The Quarantined City

by James Everington

  “I told you, I don’t write anymore. Boursier...”

  “You must still have them, the ones you did write? Who knows, maybe reading this Boursier guy will kick-start your own writing again.”

  He just shakes his head and looks out the window of her flat, at the slanted roofs of old town, repeating like a mosaic; in the distance he can see the bigger houses of the Enclave on the hill overlooking the bay, and the spires of three churches; the Mariners’ Church is the most distinctive, with its weather vane shaped like a fish. Whenever anyone is lost at sea, the service is held there.

  “Georgia, please can I use your phone?”

  “You haven’t finished your wine.”

  He necks it in one gulp, puts down the glass on the unvarnished wooden table covered in circular marks from previous glasses, and looks at her in triumph despite the taste. She calls him a twat again, and pours him another glass, right to the brim this time.

  “You haven’t finished your wine. So, tell me again just why you’re obsessed with this guy...”

  ~

  The truth is, Fellows doesn’t really know.

  From Georgia’s house he takes the quickest route out of the old town, walking down towards the docks, intending to take the route round the harbour walls and back up to the marketplace, where he has been told the bookshop is. When Georgia had finally allowed him to use her phone, the switchboard operator had tried to put the call through three times without reply; the voice that had finally answered had been blunt, aggressive even, as if annoyed at the intrusion. Fellows had doubted for a moment that the newspaper had printed the right number. But yes—the deep, croaky voice had confirmed it was the owner of The Echo Bookshop.

  “What times are you open?” Fellows asked, after saying he was interested in the Boursier works the bookseller had.

  “Later.”

  So he has allowed himself the more scenic route, and as he walks he smells a hint of spice on the air and his stomach rumbles hungrily. A man is selling potatoes dusted with paprika from a small rotisserie stall; the potatoes are cooking in the dripping fat from the chickens turning above. Fellows buys a carton of the potatoes and sits eating them overlooking the sea as it reared up against the harbour walls. The way the walls stop the sea getting in makes him think of the quarantine, as if that were protecting the city from the outside world and not the other way round; the truth is the quarantine doesn’t bother Fellows much. Some boats are pulling out to sea but they are small ones, fishing in the designated area around the city. The bigger boats and ships, which used to sail to other ports, to other countries, already have a neglected air; one of the biggest lies lopsided in the water as if it had just been abandoned; one flank of it is raised above the waterline, revealing rust and barnacles. Cormorants are drying their wings on its deck and rigging.

  Fellows licks the grease and paprika from his fingers, tasting the faintest hint of newspaper ink underneath. He realises he is deliberately delaying setting off again, because something about the bookseller’s tone, his implication that Fellows was a timewaster, has made him anxious. He has the ridiculous feeling that what should be a simple commercial transaction is going to be confrontational, and he shrinks from it. No wonder he has never come across The Echo Bookshop before, if this was the way it treated potential customers (and what kind of name was The Echo, anyway?). But then Fellows thinks that he might, finally, be about to get his hands on some Boursier stories, and some of his excitement returns. He throws his last potato to the shrieking gulls and then heads off at a pace towards the marketplace. The voice had informed him that the bookshop was to be found in a nameless alley behind the square. Of course, Fellows had thought, why make it easy for your customers to find you? It would serve the man right if he doesn’t show up...

  But yet here he is, hurrying up towards the square despite the relentless summer, moving twice as fast as anyone else in the lethargic afternoon streets. You twat, he thinks to himself, smiling as he thinks of Georgia. It’s an odd word, and one he’s never heard but from her. Is it foreign? He will have to ask her. Its meaning is clear enough regardless, he thinks, with another smile.

