Codex

by Lev Grossman

  “I’m sorry.”

  “They called it a freak accident.” Edward cleared his throat. Reciting it out loud, his own past seemed strange to him. “But there isn’t really anything freakish about dying when you’re spearfishing in a lava tube at a hundred meters, is there?” He paused, surprised at how bitter he sounded. “I guess I’m still angry about how careless he was. Anyway, she moved to California, I went to Yale. I haven’t seen her for years. When I graduated I guess I was just looking for stability. A sure bet. I-banking seemed like as sure a bet as they come. Most of my friends were doing it, or something like it.”

  “There’s no such thing as a sure bet,” Margaret said.

  “Everything’s a sure bet if you’re the bookie.”

  It was a glib response. Silence resumed, somehow deeper than it was before.

  “Margaret,” Edward said, “do you still think the codex could be a fake?”

  Margaret cleared her throat.

  “It would hardly be the first of its kind,” she began. “History is full examples of pseudepigrapha.”

  “Pseud—?”

  “Fakes. Hoaxes. Literary forgeries. The Culex, which claimed to be Virgil’s juvenilia. ‘The Letter of Aristeas,’ which was a false account of the composition of the Old Testament. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Annius of Viterbo, who pretended to be a Babylonian priest. Jacob Ilive’s Book of Jasher. The so-called Jacopo of Ancona’s City of Light.

  “In the 1700s people were crazy about the poetry of a third-century Scottish bard named Ossian. They called him the Celtic Homer, and he was a major influence on the Romantics. After he died it turned out he never existed. The man who claimed to be Ossian’s translator—a well-known academic named James MacPherson—made it all up.

  “Around the same time an impoverished teenager from Bristol was producing some very accomplished poems that he claimed were the work of a fifteenth-century monk named Thomas Rowley. He said he found them in an old chest. The boy’s name was Thomas Chatterton. Of course, the poems were fakes. Chatterton thought he was a failure, and he poisoned himself when he was seventeen. Keats wrote Endymion about him.

  “Books don’t have to be real to be true. Gervase would have understood that. Was Rowley’s work real? It was real poetry.”

  He heard the screech of her stepladder as she dragged it along the floor like a large, recalcitrant pet.

  “I suspect the Viage will end up as what bibliographers call a ghost,” she said, her voice becoming more and more distant. “A book that has been documented, and attested to in the literature, but that never actually existed.”

  They worked silently in parallel for another hour. At first Edward was curious about each of the boxes he was checking, snooping around in the contents when they looked interesting, but he got over that in a hurry. Now he just wanted to eliminate them as fast as possible and move on.

  Margaret was waiting for him at the end of the next row with her arms folded.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “What?” He tried not to show his disappointment. “You mean that’s all?”

  “For this section.”

  He absentmindedly wiped his hands on his pants before he realized they were covered with black dust.

  “Okay. What’s left?”

  By way of answering she indicated a dark corner of the warehouse that Edward had previously ignored. A large square of floor was partitioned off from the rest of the space by a chainlink cage that ran halfway up to the ceiling. It had evidently been used as a kind of in-house junkyard, a place to put things that were broken but not broken enough to throw away, or too big to haul up to the surface: discarded shelving units, dented filing cabinets, extended runs of obscure and damaged journals. A massive, medieval-looking steel press squatted amid the detritus.

  Edward walked over to the chain-link fence and put his fingers through it.

  “You think it’s in there?” he said. He had a sinking feeling.

  “I don’t think it’s out here.”

  “Can we even get in?”

  There was a door in the fence held closed by a large steel padlock. After a few tries Margaret found the right key on the Pikachu key ring, and the lock popped open with a well-oiled snap. The door moaned dismally as it swung open.

  Inside the jumbled heap sloped upward toward the corner. It was worse than he’d thought: There were brooms and mops and old cleaning supplies and just plain trash inside—broken chairs and busted-in globes and gutted, discarded bindings, all covered with a thick layer of greasy dust. There was actual dirt here. Edward picked his way gingerly through the edges of the pile.

