Salamander

by Thomas Wharton

  In an argosy of Hellenistic authors he found an amusing diatribe against the reading of novels.

  Section XXVII:

  Lassitude during public debates indicates the chronic reader of books full of lies, coincidences, and impossibilities.

  Some of these pernicious works have been known to bring on fits of sneezing, others cause blood to flow from the ears. Those which contain didactic passages may fill the lungs with mucosity and impair breathing.

  Inflammation of the eyes from protracted reading of such works may be alleviated by drinking slightly watered wine.

  Care should be taken of the books given to a pubescent female; if the breasts begin to swell to unusual fullness, reading should cease.

  These noxious books are often hastily bound with pastes derived from the boiling of animal hides. The inferiority of such bindings is usually matched by the worthlessness of the contents.

  Curiously, eunuchs do not read these books, nor do they go bald.

  He was intrigued by Sabbatai Donnolo’s comparison of God to a book. If you could cradle this fearful volume in your hand, and were to open it anywhere, beginning, middle, or end, you would find that between any two pages there would be always a third, between any two words there would be always another, between any two letters would be an unheard, invisible letter, a doorway to the void known only to mystics, where reigns a silence so profound that the roar of the entire universe rushes to fill it.

  Each morning Irena arrived, took away the books that he had sifted, and brought him new ones. When no one was about, Flood did some searching of his own, often turning up volumes that revealed the Count’s weakness for puns and riddles. The Little Treatise on the Teeth, a disguised case for combs. A fat tome titled Fuel for Enlightening Thought, which turned out to be a solid block of cleverly painted pine.

  Yet everything he read and examined, no matter how frivolous or profound, how elliptical or to the purpose, left the completion of his task as remote from the reach of his hands as the moon.

  Well and good, he told himself, slamming shut another long-untouched volume that sent up a plume of fine dust. I will carry on. I will go along with this, I will stay here and humour him, as the Abbé does, because it is profitable. And because in so doing I am honing my craft and thus not really taking advantage of anyone.

  And because of her.

  – Irena Ostrova, Flood whispered to Ludwig later that day, and leaned close to catch the buzzing reply.

  – Rain. Trove.

  He turned to see Djinn watching him with his steady blue eyes.

  He had more or less ignored the boy until now, but Djinn’s extra digits, Flood quickly realized, would be of tremendous help in the laborious composing of type. The problem was that they would have only the bare rudiments of German in common to converse with. Having chosen to print in English to begin with, Flood would have to teach the boy to set type from manuscripts he could not read. It was not long, however, before Djinn had learned to fill and lock up a chase in half the time it took Flood himself.

  He could be Mongol, Iroquois, from the Moon, the Count had said, for all he can tell you of his earliest memories. Which, when at last Flood was able to converse with the boy, amounted to little more than a hazily recollected glimpse of green hills beyond the flap of a tent, and in what seemed to be a memory from a slightly later time, his own feet, foreshortened in water, kicking lazily next to those of someone else, a girl who seemed to be a little older than he, since he was listening – but in what language he could not remember – as she instructed him to watch out for the biting turtles.

  As the days passed he became familiar enough with the Count’s system to be no longer startled by walls, floors, and people vanishing and popping up where they were not expected. He looked forward to every opportunity to see and talk with Irena, yet often found his attempts frustrated by the metamorphic nature of the castle. On his way to fetch ink or water for cleaning the type, he would glimpse the Countess at the other end of a corridor. Hastily, but with what he hoped was the appearance of nonchalance, he would head in her direction, only to have the corridor bifurcate in front of him so that Irena slipped away down one passage and he was sent stumbling into another. He would wander into an unfamiliar region of the castle from which a servant had to help him find his way back.

  Often he leaned back from his work table to see the Count on a higher gallery, circling the central hollow of the castle and gazing down like a watchful hawk.

  7:00 a.m. Wake, get out of bed, wash at revolving basin, dress.

