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

by Philip Pullman

  He sat back as the waiter brought his meal. He noticed a man sitting alone at a small table in the corner of the room, a thin and frail-looking middle-aged man who might have been Central Asian, shabbily dressed, wearing much-repaired wire-frame glasses. He saw Malcolm looking at him and turned away.

  Asta murmured, “Interesting. He’s talking to his dæmon in Tajik.”

  “A delegate to the congress?”

  “Maybe. He doesn’t look very pleased with the outcome, if he is. But thinking of Talbot…I suppose another reason he’s popular is that he’d be easy to imitate in an undergraduate essay.”

  “Good on a platform too. And I think he had read The Hyperchorasmians. He didn’t want to admit it.”

  “Harder to see why that’s popular.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Malcolm. “It’s a gripping story that encourages people not to feel bad about being selfish. Plenty of customers for that point of view.”

  “Surely that’s not what Lyra feels?”

  “I can’t imagine her ever believing that. But between them, they’ve done something damaging to her, to her and Pantalaimon.”

  “It must be due to other things as well.”

  Asta was crouching sphinx-like on the table, her eyes half closed. She and Malcolm were communicating with half murmur, half thought, and it would have been hard for either of them to say whether a remark originated from him or from her. The pot-au-feu was good; the wine Malcolm was drinking was passable; the room was warm and comfortable. It was tempting to relax, but he and Asta kept each other awake.

  “He’s watching us again,” she murmured.

  “Was he watching us before? We were watching him.”

  “Yes, he’s curious. But nervous too. Shall we speak to him?”

  “No. I’m a respectable Swiss businessman, away from home to show samples of my products to local retailers. It’s not likely that I’d be interested in him. Keep watching, but don’t let him see.”

  The Tajik man was eating a frugal meal as slowly as he could, or that was what it looked like to Asta.

  “Perhaps he’s staying in here for the warmth,” Malcolm said.

  He was still there when Malcolm finished and paid the bill, and he watched them leave. Malcolm gave him another glance as he closed the door; the man’s expression was somber as their eyes met.

  Malcolm was cold and tired. No one had disturbed the door. They went to bed, and Asta dozed on the pillow beside him as he read some of Jahan and Rukhsana before going to sleep.

  * * *

  * * *

  At two in the morning there came a knock on his door. He and Asta woke at once, though the knock was very soft.

  Malcolm was out of bed in a second. He whispered through the door, “Who’s that?”

  “Monsieur, I need to speak to you.”

  The voice was that of the Tajik man: there was no doubt about it. He spoke French, like Malcolm, but his accent was familiar, even in a whisper, even through a door.

  “A moment,” said Malcolm, and pulled on shirt and trousers.

  He unlocked the door as quietly as he could. It was the Tajik man, and he was frightened. The serpent dæmon around his neck was gazing back along the dimly lit corridor. Malcolm offered him the only chair and sat on the bed himself.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “My name is Mehrzad Karimov. Monsieur, is your name Polstead?”

  “Yes. Why do you want to know?”

  “So I can warn you about Marcel Delamare.”

  “How do you know Marcel Delamare?”

  “I have had dealings with him. He has not paid me, and I cannot leave until he does.”

  “You said you wanted to warn me. What about?”

  “He has learnt of your presence in the city and has ordered a watch kept on every road, on the railway station, and on the ferry terminals. He wants to capture you. I heard this from a man I befriended at La Maison Juste, who took pity on my situation. And now, monsieur, I think you had better leave quickly, because I saw from my window that the police are actively searching the houses nearby. I do not know what to do.”

  Malcolm went to the window, stood to one side, and pulled the threadbare curtain away from the wall just enough to see out. There was some kind of movement at the end of the street, and three men in uniform talking under a streetlight.

  He let the curtain fall and turned back.

  “Well, Monsieur Karimov,” he said, “I think that—what is it now?—two-thirty in the morning would be a very good time to leave Geneva. I’m going to steal a boat. Will you come with me?”