  “This is hopeless,” he said. He glanced at Margaret, half hoping that she would agree and admit defeat, but she started clearing it away with surprising vigor.

  “Let’s work our way to the back,” she said. “Where the big stuff is.”

  They stacked the junk against the walls of the cage as best they could, working together to lift the heavy furniture, old chairs and tables. Margaret broke a nail on an old two-by-four and stopped to smooth it down, swearing under her breath. Soon they could make out a row of trunks and crates along the two rear walls. When he got close enough, Edward opened the top drawer of a battered filing cabinet with a horrific screech. It was full of old call slips and yellowing interlibrary loan records from the 1950s, all blank, never used.

  He had a terrible premonition that they were wasting their time.

  “Margaret—”

  Margaret ripped open a rotten cardboard box that belched out a cloud of dust like a puffball spewing spores. She extricated a stack of red leather-bound books from its interior, glanced at their spines, then dumped them to one side. The more exhausted he got the stronger she seemed to become. She pushed the hair out of her eyes with her forearms.

  “Nothing yet!” she said gamely, breathing hard.

  Edward felt like they had slipped into a parallel dimension where time was elastic. It seemed like they’d been down in the vault for days, and the cold and the silence and the darkness and the tension were getting to him. Any trace of the fear and excitement he’d felt at the outset was gone. He worked in a dreamlike state. He had no idea what time it was. He guessed two in the morning, then checked his watch: It was only ten thirty.

  He spent five minutes with a steel bookend trying to lever open an antique wooden box that looked vaguely Chinese. It turned out to be packed with brittle, translucent glass negatives individually wrapped in tissue paper. He slipped one out and held it up to the light. The ghostly image of a busty blond with a twenties hairstyle materialized, winking back at him. She was perched on a rock, squinting at the seaside sun with one pale, wobbly breast exposed.

  Edward frowned. He glanced over at Margaret. She had stopped working.

  She was standing in front of a big black suitcase half as tall as she was, studying the bundle of tags that was hanging from the handle. The suitcase was stamped with faded luggage stickers from old transatlantic lines. In the cold, dusty basement of the library it gave off an impossibly remote air, of sunbathing and canvas deck chairs and shipboard romance.

  “What is it?”

  “‘Cruttenden,’” she said. “It says ‘Cruttenden.’”

  Edward dropped the negative. It shattered on the cement floor.

  “Thank God,” he said, with more emotion than he meant to. “We’re saved.”

  They worked together to clear a space for the suitcase, then carefully rocked it out away from the wall and laid it down on the floor on its back. It was a formidable object, bound in heavy brass, and it weighed a ton. Edward tried the latch, but it was locked.

  “I don’t suppose you have the key—?”

  Margaret picked up an empty fire extinguisher. He snatched his hands away just in time as she gave the lock a solid two-handed blow with its butt-end. Something metal sprang off it and tinkled away musically into the darkness. She put the fire extinguisher down.

  “Try it now,” she sai
d, breathing heavily. The lid yawned open on two cleverly constructed hinged arms. He saw why it weighed so much: Inside it was full of books, a solid mass packed tightly together like a Chinese puzzle, each one carefully wrapped in its own fine paper nest.

  This was it. He wanted to prolong the moment of the unveiling, but Margaret apparently didn’t share his delicate feelings. She chose a book at random, tore the wrapping off, and squinted at the spine: It had a series of numbers and letters, some of them Greek, printed on it in gold.

  Margaret grimaced.

  “These press marks are wrong. They’re not even close to what they should be.”

  “You mean this isn’t—?”

  He didn’t dare to finish the sentence.

  “No,” she said, still shaking her head. “I mean yes, this is the missing box. It has to be.” She looked up at him helplessly. “What else could it be?”

  Edward had no answer for her.