  7:15 a.m. Pluck breakfast from cart while descending to mezzanine level to pick up fresh sheets for the day’s work. From there leap onto passing shelf containing collected works of Leibniz and step off into the upper clock works. Duck immediately to avoid getting coat caught in gears.

  7:25 a.m. If clothing & self still intact, return to platform and commence work.

  8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Work.

  2:01 p.m. Eat remainder of breakfast among moving shelves until north wall panel swivels open. Dash through, blocking panel with large book to provide quick route of escape. Climb stairs to observatory level and stand at oriel window.

  2:15 p.m. Irena takes daily stroll along terrace with Abbé. (What do they talk about?) If she glances up, remember: smile, do not stare.

  2:16 p.m. Return to work by circuitous route (must remember map next time) to avoid Count. Remove jammed book from wall panel to avoid suspicion.

  2:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Work.

  7:01 p.m. Take refreshment and await invitation to dine with Count.

  7:30 p.m. If no invitation forthcoming, return to work.

  Hurrying to keep pace with the huge moving bed, Flood handed the Count a single blank sheet.

  – I’ve been working on the book of mirrors you asked about, he said. If I can make the paper reflective, the words will reproduce each other and thus repeat the text endlessly.

  The old man, propped up on a bastion of pillows, a tasselled nightcap on his head, turned the paper over and over.

  – An intriguing notion. Has it yielded a result?

  – I’m still working on a gloss for the paper, he said. One that will reflect light yet hold ink. This stage has proved more difficult than I expected.

  The Count thrust the sheet back at Flood.

  – Try something else, he said as his bed rolled away. Toy around. See what you can do.

  – There’s another difficulty, Excellency, Flood said, trotting to keep up. I haven’t replaced my type for quite some time. The faces are getting worn out, and it’s beginning to show on the page.

  – One wonders, Mr. Flood, if you take proper care of your tools.

  Flood bit his lip.

  – I’ve filed and polished, but the metal will take only so much of that. To speak plainly, I don’t think my type is quite up to the task.

  The Count pulled at the wings of his moustache.

  – Then we’ll get you some new type. There must be a foundry in Pressburg. Or more likely Vienna, since they can get all the lead they need by mining what passes for brains at court.

  – The Countess told me about the metallurgist from Venice who created the automatons. Samuel Kirshner.

  – Yes. The ingenious Jew. What of him?

  – His foundry makes type as well. The Countess showed me some samples of his work –

  – As I’ve found, it can be troublesome doing business with those people. They’re always getting themselves hauled off by the Inquisition or driven out of town by angry mobs, and then where are you? Out of pocket. Or, as in Signore Kirshner’s case, they make grand projections and fail to deliver. But you rate his type-work highly.

  – The finest I’ve seen.

  – Write to the man, then, if you must. Order what you need, or we’ll bring him here again if we must.

  Flood drafted a letter to Kirshner, outlining the nature of the problem and inviting the metallurgist to come in person. He was hoping to avoid it, but menti
on of the word infinity managed to find its way into his letter.

  He returned to his platform and lived on it for three days, pacing to the edges while Djinn set type and the automaton printed, looking down into the rumbling chasm of bookcases like a sightseer gazing into the crater of Vesuvius. He neglected to shave, and slept under the press on a bolster, waking up to find food and drink at hand and hoping Irena had been the one to bring it. From time to time the Abbé, wandering by on his own mysterious peregrinations around the castle, would wave distantly to Flood on his platform as if to someone on a ship about to vanish over the horizon.

  As she had asked to do, Irena came now and then to watch him work. He took her through the stages, starting with Djinn at the composing desk, turning a manuscript page into neat rows of type. As they watched Djinn’s fingers dance over the compartments in the type case, he told her that each size of type had a name. The smallest, six-point type, was known as nonpareil. The sizes most commonly used in books were long primer, and pica.

  – Although I prefer small pica. Or as its sometimes known, philosophy.

  – Small pica, or philosophy, she said. It sounds like the title of a novel. With a girl heroine.