  Pantalaimon had never felt so exposed, except for the terrible first hours of separation from Lyra on the shores of the world of the dead. But even there he hadn’t been lonely, because with him then was Will’s dæmon, who knew nothing about herself and hadn’t even known she existed till she was torn out of his heart. As the little boat had borne Will and Lyra away into the darkness, the two dæmons had shivered on the misty shore, embracing each other for warmth, and Pan had tried to explain everything to the terrified creature, who didn’t know her name, or what shape she was, or even that she could change.

  And on his journey up the river Elbe, through cities and forests and well-tended fields, he often thought back to that desolate time made warm by their companionship, and wished above everything for a companion now. He even wished for Lyra. If only they were making this journey together! It would be an adventure; it would be filled with love and excitement….What had he done to her? How must she be feeling now? Was she still at the Trout in Godstow? Or was she looking for him? Was she safe?

  It nearly made him stop and go back. But he was doing this for her. She was incomplete; something had been stolen from her, and he was going to get it back. That was why he crept along riverbanks and past power stations, and slipped aboard barges laden with rice, or sugar, or slates, or guano, and scampered through boatyards and along wharves and embankments, keeping to the shadows, staying in the undergrowth, avoiding the daylight, alert to every threat from every direction. Cats wouldn’t take him on, but several times he had to flee from dogs, and once from wolves; and always and everywhere hide from human beings and their dæmons.

  But finally he reached Wittenberg, and then came the even harder problem of finding the house of Gottfried Brande.

  What would Lyra do? Well, he thought, to start with, she’d probably go to a library and look in local reference books or town directories of one sort or another, and if those things failed, she’d start asking directly. Well-known people could never really keep their addresses secret; the postal authorities would know them; doubtless local newspapers would know too. Even passersby in the street or the marketplace might have an idea where the city’s most famous resident lived, and Lyra was very good at asking people things.

  But those ways were impossible for a dæmon on his own.

  The barge he arrived on was tied up to a buoy in the river, because the nearest quay was fully occupied. Pan waited until it was fully dark, and then slipped over the side and swam through the icy water to a patch of bare ground under some trees. The earth was frost-hard, the air still and heavy with the smells of coal, and timber, and something sweet that might have been molasses. Further back downstream, just outside the city walls, the barge had passed an area of tents and rough shanties, where people had been cooking over fires or sleeping huddled under blankets of canvas or roofs of cardboard. Pan could see the glow of the fires still, and smell the wood smoke, and for a minute he was tempted to go back and investigate; but then he shook himself dry and ran away from the river and into the city, keeping close to the walls, looking at everything.

  The narrow streets were lit by gaslamps, whose soft light cast soft shadows. Pan moved with obsessive care, only leaving the darkness of an alley or an oratory porch when he was sure ther
e was no one looking, and skirting the edges of the open squares and marketplaces. There were few people about: it was clearly a well-behaved city that went to bed early and took a dim view of pleasure. Everything was clean; even the refuse outside kitchen doors was separated into precisely labeled municipal bins.

  Pan thought it was going to be impossible. How could he ever find out where Brande lived without asking someone? But how could he, a dæmon on his own, speak to anyone without making himself horribly conspicuous? The doubts increased, and then he found himself thinking of something else: what was he actually going to do when he came face to face with the author of The Hyperchorasmians, assuming he ever did? Why had he never thought about that?

  He crouched under a boxbush in a little expanse of grass and trees in a triangle of space where three roads met. It was a residential area: tall neat houses, an oratory with a spire, some other kind of building in a large garden. The trees were bare; it would be some time before spring woke them up. Pan was cold, and tired, and discouraged, and he longed more than ever for Lyra’s arms, for her breast, for her lap. He had been utterly reckless, utterly foolish, petulant, selfish, and proud. He hated what he’d done. He hated himself.