  Stories about Boursier had begun appearing in the local paper not long after the quarantine had been imposed, but Fellows has the impression that those articles had been preceded by overheard conversations in the street, elusive snatches of gossip and innuendo. All about this mysterious writer called Boursier. No first name was ever mentioned, no personal details. Some said he was a spy come to see how the city coped with the quarantine, some said he was on the run from the law or paying some kind of penitence by his isolation. Regardless, as there were no new books coming into the city from outside anymore, the mere presence of Boursier in the quarantined city had been enough for the newspapers to latch onto. Fellows supposes the writer’s talent may well have been exaggerated, but still he had been intrigued by what he had heard: short stories set in a fantasy world, but not one that differed too much from real life. People who had read Boursier’s work, or claimed to have, said that they had a confusing, teasing quality, full of alien details but written in such a way it was as if the writer expected people to know what was meant. No explanation, no context. He might be imagining it, but to Fellows they sound like the kind of short stories he would have tried to write, back before...

  But he isn’t going to think of that.

  The market square is full of people and stalls and birds squabbling for scraps; an illusion of normalcy. But most of the stalls have meagre offerings: whatever crops people have managed to grow in the derisory ring of agricultural land this side of the quarantine. The summer-long lack of rain has not helped. Only the fish stalls are still close to being as bountiful as before. But the market is still packed with people, as if they have nowhere else to be, going through the motions of haggling over a small bunch of radishes or a jar of dried herbs using currency they don’t fully know the worth of. Others just hang around as if drawn here like the ghosts of their previous lives, standing around unable to progress, staring vacantly at the empty cheese stall and the sparse cuts of meat (about which rumours as to their origin swirl) and then walking away.

  There is a commotion towards one end of the market; Fellows sees a small group of men and women with placards, trying to get a chant going with minimal success. He goes over; one of them presses a mimeographed leaflet into his hand without making eye-contact, then starts back as if surprised Fellows has taken it. He glances at it as he walks through the crowd: it is calling for more ‘radical’ solutions in order to get the quarantine lifted. Idiots, he thinks, crumpling the leaflet in his hand and dropping it to the floor without reading further. At the far end of the crowd he sees two Guardia approaching at speed, unbuttoning the holsters of their revolvers as they do so. They glance at him as they pass, and Fellows is glad he dropped the leaflet. The crowd parts for them as they stride into it, the most energetic action he has seen in this husk of a market. The protestors have already scattered.

  He finds the alleyway that the voice on the phone must have been talking about, and steps inside; its shadows mean it is several degrees cooler than in the sunlight and he almost shivers. After the throng of people in the market square the alley’s emptiness, its quietness seem the more unnerving. As if he hasn’t just turned a corner but somehow ended up far from home. He resists the urge to look behind himself for reassurance. The alley is narrow and unevenly cobbled and an absolutely preposterous location for any kind of commercial endeavour. Can there really be a bookshop down here? Fellows thinks. He wonders if he is the victim of some elaborate, opaque prank. Or could it be something more sinister? Was some gang trying to lure him into the alleyway to mug him, to steal from him all the money they thought he would have withdrawn from the city bank to purchase Boursier’s works? In reality he has little on him; although Boursier has gained some notoriety in the local press and among the literati, such as they are, in the quarantined city, he hadn’t considered the possibility that his book
s would be changing hands for silly money. Surely he isn’t actually successful? Because his stories sound in some ways similar to what he had used to write, Fellows has assumed Boursier’s lifestyle to be similar to his own back then: periods of dull but dependable employment leaving the evenings to write in, punctuated by irregular, fruitless attempts to ‘make a living’ from fiction, eking out cheap coffee and a pack of cigarettes a week, dreaming of actually making enough money so that he won’t have to return to the real world... Maybe this Boursier has actually achieved that?

  Bastard, Fellows thinks, and heads down the alley wearily. There is faint, metallic odour to the air that he can’t quite place, and the sound of dripping water from the guttering above. What the hell? he thinks. It hasn’t rained for months. When he looks up he sees the gutters of the buildings are overflowing with lush vegetation, greener and brighter than anything he has seen for months, a miniature jungle out of place against the brown stone and grey slate around it.

