The City of Dreaming Books (8 page)

‘He was my authorial godfather. He died recently.’

‘Oh. Really? Please forgive my insensitive question and accept my sincere condolences. The man was a genius.’

‘Thank you. He himself would not have claimed as much.’

‘That renders him doubly important. To possess the potential inherent in
The Joys of Gardening
and then limit yourself to writing a single book - that is true greatness.’

If only Dancelot could have heard those words during his lifetime! More tears welled up in my eyes.

‘But do sit down! You must be tired out if you’ve come all the way from Lindworm Castle. Would you care for a cup of nutmeg coffee?’ The antiquarian tottered over to a coffee pot perched on a bookshelf.

Quite suddenly, my limbs felt as heavy as lead. Having been on my feet since dawn, I’d scarcely rested at the hotel and then roamed the streets for hours. His words made me realise how weary I was. I sat down on a chair and wiped the tears from my eyes.

‘Don’t worry, I promise I won’t delve into your thoughts any more,’ Kibitzer said as he handed me a temptingly aromatic cup of coffee. ‘May I, therefore, enquire in the traditional manner what brings you to Bookholm? My question isn’t prompted by curiosity. I may be able to help you.’ He gave me a friendly smile.

Perhaps a kindly providence had guided me to this shop, I thought. The Nocturnomath was by way of being a fan of Dancelot’s writing, so why shouldn’t I begin my quest with him?

‘I’m looking for an author.’

‘Then Bookholm is definitely a better place to start than, say, the Graveyard Marshes of Dullsgard.’ Kibitzer’s laugh at his own little joke sounded like an attack of asthma. I produced the manuscript.

‘Perhaps you’d read this. I’m looking for the person who wrote it. I don’t know his name or what he looks like. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.’

‘You’re looking for a phantom?’ The Nocturnomath grinned. ‘Very well, let me see.’

First he checked the quality of the paper by rubbing it between finger and thumb, a procedure typical of his trade. ‘Hm, high-grade Grailsundian wove,’ he muttered. ‘Timberlake Paper Mills, 200 grammes.’ He sniffed the pages. ‘Slightly overacidified. A peach tint. Birchwood with a hint of pine needles. The bleaching agent was insufficiently stirred. A trifle woody at the edges.’ This was the sort of antiquarian jargon I’d already heard on the lips of itinerant dealers in the streets.

Kibitzer ran his forefinger along the edges of the sheets. ‘Unevenly trimmed. A nick every five millimetres at least. The guillotine was already obsolete, probably a Threadcutter dating from the century before last. The watermark was applied with cuttlefish ink, from which I infer that—’

‘Perhaps you should read it,’ I ventured to suggest.

‘Eh?’ Kibitzer seemed to awaken from a trance and stared at the first page for a long time. He was probably marvelling, just as I had, at the manuscript’s calligraphic beauty. At last he proceeded to read it.

After a few moments he began to hum to himself like someone reading a score, as if I weren’t there at all. He emitted several hoarse laughs, cried ‘Yes, yes, exactly!’ and made an extremely agitated impression. What followed might have been an imitation of my own response to the text at Lindworm Castle. He alternated abruptly between paroxysms of laughter and floods of tears, fought for breath, smote his brow with the flat of his hand, and gave vent to repeated cries of approval and delight: ‘Yes indeed! Yes! How true! It’s so . . . so perfect!’ Then he lowered the manuscript and sat staring into the gloom for several minutes, utterly motionless.

I took the liberty of clearing my throat. Kibitzer gave a start and gazed at me with his big, glowing eyes. Their amber-coloured irises were quivering.

‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Do you know who the author is?’

‘It’s fantastic,’ he muttered.

‘I know. Whoever wrote it is a literary giant.’

Kibitzer handed the manuscript back, his eyes narrowing to slits. The whole shop seemed to grow darker.

‘You must leave Bookholm,’ he whispered. ‘You’re in mortal danger!’

‘What?’

‘Kindly leave these premises! Return to Lindworm Castle at once! Go anywhere you like, but get out of this city at all costs! Don’t stay at a hotel on any account! Show no one else this manuscript - no one, understand? Destroy it! Make good your escape from Bookholm as soon as possible!’

Every one of these recommendations was the diametrical opposite of what I really intended. In the first place I should have liked to spend a little longer in the shop and chat with the kindly Nocturnomath. Secondly, I was delighted to have shaken the dust of Lindworm Castle off my feet and was damned if I’d go back there so soon. Thirdly, I would naturally return to my hotel at some stage because I’d left my things there. Fourthly, I had every intention of showing the manuscript to anyone who cared to read it. Fifthly, I would never, of course, destroy the most flawless piece of writing I’d ever set eyes on. And, sixthly, I had no wish to leave this magnificent city, which promised to be the fulfilment of all my dreams. Before I could utter even one of my rejoinders, however, the gnome had hustled me out of the shop.

‘Please take my advice!’ he whispered as he thrust me out of the door. ‘Leave the city as soon as possible! Goodbye - no, farewell for ever! Hurry! Escape while you still can! And steer clear of the Triadic Circle!’

Then he slammed the door, bolted it from the inside and hung a ‘Closed’ sign in the window. The shop’s interior became even darker than before.

I
roamed the surrounding streets in a daze. Thanks to the homeless and exhausted condition in which I now found myself, dear readers, these emotional ups and downs had proved too much for me. First the distressing reminder of Dancelot, then Kibitzer’s hospitable reception and finally his brusque dismissal . . . What an unrefined, wizened little prune of a fellow he was!

