The City of Dreaming Books

by Moers, Walter

  It wasn’t midday yet and Pfistomel Smyke’s establishment would still be shut, so I paused at an intersection and debated whether to kill time in some bookshop or other. On the door of one establishment, which had some gruesome faces carved on the half-timbering above its blackened window, I noticed the Triadic Circle I had first seen displayed on the door of Kibitzer’s shop. The minuscule sign below it read:INAZIA ANAZAZI

  Ugglian Literature • Curses • Spells

  Wow! An Ugglian bookshop, probably run by a genuine Uggly! It had been a long-standing childhood wish of mine to encounter a real live Uggly. The creatures abounded in the children’s books and old fairy tales Dancelot had read me at bedtime - and, of course, in my subsequent nightmares. I now had an opportunity to see one in the flesh and was old enough not to run off screaming at the sight, so why wait? With a pleasurable shudder, I turned the door handle.

  My presence was announced by the metallic screech of hinges left unoiled for an eternity. The interior of the shop was dimly illuminated by one or two little oil lamps. The book dust stirred up by my abrupt entrance danced round me and infiltrated my nostrils. I sneezed despite myself.

  A tall, thin figure attired in black shot up from behind a stack of books like a jack-in-the-box. ‘What do you want?’ it shrieked.

  ‘Er, I don’t want anything in particular,’ I said haltingly. ‘I’d simply like to browse a bit.’

  ‘You’d simply like to browse a bit?’ the Uggly repeated as loudly as before.

  ‘Er, yes. May I?’

  The gaunt creature tottered towards me, nervously interlacing her spindly fingers.

  ‘This is a specialised antiquarian bookshop,’ she croaked malevolently. ‘I doubt if you’ll find what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Really?’ I retorted. ‘What do you specialise in?’

  ‘Ugglian literature!’ the hideous bookseller crowed triumphantly, as if those words alone would drive me out of the shop.

  Looking deliberately unimpressed, I scanned the backs of the books nearest me. Soothsayers’ prophecies, wart-curers’ incantations, maledictions - nothing suitable for an enlightened Lindworm like me. I really wanted nothing more to do with this psychic scarecrow, but her unfriendly manner had provoked me. Instead of leaving the shop at once I lingered there and made my way along the shelves.

  ‘Oh, Ugglian literature!’ I crooned. ‘How exciting! I’m passionately interested in predictions based on toads’ entrails. I must root around in your treasures a while longer.’

  I had resolved to teach the old crone some manners. From now on I would treat her with breathtaking condescension. I removed one of the books from a bookcase.

  ‘Hm, Looba Gordag’s How to Foretell the Future by Interpreting Nightmares. That’s my kind of book!’

  ‘Kindly replace it on the shelf. It’s reserved.’

  ‘For whom?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘For, er . . . I don’t know the customer’s name.’

  ‘Then it could, purely in theory, be reserved for me. You don’t know my name either.’

  The Uggly wrung her spindly fingers in despair. I flung the book at the bookcase. It sailed past and landed on the floor, losing its back in the process.

  ‘Whoops!’ I said.

  With a groan, the Uggly bent down to retrieve the book.

  ‘What’s this?’ I exclaimed in delight, pointing to a big fat tome. ‘Ah, a collection of Ornian curses!’

  I leafed through the valuable book, clumsily dog-earing a couple of pages, and proceeded to read from it in a loud, resonant voice. At the same time I waved my free hand portentously in the Uggly’s direction.

  ‘Where slender stems of green bamboo rise high above the spectral plain and lifeless eyes peer blankly through, there hover spirits racked with pain . . .’

  The Uggly shielded her face with one arm and ducked down behind the counter. ‘Stop that!’ she screeched. ‘Those curses are most effective!’

  What a hoot! She actually believed in this stupid mumbo-jumbo! I tossed the book aside. It landed in an old wooden box, sending up a cloud of the finest book dust. An idea occurred to me.

  Slowly turning to the Uggly, I levelled my forefinger at her in an inquisitorial manner and spread my leather wings a trifle. This made my cloak bulge in the shoulder region.

