The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  Then she went back to the hotel and washed her hair, toweling it roughly dry and shaking her head to let it fall where it would; and then she put on the new clothes and paid her bill, and went out to find Süleiman Square.

  The air was fresh and clear. Lyra bought a tourist map of the city center and walked the half mile or so to the square, which was shaded by trees just coming into leaf and overlooked by the statue of a lavishly medaled Turkish general.

  The Café Antalya was a quiet and old-fashioned place, with starched white tablecloths and dark wood paneling. It might have been the kind of place where a young woman on her own, let alone one without a dæmon, might have felt unwelcome; it had an air of old-fashioned masculine formality and style; but the elderly waiter showed her to a table with every courteous attention. She ordered coffee and pastries, and looked around at the other customers: businessmen, perhaps, a father and mother with a young family, one or two older men dressed with fastidious elegance, one wearing a fez. There was one man on his own, writing busily in a notebook, and while she waited for her coffee, she played an Oakley Street sort of game and watched him without looking directly. He wore a linen suit with a blue shirt and a green tie, and a panama hat lay on the chair beside him. He was in his forties or early fifties, fair-haired, slim, strong, and active-looking. Perhaps he was a journalist.

  The waiter brought her coffee, a plate of elaborate pastries, and a little carafe of water. She thought, Pan would say I’d better eat no more than one of those. Across the café the journalist was closing his notebook. Without looking, Lyra knew that his dæmon—a small white owl, with large black-rimmed yellow eyes—was watching her. She sipped her coffee, which was intensely hot and sweet. The journalist stood up, put on his hat, and came straight towards her, making for the exit; but then he stopped in front of her, raised his hat, and said quietly, “Miss Lyra Belacqua?”

  She looked up, genuinely startled. The glare of the owl dæmon on his shoulder was ferocious, but the man’s expression was friendly, puzzled, interested, a little concerned, but most of all surprised. His accent was New Danish.

  “Who are you?” said Lyra.

  “My name is Schlesinger. Bud Schlesinger. If I said the words Oakley Street…”

  Lyra remembered Farder Coram’s voice, instructing her in his warm tidy boat, and said, “If you said that, I’d have to say, Where is Oakley Street?”

  “Oakley Street is not in Chelsea.”

  “That’s true as far as it goes.”

  “It goes as far as the Embankment.”

  “So I’ve heard…Mr. Schlesinger, what on earth is going on?”

  They had been speaking very quietly.

  “May I join you for a moment?” he said.

  “Please do.”

  His manner was free, informal, friendly. He was possibly even more taken aback by this encounter than she was.

  “What—”

  “How—”

  They both spoke at the same time, and were both still too surprised to laugh.

  “You first,” she said.

  “Is it Belacqua, or Silvertongue?”

  “It was Belacqua. The other name is what I’m called now. Among friends. But—oh, it’s complicated. How did you know about me?”

  “You’re in danger. I’ve been looking for you for over a week. There’s been a general call for news of your whereabouts—that is, among Oakley Street agents—because the High Council of the Magisterium—you’ve heard about the new constitution?—has ordered your arrest. Did you know about that?”

  She felt dizzy. “No,” she said. “First I’ve heard.”

  “The last news we had of you was in Buda-Pesth. Someone saw you, but couldn’t make contact. Then there was a report that you were in Constantinople, but that wasn’t a definite sighting.”

  “I’ve tried not to leave a trail. When—why—what does the Magisterium want to arrest me for?”

  “Blasphemy, among other things.”

  “But that’s not against the law….”

  “Not in Brytain. Not yet. This is not a matter of public knowledge—there isn’t a price on your head, nothing of that sort. The council has let it be known discreetly that your arrest will be pleasing to the Authority. The way these things work now, a word of that sort will be sufficient justification to make it happen.”

  “How did you know who I was?”

  He produced a pocketbook, and took out a printed photogram. It showed an enlargement of Lyra’s face taken from the matriculation photogram Lyra and her contemporaries had posed for in their first term at St. Sophia’s.

