by H. G. Parry
“It wasn’t hard,” Charley added. “It’s a significant object—it’s easy to have a reading strong enough to bring to life. It was a lot harder to use it to free myself. I think I nearly cut my wrists. But I heard you call my name. I knew that meant you’d worked out whom you were really with, and that meant you were in danger. It was my fault. I had to do something.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I half wanted to thank him, but felt it would make my anger with him somewhat less convincing. In the end, I contented myself with, “Does that make you rightful king of all Britain or something?”
“Wrong sword. Excalibur was from the Lady of the Lake. I think it just makes me the person who needs to tidy up the mess in the closet tomorrow. Today.” He yawned again. “So what’s your case?”
That took me by surprise. “What?”
“You told Uriah you had an early trial. What is it?”
Now I had to wonder what else he had heard me tell Uriah before I realized who he was. Nothing I wouldn’t have said quite literally to his face, I suppose, but I had been angry. “You don’t want to hear about my trials.”
“Why not? Maybe I could help.”
“They’re about the real world. Facts and figures. You’ve never lived more than half in the real world your entire life. Besides—” I broke off.
“What?”
“Nothing. I mean—you’re practically asleep. If I start to tell you about my work, you’ll be out in five minutes.”
That was true, but I had been about to say that I didn’t need his help. It was what I might have said as a teenager, saturated with resentment, and what I knew I still said, deep down, whenever he told me something I hadn’t known or his mind jumped lightning fast to a conclusion before mine could get there. It was what I had come too close to saying in Charley’s office. I didn’t want him. He’d ruin everything.
“No, I won’t,” Charley said. I think he missed the words I’d left unsaid, but I could never quite tell with him. “Try me.”
“Forget it.” I hesitated. “Charley?”
“Hm?”
I almost didn’t speak, but it had been nagging at me too much. “Uriah Heep—just before you arrived on the scene, he said that something was coming. A new world, I think were the words. He said you would be at the heart of it. What did he mean?”
“I have no idea,” Charley replied. His brow furrowed. “I must have missed that part, trying to get out of the closet. Are you sure he said that?”
“Pretty sure. He had a knife to my throat at the time, so I was paying attention. He doesn’t know anything you don’t, though, right? He can’t.”
Some of the smart ones do seem to have more of Charley’s memories than others. When we had Sherlock Holmes in our spare room for a few days, back when Charley was seven, he knew enough about the modern world to pass for a friend of the family and beat all our high scores at Pac-Man. But still, they’re from Charley’s head. They can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know.
“There has been something strange building lately,” Charley said hesitantly. “Have you noticed? Perhaps in the last year, but more so in the last few weeks. I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eye that don’t seem right.”
“At the university?”
“No—well, yes, once or twice. I was in the stacks of the library a while back, and something ran past me very fast, about knee height.”
“It was probably a small child. They do exist, you know.”
“Why would there be a small child at the university library? Looking for volume three of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Besides, when I went to follow, the door slammed shut in my face. That door is heavy. A small child couldn’t unhook it and slam it shut on me like that. And it hasn’t only been the university. I was at Cuba Street the other week, and… this will sound strange, but I swear I saw the Artful Dodger buying muffins.”
“That does indeed sound strange. It also sounds impossible. I suppose it explains where Uriah Heep got the idea from after all.”
“Not the new world part. I’ve never heard that before in my life. And—”
“What?” I asked, after the pause had lengthened beyond the usual limit.
“Nothing. You haven’t noticed anything?”
“I notice a lot of things. The only truly strange things I’ve ever noticed in this city are what you bring to it.”
“You were the one who said Uriah Heep told you—”
“I know, and I’m sorry I mentioned it. It was just a phrase. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Nothing is nothing.” He paused. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean is, phrases are important. That’s what I’m trying to teach my poetry students at the moment. Words are chosen very carefully. Stories are built from words.”
“This is reality, not story. Reality is built from facts.”
“‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,’” Charley said, which sounded like a quote from something. He shook his head before I could reply too sharply. “Sorry. You’re right, I’m practically asleep. Perhaps he was just playing with you. He’s Uriah Heep. He does that.”
“Exactly,” I said. Since this was what I wanted to hear, I didn’t push any further. But I knew it hadn’t sounded like that at all.
Lydia was getting dressed by the time I had dropped Charley off and come home. She works as a hotel manager at City Limits on Courtenay Place, and her days either start very early or go very late—sometimes both. I had started this one a little earlier for us both.
“Is your brother all right?” she asked as I shaved and she put on earrings in front of the tiny bathroom mirror. (We still needed to renovate the bathroom.)
“He’ll be bouncing off the walls again in an hour or so.” Which meant I should probably at least phone him at some point during the morning and remind him not to be an idiot. Charley after accidentally reading a character forth has a bad history of being so fascinated with the result that, as soon as dizziness and exhaustion have worn off, he’ll accidentally-on-purpose do it again.
