fee to read the reports on their strips of newsprint, for instance:

Bookhunters
were hurrying from one antiquarian bookshop to another, eager to convert their booty into cash or receive new orders. Bookhunters! You could recognise them by their miners’ lamps and jellyfish torches, their martial attire of durable leather, their chain-mail shirts and pieces of armour, their weapons and equipment: cleavers and sabres, pickaxes and magnifying glasses, ropes, lengths of string and water bottles. One of them emerged from the sewers at my very feet, an impressive specimen wearing an iron helmet and wire-mesh mask. These protective devices were more than just a defence against the dust and dangerous insects in Bookholm’s mysterious underworld. Dancelot had told me that Bookhunters not only competed for booty in the bowels of the earth but fought and even killed each other there. Seeing this fully armoured creature emerge from the ground, panting and grunting, I could well believe it.

But most of the passers-by were tourists attracted to the City of Dreaming Books by sheer curiosity. Many of them were being shepherded through the streets by guides with metal megaphones who loudly informed their charges, for instance, that Marduk Bussek had sold his
Valley of the Lighthouses
to such-and-such a publisher in such-and-such a building. Chattering and craning their necks like agitated geese, the tourists trailed after them, marvelling at the most trivial things.