  At the bottom of the alleyway is a pile of garbage bags which an energetic seagull is tearing into, and an open wooden door with peeling white paint that leads into one of the buildings to the left. Fellows pauses. From this angle he can’t see what it opens into; he thinks again he should just turn and leave, forget about this absurd Boursier character and the memories of his own failed literary ambitions he has stirred up...

  But he walks up to the door, and goes inside. The gull clatters upwards on white wings.

  The room he finds himself in has an uneven floor, an uneven ceiling, as if it has been hollowed out of rock rather than being made of brick and timber. It is large, or would feel so if it weren’t for the aisles and aisles of bookshelves it is filled with, so tight together any prospective customers could only move between in single file. Not that there are any other customers; the only echoes in here seem to be his own. Despite himself Fellows is excited by the sight of so many books, of the old musty smell of them: the books overflow from the shelves and are piled at the ends of the aisles. He walks down one of the aisles; he stops when he sees a sign in felt-tip pen saying Fictions B, but he can’t see any books by Boursier on the shelves. He hopes this means the proprietor, wherever he is, has kept the books safe for him rather than sold them already. Fellows doesn’t recognise the names of any of the authors—Boddings, Bergeron, Belacqua—as he moves towards Fictions A. Am I so out of touch? he thinks.

  At the end of the aisle he comes to a halt, for he sees what he presumes is the sales desk, which is little more than a table piled high with yet more books as well as an ancient looking cash register. There is an office chair, the kind with wheels, in front of the desk, turning slightly as if someone has just risen from it and dashed out of sight. And on the other side of the desk staring at him is a young man of about eighteen, Fellows guesses. The boy is pale and shiny to the point of looking unwell and his close cropped hair is suggestive of the gaol. He has one eye that doesn’t look in the direction it should.

  “Uh, hi,” Fellows says. “Is your... is the owner around? I called earlier and...”

  “You?” the boy says. “You’re the person who called about these bloody Boursier stories?” Fellows is shocked to hear the same hoarse, vaguely aggressive voice he heard on the telephone.

  “Yes, that was me,” he says. The boy gives a low whistle and chuckles to himself; Fellows wonders again if the books really are expensive, and if his somewhat worn and crumpled linen suit marks him out as someone who surely won’t be able to able to purchase them...

  “Well, okay...” the boy says, and bends down to open a drawer of his desk. As he does so there is a noticeable disturbance of dust. He angrily clears some free space from the desk by knocking some of the books there to the floor, and puts the contents of the drawer in the vacated space. They are not what Fellows was expecting.

  There are no actual books per se; there are some cheap looking literary journals and magazines, dog-eared at the corners. He opens one to its contents page and sees at least it isn’t a trick—the third line says Spot The Difference by Boursier. There is no forename or initial. As well as the magazines there is a story in what appears to be a succession of newspaper clippings, and one that appears to have been hand-produced by a mimeograph. There are six stories in all, he sees. He doesn’t try to hide his disappointment, but after all what does it matter where and how these stories were published if they are as good as the rumours suggest? And maybe the fact he looks a little nonplussed will help him bargain the bookseller’s price down.

  “Hmmmm,” he says, “well I suppose they might be worth a read. How much?” he adds, pulling out the lowest denomination note from his wallet as some kind of starting point.

  “Old money only,” the boy says, and Fellows sees he is smiling, although because of the boy’s rogue eye he isn’t sure if it is at him or not.

  “What?”

  “Seller’s instructions: pre-quarantine money only. Pounds and pence.”

  “What? But I... I don’t have any on me,” Fellows says in annoyance. “Why would I be carrying around money I can’t bloody spend any more?” A thought strikes him. “And what do you mean, seller’s instructions?”

  The bookseller gives that little mocking whistle again, as though Fellows is a simpleton who has failed to grasp the obvious. “I’m just on commission,” he says. “Do you think I bought this junk?” He gestures dismissively at the pile of Boursier stories between them. “Of course not. I only buy books that are properly published, properly bound...” He sniffs as if the dust of his shop has irritated him. “But how could I turn him down? The guy came in the other week and asked me to try and sell these, for fifty percent of the takings. It’s not like they take up much room so I said yes, on the condition that if they didn’t sell in a month he’d have to come back and take them away. Which I fully expected. But then here’s you.”