  ‘I have another question,’ I said.

  This was an old Lindworm trick. My wings - they’re just a bequest from some pterodactylic member of my ancestral line - are incapable of flight but admirably suited to spreading. It always amuses one to observe the intimidating effect this has on the unwary. Producing Dancelot’s manuscript from my cloak, I held it under the Uggly’s nose - near enough for her to read the text.

  ‘Do you by any chance know the author of these lines?’ I asked sharply.

  The Uggly’s face froze. She stared at the manuscript as though hypnotised, uttering a series of squeaks, then staggered backwards, bumped into a bookcase and clung to it like someone in the throes of a heart attack. Her violent reaction surprised me.

  ‘You do know the author, don’t you?’ I said. There was no other explanation for her behaviour.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ the Uggly croaked. ‘Leave my premises at once!’

  ‘I simply must find out who wrote this,’ I insisted. ‘Please help me!’

  The Uggly took a step forward and struck a pose. Narrowing her eyes to slits, she spoke in a dramatic whisper: ‘He will descend into the depths! He will be banished to the realm of the Animatomes, the Living Books! He will consort with Him whom everyone knows but knows not who He is!’

  I was aware that Ugglies employed such cryptic utterances to impress potential customers. They didn’t work with me.

  ‘Was that a threat or an Ugglian prophecy?’

  ‘It will come true unless that manuscript is destroyed at once, more I cannot say. And now get out of my shop!’

  ‘But you obviously know who—’ I persisted.

  ‘Get out!’ screeched the Uggly. ‘Get out or I’ll summon the Book Police!’ She dived behind the counter and grabbed a cord connected to a large bell suspended from the ceiling.

  ‘Out!’ she snarled again.

  There was nothing for it. I turned to go.

  ‘One more thing,’ I said.

  ‘Leave!’ the Uggly gasped. ‘Just go!’

  ‘What’s the significance of that peculiar sign on your door?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Uggly replied. ‘Goodbye for ever. Never dare to set foot in this shop again.’

  ‘I thought Ugglies were omniscient, but you know surprisingly little,’ was my parting shot. Opening the door provocatively slowly, I sauntered out to a squeal of hinges.

  Slightly dazed, I stood there in the sunlight and listened to the sounds emanating from the bookshop. The Uggly was swearing unintelligibly to herself and fiddling with a bunch of keys. A lock clicked behind me for the second time in a few hours.

  Great! I was getting nowhere fast. I hadn’t been two days in Bookholm and already two booksellers had given me my marching orders.

  Pfistomel Smyke’s Typographical Laboratory

  Seventy-seven, seventy-eight . . . I was familiar with the antiquated numerals peculiar to Bookemistic numerology, as luck would have it, or I would have been unable to decipher the house numbers. Darkman Street was the oldest thoroughfare in Bookholm. The buildings here were so old and dilapidated that they had half subsided below ground level and their crooked roofs resembled alchemists’ hats that had slipped sideways. Thistles were sprouting from their walls and birds nesting in the grass that thickly carpeted their shingled roofs. The eaves of these decrepit old buildings almost met overhead, they canted forward at such an angle. Indeed, they seemed to be pressing ever closer for the purpose of appraising me, their uninvited guest. Although it was noon and the sun was shining, I had made my way through the narrow streets almost entirely in shadow. I had a sneaking sensation that the houses formed a single building into which I’d stolen like
a thief. There was no sound save the hum of insects and the squalling of cats. The cobblestones had cracked open in numerous places, forced apart by weeds, and I occasionally saw emaciated rats flit across the street. Did anyone live here? It was hardly surprising the streets received no normal visitors. I felt as if I had walked through an invisible gate into another age hundreds or even thousands of years in the past, a long forgotten epoch when decay reigned supreme.

