The City of Dreaming Books

by Moers, Walter

  ‘I was brought here against my will, then I lost my way. All I’m hunting for is the way out.’

  ‘It’s been the same old story for a thousand years,’ said the gnome behind the bookcase. ‘The catacombs are full of skeletons. The folk up above make a habit of dumping their trash in our habitat.’

  I studiously overlooked his allusion to trash.

  ‘You’re the first inhabitant of Lindworm Castle I’ve seen in the flesh,’ said the gnome behind the stack of books. ‘I’ve read everything that’s ever been written there, but I’ve never actually set eyes on a Lindworm before.’

  I tried to do justice to this historic moment by smoothing my cloak down.

  ‘We’re great admirers of Lindwormian literature,’ said the gnome behind the stack of paper.

  ‘I’m honoured. Now that you know something about me, may I ask who you are?’

  The fat gnome emerged a few inches from his refuge and declaimed,‘The quality of mercy is not strained,

  it droppeth like the drips from stalactites

  upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;

  it blesseth him that gives and him that takes . . .’

  I tried to interpret his meaning. Was he still frightened of me? Was he appealing to my better nature?

  ‘What are you getting at?’ I asked. ‘Why not simply tell me who you are?’ He ventured still further out of his lair.

  ‘’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the dread Bookhunter better than his axe . . .’

  Why did those lines sound so familiar to me? One moment! They were a quotation! A quotation from . . . from . . .

  ‘You were quoting from Wimpersleake!’ I cried. Of course! Aleisha Wimpersleake, the undisputed colossus of Zamonian literature. Much beloved by adults but the scourge of schoolchildren ever since his day. Of course! Those lines came from one of his most famous plays. Dancelot had drummed them into me for decades.

  The fat gnome now emerged completely. His skin was the colour of a ripe green olive.

  ‘You’ve got it. That’s my name.’

  ‘Your name? You’re Aleisha Wimpersleake?’

  ‘I most certainly am. You may call me Al, everyone else does.’

  I felt bewildered. Wimpersleake had been dead for centuries.

  The gnome behind the bookcase left his refuge too. His complexion was pale blue. ‘And I’m Wamilli Swordthrow,’ he said. ‘Wami to my friends.’

  Wamilli Swordthrow was one of my favourite poets. He had written ‘Imitations of Informality’, which was enough by itself to render him immortal in my eyes.

  ‘I see,’ I said, humouring him. ‘So you’re Wamilli Swordthrow.’

  ‘You bet I am!’ cried the slender gnome. Clasping his hands together, he declaimed dramatically,‘I hovered, lonely as a kite

  that floats on high o’er hill and dale,

  when all at once I saw a sight

  that made my countenance turn pale.’

  That was indeed by Swordthrow. It came from one of his most famous poems, though not his best. Dancelot had made me learn it by heart. Who were these strange little creatures?

  ‘And what’s your name?’ I asked the third and smallest of them, who was pale pink in colour. ‘Are you also called after an eminent literary figure?’

  ‘Not as eminent as all that,’ he said shyly, coming out from behind his stack of paper. ‘My name is Dancelot Wordwright.’

  I winced as if he’d slapped me in the face. The name of my authorial godfather went echoing along the passage like the voice of a disembodied spirit.

  ‘All of us are products of the soil,’ the little gnome quoted. ‘Dust we were, and to dust we shall return. We wend our way along in an endless festive procession, a funeral cortège of impermanence.’

  I was dumbfounded. ‘Dancelot . . . ?’ I said, as if he himself were standing there in front of me. It was a passage from his book recited word for word.

  ‘. . .Wordwright,’ the little gnome amplified. ‘A writer from Lindworm Castle. You may well have heard of him, if you—’

  ‘I knew him personally,’ I cut in. ‘But how do you come to bear his name?’

  ‘We all bear the names of distinguished writers,’ Al said proudly.

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ I said.

  The three of them looked at each other.

  ‘Shall we?’ said Al.