  There was a signboard above the wall around the garden across the street. It stood under a large conifer, and there was no streetlamp nearby; but just then a tram came past, and in its headlights and the glow from the lighted interior, he read the words:

  ST. LUCIA SCHULE FÜR BLINDE

  A school for the blind!

  As soon as the tram had turned the corner, he darted across the road and leapt up to the top of the wall, and from there into the pine tree, and a minute later he was curled up in a comfortable fork in the branches, where he fell asleep at once.

  * * *

  * * *

  In the dawn, Pan scouted the school grounds and the outbuildings. It wasn’t a large place, but it was carefully tended and as clean and tidy as the rest of the city. The main school building was built with brick and plain almost to the point of severity, so much like St. Sophia’s College, in fact, that the sight of it in the early light brought a pang of homesickness. On the other side of the main building was a neat garden, bare at this time of year, but with a little fountain playing in a pool, and a gravel drive leading to the main gates.

  Pan wasn’t sure what he’d do, but not being seen would be just like being invisible, and he’d improvise when the time came. He found a dense little shrubbery on one side of a close-cut lawn, from which he could see the whole of the main building, and settled down to watch.

  It was a boarding school for girls. He was familiar with the sort of routine that governed the day in such a place, and he listened to the bell that signaled time to get up and time to go to breakfast, the sounds of female voices, the clatter of knives and forks on china plates, and he smelled the fragrance of toast and coffee; and he saw shutters over dormitory windows being opened wide, lights coming on, adult figures moving to and fro; and then breakfast was over, and from another part of the building came the sound of young voices raised in a hymn. He knew it all so well.

  At some point in the morning the pupils would come out for air and exercise, and then he’d take whatever chance he could find. In the meantime, he explored the school grounds. Behind the shrubbery was a continuation of the stone wall he’d scaled to get in, and he could hear a busy street on the other side of it. He’d be able to escape that way if he really needed to, but he didn’t want to leap down among pedestrians and traffic. It would be better to find a quieter corner where he wouldn’t be so conspicuous, and he found one behind a wooden shed that contained gardening tools.

  Right now, however, the shrubbery was the best place to hide, so he went back there and made a discovery. Someone had created a little shelter from branches and leaves against a big pine trunk on the side that faced away from the school. The way to it was thickly overgrown and would have been hard for an adult to get through, but a young person, if they were slim, would be able to do it easily. Inside the shelter, Pan found a tin box under a heap of dry leaves. It was locked, and it was heavy with the sort of weight a thick book would give it. Someone’s secret diary? But how could she write if she couldn’t see?

  He heard the bell ring and put everything back. Then he climbed the tree trunk a little way and waited.

  It wasn’t long before she came. She was about fourteen years old, and slender, and dark-haired. She wore a skirt and blouse of blue cotton and a paint-stained white apron, and her bare knees were badly scratched, no doubt from the bushes she’d had to push her way through in order to hide the box. Her dæmon was a chinchilla.

  Pan watched as she felt for the leaves, pulled out the tin, and unlocked it with a little key on a chain around her wrist. She took out a battered book, as thick and heavy as Pan had guessed, and settled down with her back against the tree trunk to read it. What he hadn’t realized was that the book was thick because, of course, it was printed in the raised-dot alphabet that blind people could read with their fingers. As she moved her hand across the page, she whispered to the little dæmon on her shoulder, reading it aloud to him. Within a minute they were both completely engrossed in the story.

  Pan felt bad to be spying on them, so he climbed down the trunk, taking care to scratch his claws on the rough bark so they could hear him coming. They both heard and turned their faces up in alarm.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Pan said in the German he and Lyra had both struggled with for years until they began to memorize poetry in it.

  “Who are you?” the girl whispered.

  “Only a dæmon,” he said. “My girl is nearby, watching to see if anyone comes.”

  “So you’re not blind? What are you doing here?”

  “Just exploring. My name is Pantalaimon. What’s yours?”

  “Anna Weber. And Gustavo.”