  “There are hundreds of copies of this in circulation,” he said. “With the name Belacqua. I was kind of on the lookout, not because I expected you to come through Smyrna, but because I know Malcolm Polstead.”

  “You know Malcolm?” she said. “How?”

  “I did my doctorate in Oxford, oh, I guess, twenty years ago. It was around the time of the great flood. That’s when I first met him, but of course he was just a kid then.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “What, right now? No, I don’t. But he wrote me a short while ago, enclosing a letter for you, under the name Silvertongue. The letter’s in the safe in my apartment. He said to look out for you.”

  “A letter…Is your apartment nearby?”

  “Not far. We’ll go get it in a minute. Apparently Malcolm’s on his way east. There’s some big operation going on involving Central Asia—that’s all he said—and we’ve heard something on the same lines from local eyes and ears.”

  “Yes. I think I know what that’s about. It involves a desert in Sin Kiang, near Lop Nor, a place where…Well, a place where dæmons can’t go.”

  Schlesinger’s dæmon spoke. “Tungusk,” she said.

  “Like that,” said Lyra, “but further south.”

  “Tungusk, where the witches go?” said Schlesinger.

  “Yes. But not that. Like it, but somewhere else.”

  “I can’t help noticing…,” he said.

  “No. No one can help noticing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s relevant. I can do what the witches do and separate from my dæmon. But then he disappeared, my dæmon, and before I do anything else, I have to find him. So I’m going to a place called…the Blue Hotel. Or sometimes the City of the Moon, Madinat al-Qamar.”

  “There’s something familiar about that name….What is that place?”

  “Oh, a story. Maybe just a travelers’ tale…They say there’s a ruined city there that’s inhabited by dæmons. It might be nonsense. But I’ve got to try.”

  “Oh, be careful,” said the owl dæmon.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re ghosts and not dæmons. I don’t even know where it is, exactly.” She pushed the plate of pastries towards him, and he took one. “Mr. Schlesinger,” she went on, “if you wanted to travel on the Silk Road to Sin Kiang, to Lop Nor, how would you go about it?”

  “You specifically want to go that way rather than, say, by rail to Muscovy and then through Siberia?”

  “Yes. I want to go that way. Because I think on the road I’d be able to hear a lot of news, gossip, stories, information.”

  “You’re right about that. Well, your best bet is Aleppo. That’s the western terminus, if I can put it like that, for one of the main routes. Join a caravan there and go as far as they’ll take you. I can tell you the man to see.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “His name is Mustafa Bey. The Bey is a courtesy title. He’s a merchant. He doesn’t travel much himself anymore, but he has interests in many ventures, caravans, cities, factories, enterprises the whole length of the Silk Road. It’s not one road, but I guess you knew that—it’s a whole bundle of trails and roadways and tracks. Some go south round a desert or a moun
tain range, some go further north. Depends on what the caravan master decides.”

  “And if I went to see this man Mustafa Bey, would he be suspicious of me? Of the way I am?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know him very well, but I think he’s interested almost entirely in profit. If you want to travel with one of his caravans, just show him you can pay.”

  “Where can I find him? Is he well-known there?”

  “Very well-known. The best place to find him is in a café called Marletto’s. He’s there every morning.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember that. D’you know why I came to this café today?”

  “No. Why?”

  Lyra told him about the shipping brochure, and the annotation marking the appointment in that very café. “It was found on the body of a man who’d just arrived in Oxford from Tashbulak, the place Oakley Street is interested in. He was a botanist, working with roses. We think that was why he was killed. But we’ve got no idea who was going to keep this appointment, him or someone else, or both.”

  Schlesinger wrote a note in his diary. “I’ll make sure to be here on that date,” he said.

  “Mr. Schlesinger, do you work full-time for Oakley Street?”