  The other two nodded. Then they turned to me and chanted in unison,‘Put away your swords and axes,

  you cannot us overwhelm,

  for your weapons serve no purpose

  in the Fearsome Booklings’ realm.’

  I took an involuntarily step backwards. The Fearsome Booklings! The all-devouring cyclopean monsters of the catacombs! Their most dangerous life form apart from the Shadow King! Of course! These creatures had only one eye! They were Cyclopses! The three one-eyed gnomes slowly advanced on me.

  ‘Don’t be frightened!’ Al cried. ‘We won’t hurt you.’

  That was easy to say! They were pretty small for omnivorous Cyclopses, but scorpions could also be small.

  ‘That’s just a scary rhyme we made up for the Bookhunters’ benefit,’ said Wami. ‘Down here you have to cultivate an evil reputation or you’d be done for in no time at all.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, retreating slowly, ‘so you’re the Fearsome Booklings. What has that to do with writers’ names?’

  ‘I think we’d better begin at the beginning, folks,’ said Al. ‘He’s a bit slow on the uptake.’ The others nodded. Then all three came to a halt.

  ‘It’s like this . . .’ said Wami. ‘Every Bookling has to learn the entire work of some great writer by heart. That’s our purpose in life and raison d’être. Me, I’m currently memorising every last poem in Wamilli Swordthrow’s oeuvre.’

  ‘And I’, said Al, ‘am doing the same with Aleisha Wimpersleake - no mean task, given that he wrote some forty plays and innumerable sonnets. I have to keep refreshing my memory.’ He uttered a sigh that would have melted the hardest heart.

  ‘And I can recite the entire works of Dancelot Wordwright, word for word,’ Dancelot said timidly.

  ‘Big deal!’ Wami scoffed. ‘Just one measly book.’

  ‘He may write some more,’ Dancelot protested.

  I had also come to a halt. ‘No,’ I said sadly, ‘I’m afraid he won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He died quite recently. He was my authorial godfather.’

  The three Booklings stared at each other in dismay and Dancelot burst into tears. His friends did their best to console him.

  ‘There, there,’ Al said in a low, soothing voice. ‘How do you think I feel? My writer’s been dead for centuries - he’ll never produce anything more either.’

  ‘Everyone has to enter the Great Mystery sooner or later,’ Wami whispered. ‘We’re all equal before the Orm.’

  Dancelot was sobbing uncontrollably. ‘One book!’ he whimpered. ‘Only one!’

  Al and Wami looked at me and shook their heads, patting Dancelot tenderly on the back. Their outsize eyes went moist and I myself was just as unable to hold my tears in check. We all broke down and wept with a will.

  A Very Short Chapter in Which Precious Little Happens

  Once we had all calmed down the Booklings stepped aside and conferred in whispers. Then they came over to me.

  ‘We’ve decided to take you to see the rest of our community,’ said Al. ‘But only, of course, if you agree.’

  How could I object? What difference would it make if I were devoured by three Fearsome Booklings or a hundred? Besides, I was beginning to have my doubts about their fearsomeness.

  ‘I’m game,’ I said. ‘Is it far?’

  Instead of answering, the trio opened their eyes as wide as they could and subjected me to a piercing stare. The yellow light in their pupils began to pulsate gently. Then they started humming.

  Yes, my good and faithful readers, that’s all I have to report in this cha
pter. I can only tell you that - whoosh! - an instant later we found ourselves somewhere entirely different. I’ve no idea how the one-eyed gnomes performed this trick, but from one moment to the next we were standing outside a huge stone portal that formed the entrance to a cave.

  The Leather Grotto

  What happened?’ I asked. I was feeling drowsy and a trifle unsteady on my legs. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘That was a sample of our gift for, er, teleportation,’ said Al.

  ‘Teleportation, tee-hee!’ Wami tittered. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘From the stars we come, to the stars we go. Life is merely one long journey,’ quoted Dancelot.

  ‘You mean you can transport yourselves - and me - from one place to another by the power of thought?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be lying if you put it that way,’ Al replied with a grin and the other two giggled inanely. ‘Come on! We’re about to enter the realm of the Fearsome Booklings.’