  A hundred and twenty-seven, a hundred and twenty-eight . . . I shivered, involuntarily reminded of a chapter in Regenschein’s book in which he had written of this district and its sinister history - and recounted the legend of the Darkman of Bookholm. This was where, centuries ago, the Bookemists had lived and largely controlled the destinies of the city. Bookemism was a Bookholmian species of alchemy. Part scientists, part physicians, part charlatans and part antiquarians, the Bookemists had founded a guild devoted to typography, antiquarianism, chemistry, biology, physics and literature. These branches of knowledge had combined with conjuration, divination, astrology and other hocus-pocus to form a baneful amalgam sufficient to fill whole libraries with horror stories.

  Two hundred and four, two hundred and five . . . In these old buildings, bizarre attempts had been made - for whatever reason - to transform printer’s ink into blood and blood into printer’s ink. Indescribable scenes must have occurred when the Bookemists assembled in the narrow street under a full moon, there to celebrate the rites laid down in The Twelve Thousand Precepts and carry out their gruesome experiments on animals and other life forms. This was in the period after the Bookholmians had been driven from the catacombs by epidemics and natural disasters, a time when civilisation was just beginning to burgeon: a transitional phase midway between barbarism and the rule of law, sorcerous cults and genuine culture.

  It was in Leyden Lane, one of the streets leading off Darkman Street, that the first Leyden Manikin had come into being. This was also where the Bookemists had bred cats with wings and even, so it was said, the living books known as Animatomes. They had pursued their frightful experiments in the megalomaniac belief that anything capable of being imagined and committed to paper could also be created in reality, with the result that the neighbourhood had long abounded in hybrid creatures so bizarre as to defy description.

  Two hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and forty-nine . . . One day, according to Regenschein, the Bookemists had set out to create a giant, a huge paper colossus that would defend Bookholm against all its enemies. Having boiled up some books, mixed printer’s ink with herbs and performed various rituals, they fashioned a figure three times the height of a house out of pulped paper, minced animals and mashed peat from Dullsgard. This figure they steeped in printer’s ink to render its appearance even more frightful and christened ‘the Darkman’. Then, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, ten Bookemists had committed suicide so that it could be transfused with their blood.

  Last of all, the figure had an iron rod inserted in its head and was exposed to a thunderstorm with its feet immersed in two tubs of water. An immense shaft of lightning is said to have raced down the rod and brought the Darkman to life. He uttered a terrible cry and, with electrical charges flickering round him, stepped out of the water. The Bookemists cheered and hurled their conical hats into the air - until the Darkman bent down, grabbed one of them and swallowed him whole. Then he stalked through the city, snatching up screaming inhabitants at random and devouring them. He even ripped the roofs off houses, reached inside and gobbled up anything that moved.

  Eventually, so the story ran, one courageous citizen of Bookholm set the Darkman on fire with a torch. But the blazing giant staggered off through the streets, bellowing with pain. The flames ignited house after house and street after street until he was finally reduced to a mound of grey ash. That was how Bookholm’s first great conflagration is said to have started.

  Three hundred, three hundred and one . . . The real truth, in all probability, was that some scatterbrained antiquarian had knocked over an oil lamp and that this hair-raising horror story was a figment of the imagination centuries in the making.

  Three hundred and eleven, three hundred and twelve . . . Nevertheless, that old wives’ tale seemed quite plausible to anyone who, like me, was tiptoeing through those coal-black ruins. If printer’s ink had ever been transformed into blood and paper into a living creature anywhere in Zamonia, it was here in the heart of this crazy city.

  Three hundred and twenty, three hundred and twenty-one . . . The urban heart of Bookholm was a place on the frontier between delusion and reality, a world of alchemy transmuted into architecture.

  Three hundred and thirty-two . . . Three hundred and thirty-three! I came to a halt. I had at last reached the address I was looking for - 333 Darkman Street - and was standing outside Pfistomel Smyke’s bookshop.