  They worked together to unpack the books, starting at opposite ends. Kneeling next to the suitcase, Margaret ripped the wrapping paper off each book with both hands and threw it behind her. Edward was seeing a new side of her: She had scented blood, and something serious and primal was coming to the fore, an angry shark spiraling up out of the blue depths. Edward stayed out of her way as she worked. She’d been looking for this longer than he had, he thought. It was her victory more than it was his.

  He used his sleeve to clear the dust off a table where he could stack the books as she unwrapped them. She went through the volumes in the suitcase with the ruthless efficiency of a child looting the broken carcass of a piñata. Some of the books, the ones that were obviously modern, she tossed aside without even opening. She spent longer on the older volumes, then threw them behind her, too.

  And then it was empty. The blank bottom of the suitcase gaped at them in the dimness. They both felt around in the shadows inside it, patting the sides, looking for a book they’d missed, or maybe—could it be?—a secret compartment? But there was nothing to find. The codex wasn’t there.

  Edward was almost too stunned to be disappointed. He’d been so sure, he hadn’t even stopped to consider what would happen if they were wrong. Margaret obviously hadn’t either. She pawed through the huge pile of wrapping paper she’d thrown aside, like a cat in a pile of leaves, but there was nothing solid.

  “It’s not here,” she said in a small, odd voice.

  “I guess not.”

  Edward tried to sound casual. He got to his feet, dusting off his hands, okay, no big deal.

  She stood up with a dazed expression on her face, looking around at the jumble of trash and discarded objects.

  “I don’t think it’s here,” she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him the first time. She looked like a shell shock victim stumbling out of a bomb crater.

  “Margaret, it’s obviously not here,” he said. “There’s still a few more filing cabinets. We could—”

  She took a running step and kicked the empty suitcase. Dust flew up out of it, and it boomed hollowly in the silence. Then she kicked it again, and a third time, with increasing force. Edward watched, fascinated, as she slammed the suitcase closed. He’d never seen anybody so angry. With more strength than he would have thought possible in her slender arms she picked it up and threw it bodily against a row of filing cabinets. A huge crash echoed through the vault, like the collapse of a colossal machine.

  “This is bullshit!” she screeched. “Bullshit!”

  She kicked the suitcase again and again where it lay on the floor until Edward finally snapped out of it and grabbed her around the waist. She struggled, trying to pry his arms away, but she was too light, and he was too strong. For a second her cheek pressed against his. It was wet with warm tears that turned cold in the chilly air.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Shh. It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s not all right!”

  She finally pulled away from him and sat down on an old desk chair. Sobbing, she put her head in her hands. They were both covered with black dust and dirt. She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her hands were trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She sobbed once, convulsively. “I’m sorry. God damn it.”

  Edward stood the suitcase up on its side and sat down on it. He shouldn’t be here, he thought wearily, watching her. He was tired and cold and unhappy, but even so, he didn’t deserve to be here. She wanted the codex more than he could have guessed, more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. She was right: She was the serious one, he was just along for the ride. He felt like an acquaintance at a funeral who realizes for the first time that he’d never really known the deceased, that he’d been invited along merely out of politeness.

  He wanted to comfort her. The distance he so often felt between himself and other people was reasserting itself, and he didn’t want to let it. He went over to where she was sitting and put his hands on her shoulders, then around her waist. The position was awkward, but he couldn’t let go of her. How old was she? From what she’d told him she couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. He wanted to protect her from the hurtful, disappointing world around them. He stayed like that for what seemed like a long time. She didn’t move. After a while his neck got tired, and he rested his head on top of hers. From time to time she sniffed wetly, but she didn’t try to pull away.

  Finally she turned around. He shifted his weight to an old crate next to her, and they kissed. It was a soft, tender kiss. A good kiss. After a few minutes she moved his hand up her slender ribcage and placed it over her small, soft breast.

  Another long time later they broke apart. Margaret’s eyes were closed. She seemed to be half sleeping, half dreaming. They didn’t speak, and the silence was deep around them. They were like two slaves buried alive together for all eternity in the tomb of some cruel Asiatic king. She leaned her head against his chest, and he put his arms around her shoulders. He was grateful for the warmth.