  Al, Wami and Dancelot strode ahead of me through the huge gateway, which was flanked on either side by two enormous stone statues. They represented Booklings, but Booklings of greatly exaggerated size. Awesome-looking monsters with gaping jaws, cyclopean orbs and sharp claws menacingly raised, they were a sight calculated to make any intruder turn tail and run.

  ‘They serve to deter unwelcome visitors,’ Al explained, ‘should any find their way here. Actually, no one has ever entered our territory who wasn’t a Bookling. With two exceptions. You’re the second.’

  I was still busy digesting his reference to teleportation, quite apart from feeling as if I’d just been abruptly roused from a deep sleep, so neither this last remark nor the sight of the sculptures made any great impression on me. I tottered after the trio in silence.

  As we passed through the gateway all my drowsiness left me in a flash. Ahead of us lay a plateau from which a wide stone staircase led down into a vast stalactite cave. Al paused, threw out his arms and cleared his throat. ‘Behold,’ he cried,‘This fortress built by Booklings for themselves against Bookhunters and the hand of war! ’

  The rest of us paused too. The view was, to put it mildly, remarkable. But the most remarkable thing about it was not that the walls, roof, floor and even the stalactites were dappled with countless shades of brown and gleamed like polished leather. Nor was it the huge machine of weird design that stood in the middle. No, the most fascinating feature of the cave was its occupants: hundreds of little one-eyed creatures that all resembled Al, Wami and Dancelot but differed from them in certain details. Some were fat, others thin, some bigger, others smaller. Some had long, spindly limbs, others were short and sturdy, and each seemed to have a complexion all its own. The cave was teeming with them. They were reading at long tables, toting piles of books to and fro, pushing laden handcarts along or busying themselves with the gigantic machine.

  ‘That’s the Rusty Gnomes’ book machine,’ said Al, as if that explained everything.

  The machine, which took the form of a cube some two hundred feet high, wide and deep, appeared to consist of rusty shelving. As far as I could tell at long range, the shelves were filled with books and in constant horizontal or vertical motion. Running round the machine on six levels and connected by numerous flights of steps were walkways on which more of Al’s fellow Booklings were bustling to and fro, removing or replacing books and operating various levers and handwheels. Not only the shelves but the whole huge contraption, including the catwalks and stairways, consisted of rusty iron. Its function remained a mystery to me.

  At the foot of the machine were some long tables laden with large volumes, also handcarts, crates and more shelves filled with books. There were no phosphorescent jellyfish in the cave. The entire place was illuminated by candles, some in huge iron chandeliers suspended from the roof and others in ornate candelabra with numerous branches. Coal fires were burning in several big fireplaces let into the walls.

  ‘This is the Leather Grotto,’ said Wami. ‘Our library, academy and community centre. And these are our compatriots, the Fearsome Booklings.’

  I was about to ask a question, but Dancelot got there first.

  ‘I’m sure you’re wondering about all this leather. It’s book covers - the whole cave is lined with them. We’d be happy to claim the credit for that achievement, but I’m afraid we weren’t responsible. It was the Rusty Gnomes, who also constructed the book machine. We polish the leather regularly to keep it looking nice and shiny in the candlelight. The atmosphere is ideal for reading. It smells good, too.’

  That, at least, was true. The air smelt tolerable for the first time since I’d entered the catacombs. It was a trifle stuffy, perhaps because of the innumerable candles, but laden with pleasant aromas. The cave looked comfortable and elegant despite its size; in fact, it astonished me that a subterranean chamber could make such a cosy impression. I felt an urge to sit down and start reading right away.

  ‘Please note the skill with which the leather was hung,’ Al said proudly. ‘The most amazing thing is, not a single book cover was trimmed to make it fit. They went to an incredible amount of trouble to find the right cover to fill each space. It must have taken centuries to line the whole cave. The Rusty Gnomes were obviously very fond of books. They’re extinct, alas.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Wami, ‘we’ll show you round.’