“And are you going to tell me anything more about what the problem was in the first place?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it bloody well matters!” She finished putting in her earring, and turned to face me. I immediately began to prepare my defense. “I want to know what’s going on. I care about your brother, too, you know. I like him. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine what he could be involved in that requires you to be pulled away at all hours of the day or night to go to his aid. He just isn’t the type.”
It wasn’t the first time she had asked this, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I couldn’t answer. It wasn’t just that I had never betrayed Charley’s secret to anyone, or that I wanted to protect Lydia from having to keep the secret herself—though both of those reasons were constantly on my mind, sometimes nestled so closely I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I just knew that once I did tell her, the shape of our lives would be irrevocably altered. I wasn’t ready for that. I had fought too hard for our life.
“You know him,” I said as carelessly as I could. “He’s hopeless.”
“No,” she countered, “he’s not. He may not know what day of the week it is half the time, but he didn’t earn a PhD by the age of nineteen on the other side of the world by being completely hopeless. Something was very wrong last night. If it wasn’t, you would be able to tell me what it was.”
“It was wrong last night,” I conceded. “It’s right again now.”
“As simple as that? Whatever the problem was just vanished into thin air?”
“That,” I said, “is exactly what happened.”
“And you vanished it?”
“No, actually. He did. But I helped.”
“I’m sure you did.” She actually meant that; her look softened. Human nature being what it is, I wondered if I’d sounded a bit pathetic. “I don’t mind you wanting to look out for hi
m, you know. I get it; he’s your brother. I have four of my own. I know what it’s like. I just don’t see why it has to be such a secret. And, I have to admit, I wonder if it would be better for both of you if you let him fix his own problems sometimes.”
I realized that she had been lying awake thinking this out while I was gone, for her benefit as much as mine. Lydia’s like that. We’ve been together four years now, and I’m constantly amazed by how long she can think over her own feelings, working at them patiently until she’s straightened out the knots and tangles and can lay them out in words. I, according to her, am more likely to use words to deliberately confuse myself and others. And I am in the practice of law, so she’s probably right.
“You’re probably right,” I said to her. “But I can’t exactly ignore him when he phones in the middle of the night in a panic.”
“No,” she conceded. “I didn’t mean that. You should have let me come too, you know. You came and helped move my parents into their new house last month.”
“That was carrying boxes. And eating your father’s cooking, which was amazing. This… could best be described as a family thing.”
Lydia’s big on family things. One side of her own family is Māori and the other is Greek, and there are a lot of enthusiastic relatives in her life at any given time. She will usually accept that definition, at a push. This time, she gave me hard look, but mercifully didn’t push any further.
“Well,” she said instead, “if we’re stopping to get breakfast in town, we’d better get a move on. And if we’re not, one of us needs to learn to cook in the next three minutes, because Thursdays require more than last-minute toast and possibly expired yogurt. You know this is true.”
I kissed her—partly because I wanted to, partly to thank her for trying to be understanding about what was not really understandable at all.
When I first came to Wellington to study law, I came because it was the cultural and creative capital of the country. It was where laws were made, and where art was made. It was where governments rose and fell in the House of Parliament named the Beehive, where lively discussions sparked over coffee in quirky cafés, where students drank to flashing strobe lights in the small hours of the morning. I had been there only once or twice, on school visits. I knew its inhabitants always complained about the weather and the hills: it was famous for winds that tore through the city at up to 250 kilometers an hour, rain that lashed its coast to ribbons, and steep slopes, dark with ancient bush, on which wooden colonial houses perched like roosting wood pigeons. I didn’t have feelings about that. I was eighteen and ambitious, and I wanted to build a life in the city. I didn’t need, or expect, to fall in love with it.
I did fall in love, of course—for all the things I had no feelings about, plus a few more. Now I know that almost everyone who lives in Wellington is in love with it, many of them fiercely, passionately, jealously. It’s just customary to express it by complaining about weather and hills.
On that day, I was glad of the wind tugging at my coat; I was glad, too, of my sleek office building, thrumming with people and ideas. It helped drag me the rest of the way out of Charley’s world. In the rush of an ordinary day, Uriah Heep’s threat or warning seemed ludicrous. If it weren’t for the tiny blade cut rubbing at my shirt collar, the whole thing would have felt like a dream. I collected my files for the day, clarified a few last-minute details with the paralegals, and crossed the road to the district court. I finally argued the case I’d been preparing for months, the lingering tiredness from my early start burned away by the peculiar cocktail of adrenaline and conviction that always kicks in about five minutes into a trial. I don’t have the feel for language my brother does, or the intellect. I’m articulate enough when I need to be, and I’m bright enough to get by with a good deal of hard work. But I love the feel of a case coming together. It becomes real, at that moment. I had the exhilarating sense, as I often do of being in touch with the heartbeat of the city.
When I came out of the courthouse at lunchtime, still riding a crest of exhilaration, I saw a child by the side of the road. A boy, quite small and frail, maybe eleven years old. I would have thought he was waiting for someone, but in all the crowds going past, nobody seemed to spare him a second glance. Perhaps I wouldn’t have, either, except that I was almost certain he was looking at me. He was wearing an old baseball cap and oversized sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. But I could feel them.