  But what a disappointment! The building was probably the smallest I had so far seen in Bookholm. More of a witch’s cottage than a genuine antiquarian bookshop, it was hemmed in by two blackened ruins whose sole remaining occupants, I suspected, were bats. Its only remarkable feature was that it was still standing after so many centuries. For No. 333 Darkman Street must have been many centuries old. The half-timbering, which seemed to have grown into position naturally, had never been planed or stripped of its bark - one of the characteristic features of early Bookholmian architecture. The bent and misshapen timbers meandered through the masonry, the wood was petrified and black as charcoal. The courses of stones between the timbers had apparently been laid without mortar, a technique no longer practised today. Granite and marble, tiny pebbles and fragments of pumice, iron ore, semi-precious stones, topazes and opals, quartz and feldspar - all had been so carefully selected, neatly trimmed and skilfully fitted together that none of them was in the wrong place and each supported its immediate neighbours. Mortar would have become friable over the years, causing the house to collapse long ago, but this early method of construction had triumphed over the march of time. Feeling ashamed of my overhasty verdict on the house, I looked at it rather more closely. It was indeed a work of art, a three-dimensional mosaic constructed with microscopic precision. I discovered that the little stones had even smaller stones between them, and so on and so forth until the tiniest were the size of grains of rice - and all assembled firmly enough to withstand the passage of millennia. I bowed my stupid head in profound respect. That was how timeless art was created, I thought. That was how one ought to be able to write.

  ‘Yes, this building is an architectural gem. One doesn’t see that at first glance,’ said a deep voice. I was jolted out of my reverie.

  The door had opened without a sound, and leaning against the jamb was a Shark Grub. Although I had already seen a few representatives of that life form in Bookholm, this one was an exceptionally impressive specimen. The maggotlike torso looked grotesque with its fourteen skimpy little arms, and the neckless head was equipped with a set of shark’s teeth. The peculiarity of the creature’s appearance was not diminished by the fact that it was wearing a bee-keeper’s hat and veil and carrying a smoke gun.

  ‘Smyke’s the name, Pfistomel Smyke. Are you interested in early Bookholmian architecture?’

  ‘Not really,’ I admitted, somewhat bemusedly groping in my pocket for the business card the Hoggling had given me. ‘I got your address from Claudio Harpstick.’

  ‘Ah, dear old Claudio! You want to buy some books?’

  ‘Not that either, to be honest. I own a manuscript which—’

  ‘You want an expert opinion?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Wonderful! This is a welcome distraction. I was just cleaning my beehive out of sheer boredom. Do come in.’ Pfistomel Smyke retreated into the house and I followed, bowing politely.

  ‘Optimus Yarnspinner.’

  ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance. You’re from Lindworm Castle, aren’t you? I’m a great admirer of Lindwormian literature. Please follow me to the laboratory.’

  Smyke undulate
d ahead of me down a short, dark passage.

  ‘Don’t let my hat and veil mislead you,’ he went on chattily, ‘I’m not a genuine bee-keeper, it’s just a hobby. When the bees stop producing I roast them and bottle them in honey. Do you think that’s heartless of me?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, running my tongue over my gums. The spot was still slightly inflamed.

  ‘It’s ridiculous, of course, going to all that trouble for one jar of honey in springtime. I only wear the hat because I think it’s chic.’ Smyke emitted a guttural laugh.

  At the end of the passage was a bead curtain composed of lead type strung like beads on lengths of thin cord. Smyke parted it with his massive body and I followed him inside.

  For the third time that day I entered another world. The first had been the Uggly’s dusty, airless bookshop, the second the sinister, historic heart of Bookholm. I was now admitted to a world of letters, a room completely given over to writing and its exploration. Hexagonal in shape, it had a ceiling that tapered to a point. The large window was obscured by red velvet curtains. The other five walls were lined with shelves on which reposed stacks of paper in a wide variety of formats and colours; retorts, flasks, alembics and vessels of all kinds containing liquids and powders; hundreds of goose quills neatly arrayed in small wooden racks; an assortment of metal-nibbed pens in little mother-of-pearl boxes; inks of every conceivable colour including black, blue, red, green, violet, yellow, brown and even gold and silver; rubber stamps and ink pads, sealing wax, magnifying glasses of various sizes, and microscopes and chemical apparatus of a kind I’d never seen before. All these things were bathed in the mellow, fitful light of flickering candles standing here and there on the shelves.

  ‘I call this my typographical laboratory,’ Smyke said with a touch of pride. ‘I conduct research into words.’