  He showed her the various parts of the press and how they worked together.

  – This sliding carriage is called the coffin. You crank the rounce and –

  – I see, she said. The coffin slides under the stone slab —

  – The platen –

  – And slides back out again. I see now. That’s why the inscription on your books. Vitam mortuo reddo. I wondered about it.

  Flood nodded.

  – I restore life from death. It was the motto of the family business long before I was born.

  A stab of regret silenced him. He thought of the crude unvarnished box they had laid Meg to rest in. Though they worked side by side for countless hours, there were many days when he and his father said nothing at all to one another, unless it were to correct a fault or call for a brief halt. He looked back on that time in his life as a great silence.

  A printer can be of service in many ways, his father once pronounced when he took a commission for a collection of bawdy ballads. Sometimes by not printing.

  Books as novelties, as jokes. Books to gratify the whims of a lunatic nobleman, to win the admiration of his daughter. He saw his father, wiping his hands on his greasy apron and shaking his head in dismay. There was little doubt what he would have to say, were he still alive. Reckless, reckless.

  At last Flood showed Irena his first finished trial piece: a scroll inspired by the Ostrov coat of arms. In order to make sense of the story, one had to unroll it entirely and join the ends into a loop, but with a twist, so that the paper seemed to have (or perhaps did have) only one side. For a text, he used an old legend he found in Zecchino’s Antiquities, concerning the founding of Venice.

  – There were two wealthy Roman families in Aquilea, he told Irena, who each had one child born to them on the same day, a boy and a girl. The children were wondrously beautiful, but the local sibyl warned that should they ever meet, they would instantly fall so deeply and irrevocably in love with one another that they would expire on the spot, their mortal bodies too frail to withstand such unearthly and absolute desire.

  He paused, seeing Irena frown as she handled the unwieldy ribbon of paper.

  – Go on, she said. I’m listening.

  – The two families had a city constructed on the sandy islets in the lagoon. A city designed as an elaborate maze of walls, streets, and canals, something like this castle, if you will. The idea was to prevent the boy and girl from ever meeting. By the time they reached the age of sixteen, however, they had both heard rumours of each other’s existence, and understood that the city was in fact their prison. So the boy and the girl escaped into the streets to find one another.

  – The looping design, Flood went on, reflects their endless pursuit. The boy’s story is printed on one side, the girl’s on the other. But when the ends are joined, both follow the same single-sided story, so to speak, unaware that only if one of them stops moving will they be able to meet.

  He waited for some comment from her, and when she handed the scroll back without speaking, he said,

  – You don’t think the Count will care for this?

  She glanced up with a look of confusion, as if she had woken suddenly from a dream and still expected to see its landscape around her.

  – It’s very clever. I think you should show this to my father.

  He did so that afternoon, despite his misgivings.

  – Have you ever been to Venice? the Count asked, handing back the scroll.

  – No.

  – If you had, you likely wouldn’t have chosen a romance for your text. The Queen of the Adriatic is toothless, senile, and smells bad. Still, this is a clever contrivance and I am not displeased. Persevere, Mr. Flood.

  Instead of persevering he stepped out for a breath of air and a leg-stretch on one of the parapets. He walked up and down, rubbing his hands together, glared at by gargoyles with long icicle noses, their gaping jaws dribbling water into an abyss of cornices, spires, slate roofs, and flying buttresses. He stood gazing out at the outside world that for days now he had virtually forgotten. How long had he been here? Today made it … eleven days. Only eleven days.

  The river was frozen over but for a narrow scar of black water. The pines on the mountains were cloaked with snow, the ribbed white roof of the sky streaked with smoke rising from the village. From the forested hillsides came the sound of trees being cut, the axes striking the wood in an irregular tattoo that somehow soothed him. If not for that vaguely pleasing sound, the world would have seemed locked away in crystal. Had anything ever changed in this valley? For all he could see or hear that revealed otherwise, it could be the year 1000. Or the year 1400, Gutenberg’s invention of movable type still half a century away.