  He looked up at the shadowy ceiling far above their heads, then carefully, so as not to disturb her, he glanced down at his watch. It was one in the morning.

  AT 6:58 A.M., TWO DIRTY, shivering refugees stood at an out-of-the-way fire exit in an obscure corner of the basement of the Chenoweth Rare Book and Manuscript Repository Annex. Margaret stood slightly apart from Edward. He carried the heavy suitcase containing the Wents’ books, looking like a bedraggled immigrant with chalk marks on his coat waiting to be processed at Ellis Island. She carried a rare copy of De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater in her folded arms; she’d picked it up at some point the night before and refused to part with it. They watched and waited. At exactly 7:00 a tinny electronic tone chimed, and a tiny red light over the door winked out.

  The door opened onto a thick evergreen hedge covered with dew. They pushed their way out through it and across a moat of brown wood chips. It was daylight, but no one saw them, or if they did they didn’t raise the alarm. The air was as warm and humid as a rainforest after the dry chill of the library, and they shivered uncontrollably as they warmed up. Margaret’s face was streaky and red where her tears had dried. A bird called sweetly from further down the riverbank, nearer the water, where a mist was burning off in the morning sun. The grass was drenched with moisture that soaked into their socks. Edward would happily have murdered for a sip of scotch.

  Margaret walked ahead of him through the carefully manicured grounds, whether out of embarrassment or eagerness to get out of there, he couldn’t tell. She limped slightly; she must have hurt her foot when she kicked the suitcase. Edward hadn’t slept much, and he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. Now the hunger and fatigue caught up with him, and he felt faint. His mouth flooded with saliva. She waited impassively, sphinxlike, while he puked into a rhododendron.

  A half-dozen cars were lined up in the motel parking lot like suckling pigs. All the windows were dark, the curtains drawn. Edward had the key. There were twin beds in their room, covered with synthetic floral
bedspreads, fresh and unslept-in. Two water glasses stood on the dresser, still wrapped in hygienic tissue paper.

  Edward sat down on the nearer bed.

  “Just give me a minute,” he mumbled. He’d get up in a second. “I just need to close my eyes for one minute.”

  The mattress was hard, and the bed was made so tightly it was an effort to pull back the covers. Finally he just lay down on top of them, still wearing his shoes, and put his hands under the flat, flaccid pillow and closed his eyes. A warm, glowing, pulsing pattern appeared behind his eyelids. He heard the shower come on.

  After a while he felt hands untying his shoes, urging him under the covers, tucking him in, and then Margaret lay down next to him, warm and pink and clean, and they fell asleep together in the bright white sunlight streaming in through the windows.

  16

  THE DAY AFTER THEY got back Edward came down with a summer cold.

  It might have been the chilly air in the library, or the dust or the stress or the lack of sleep, or all of them combined, but when he woke up the next morning everything around him felt different. He knew that his apartment was full of sunlight and heat, but he couldn’t feel it. Time was slower. Gravity was weaker. His head felt like it was full of some thick, heavy, viscous liquid.

  For two days Edward lay on his couch with his head on the cushions and his legs hooked over one of the arms, his blue office shirt unbuttoned and his hair unwashed. He wore plaid flannel pajama bottoms and drank cartons of orange juice in little sips because he couldn’t breathe through his nose. He ate once a day. He left the TV on all the time, watching shows he’d never seen before, or even suspected existed. One show was devoted exclusively to horrific sporting accidents captured on videotape. Every episode followed the same formula: a festive occasion, bright sunlight, crowded bleachers, “loving” family members present. Often the fateful incident took place in the background while the amateur cameraman, oblivious for the first few seconds, focused on the loved ones chattering away blissfully in the foreground, while behind them a funny car unexpectedly spewed burning fluid all over itself, or a double-hulled speedboat took graceful flight and floated toward a beach packed with sun-bathers, or a privately owned Cessna lumbered into the air, overloaded with happy hunters bound for a carefree weekend upstate that they would never, ever enjoy.