  “No. I’m a diplomat. But I’m bound to Oakley Street by old ties of friendship, besides actually believing in what they stand for. Smyrna is a kind of a crossroads; there are always things to watch, or people to keep an eye on. And once in a while, something to do. Now, tell me what Oakley Street knows about your present situation. Do they know where you are? Do they know about your plan to visit this Blue Hotel, if it exists?”

  She thought for a few moments. “I don’t know. There’s a man called Coram van Texel, a gyptian from the Fens, a retired Oakley Street agent, who knows; he’s an old friend, and he can be trusted. But…in the light of day, I’m not sure about the Blue Hotel anyway. It all sounds so improbable. Secret commonwealth business.”

  She used the phrase to see whether he’d heard it before, but he merely looked puzzled. “Now you’ve told me, I have to pass it on,” he said.

  “I understand that. What’s the best way of getting to Aleppo?”

  “There’s a good train service twice a week. One leaves tomorrow, I think. Listen, Miss Silvertongue, I really am anxious about your safety. You look too much like this picture. You ever thought of a disguise?”

  “No,” she said. “I thought not having a dæmon might be a sort of disguise. People don’t like looking at me, because they’re frightened or disgusted. They look away. I’ve been getting used to that. Trying to be inconspicuous. Or invisible, like the witches. It works some of the time.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course. What?”

  “My wife used to be on the stage. She’s done this before a few times—changing someone’s look. Nothing drastic. Just a few details to help people’s eyes see someone different from you. Would you come to my apartment with me now and let her help you? We’ll pick up Malcolm’s letter at the same time.”

  “Is she at home now?”

  “She’s a journalist. She’s working at home today.”

  “Well,” Lyra said, “I think that might be a good idea.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Why did she trust this Bud Schlesinger? He knew about Oakley Street, and about Malcolm heading this way too, but an enemy might know those things and use them to trap her. It was partly her mood. The morning was sparkling; things were intensely themselves; even the Turkish general on the stone plinth had a roguish light in his eye. She felt she could trust the world.

  So twenty minutes later she stepped out of the shuddering, creaking, ancient elevator in Schlesinger’s apartment building and waited as he opened the door.

  “Excuse the lack of domestic airs and graces,” he said.

  It was certainly a place of color. On every wall hung rugs and other textiles; there were dozens of paintings and several walls of bookshelves. Schlesinger’s wife, Anita, was colorful too: slender and dark-haired and dressed in a scarlet smock and Persian slippers. Her dæmon was a squirrel.

  As Schlesinger explained the circumstances, she examined Lyra curiously, but it was a professional curiosity, full of life and understanding. Lyra sat on a large sofa and tried not to feel self-conscious.

  “Right,” said Anita Schlesinger. She too was New Danish, her accent a little less marked than her husband’s. “Now, Lyra, I’m going to suggest three things. One is simple: you wear a pair of spectacles. Plain glass. I’ve got some. The second thing is to cut your hair much shorter. And the third thing is to dye it. How d’you feel about that?”

  “Intrigued,” said Lyra carefully. “Would those things make a big difference?”

  “You’re not trying to fool your friends or anyone who knows you well. It won’t do that. What you’re trying to do is make someone who’s got a picture in his mind of a blondish girl without glasses not look at you twice. They’ll be looking for someone who doesn’t look like you. It’s superficial, but superficial is the level most interactions work at. Do they know you haven’t got your dæmon with you?”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Because that’s a pretty big giveaway.”

  “I know. But I’ve tried to make myself invisible….”

  “Hey! I’d love to do that. You must tell me how. But first, can I cut your hair?”

  “Yes. And dye it. I can understand the reason—all you said makes sense. Thank you.”

  Bud brought Lyra the letter from Malcolm, and then he had to leave. He shook Lyra’s hand and said, “Seriously, you’re in real danger. Don’t forget that. It might be safer to stay in Smyrna till Mal gets here. We could keep you out of sight.”

  “Thank you. I’ll think hard about that.”