  What would he be if he had lived then? A scribe, a monk, if he was fortunate. But more likely he would be down there in the forest with the timber-cutters, one of those who had likely never held so strange an object as a book in their callused, dumbfounded hands.

  About the time this castle was built, according to the Count, the Mainz goldsmith had begun his cataclysmic innovations. And now, three hundred years later, the world was just beginning to drown in books. Like the magic wine cask in the old story, the press, once set flowing, could not be stopped by human power. Everyone, rich and poor, inquisitive or merely bored, was clamouring for things to read, and here he was, in this spellbound corner of the world, busily adding his own trickle of inked paper to the biblical deluge that was surely coming.

  Someday books would even spill into this valley, and the people down there would scoop them up out of curiosity and drink, and learn the taste of knowledge, which always left one thirsty for more. And then that pleasantly distant sound of axes would grow much louder, as freshly sharpened blades started biting into the roots of this castle.

  He heard a sound near him and peered around the corner of the parapet to see the Abbé de Saint-Foix, wrapped in a thick cloak, pacing and reading a letter. When Flood approached he glanced up as if emerging from a deep cavern.

  – You’re only in your shirtsleeves, Mr. Flood. Aren’t you afraid to catch a chill?

  – I thought winters in Quebec were a lot worse than this.

  – They are. Why do you think I left?

  For the first time, they shared a smile.

  – I see that the Countess Irena takes quite an interest in your craft. If only I was staying on here. The three of us might have worked together on your impossible project. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Book without end, Amen.

  – It sounds like you’re planning to leave soon.

  – I must. In any event I have found life inside this giant clock a little confining. I will be returning home, to Quebec, at least for a while. This letter informs me that my brother, Michel, has gone to his eternal reward.
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  – I am sorry.

  – You needn’t be, the Abbé said, meticulously folding the letter and tucking it into his cassock. He was brother to me only by accident of birth. Life under his rule, after our parents died, was rather like life here at the castle. Come to think of it, Mr. Flood, I have a story about my childhood that may be of use to you in your labours for the Count.

  THE ABBÉ’S NARRATIVE

  During Sunday Mass, wedged with his squirming brother and sisters between the sombre bastions of his parents, Ezequiel listened to the priest expound upon the eternity of bliss enjoyed by the righteous in heaven, or, more often, the eternity of torment awaiting sinners in hell. He would attempt to form a picture of it – what would an eternity of bliss be like? — since he never seriously contemplated the possibility that God would send him elsewhere, and in any case the priest already supplied a vivid description of the other place. He had much to say about what activities would be occupying the hours of the damned in hell, but he never went into similar detail about what the blessed would be doing with all the time at their disposal, other than singing the same hymns they sang here in church, only even more interminably.

  What did it mean to say that for those in heaven, bliss would never end? How could that be? A thing only made you feel good because there was a time when you didn’t have that thing, and so when you did, you could remember how much less enjoyable life had been not having it. Eternal bliss meant you were happy always and at every moment, without ever passing through a time when you were not happy. Every moment of that timeless time you would be aware that, yes, you were in heaven and this was bliss. Always. An unpassing passage of time, it seemed to him then, that might be like the long, dark winters of this land, like the fields of snow that stretched out endlessly beyond the walls of Quebec, perched on its rocky height above the silent white river.

  His mind, like his delicate stomach the day his brother forced him to eat a scrap of the leathery cured meat favoured by les coureurs de bois, instinctively rejected the idea. That was no escape. It was mindless, the dream of slaves. He realized quite early how life in the colony was ruled by the clock. Each spring, when the ice broke up and he waited with everyone else for the arrival of the first ships from France, it occurred to him that time was their creator. Quebec did not believe in its own existence until those white sails were sighted on the horizon. Then the people around him, the pale ghosts of winter, would jerk to life like marionettes, pat one another on the back, drink toasts, observe that the ships were early this year, or late, or right on time, and place bets on just when the wind was likely to bring them into port.