The Memory Theater

by Karin Tidbeck

  The queen of this country was the last of a great dynasty. She came from a tradition of taking good care of literature. Her father had revered the library, and so had his mother before him. The queen sent out messengers and merchants to find new books; to collect all the literature mankind had produced. And she succeeded.

  The library was an ecosystem of sorts; the sheer mass of the place couldn’t help but produce life. Out of the collected knowledge, of the love with which the librarians and visitors treated the books, of the fossilized voices of a hundred thousand scribes and storytellers, little guardian spirits took form.

  These keepers were ferociously protective of their respective territories, but helpful toward those who treated the literature and librarians well. They helped new scribes navigate the stacks, alerted the librarians to any works that were in need of repair, and punished those who didn’t behave. They took on the characteristics of their territory, of course. The keeper of mathematics had skin made of etched clay and spoke in statements. The keeper of plays liked to wear masks and use props. The keeper of philosophy wore a mirror face. They did have a sense of humor.

  But the country was invaded and many cities burned. The capital was set aflame, too, and so was its library. All except for one small part.

  Pinax fell quiet.

  “Except for which part?” Augusta asked.

  “I do love these,” Pinax mumbled, and picked up a crumbly yellow cake from the tray.

  “What does any of this have to do with anything?” Augusta said.

  “It’s my story,” Pinax said. “I am the keeper of the registry. And my story is important to yours.”

  “So explain it to me,” Augusta said.

  Pinax smiled at her. “Perhaps if we were friends, I might. But so far I don’t know that I trust you.”

  “But we are friends.” Augusta gestured at the table. “I brought you cake, you made tea, we are having it together.”

  “You’re only interested in what I can do for you,” Pinax said.

  “Yes,” Augusta replied. “That’s why you’re my friend, because you can do something for me. You can help me find Phantasos, so I can go home.”

  Pinax raised an eyebrow. “That is not how friendship works.”

  “Then how does it work?” said Augusta in exasperation.

  “Friendship,” Pinax said, “is not an exchange of gifts. Friendship is built on trust. I don’t know if you are trustworthy, Augusta. I don’t know that I can trust you with the information you seek. You are uncultured and rude. But I see potential in you. And that potential person might be a friend of mine.”

  Augusta scoffed. “I am not uncultured and rude. I am a lady.”

  “Perhaps in your world and your time. But I need to see that you have some sort of conscience,” Pinax said. “That you will use the information I have wisely.”

  “But I am wise,” Augusta said. “I’m clever.”

  Pinax sighed. “Let’s call it a mentorship for now. I will teach you things.”

  “If I learn things, will you tell me where to find Phantasos?”

  “Perhaps. Come back tomorrow and we will talk more.”

  * * *

  —

  Augusta returned home only to realize that she had no maid. She wandered down the street until she spotted a young man who looked appropriate. He followed without protest, although he kept asking questions. Who was Augusta? Where were they going? What was he supposed to do? He became more pliable after a beating. Augusta settled in her room to wait. She would have to have patience until Pinax gave her the information she needed.

  11

  “Trees!” Thistle said weakly, and pointed at the horizon, where shapes rose like slender fingers against the sky.

  He was beginning to weigh on Dora’s back now. Her feet were heavy, and her arms were tired from holding on to Thistle’s legs. Still, she would not put him down. He was more tired than she was.

  The tall grass gave way to dusty gravel. Ahead lay a stone city, its border guarded by enormous, forbidding statues. A naked woman with wings and bird feet held a sharp-looking hook in her hand. A cloaked figure rested its bony hand on a scythe. A man with a canine head held a staff and a looped cross. A twisted old woman in robes brandished a long knife. As Dora walked in among them, the statues seemed to stare at her, although not in a hostile way; it was more as if she were being studied and measured.

  A road flanked by those tall trees led through the metropolis. The stone buildings on either side were in a jumble of wildly different styles: pyramids, columned temples, ornate tents, simple slabs leaned against one another. Eventually, they came to an open space, a square intersected by a wide canal with an arched bridge. Thistle climbed down from Dora’s back.

  On the other side of the canal stood a house unlike the others. It was made of wood, with a pointed metal-tiled roof and stained-glass windows, and it sat on three pairs of large spoked wheels. It looked like a carriage of some sort, if a carriage could also be a house. Dora could hear the drone of voices and snatches of music. She walked across the bridge. Thistle followed in her wake.

  Thistle peeked in through the nearest arched window, which sat just low enough that he could reach it. The light from the inside cast his face in jewel tones. Dora looked over his shoulder. The room was unfurnished; the floor planks were naked. The light came from a huge chandelier that hung from the ceiling, set with scores of candles. Nothing moved in there, but still the noise from something like a party bled outside. A multitude of voices, the clink of glass, a melody played on strings. Dora circled the structure. The long wall on the other side was set with wide stairs that almost, but not quite, touched the ground. It did not, however, have a door. Just more windows. Dora climbed the stairs and looked inside. The room looked empty, just like it had from the other side. She heard Thistle rapping on the glass. The noise remained unchanged.