I knew that antiquarian booksellers, and especially the Bookholmians among them, were given to eccentric behaviour - indeed, their professional reputation depended on it, so to speak. But what had Kibitzer meant when he told me to avoid the Triadic Circle? Had he been referring to the sign on his door? He was probably just an oddball afflicted by extreme mood swings - and no wonder, if he persisted in reading Professor Abdul Nightingale’s crack-brained writings!

I strove to shake off my recollection of the incident by planning my future course of action. First I needed to know more about this city and its unwritten laws. I needed a guidebook and a street map - even, if such a thing existed, a printed list of the conventions to be observed when visiting antiquarian bookshops. It was possible that I had unwittingly broken certain rules peculiar to Bookholm.

While debating these points I recalled the shop window containing Colophonius Regenschein’s
Catacombs of Bookholm,
a work that was said to plumb the city’s mysteries. I resolved to acquire the book and digest its contents over a few cups of coffee in some well-heated café. By so doing I could become an expert on Bookholm overnight and kill time without having to spend it in the dubious company of the white bat and the rampaging Bluddums in the Golden Quill
.
I would collect my things in the morning and change hotels.

It didn’t take me long to find the bookshop again. The book was still in the window, so I paid the paltry sum it cost, bought a street map and antiquarian guide as well, and bore my acquisitions off to a nearby coffee shop. A nocturnal reading was in progress, which meant that every half-hour some wretched poet would mount a table and deliver a recitation for which he would, at Lindworm Castle, have been tarred, feathered and hurled from the battlements.

I stood marvelling for a long time in front of a blackboard on which all the delicious fare one could order was listed in chalk. I was bewildered by the abundance of food and drink bearing names with literary associations:
Printer’s Ink Wine
and
Blood and Thunder Coffee
;
Sweetpaper Sandwiches
(they could be not only eaten but written on);
Muse’s Kiss Cocoa
and
Liquid Inspiration
(the latter a brutally high-proof spirit);
Horror Candies
(to be eaten while reading thrillers, many of them with surprise fillings of vinegar, cod liver oil or desiccated ants); and seventeen types of pastries named after various classical poets, for example,
Bethelzia B. Binngrow Buns
and
Ardelf Nennytos Cookies
. Those in need of more substantial fare could gorge themselves on dishes named after popular novelists or their heroes, for instance
Prince Sangfroid Pie
or
Risotto à la Evsko Dosti
, but there was also a light
Syllabic Salad
incorporating alphabet spaghetti and trombophone mushrooms. It was enough to make your head spin.

Having pulled myself together at last, I ordered a big jug of
Midnight Oil Espresso
and a pastry known as a
Poet’s Ringlet.
Then I retired to a table right beside the crackling stove in the furthest corner of the establishment. I took a swig of coffee and a bite of my delicious Poet’s Ringlet, got out
The Catacombs of Bookholm
and began to read.

A dwarf with an unpleasantly shrill voice was reading out a long-winded essay on his aversion to sponges, not that this impaired my concentration too much. If what I am reading has the power to grip me, I can read under the most difficult circumstances.

And
The Catacombs of Bookholm
surpassed my expectations in every respect. The book was not only informative but enthralling, and of a literary quality unusual in a work of non-fiction. After only a few paragraphs the dwarf’s frightful voice became mere background noise and little more intrusive than the twittering of a bird. Meanwhile, eager to plumb Bookholm’s amazing mysteries, I was descending into its hopelessly convoluted labyrinth of tunnels in the company of Colophonius Regenschein, the city’s greatest Bookhunter and hero.

Regenschein hadn’t always been Bookholm’s greatest Bookhunter, dear readers. Oh no, there had even been a time when his name wasn’t Colophonius Regenschein at all. A resounding pseudonym was part of every Bookhunter’s stock in trade and Regenschein differentiated himself from his colleagues at the very outset by choosing one with no warlike connotations.

His real name was Taron Trekko and he was just a roaming Vulphead whose travels had brought him to the City of Dreaming Books quite by chance. Indeed, literature had meant nothing to him at first. Like most Vulpheads, Trekko possessed a prodigious memory and used that gift to earn a living in taverns by multiplying hundred-digit numbers in his head while juggling with raw eggs. However, he happened to arrive in Bookholm just as a dispute broke out between the adherents of druidical arithmetic and Old Zamonian mathematics. This divided the population of Zamonia into two irreconcilably hostile camps. The result was that mass brawls occurred nearly every time a ‘memory artiste’ put on a show, so a Vulphead had only to put his nose round a taproom door for the landlord to hurl a jug at him.

Thus, Taron Trekko found himself threatened with starvation in the midst of a city filled with taverns patronised by folk eager for entertainment, but he soon discovered a far more lucrative way of making money than performing numerical tricks for drunks, namely, dealing in rare books. This was no brilliant feat of deduction on his part, given that nearly everyone in Bookholm dealt in books. However, there existed some particularly rare specimens for which demand never waned. These were the books on the
Golden List.
The volumes on this list could not be purchased in any of the city’s antiquarian bookshops. Very seldom offered for sale and promptly snapped up by wealthy collectors bidding in competition, they were literary legends coveted by all, rather like the gigantic diamond reputed to lie hidden in the heart of Lindworm Castle.