The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books (2 page)

Return to Lindworm Castle

YOU’RE WELCOME TO
pronounce me a megalomaniac for claiming that, at the time this story began, I had already become Zamonia’s greatest writer. What else can one call an author whose books were being trundled into bookshops by the cartload? Who was the youngest Zamonian artist ever to have been awarded the Order of the Golden Quill? Who had had a fire-gilt cast-iron statue of himself erected outside the Grailsundian Academy of Zamonian Literature?

There was a street named after me in every sizeable Zamonian town. There were bookshops that stocked my works exclusively – plus all the reference books devoted to them. My fans had founded associations whose members addressed one another by the names of characters in my novels. ‘Doing a Yarnspinner’ was a vernacular expression for triumphing in some artistic discipline. I couldn’t walk down a busy street without attracting a crowd, enter a bookshop without causing female members of the staff to swoon, or write a book that wasn’t promptly declared a classic.

In short, I had become a conceited popinjay pampered with literary prizes and public esteem. One who had lost all capacity for self-criticism and almost all his natural artistic instincts – one who quoted only himself and copied his own works without realising it. Like an insidious mental disease of which the patient himself is unaware, success had overtaken and infected me completely. I was so busy wallowing in my own fame, I didn’t even notice that the Orm had long since ceased to suffuse me.

Did I write anything of importance during this period? I don’t know when I could have done so. I wasted most of my time reading from my own works in a self-infatuated sing-song, whether in bookshops and theatres or at literary seminars, after which I would get drunk on applause, condescendingly chat with admirers and sign copies of my books for hours. Alas, my faithful friends, what I then considered the zenith of my career was really its absolute nadir. Long gone were the days when I could anonymously roam a town and undertake research without being pestered. I was instantly surrounded by crowds of admirers begging for autographs, professional advice, or simply my blessing. Even on country roads I was dogged by hordes of fanatical readers eager to be there when the Orm overcame me. This happened more and more rarely at first and then not at all – and I didn’t even notice because, to be honest, I could hardly distinguish between the Orm’s trancelike state and a wine-induced stupor.

It was to escape my monstrous accretion of popularity, my bizarre success and my demented admirers, that I decided, after many years of restless wandering and sundry adventures, to return for a while to Lindworm Castle and rest on my laurels there. I moved back into the small house bequeathed me by my godfather, Dancelot Wordwright. I did this also – let us look the facts in the face, dear friends – in order to pretend to the public and my peers at the castle that I was returning to my roots. ‘At the zenith of his career, the prodigal son returns home to augment his titanic oeuvre, humbly and unpretentiously, in the cramped little cottage that had once belonged to his beloved godfather.’

Nothing could have been further from the truth. At this period, no one in the whole of Zamonia was less root-bound than I, and no one led a more decadent, aimless existence without a care for his cultural mission and artistic discipline. Lindworm Castle was quite simply the only place that offered me perfect protection from my own popularity. Lindworms were still the sole life form permitted to dwell there. Only there could I be an artist among artists, and only Lindworms
observed
the perfect etiquette that guaranteed each individual his privacy. Solitude was accounted a precious commodity at Lindworm Castle. All were so busy with their own literary work that no one noticed how inexcusably I neglected mine.

All that worried me, apart from the usual attacks of hypochondria, was my weight. Thanks to a leisurely lifestyle, chronic lack of exercise and hearty Lindworm fare, I had soon put on several pounds around the hips. This sometimes depressed me, but never so much that my spirits couldn’t be restored by a few jam omelettes or a haunch of roast Marsh Hog. I might perhaps have ended as Lindworm Castle’s fattest and loneliest writer had I not been jolted out of my lethargy by a mysterious letter.

It was on an otherwise unexceptional summer morning that my life received this jolt. As on any other day, I was sitting over an inordinately protracted breakfast in the little kitchen of my inherited
house
, engaged in my customary hours-long perusal of the latest fan mail, munching chocolate-encased coffee beans and a dozen croissants filled with apricot purée. Now and again I would reach into one of the mailbags delivered every few days by the sullen postman, take out a letter, open it and impatiently scan it for the most flattering passages. I was faintly disappointed as a rule, because I always imagined such letters would be a trifle more laudatory than they already were. And so, while reading them, I would mentally replace their ‘excellents’ with ‘historic’ or ‘sublime’ or ‘unsurpassable’, then clasp them to my bosom and, with a sigh, toss them into the fire. Although I burnt my fan mail with a heavy heart, its sheer bulk would soon have driven me from house and home had I not disposed of it at regular intervals. Thus the ashes of Yarnspinner panegyrics belched from my chimney all morning, enriching Lindworm Castle’s air with the perfume of my success. After breakfast I often devoted an hour or so to my new amateur hobby, playing the Clavichorgan.
¹
I had recently taken to tinkling my own modest renditions of works by Evubeth van Goldwine, Crederif Pincho, Odion la Vivanti and other great exponents of Zamonian music. That, however, was the full extent of artistic activity in my normal daily round.