  “No door?” Thistle said as he came around the corner.

  “No door,” Dora replied.

  “Should we break in?” Thistle asked.

  The sound of shrill pipes in the distance interrupted Dora before she could reply.

  A small procession came walking up the road to the square and stopped on the middle of the bridge. Two people draped in white carried a bier, on which rested a human form under a sheet. The tan young man who carried the back end had curly brown hair and a square face; the girl at the front was rosy and wiry, her dark blond hair in a simple twist slung across her shoulder. At the head of the procession walked an older woman, stout and powerful but bent in sorrow. She wore layers of white linen, brilliant against her brown skin. A crown of twigs sat atop her braided black hair. She was playing a double-piped flute, an insistent and weeping melody that harmonized with itself in chords that made Dora clap her hands over her ears.

  The pallbearers set the bier down on the ground. The older woman lowered her flute. Then they all stared at Dora and Thistle as one. When the older woman spoke, her voice was deep and sonorous.

  “Who disturbs our rites?”

  “Hello,” Dora said.

  Thistle bowed. “Madam, I am called Thistle, and my companion Dora.”

  Dora didn’t bow. “Who are you? Who is the dead person?” she said.

  The girl peeled the sheet back. The man on the bier was dressed in an oilcloth jacket over a gray knitted sweater. He wore a cap that obscured his eyes, but his cheeks were coarse and weather-beaten.

  Dora pointed. “Who is that?”

  Thistle pinched her arm.

  “He was a fisherman,” the crowned woman intoned. “A simple man, a god-fearing man.”

  “He was Knut Olesen of Lillesand,” the young man filled in. “The first victim of a great invasion.”

  “He had made the best catch in a decade when they killed him,” said the girl. “He was forty-three years
old.”

  The older woman gestured at the canal. “We come to lay him to rest.”

  She raised her hands to the sky, as did the young man and the girl.

  “Gods of death, hear me,” she said. “We consign this man to you.”

  The young man bent down and picked up the back of the bier. The corpse slid into the water without leaving so much as a ripple.

  “So ends Knut Olesen’s story,” the woman said.

  “So ends the story,” the others said in unison.

  They stood with their heads bowed for a moment. Then, improbably, the girl broke into a grin. The older woman nodded and smiled.

  “Well done,” she said to the others.

  There was a splash from the canal.

  “Well, that was wet,” a voice said.

  An old man rose out of the water and climbed onto the cobblestones. He looked nothing like Knut Olesen the fisherman, but he was wearing the same clothes, now soaked. His face was alive and draped in kindly folds. He walked onto the bridge and joined hands with the tall woman. The pallbearers joined them on either side. They bowed as one.

  “You have seen The First Victim!” the crowned woman said. “I present to you, in order of appearance: our beloved Nestor, as Knut Olesen!”

  The old man stepped forward, flinging his arms out like a dancer.

  “Journeyman, as Pallbearer One!”

  The young man bowed solemnly.

  “Apprentice, as Pallbearer Two!”

  The girl bobbed a quick curtsy.

  “And finally”—the woman herself stepped up—“the High Priestess, played by yours truly. I am Director, and I hope you have enjoyed our show, whoever you are and wherever you may be.”

  Dora had a sudden urge to clap her hands. She did. The people on the bridge looked down at them.

  “It’s an actual audience,” Apprentice said.

  “Yes, it is,” Director said. “Who are you?”

  “We already told you,” Dora replied.

  “You told the Priestess and her aides. You didn’t tell us.”

  “I’m Dora. He’s Thistle.”

  “I apologize, madam,” Thistle said. “She is very direct.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.” Director shrugged. “We’re not exactly people with manners.”

  She looked Thistle up and down, and then Dora. “How did you get here?”

  “We walked,” Dora replied.

  “I see. From where?”

  “The other side of the lake. And the crossroads.”

  Director nodded. “And your purpose?”

  “We’re looking for someone,” Dora said.

  “Who?”

  “A theater troupe. Ghorbi said we’d know them when we saw them,” Thistle said.

  “Ghorbi,” Nestor muttered.

  Director arched an eyebrow. “I see. Then allow me to really introduce us.” She threw her arms out. “We are the Memory Theater.”

  Behind her, the others bowed again.

  “We play stories so that they may be remembered,” Director continued. “We play true stories. We write them into the book of the universe, if you will, or weave them into the tapestry, if that sounds better. When we do that, the event will live on. It is recorded and will always have happened. Like here: Knut Olesen’s death, recorded.”

  “But we usually don’t have an audience,” Journeyman said.

  “A visible audience,” said Nestor, and scowled at him. “The universe is watching.”

  “So this is quite an occasion,” Director finished.

  There was a short moment of silence in which the troupe and the siblings looked at each other. Dora’s stomach rumbled.

  “I’m hungry,” Dora said. “Do you have food?”

