The Memory Theater

by Karin Tidbeck

  “This is it,” Pinax said. “What do you think?”

  Augusta plucked a scroll from a pile and examined it. The outside was covered in odd symbols. Pinax pried it out of her hands before she could unroll it, and put it back on the shelf.

  “I’m missing something, aren’t I,” Augusta said.

  Pinax made a small sound that Augusta couldn’t interpret. Perhaps frustration.

  “Let’s go back upstairs,” they said, “and I will tell you the rest of the story.”

  * * *

  —

  The queen had nightmares about fire.

  In her dreams, fire ate its way through the library shelf by shelf, section by section. Night after night, she woke up screaming and rushed down to her books only to discover them unharmed, and the little guardians confused that she was in such a state. Her soothsayer interpreted her dreams as merely symbolic. The queen pretended to agree with him but still ordered a new section built into the library: a registry that also held copies of the greatest works in each section. The official purpose was to present the essence of the library. Not long after the new registry was completed, a runner came to inform her that a foreign army had crossed the border to their country.

  The nation was old and had not been at war for a long time. It had relied on negotiation and good relations for centuries; its armies were trimmed down to a bare minimum.

  We had seen wars before, but never had anyone tried to burn the library. Invaders had understood the value of knowledge. These new enemies had no respect for literature. To them, destroying thousands of years’ worth of knowledge was a strategic act. They rushed across the country, leaving burning temples and ruined monuments in their wake.

  The queen was inside the library when they came. The soldiers forced the doors open and poured inside. They drenched the shelves in oil and set their torches to them. Fire devoured dry wood and vellum and paper. Keepers screamed in terror as they perished with their works. The queen donned her helmet and spoke to me.

  “If anything can be saved, Keeper,” she told me, “let it be the knowledge of what was once here. Protect our memory.”

  * * *

  —

  Pinax poured themself some more tea. Augusta sat very still.

  “Some keepers escaped,” they said. “The keeper of plays, for example. They live on. And then there’s me.”

  “You,” Augusta said.

  “Yes. I was the keeper of the registry. That’s what my name means. I took what remained of the library and made a little world to keep it safe. But it is so much work to maintain. What happened to the rest of the library is catching up. So, slowly but surely, the room is getting hotter. The fire outside, the fire in the burning library a long time ago, is trying to get in.”

  Pinax sipped from their cup. “I don’t know if I myself will survive. I am a genius loci; my life is tied to a place. And that place is burning down. I have built new homes in various places over the years and brought the little pocket universe with me. I thought perhaps time and distance would make it easier, that it would somehow weaken the bond between my stolen room and the rest of the library. And so I ended up here, in this cold country.”

  “You created a world within a world,” Augusta said.

  Pinax nodded. “I did. It just took words, and will. As the Keeper, I knew every book in the library. I knew the spells and incantations to build and protect such a place.” They pointed at her with the cup. “Just like you did, once upon a time.”

  “I did?”

  “Your society did. Phantasos and Mnemosyne sought me out. I lived in Paris in those days, but I was not unknown among those with mystical knowledge. Your colleagues traveled all the way from this town to ask me how to create a world. I taught them.”

  “Ah,” Augusta said.

  “You created the Gardens through a mutual agreement that it be separate from Earth,” Pinax continued. “It would be perfect, innocent, unravaged by the passage of time, like the Arcadia of myth. When you started asking questions about time, Augusta, you risked the existence of that place. That is why Mnemosyne cast you out.”

  Augusta felt like her chest was shrinking.

  “And it was for the best,” Pinax said. “You created a world of your own, and you lost yourselves in it. Phantasos described it to me. He said that you grew senile, then mad. That you forgot who you were and why you had chosen to create the Gardens. He said he was sick of ruling a nation of idiots.”

  “Where is he?” Augusta asked. “Tell me. Help me find him.”

  “Phantasos?” Pinax looked at her. “Are you ready for that?”

  “Look at me,” Augusta said. “It has been a month, and I’m growing old.” She drew a finger from her right nostril to the corner of her mouth. “Here. See?”

  Pinax’s mouth was a line. “There are answers in the library, but you are not ready.”

  “You promised,” Augusta said. “I have done everything you said.”

  “I promised nothing,” Pinax replied. “It has only been a month.”

  “I’ll die of old age before you tell me anything!” Augusta shouted.

  There was nothing for it. She stormed out.

  * * *

  —

  That night in a dream, Augusta stood with others in a circle around three divans. They were in the conservatory; moonlight shone down on them through crystal panes. She recognized Euterpe, Walpurgis, Tempestis, Cymbeline, Virgilia, the rest. Their clothes were less elaborate than they should be. Their unpainted faces looked smooth and very young. Augusta’s heart swelled to see them. She loved them. It was love.

  On the three divans sat the Aunts, hands resting on their thighs. Behind them stood Mnemosyne and a man Augusta didn’t recognize. He was slight, with fair hair falling in perfect ringlets around a pointed face. He looked around the circle, and for a moment his eyes bored into Augusta’s.