  Lyra was burning to read the letter, but she put it away for now and focused on Anita, who was keen to hear about the witches and their way of becoming invisible. Lyra told her everything she knew. And that led to Will, and how he’d worked the same sort of spell without knowing it; and that led somehow to Malcolm, and everything he’d told her about the flood, and how she’d never known about it when she was his pupil, and how differently she saw him now.

  It was the sort of conversation she hadn’t had for a long time, and she had no idea how much she’d missed that sort of easy, friendly chatter. She thought, This woman would make an irresistible interrogator. No one could help telling her things. She wondered how often Anita had helped her husband with Oakley Street business.

  Meanwhile, Anita was cutting Lyra’s hair, a little at a time, stepping back and looking critically, checking in the mirror.

  “We’re aiming to change the shape of your head,” she said.

  “That sounds alarming.”

  “Without surgery. Your hair’s naturally wavy and thick and takes up a lot of space, even though it isn’t very long. We just want to make it a bit self-effacing. The dye will make a bigger difference. But a lot of what you call being invisible depends on the way you hold yourself. I recognize that. I acted with Sylvia Martine once.”

  “Really? I saw her Lady Macbeth. Terrifying.”

  “She could put it on at will. I was walking down the street with her one day. We’d just been rehearsing and it was a normal sort of busy city street, people going past, not noticing anything. And she said—you know her name was really Eileen Butler—she said, ‘Let’s call Sylvia.’

  “I didn’t know what she meant. But we’d been talking about audiences, and fans, and followers, and she said that, and I didn’t know what to expect.

  “Well, her dæmon was a cat, as you probably remember if you saw her onstage. A perfectly ordinary cat. But something happened to him then, or he did something, and instantly he became—well, I don’t know how to put it. He became more visible. As if a spotlight h
ad come on, focused right on him. And the same was true of her. One second she was Eileen Butler, nice-looking, but just an ordinary passerby. The next second she was Sylvia Martine, and everyone in the street knew it. People saw her, they came up to speak, they crossed the street to ask for her autograph, and within a minute she was pretty well surrounded. It happened outside a hotel—I think she knew exactly what would happen, and did it somewhere where we could escape. The commissionaire let us in and kept everyone else back. Then she was Eileen Butler again. I wasn’t a bad actress, but she was a star, and the difference is colossal, magical. Something supernatural about it. I was too shy to ask how she did it, becoming Sylvia in that way, but her dæmon had something to do with it. He said very little; he just—I don’t know—became more visible. Extraordinary.”

  “I believe it,” said Lyra. “I believe every word of it. I wonder if you can learn to do it. Or whether it’s only possible for a few people.”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve often thought it would be dreadful to have that sort of power and not be able to turn it off. Sylvia could manage it—she was full of good sense—but in the case of someone vain or silly, it would drive them mad in the end. Make them a monster. Well, I can think of a few stars like that.”

  “I want to do just the reverse. Can I see what it looks like now?”

  Anita stood aside, and Lyra looked in the mirror. Her hair had never been so short. She liked it, liked the lightness, liked the air it gave her of being alert and birdlike.

  “We’ve only just started,” said Anita. “Wait till you see it dyed.”

  “What color do you suggest?”

  “Well, dark. Not hard black—that wouldn’t go with your general coloring. A darkish chestnut brown.”

  Lyra submitted willingly. In all her life it had never occurred to her to have her hair colored; it was curious to find herself in the hands of someone so good at this whole business, so interested in it, so knowledgeable.

  After applying the dye, Anita made some lunch, just bread and cheese and dates and coffee, and told Lyra about her journalistic work. She was currently writing a piece for an English-language paper in Constantinople about the state of the Turkish theater. Journalism sometimes overlapped with her husband’s diplomatic work, and she’d seen something of the crisis in the world of rose gardens and precious oils and perfumery. She told Lyra about the numbers of gardens she knew about that had been destroyed, and of the merchants who dealt in those goods and who’d seen their factories and warehouses burned down.