  Director broke into a smile. “Of course we do! To the wagon.”

  The troupe marched over to the mysterious house on wheels. They walked up the stairs, and Journeyman fiddled with the center window. Somehow he unhooked it, then pushed. The whole wall to the right of the window folded and slid aside on rails. Director grabbed the left section and pushed it the other way. What had from the outside looked like an empty space was now a cluttered dressing room, with vanity tables, several stuffed armchairs, and a tiny kitchen with an iron stove next to the open wall. The four actors climbed inside and walked over to the four armoires that covered the back wall, where they unceremoniously stripped naked and changed into blue coveralls. Journeyman was done first and opened a cupboard next to the stove, where he started getting out pots and pans.

  “Complimentary dinner for our guests!” Director shouted from where she was buttoning her coveralls.

  12

  Pinax was always at home when Augusta came to call. They would always let her in.

  Pinax’s home was meticulously ordered but mutable. They were constantly rearranging the books according to different systems: binding, author, category, first sentence in alphabetical order, last sentence in alphabetical order, longest beginning sentence, authors who knew each other. Augusta watched and ate cakes.

  Pinax spoke of cities they had lived in, libraries they had visited, and creatures they had encountered: ulda, jinns, strigoi, bacchantes, wordless creatures at the edge of civilization like Pyret and Mörksuggan. These were fascinating stories, but Pinax still wouldn’t talk about Augusta’s request to help her find Phantasos. They turned to stories about the current age: kings, queens, countries at war. That the streets were dark at night because flying machines might come to drop bombs. These were all important things Pinax apparently thought Augusta should know.

  They lent Augusta a book on etiquette, and she read it with some difficulty. These were the codes that humans here lived by, and that Pinax for some reason found important. Most of them were random and pointless, with the exception of how to address superiors, of which Augusta approved. The purpose of etiquette was clear: it was about how to flatter people, which in turn would make them well disposed toward you, which meant you could make them do things for you. It was about wheedling. Well, Augusta could wheedle. She tried some of the suggested techniques on Pinax: she complimented them on their immaculate shoes and manicured nails, and asked how their day was. Pinax brightened visibly, which was encouraging. Augusta tried the same on some of the wood-lice people in the street, but they scurried away without reply. Perhaps they were too intimidated; despite her simple attire, Augusta still radiated magnificence.

  She stopped asking Pinax to tell the rest of the library story. Instead, she listened to even more stories, lectures on how to engage with people, even how to cook. Augusta engaged with people. She found a building from which, an elderly gentleman told her, trains transported people to faraway places. You bought a slip of paper to travel on them. Augusta didn’t have any money. She didn’t need it: she enthralled shopkeepers to hand her new clothes. She could have whatever she wanted from the stores. Fashion—except for suits—was horrible, and food everywhere was dull because of this “rationing.” Technology was interesting, however: engines, bicycles, cars, electric lights. Augusta especially liked trains, although she had yet to figure out where she would go. Perhaps she would take a train to Phantasos.

  At night she went back to her little house, where her servant was waiting by the stove. Augusta asked him about the things she had seen during the day, but the boy was next to useless except when it came to cooking. His face had been printed on a newspaper that the man on the corner sold. He could not be let out of the house again. Augusta killed him and found another.

  Pinax smiled more often, made jokes, and explained them when Augusta missed the fine points. It seemed to Augusta that perhaps this was friendship, even though Pinax had yet to give her what she needed.

  The weather grew cooler, and the rosehips along Augusta’s street ripened into little orange fruits. When Augusta woke one afterno
on and beautified herself with the little wax stick, she realized that something was happening to her face. Faint lines radiated from her eyes and spread across her forehead, and shallow grooves ran from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. She was aging.

  She brought Pinax a box of arrak rolls.

  “I have waited and waited,” Augusta said. “Something is wrong with my face now.”

  “Yes, you have waited for a month,” Pinax replied. “You have been very patient. Come inside.”

  * * *

  —

  “Would you like to see it?” they asked as they drank their tea.

  “Would I like to see what?” Augusta replied.

  “The library.”

  “We’re in it.”

  “Not this library,” Pinax said. “The library from the story.”

  Pinax led her into the study next to the sitting room, where they opened a door. Inside, a set of stairs wound down into a dimly lit passage that smelled of smoke. The air was noticeably warmer here. Augusta followed Pinax for what could have been fifty steps or a hundred until they reached a pair of wooden double doors. They swung open on well-oiled hinges, and the heat hit Augusta’s face like a wall.

  The room might have been ten meters across. Shelves lined the stone walls from top to bottom, crammed with all kinds of writing. There were rolls, codices of bamboo, vellum, and wood, stacks and rows of clay tablets, inscribed bone plates. The air was dry and stank of burning paper. A roar filled the room, the sound of fire raging on the other side of the walls. Augusta heard muffled shouts in some unfamiliar language. She walked along the shelves, trailing her fingers over books and rolls and stacks.