  Mnemosyne and the man joined hands, and the lords and ladies in the circle began to chant, long words with soft consonants and open vowels. This is our land, the words meant. Our pure and innocent land. Time is no more. Only this blessed night, in Arcadia, forever.

  The chant ended. The Aunts lay down as one. A shudder went through the air.

  “Time,” Mnemosyne said into the silence, “has stopped. We are free. Let us cast off our old lives. Let us forget the old world and be innocent.”

  Then they were in the statuary grove, dancing to a slow and uneven rhythm. Mnemosyne and the man sat on a dais before them, watching.

  Augusta sat in her bower. A servant put makeup on her face. They smiled at each other. The brush was cold against her lips. She was bored. The servant’s skin was smooth. Why should not the servants be adorned? Let us paint the servants. Flowers for their names.

  They danced in the statuary grove, but it was like moving through muddy water. The wine tasted sour.

  A croquet game on the grand lawn. Someone fell. Breaking glass. Blood spilled down a servant’s shirt. The arterial red cut through the dullness like a shout. Such a pretty shade. Why should not the servants bleed? Flowers for their names.

  They danced in the statuary grove. The man stood up and left the dais.

  They danced in the statuary grove.

  They danced in the statuary grove.

  They danced in the statuary grove.

  13

  “So,” Nestor said, “it’s time you explain why you searched us out.”

  Thistle and Dora sat with Director and Nestor on the stairs to the house on wheels. Apprentice was clearing the dirty dishes away, and Journeyman was organizing costumes in the armoires. Director and Nestor shared a hookah, making watery burbles and puffs of cherry-scented smoke. They had all been noisy for a long time now. They were talking back and forth, quick and chittering like birds. The babble closed over Dora’s head like water, pressed a
t her from all sides. It was getting very hard to keep up, but Thistle did the talking and replied to Nestor’s question.

  “We’re looking for someone called Augusta Prima,” he said.

  “And from where does this Augusta Prima hail?” Director asked.

  “The Gardens,” Thistle said.

  “Which gardens?”

  “That’s what they’re called,” Thistle said. “The Gardens.”

  Dora made an effort to jump in. “There’s an orchard and a conservatory and a statue forest and a croquet lawn,” she said. “But no time.”

  The others looked up when she spoke.

  Nestor raised an eyebrow and blew a smoke ring. “No time, eh. I recognize that.”

  “We’ve played it,” Director said. “The Creation of Arcadia.”

  “That’s right.” Nestor nodded. “I believe Apprentice was new at the time.”

  “I know it!” Apprentice came over and sat down. “I played…I can’t recall who I played. I was so nervous. What happened after they made the place?”

  “Bad things,” Thistle said.

  “They went insane, didn’t they,” Director said. “It was such an audacious idea.”

  “What else do you know?” Thistle asked.

  Nestor shook his head. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what we know.”

  Director held up a book that had been resting on the step next to her. The cover was marbled and had an ornate spine.

  “This is the playbook,” she said. “That’s where we find the manuscripts. A new one appears, and we’re off. We don’t know anything else but what it says on the page.”

  “Like this time it was about that fisherman,” Apprentice said. “Knut. He was fishing when the army came. But that’s all we know.”

  “We do know that it took place on Earth,” Nestor said. “But not much else. We came here to the city of the dead to enact his burial.”

  “The city of the dead,” Dora said.

  Director nodded. “We come here quite often. Births and deaths are popular with the book.”

  “Ghorbi said so,” Thistle said.

  Again, Nestor muttered something to himself. Then he said, “Now, what is your quest?”

  “Augusta has my name. I need it back, so I can find my way home to my parents.”

  “And you, Dora?”

  Dora reached down and put an arm around Thistle, who leaned back against her. “I go where he goes,” she said.

  Director hummed.

  Journeyman watched them from a stool, where he sat mending a robe. Every time Dora looked at him, he was watching her. Apprentice had cleared away the dishes and came over to sit with them.

  “Ghorbi sent you?” Apprentice asked.

  “She helped us,” Thistle said. “And said you could help us find Augusta.”

  Nestor made a sour face. “Calling in her favor. Couldn’t even come by herself.”

  “You know her?” Dora asked.

  Nestor glared at the hookah. Director patted him on the shoulder.

  “Ghorbi and Nestor have history,” she said. “She saved him from a great library when it burned. It was long ago, before the rest of us came along. Of course she wouldn’t come personally, Nestor. You would have made a scene.”

  The talk became a cloud again. It pressed in on Dora’s head from all directions. Everything was too loud, too sharp.

  “Thistle,” she whispered. “It’s too much.”

  Thistle looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Dora. I should have noticed that you were tired.”

  He stood up and took Dora’s hand. “Dora needs to rest. Is there somewhere quiet she can go?”

  “Was it something we said?” Nestor asked.

  “She just needs to be alone,” Thistle said.

  “The trapdoor?” Journeyman said from his stool.