  “May I sit with you for a little?”

  “Yes, if you tell me what shape you have.”

  “I’m a…” He didn’t know the German word.

  The chinchilla dæmon had no more sight than she did, but his other senses were briskly alert. He touched noses with Pan, and sniffed, and twitched his ears, and then whispered to Anna. She nodded.

  “Marder,” she said.

  “Oh. In my language it’s marten. What are you reading?”

  She blushed. Pan wondered whether she knew he could notice. “It’s a love story,” she said, “but one we’re not supposed to know about because…it’s kind of grown-up….That’s why I hide it out here. My friend lent it to me.”

  “We read a lot, me and Lyra.”

  “That’s a strange name.”

  “Have you read The Hyperchorasmians?”

  “No! Oh, but we’d love to. We’re longing to read that. But the school won’t allow it. One older girl got into terrible trouble for bringing it in. You know the author lives here in this city?”

  Pan felt a shiver of luck. “Does he? Do you know where?”

  “Yes. It’s famous. People come from all over the world to visit him.”

  “Where is his house?”

  “In the street behind the Stadtkirche. They say he never leaves it—his house, I mean—because he’s so famous and people stop him to talk all the time.”

  “Why won’t the school let you read it?”

  “Because it’s dangerous,” she said. “Lots of people think so. But it sounds so exciting. Did you read it with…Lyra?”

  “Yes. We didn’t agree about it.”

  “I’d love to hear what she thought about it. Was it as exciting as people say?”

  “Yes, it was, but—”

  The bell rang. Anna closed her book at once and felt for the tin box. “Got to go in,” she said. “They don’t give us long. Will you come and talk to us again?”

  “If I can. I’d like to. Do you
know what Brande’s house looks like? Sorry. That was a silly question.”

  “Well, no, but it’s called the Kaufmannshaus. It’s famous.” She swiftly and deftly locked the box and thrust it back among the leaves. “Bye!” she said, and scrambled away through the undergrowth.

  Pan felt bad about deceiving her. If he and Lyra were ever reconciled, he’d make sure they came back here to visit Anna and bring her some books. But the luck! He felt as they’d done in the Arctic town of Trollesund, meeting the aeronaut Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison the armored bear, the very best allies they could possibly have found. That felt as if he and Lyra had been blessed, or as if some power was looking after them, and so did this.

  He moved quietly around the grounds until he came to the caretaker’s hut, and then jumped up on the roof and across onto the wall. The narrow side street below was deserted, but he could hear the sound of traffic from the main road beyond the school. To be safe, he should wait till dark, and he knew it, but it was so tempting to jump down and run hard….

  In which direction, though? She’d mentioned the Stadtkirche, the town church. Pan looked around, but the tall houses blocked the view ahead. Keeping low, he scampered along till he came to the spot where he’d entered the grounds the night before. Through the branches of the bare trees on the little triangle of grass, he could see two square towers of pale stone, each capped with a black dome and lantern. That might be it.

  Before he could stop himself, he leapt down from the wall and raced into the street just after two trams had crossed in the middle. One or two pedestrians saw him and blinked or shook their heads, but he was across too soon for anyone to see him clearly, and then he scrambled up the trunk of an old cedar and vanished from view. He looked down carefully and saw that the passersby were moving on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps they thought their eyes were tricking them.

  He climbed round the trunk a little way and looked for the towers of the Stadtkirche, and soon found them again.

  Maybe he could get there by moving from roof to roof. The houses were tall and narrow, with no gaps between them, opening directly onto the pavement without the little basement area that was common in English town houses. He darted across the road and into a small alley, climbed a drainpipe, slipped into the gutter it drained, and then onto the tiles and up to the ridge of a roof. Now he could see the church towers in the pale sunlight, and many other tall buildings besides, and no one could see him. It was almost like being on the roof of Jordan College long ago. He settled down to sleep by a warm chimney and dreamed of Lyra.