  “That’s when you saw my advert then?” Fellows says. “And put your reply in the paper today?”

  “What? Why the hell would I pay for an advert in the paper for this junk? I didn’t place any advert,” the boy says. Is he crazy, Fellows wonders, some kind of compulsive liar? “Anyway. He gave... other instructions too. One of which was old money only.”

  “Wait. Who did? Who’s selling these?”

  “The author, who else? Who else but a struggling no-talent author would offer me fifty percent?”

  “Boursier?”

  “So he said,” the boy says in his croaky voice that doesn’t match his face. He sniffs again. His smile annoys Fellows no end.

  “Well, have you got any old money?” he says, “that I could buy from you?”

  “A bit, but it won’t get you all of the stories,” the boy says. “Just the one. And I charge a bastard of a commission.”

  Fellows tells himself not to do it, to walk away, but finds himself agreeing. For some reason the boy insists on playing out the whole transaction, giving him the old orange note in exchange for about half the contents of Fellow’s wallet in new money, writing out a receipt, then taking the note back from Fellows before allowing him one of the magazines, and writing out another receipt. Fellows snatches the magazine angrily from the boy, not bothering to hide his annoyance. He sees his fingers are still stained with newspaper ink and hopes he won’t mark the pages he’s paid so much for.

  “I’ll be back for the others tomorrow,” he says flatly.

  “Maybe not once you’ve read that one,” the boy says grinning. “Drivel.”

  Fellows bites back on his reply and leaves the shop.

  ~

  It is late afternoon and the day has retained all the heat that has been burnt into it by the sun; the city seems even more torpid than normal to Fellows. Most people have been working fewer hours since the quarantine because there is genuinely less to do, but it is more than the fact that people are taking longer siestas. There is a sense the quarantined city is holding its breath, waiting for what comes after.

  It’s a hiatus Fellows admits to enj
oying, an escape from old tension, and he enjoys too the feeling of the sun on his face as he walks. He decides to go and read the Boursier story he has bought for such a ridiculous price in the nearby park; by the time he has read it and is ready to walk home the day might have cooled. He stops to buy some bottles of beer on the way, and as he comes out the shop Fellows hears the intrusive noise of the car engine that he has heard on and off all day. He shudders. But still he steps out into the road without thinking; the noise is an annoyance he has ceased to associate with actual traffic, for the streets of the quarantined city have been empty of that for so long.

  The car swerves and shoots past him with a loud scream of its horn to chastise him. Fellows staggers backwards; all he can comprehend for a second is the sudden hostile black bulk of the thing, the swirl of air and dust it blasts into his face.

  “Idiot!” he shouts at its retreating form, not caring if it is a government official’s car (they being the only ones still allowed unlimited petrol) for the car had been going too fast and driving up the centre of the road like it owned it all, rather than on the right-hand side as it should.

  Fellows swears again, under his breath this time—his breathing is coming in heavy, painful gulps and his heart is pounding. He is leaning against one of the street signs for support. Relax, nothing happened, he thinks, but it is a long time before he can do so.

  The sun is finally lowering itself for the day when he gets to the park, and the first prostitutes and rent-boys are already lazily gathering down by the fountain. Fellows gives the women a quick glance, but knows that the vague ache he feels is loneliness dressed up as lust rather than lust itself. And besides, he barely has any money on him after buying the beer and being ripped off in The Echo Bookshop.

  Sighing, he sits on a bench furthest from the fountain, near the statue of the man who apparently founded the city, so worn and splattered with gull shit whoever it was is almost unrecognisable. Fellows opens one of the beers, using the side of the wooden bench to lever the bottle-top off, and takes a swig. It is warm and flat and tasteless; when he looks at the bottle he sees the label on its side hasn’t spelled the name of the brand correctly, and is already peeling off due to the cheap glue. Blame the quarantine, Georgia says in his mind, and he smiles.