  He beckoned Thistle and Dora over to the back of the wagon and lifted a hatch in the floor. A ladder led down into a small space where Dora could glimpse pillows and blankets.

  “There’s a mattress and everything. I go there for naps.”

  Dora climbed down the steps and made a nest.

  “Will you be all right?” Thistle asked from above.

  “Close the door,” Dora said.

  She could hear and see nothing. She could breathe again in this quiet place.

  * * *

  —

  Dora woke to swaying movement. Thistle was next to her, drawing quiet sleep-breaths. The air was stuffy. Dora climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch.

  The wall of the house was back up. Faint light shone in through the windows, moving, as if they were traveling through a forest or under water. The troupe members were sitting in armchairs around something on the floor. They were dressed in bathrobes, talking in rapid voices. As Dora came closer, she saw that the thing on the floor was a map, except it wasn’t. The sheet of paper on the floor had coastlines and places marked out, but over it sat something that looked like a canopy made of thick metal wire. From the canopy hung paper silhouettes and glass spheres at different heights, all of them connected to one another and the map with thread.

  Apprentice spotted Dora and waved at her. “Breakfast?”

  Dora nodded. Apprentice guided her to an armchair and handed her a deep bowl filled with some sort of stew.

  “Sorry,” she said. “We’re between worlds. No exciting food.”

  The stew was lukewarm and tasted like nothing much, which was nice. “Thank you,” Dora said.

  Nestor smiled at her. “You’ve been down there for a while. I hope you feel better.”

  Dora pointed at the canopy on the floor. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a map,” Apprentice said behind her.

  “A very imperfect one,” Nestor added. “You see, it only describes four dimensions, and badly at that.”

  He pointed at a miniature carriage suspended on a silver thread in the middle of the structure. It was moving on a very slow downward trajectory. “Right now we are somewhere around here, in transit between worlds.” Then he pointed at a place on the paper map on the floor. “But ‘there,’ for example, is relative. These places are not stationary. They are like floating islands.”

  “You could consider the universe an ocean,” Director said, “and us a ship.”

  “Can you go everywhere?” Dora asked.

  “In theory,” Director replied. “We go wherever the playbook leads us. Most of the time it’s about reenacting an important scene that needs remembering. Sometimes we pay tribute to important people. Sometimes to ordinary people, like Knut Olesen the fisherman. We stay backstage, though. We see and experience, but we don’t touch.”

  “I’ve never been frontstage,” Apprentice said bitterly.

  “That’s not your job,” Director said, and it seemed that they had had this conversation many times before.

  The whole thing made Dora’s head hurt. “It’s too much,” she said.

  “Thistle tells us you’re different,” Nestor said, “and we should try not to jabber too much at you.”

  “What are you?” Apprentice asked. “You’re not human.”

  “I don’t know,” Dora said. “Ghorbi says I was grown like a root.”

  Nestor drew the corners of his mouth down. “Yes. Thistle told us she…traded you, like cattle. How could you trust her after what she did to you?”

  “She said she was sorry. She took us out of there.”

  Nestor rolled his eyes and turned to Director. “Did you hear that? Ghorbi says she’s sorry.”

  “Oh, come,” Director said. “She has a profession like the rest of us. She broke your heart, we know.”

  “Well, I’m not the forgiving type,” Nestor replied.

  “There’s nothing to forgive. You’re being unreasona
ble. And she did do you a favor.”

  Nestor scowled. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been in love.”

  “I have too,” Director snapped. “But I have never demanded that anyone love me back.”

  Dora looked down at her bowl. She had emptied it without noticing.

  “Dora,” Journeyman said next to her. “Would you like more?”

  Dora nodded, and Journeyman filled her bowl again. The others returned to the map, but Nestor kept his frown.

  * * *

  —

  Dora finished the stew. When next she looked up, the doors were pushed aside and light streamed in. The troupe was gathered in a little clearing: Apprentice lay on the ground with her legs in the air, Journeyman resting on the soles of Apprentice’s feet, their hands linked to keep balance. Director and Nestor juggled little balls back and forth, calling out words Dora didn’t understand. Thistle sat with his back against a tree next to the carriage. He was dressed in a pair of the company’s coveralls; they were a little too big for him. He looked relaxed, but his sleeves were rolled down and fastened tightly around his wrists. His face was all stubbly now, and his russet hair curled in a halo around his head. He smiled at Dora as she sat down next to him, and brushed at her skirts with his hand.

  “You could use some clean clothes, Dora,” he said. “And a bath.”

  Dora considered this for a moment. “Yes.”

  * * *

  —

  There was a little pond among the trees, its water coppery but clear. Dora dived in and swam along the bottom, where crayfish crawled in under rocks and perch darted away from her. Something bigger lurked in the forest of water lily stalks but retreated as she came closer. The sun shot rays of liquid light through the water. Down here there was only the sound of the pulse in her ears and the small noises of water life. Dora only came up because her lungs were burning. Thistle was standing on the shore, a towel in his hand.