I moved toward him, on impulse. I couldn’t just leave him there. It was the middle of a school day, in the middle of the city. It didn’t feel right. He didn’t feel right. This was Lambton Quay, the heart of central Wellington. Parliament was across the road; the railway station, in all its redbrick glory, was opposite. It was a clean, solid area. He was a ghost in the middle of it.
“Are you all right there?” I asked. “Who are you looking for?”
The boy was gone before I had taken three steps. He didn’t run, just ducked his head quickly and walked away, as though he’d been caught staring at something he shouldn’t. A shiver went down my spine that I couldn’t name. There had been something very familiar about him.
I entered our office building cautiously. This had nothing to do with the boy; I’d shaken off the incident over the walk back across the road, reassured as usual by the bustle of the wind and the crowds. I was avoiding Eva Rusch, the firm’s lead partner. I knew there were new interns in the building, and that it was my turn to take one of them on for the week to prepare them for the summer. And I know they needed someone to look after them, and I should have been happy to oblige. Lydia had told me as much the other night, and she was right. I usually would have been—younger interns, however brilliant or hopeless, were refreshingly easy to look after compared to my younger brother. But it had been a long, difficult morning, and I was not in an obliging mood.
I was almost safe, actually opening my office door, when I heard the telltale rap of heels on the corridor floor.
“Oh, Rob,” Eva said, catching my arm with a smile that said she knew what I was doing, and that threatened me with disembowelment if I didn’t stop. “There you are. Come meet the new summer interns. People, this is Rob Sutherland, one of our best solicitors; Rob, this is Carmen, Frances, and Eric.”
I sighed inwardly, turned to say hello, and found myself face-to-face with two pleasant-looking young women and Uriah Heep.
Dr. Charles Sutherland, age nineteen
Extract from notebook (leather bound, green)
I know it’s a secret. But one day it might not be. One day people might want to know what it is and how it works, and the knowledge might not be there. I would tell them, but the day might come only after I’m dead. So just in case, I want to write down what I know—or at least what I think—about how it works.
This is how it works. I think.
I’ll be reading. Of course I will. Well, if I know something thoroughly enough—a poem, or a very specific piece of text, something small—I can sometimes just be thinking. But usually, I need the sight of words on paper. It has to be paper. That’s me, I think, not the magic or the ability or whatever term applies. Words aren’t the same to me on a screen. I can see them, but I can’t connect with them. They’re too hard and bright; I float on top of them, like a leaf on the surface of a pond. Words on paper are quiet, and porous; in the right mood, I sink down between the gaps in the letters and they close over my head.
Words and paper. That’s the easy part.
So I’ll be drifting in words, absorbing, and the words I absorb will be racing through my bloodstream. Every nerve, every neuron will be sparking and catching fire, and my heart will be quickening to carry it through faster, and my eyes will be tearing ahead to take in more and more.
This isn’t magic yet, or whatever the word is. (It’s always annoyed me that I can’t find the word.) This is just reading a book.
And while I’m reading, the new words I’m taking in will connect to others already taken in. That referenc
e to blue is the third this chapter, and it always goes with wealth. That phrase is from the poem earlier. Deeper. That’s a reference to the myth of Orpheus. That’s a pairing of two words that don’t usually go together. Wider. That’s a symbol Dickens employs often. That typifies Said’s writings on Orientalism. Points of light. They make a map, or a pattern, or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely.
And then, at once, they’ll connect. They’ll meet, and explode. Of course. That’s the entire point. That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense. And it’s beautiful. It’s a moment of pure joy, the kind that brings pleasure like pain.
This isn’t magic yet either. (Or whatever the word may be.) Still just reading. Or literary analysis? Are they different things? This is just reading deeper.
Sometimes—often—at that point of explosion, someone or something will arrive. It’s as though I see them properly, and I see them so clearly that they manifest. I can remember doing it for the first time when I was four, before the time with The Cat in the Hat that drew my parents’ attention. I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four. I still didn’t understand everything about Nineteen Eighty-Four—if I had, Child Protection would have probably needed a call—but I understood the paperweight. The main character, Winston, buys a paperweight—glass, with a piece of coral enclosed inside—at an antiques store. He and his lover, Julia, have it in the attic where they go to escape the attention of their evil government. (“The paperweight was the room he was in,” Orwell says, “and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.”) When they are discovered, the paperweight smashes. I understood, right then, how a piece of coral in writing could be the hearts of two people, and a glass paperweight could be the world they create: safe, protected, yet infinitely fragile. In life, a paperweight was a paperweight. In a book, when it broke, it could leave you exposed on the floor. I remember catching my breath in awe at this, and then the smooth, cool feel of the paperweight in my hand. Instead of the coral, there was a tiny attic inside it, and a tiny Winston and Julia safe in each other’s arms.