One brief moment, sometimes no longer than the bat of an eyelash, can often determine one’s destiny. In my case it was the time required to read a sentence of eight syllables. My claws plucked an envelope at random from the bulging mailbag while my other paw dunked a croissant in hot chocolate and whipped cream. Ah, little letter, I thought, you’ll hold no surprises for me either! I know precisely what you contain. What’s the betting? An ardent declaration
of
love for my poetry or a servile obeisance to my audacious prose style? An enthusiastic encomium on one of my stage plays or a genuflection to the Yarnspinner oeuvre as a whole. Yes, yes … On the one hand, this never-ending torrent of adulation bored me stiff; on the other, I’d become addicted to it, perhaps as a substitute for the Orm that had deserted me for so long.

I effortlessly succeeded in tearing open the envelope with my left-hand claws, removing the letter and unfolding it while simultaneously dunking another croissant in hot chocolate, for I had often tried this. Submitting the letter to my blasé gaze, I unhinged my lower jaw and tossed the croissant into my mouth without raising my elbow from the table. This I did with the intention of reading the first few flattering lines of my admirer’s missive and simultaneously gorging myself on delicious flaky pastry. That’s how low I had sunk!

‘
This
’, I read as the croissant disappeared between my jaws, ‘
is where the story begins
.’

I suppose I must have stopped swallowing at the same time as I gasped in surprise. The only certainty is that the croissant had not been sufficiently moistened, so it lodged in my gullet. The latter tightened convulsively, squeezing the hot chocolate and cream out of the pastry and pumping them upwards. My windpipe became so flooded with them, I made noises like a frog being strangled underwater. Crumpling up the letter in one paw, I waved the other futilely in the air.

Unable either to swallow or to breathe, I abruptly leapt to my feet in the hope that an erect posture would remedy the situation. It didn’t, though. I merely gargled with cream.

‘Aaarghle,’ I went.

The blood shot into my head and my eyes bulged from their sockets. I dashed to the open window in the vain expectation of getting more air there, but I only succeeded in making more gurgling noises as I leant out. Two Lindworms who were just then strolling down the street glanced over at me.

‘Aaargh!’ I went, waving frantically and staring at them with bulging, bloodshot eyes. They must have assumed that this was a jocular form of salutation, because they reciprocated it by imitating my gurgling noises.

‘Aaargh!’ they called gaily, opening their eyes wide and waving back. ‘And a very good aaargh to you, Master Optimus!’

And then they laughed.

I had become such a darling of the gods that my fellow Lindworms had taken to imitating my quirks for fear of missing out on some up-to-the-minute trend I was in the process of setting. Gurgling and laughing, they walked off down the street without paying me any further heed. The new Yarnspinnerish greeting would be bound to catch on.

Cream was trickling from my nostrils. Leaving the window and tottering back into the kitchen, I tripped over a stool, fell headlong and pulled myself up by the edge of the table. All I could now make were the sort of sounds emitted by blocked drains or trombophones. In search of assistance, my tear-filled eyes lighted upon an ancient portrait in oils of my godfather Dancelot. It stared down at me uncomprehendingly. During his lifetime Dancelot had enjoined me to eat steamed vegetables and warned me never to bolt my food. Now I was only moments from following him into the world hereafter – far too soon for my taste. My eyes bulged still further from their sockets and my senses were bemused by an irrepressible feeling of exhaustion. A strange, contradictory mixture of panic and total indifference overcame me: I wanted to live and die at the same time.

It was in this of all situations, dear friends, when I was no longer capable of rational thought, that a fundamental realisation dawned on me: my success, my meteoric career, my life and ambitions, my existing oeuvre, my literary prizes and multitudinous editions – all were outweighed in importance by a breakfast croissant. For me, the arbiter between life and death was a cheap confection of flaky pastry, a mixture of common flour, sugar, yeast and butter.

And that, despite my dramatic predicament, made me laugh. Mine wasn’t a joyous, optimistic laugh, as you can imagine, merely a short, embittered ‘Hah!’. It did, however, suffice to remedy the disastrous situation in my oesophagus.

For, thanks to my laughter, the croissant leapt in my throat, as it were, and headed for my stomach with renewed momentum. This time it slid down with ease and disappeared into my alimentary tract in the regulation manner. The cream flowed after it, almost clearing
my
airways. Having coughed and trumpeted the remainder through my nostrils, I was able to breathe once more.

‘Bwaaah!’ I gasped like a drowning man who has just made it to the surface. Oxygen! The best things in life are free! At once exhausted and relieved, I flopped down on a kitchen chair and clutched my chest. My heart was beating like a corps of drums. Heavens alive, I had escaped a totally ridiculous demise by a hair’s breadth! That confounded croissant had very nearly ruined my biography: