The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  “A saint? I’ve seen him referred to as St. Simeon. Is that a courtesy title?”

  “The Patriarch of the Sublime Porte holds the title of saint ex officio.”

  “And the President of the new council will really be the first leader of the entire Church since Calvin renounced the papacy?”

  “Undoubtedly. That’s why the council was created.”

  Malcolm was making “shorthand notes” as Talbot spoke. In fact, he was writing random words in the Tajik alphabet.

  Talbot lifted his empty glass and put it down again.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Malcolm said. “May I buy you a drink?”

  “Kirsch, thank you.”

  Malcolm waved at a waiter and said, “Do you think a single leader is the best form of government for the Magisterium to adopt?”

  “In the flux of history, every kind of leadership emerges and then vanishes again. I wouldn’t presume to say that one was better than another. Those terms are the currency of journalism, shall we say, rather than scholarship.” His smile became especially charming. A scowling waiter took Malcolm’s order, and Talbot lit a cheroot.

  “I’ve been reading The Constant Deceiver,” said Malcolm. “It’s had a big success. Were you expecting a response like that?”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. Far from it. But I think perhaps it struck a note that resounded, among younger people especially.”

  “Your exposition of universal skepticism is very powerful. Is that the reason for its success, d’you think?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t like to say.”

  “I’m intrigued, you see, to find someone so closely associated with that position praising someone for his simple goodness.”

  “But the Patriarch is good. You have only to meet him.”

  “Shouldn’t there be some sort of caveat?”

  The waiter brought their drinks. Talbot leant back comfortably and puffed at his cheroot. “Caveat?” he said.

  “For example, you might say that he’s a transparently good man, but goodness itself is a problematic idea.”

  A loudspeaker crackled into life and announced in three languages that the Paris train would be leaving in fifteen minutes. A number of people finished their drinks, stood up, put on their coats, and looked around for their luggage. Talbot sipped his kirsch and looked at Malcolm as if he were a promising pupil.

  “I think my readers are capable of detecting irony,” he said. “Besides, the article I shall write for the Journal of Moral Philosophy will be couched in rather more nuanced terms than I might use if I were writing for the Baltimore Observer, shall we say.”

  The twinkle that accompanied that shaft of would-be scholarly wit suddenly reduced it to mere vulgarity. Malcolm was interested to see that Talbot didn’t realize it.

  “What did you think of the quality of debate at the congress?” he said.

  “Very much what one might expect. Most of the delegates were men of the cloth, and their preoccupations were naturally clerical—matters of ecclesiastical law, liturgy, that sort of thing. Though there were one or two speakers who impressed me with their breadth of vision. Dr. Alberto Tiramani, for example, who, I think, is the head of one of the bodies represented at the congress. Certainly a subtle intellect. Something not often combined, as I’m sure you’ll have noticed, with a striking clarity of utterance.”

  Malcolm wrote busily for a moment or two. “I read an article recently,” he said when he’d finished, “which made an interesting comparison between your remarks about veracity and the arbitrary nature of language, on the one hand, and the swearing of oaths to tell the truth in courts of law, on the other.”

  “Really?” said Talbot. “How fascinating.” His tone made the words sound like an example of irony, performed for the benefit of the stupid. “Who was the writer of the article?”

  “George Paston.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him,” Talbot said.

  Malcolm was watching closely. Talbot’s response was perfect. He sat back comfortably, calm, slightly amused, enjoying his cheroot. Only his macaw dæmon reacted, shifting from foot to foot on Talbot’s shoulder, turning her head for a moment to look at Malcolm, then turning away.

  Malcolm made another note and said, “Do you think it’s possible to tell the truth?”

  Talbot let his eyes brighten. “Ah, well. Where should I begin? There are so many—”

  “Imagine you’re talking to the readers of the Baltimore Observer. Straightforward people, who like a straightforward answer.”

  “Are they? How depressing. What was the question again?”

  “Is it possible to tell the truth?”

  “No.” Talbot smiled and went on: “You’d better explain the paradox in that answer. I’m sure your readers would enjoy it if it were set out in simple words.”

  “In a court of law, then, you wouldn’t consider yourself bound by an oath to tell the truth?”

  “Oh, I should do my best to obey the law, naturally.”

  “I was intrigued by your chapter in The Constant Deceiver about dæmons,” Malcolm went on.

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Do you know Gottfried Brande’s The Hyperchorasmians?”

  “I know of it. Isn’t it some sort of bestseller? I don’t think I could face it.”

  The macaw dæmon was definitely uncomfortable. Asta, sitting on Malcolm’s lap, made no move: her eyes were fixed on the macaw. Malcolm could feel her tension.

  Talbot finished his drink and looked at his watch. “Well, fascinating as this has been, I must go. I don’t want to miss my train. Good evening, Mr. Peterson.”

  He held out his hand. Malcolm stood up to shake it and looked directly at the blue macaw, who looked back at him for a moment but then turned her head away.

  “Thank you, Professor,” Malcolm said. “Bon voyage.”

  Talbot swung a rusty-brown tweed cloak around his shoulders and picked up a large briefcase. A sharp nod, and he left.

  “That was a draw,” said Asta.

  “I’m not so sure. I think he won. Let’s see where he’s really going.”

  A moment in the cloakroom to put on a pair of heavy glasses and a black beret, and Malcolm, with Asta on his shoulder, slipped out into the rain-washed street. There was a heavy drizzle, and most people were walking fast, heads down under their hats or hoods. The black mushrooms of a dozen or more umbrellas filled Malcolm’s eyeline, but the blue macaw was impossible to hide.

  “There she is,” said Asta.

  “Going away from the station. As we thought.”

  The lights from shop windows picked out the dæmon vividly, but Talbot was walking fast, and Malcolm had to hurry to keep him in sight. The man was doing what Malcolm himself would have done if he knew he was being followed, checking in shop windows for a reflection of what was behind him, slowing down unpredictably and then speeding up again, and crossing the road just before the traffic lights changed.

  “Let me go after him,” said Asta.

  It was much easier to follow someone if two of you were doing it, but Malcolm shook his head. The street was too busy; it would be too conspicuous.

  “There he goes,” he said.

  Talbot was turning into the narrow street where Malcolm knew La Maison Juste was situated. After a few moments he disappeared from sight. Malcolm didn’t follow.

  “You really think he won?” said Asta.

  “He’s a lot cleverer than Benny Morris. I shouldn’t have tried to catch him out.”

  “She gave him away, though.”

  “Well, maybe a draw. But I still think he shaded it. We’d better go and find a train. I don’t think it’ll be safe here for very long.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “His name is Matthew Polstead,” Talbot said. “He’s a Schol
ar of Durham College. Historian. I recognized him at once. Almost certainly an agent of theirs. He knew about my connection with that lout of a policeman who bungled the, the, ah, incident by the river, which means that by now the other side will have got hold of Hassall’s notes and other things.”

  Marcel Delamare listened impassively and watched him across the gleaming desk.

  “Did you give anything away?” he said.

  “I don’t think so. He’s fairly sharp, but fundamentally a bumpkin.”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “A rustic oaf.”

  Delamare knew that Talbot’s philosophy maintained that nothing was anything, fundamentally, but he didn’t question what the Oxford man said. If the phrase “useful idiot” had existed in their world, it would have expressed his opinion of Talbot precisely. The macaw dæmon was looking at Delamare’s white owl, preening her feathers, bobbing her head, moving from claw to claw. The owl kept her eyes closed and paid no attention.

  Delamare pulled a notepad towards himself and took up his silver pencil. “Can you describe him?” he said.

  Talbot could and did, in considerable detail, much of it correct. Delamare wrote swiftly and meticulously.

  “How did he know about your connection with the incompetent policeman?” he said when he’d finished.

  “That remains to be discovered.”

  “If he’s a bumpkin, your arrangement can’t have been well hidden. If it was well hidden, he’s not a bumpkin. Which is it?”

  “Perhaps I’m overemphasizing his—”

  “Never mind. Thank you for coming in, Professor. I shall be busy now.”

  He stood to shake hands, and Talbot gathered his cloak and his briefcase and left, obscurely humiliated, though he wasn’t sure how; but his philosophy soon made that feeling disappear.

  * * *

  * * *

  At the station, Malcolm found a confused crowd of travelers waiting in frustration, and an official of the railway company trying to explain why they couldn’t board the train for Venice and Constantinople, as they were expecting to, and as he was too. It was already crowded, and apparently one entire carriage had been requisitioned at the last minute for the exclusive use of the new President of the High Council. Passengers who had booked seats in that carriage would have to wait for the train on the following day. The railway company had tried to find an extra carriage, but none were available, so they were now trying to find hotel rooms so the disappointed passengers could stay overnight.

  People around Malcolm were complaining loudly.

  “A whole carriage!”

  “He’s supposed to be a humble, modest man. Give him a title and all of a sudden he becomes a monster of arrogance.”

  “No, you can’t blame him. It’s his entourage, insisting on new privileges.”

  “Apparently the order came from the Prefect of the Secretariat.”

  “Surprising, given how well everything else was organized…”

  “Absurd! Exceptionally inconsiderate.”

  “I have an extremely important meeting in Venice tomorrow! Do you know who I am?”

  “They should have thought of this a long time ago.”

  “Why does he need a whole carriage, in God’s name?”

  And so on. Malcolm scanned the notice boards, but there were no more departures that evening except local trains to small towns nearby, and one more train for Paris just before midnight, and he wasn’t going to Paris.

  Asta looked around. “Can’t see anyone who looks dangerous,” she said. “Talbot wasn’t getting this train, was he?”

  “I should think he’d be going in the opposite direction. He’ll be getting that late one for Paris.”

  “Are we going to wait for them to find us a hotel room?”

  “Certainly not,” said Malcolm, who was watching three more officials hurrying towards the crowd with leaflets and clipboards and sheets of paper. “They’ll make a list of who everyone is and where they’ve put them. I think we’d better be anonymous.”

  Suitcase in hand, rucksack on his back, Asta padding beside him, he left the station quietly and set off to find a room for the night.

  * * *

  * * *

  The President of the High Council of the Magisterium, the Patriarch of the Sublime Porte, St. Simeon Papadakis, was humbly conscious of being the cause of all this trouble, and settled into his seat in the reserved carriage with deep unease.

  “I don’t like this at all, you know, Michael,” he said to his chaplain. “It’s unjust. I did try to protest, but they simply wouldn’t listen.”

  “I know, Your Serenity. But it’s for your own protection and convenience.”

  “That shouldn’t matter. I do so dislike being the cause of inconvenience to those other passengers. They are all worthy people, all on holy business, all with appointments to keep and travel connections to make….I don’t think it’s right at all.”

  “As the new president, though…”

  “Well, I don’t know. I should have insisted harder, Michael. I should have started in the way I’d like to go on. Simplicity, not ostentation. Would our blessed Savior agree to sitting apart from his fellow passengers? They should have asked me first, you know, before causing all this trouble. I should have put my foot down.”

  Inadvertently, the chaplain looked down at the Patriarch’s feet and then away again. The old man was wearing galoshes over the much-repaired black shoes he wore every day, and something was troubling him: he couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position for his legs.

  “Are you uncomfortable, Your Holiness?”

  “These galoshes are troubling me….I don’t suppose…”

  But it wasn’t the galoshes. Like all his other attendants, the chaplain knew that the Patriarch was troubled by pain in one of his legs. The old man tried not to limp, and never mentioned it, but when he was tired, he couldn’t conceal it. The chaplain wondered if he should raise the matter with the physician.

  “Of course. Let me help you take them off,” he said. “You won’t need them till we get out.”

  “That would be very kind. Thank you so much.”

  As he gently removed the rubber overshoes, the chaplain said, “But you know, Your Holiness, a train carriage especially set aside for the President of the High Council is a very similar kind of thing to the ceremonial and ritual of the Holy Church itself. It marks the natural distance between—”

  “Oh, no, no, it isn’t the same at all. The ceremonies of the Church, the liturgy, the music, the vestments, the icons—those are holy things intrinsically. They embody holiness. They have sustained the faith of generations past. Sacred things, Michael. Not at all the same as commandeering a whole railway carriage and leaving those poor people in the rain. It’s very bad, you know. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  A young, dark-suited, smooth-haired attendant was hovering respectfully nearby. When the Patriarch’s galoshes were safely off, he stepped forward and bowed.

  “Jean Vautel, Your Serenity. I am blessed enough to have been appointed your new secretary for council business. If you are comfortable, I should like to discuss arrangements for the celebration to mark your election as President. Then there is the matter of—”

  “A celebration? What is this?”

  “A natural expression of the joy of the people, Your Serenity. It would be a fitting—”

  “Oh, dear. I hadn’t expected anything like that.”

  Behind the new secretary, St. Simeon could see other men, strangers, but all busy stowing boxes, files, and suitcases on the luggage racks, and all with the same air of competent zeal that Monsieur Vautel exhibited in every pore.

  “Who are all these people?” he said.

  “Your staff, Your Holiness. Once we are on our way, I’ll bring them forward and present th
em to you. We have done our best to assemble a team of many talents.”

  “But I have a staff already…,” the old man said, looking helplessly at the chaplain, who spread his hands and said nothing as the train began to move out of the station. The platform was still thronged with passengers.

  * * *

  * * *

  Malcolm found a cheap place called the Hotel Rembrandt not far from the lakeshore. He registered under one of his false names, found his third-floor room and left his suitcase there, then went out to find something to eat. There was nothing incriminating in the suitcase, but he plucked out one of his hairs and placed it between the door and the jamb so he could see if anyone had entered while he was out.

  He found a small brasserie next door to the hotel and ordered pot-au-feu.

  “I wish…,” he said.

  “So do I,” said Asta. “But she did.”

  “ ‘Gone to look for your imagination.’ What a thing to have to read. What d’you think he meant?”

  “Precisely what he said. He felt them both to be…I don’t know, diminished perhaps, because of the way she was thinking, as if part of her had vanished. Perhaps she’d stopped believing in her imagination, because of Talbot, partly. So he set out to find it.”

  “She couldn’t have been taken in by that mountebank. Surely?”

  “Plenty have been taken in. It’s a corrosive thing, his way of thinking. Even corrupting. A sort of universal irresponsibility. Does he say anything specifically about the imagination?”

  “No. From time to time he uses the word imaginative as a term of disparagement, as if in quotation marks. So that the readers of the Baltimore Observer can tell he’s being ironic. What did you feel when you spoke to him in Oxford? To Pantalaimon, I mean.”

  “Le soleil noir de la Mélancolie. He said nothing directly about it, but it was there.”

  “Exactly what I felt about her when we saw her again,” said Malcolm. “When she was younger, she was fierce, defiant, insolent even, but there was something melancholy about her even then, don’t you think?”