  We descended the broad staircase. I was still a bit dizzy from the effects of teleportation, but now my legs became really shaky. I don’t like walking down long staircases at the best of times, especially with people watching. I always have visions of making an utter fool of myself by tripping and tumbling down them. However, we reached the bottom without incident.

  The other Booklings took no apparent notice of me while I was being shown round the cave.

  The ones seated at the tables were muttering to themselves as they read. Others strode up and down, gesticulating and soliloquising, and many stood conversing in groups. The cave was filled with voices and their manifold echoes. The little creatures went on with what they were doing, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that they stared after me curiously as soon as I’d gone by. If I turned round, they quickly looked in another direction. Hundreds of them there might be, but I simply couldn’t feel scared of them.

  ‘Why do you call yourselves the Fearsome Booklings?’ I asked Al. ‘You certainly don’t strike me as very frightening. I pictured Cyclopses quite differently.’

  ‘It’s what the Bookhunters call us,’ the fat Bookling replied. ‘No idea why.’

  ‘No idea why, tee-hee!’ said Wami, smirking for some unknown reason.

  ‘But we don’t do anything to salvage our reputation,’ Al went on. ‘It’s wiser not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen, there are over three hundred kinds of Cyclopses in Zamonia. Some are peaceful and others warlike, some carnivorous and others vegetarian. The Demonocles feed exclusively on prey that is still alive and kicking. Other Cyclopses eat nothing but buttercups. There are Cyclopses with the intelligence of a house fly and others of above-average intellectual capacity - my innate modesty forbids me to tell you what those are called. The only thing the various Cyclopses have in common is their single eye, but in the public mind they’re doltish and dangerous creatures. We decided to take advantage of that prejudice.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘How many of us would have survived, do you imagine, if we were called the Kindly Booklings?’ Al retorted. ‘Or the Nice Booklings? This subterranean world is a brutal, merciless place. Down here the most highly respected creatures are the most ruthless and dangerous. In the catacombs a good reputation can be more lethal than a Toxicotome.’

  Dancelot grinned. ‘Most Bookhunters are superstitious, fortunately,’ he said. ‘They’re shockingly uneducated individuals with a barbarous attitude to life. They believe in gods and devils. They love ghost stories and horror stories, and they like swapping Bookhunters’ yarns at their get-togethers. They all try to outdo each other with their tale
s of the Fearsome Booklings; in fact, many of them believe we practise witchcraft.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘considering how you teleported me, they’re not so wide of the mark.’

  The three of them nudged each other and giggled.

  ‘Teleportation, huh?’ Wami guffawed.

  I had no idea why the silly little gnomes kept laughing. Perhaps it was just their own peculiar sense of humour.

  ‘Anyway,’ Dancelot resumed, ‘we encourage the Fearsome Booklings myth whenever we can. If we go our separate ways some time, it would be very nice of you to tell everyone you saw us devouring our own kind alive, or something of the sort. Or that we’re twenty feet tall with teeth as long as scythes.’

  I remembered Regenschein’s stories about the Booklings. He had helped to spread the myth of their fearsomeness by including that kind of stuff in his book. I was just about to ask the gnomes if his name meant anything to them when we reached the huge machine.

  ‘When the first of us entered the Leather Grotto,’ said Wami, ‘this apparatus was too clogged with dust and dead insects to work. The Rusty Gnomes had probably become extinct many centuries before. But then we found the levers and handwheels. We tinkered with them and the machine suddenly started working again. Since then we’ve kept it in operation by oiling it regularly.’

  ‘But what does it do?’ I asked.

  The three Booklings exchanged conspiratorial glances.

  ‘We’ll explain when the time comes,’ Al said mysteriously. ‘At present we use the machine as a library. It’s a bit tiring, the way the shelves never stop moving, but it keeps us in good shape.’

  I saw the Booklings on the catwalks hurrying after the shelves as they removed books or replaced them. The rusty shelves kept superimposing themselves on each other or receding and disappearing into the interior of the machine. It made one dizzy to watch so many books on the move.