Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  ‘Perhaps a diversion,’ offered Septimus.

  ‘Exactly the solution I was coming to,’ Kalkbrenner affirmed.

  ‘O Ernst!’ from Elly.

  ‘A hobby, perhaps….’

  ‘… which would provide an outlet for this excessive reading,’ Septimus completed the sentence.

  ‘An outlet? Oh. Yes, an outlet. I was just going to suggest the same. An outlet would be the thing, a valve yes, an outlet.’ Kalkbrenner’s cure was taking shape. ‘Now the form of this outlet; surgery offers us several alternatives….’

  ‘… which only a man of your own experience Doctor Kalkbrenner would have the confidence to reject. As your admirable Condillac advises us, it is the mind which probes the mind,’ Septimus intervened.

  ‘He does indeed, he does indeed. Ah, the mind. The mind needs a mental outlet….’

  ‘An activity,’ interrupted Septimus again. ‘Something to do to exorcise this reading.’

  ‘To exorcise it? Well, not that quite but these are the general lines of my diagnosis, yes Septimus.’ Kalkbrenner was groping for the answer; “the mind”, “the outlet”, “the reading”, shunting these counters around, the shape was coming into focus…. ‘To write!’ he exclaimed. ‘He needs to write!’

  ‘Bravo, Ernst! Bravo!’ shouted Elly.

  ‘Of course,’ said Septimus as if stunned by the sheer rightness of Kalkbrenner’s prescription. ‘The answer was staring us in the face but only you could have unearthed it. Well done, Ernst. Well done!’ Kalkbrenner was mopping his brow and smiling, half-embarrassed - had his brilliance been too ostentatious? His instincts told him no.

  ‘To write?’ Lemprière’s voice was lost in a general, self-congratulatory hubbub. ‘Write what?’

  An hour later, in the same place, the four of them were moving towards an answer to this question by a process that had become one of elimination. On the criteria, they were agreed: it must embrace Lemprière’s love of the Ancients, and at the same time, it must treat of all the ways in which this love might return to haunt Lemprière’s waking hours, including those instances already mentioned. ‘Lay the ghosts of Antiquity to rest!’ Ernst had exclaimed. ‘Do it to them before they do it to you.’ Septimus had endorsed the sentiment. ‘But what?’ Elly had asked.

  Rejected so far were: an almanac (too late in the year), a breviary (pointless), a cadaster (too bourgeois), an encyclopedia (would take too long), a fescennine verse-dialogue (only Lemprière knew what it was), a glossary (too many already), an homily (no), incunabula (too late), juvenilia (also too late), a kunstlerroman (too early), a log (Lemprière hated boats), a manual (boring), a novel (too vulgar), an opera (over-ambitious), a pamphlet (too humble), a Qu’ran (already was one), a replevin (too arcane), a story (too simple), a treatise (perhaps, but little enthusiasm), an Upanishad (too fanciful), a variorum edition (of what?), a Weltanschauung (onanistic), a xenophontean cosmology (out of date) and a year-book.

  Lemprière, Kalkbrenner and Clementi were sunk in gloom, stony ground for Septimus’ suggestions whose rate had slowed to the occasional thought thrown out with little conviction or chance of acceptance.

  ‘No,’ they said to the latest (a Zetetic tract). ‘Too inquisitive.’ Even Septimus seemed disheartened for a moment. Abruptly his expression changed. He stood up and strode briskly to the bookshelf opposite. He had spied two large, identical books. The author’s name gleamed in gold on their spines.

  ‘I have it,’ he said, picking one out. ‘This is it. This is what you must write, John. Write one of these.’ The name stared up at him. ‘Samuel Johnson’.

  ‘Samuel Johnson’ he read aloud.

  ‘Samuel Johnson’ echoed Kalkbrenner. ‘Of course! How could we have missed it? You are indeed correct Mister Praeceps; Mister Lemprière you must emulate the good Doctor Johnson, that is my final and certain prescription.’ Septimus brandished the book like a club then threw it across to Lemprière who caught it and peered curiously at its frontispiece.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Elly.

  ‘You wanted a work which covered everything, did you not? This is that!’

  ‘Right,’ said Lemprière, his head in the book.

  ‘How clever of you, Ernst, but may I ask what it is?’ cooed Clementi.

  ‘The answer at last. Do you think you can do it, John?’ Septimus asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the other, still reading. Septimus marched across to shake Kalkbrenner’s hand.

  ‘Knew we’d find it.’

  ‘Well done Ernst!’

  Clementi was bobbing up and down offering congratulations and praise to both. ‘Well done all of you! Really, everything seems to be quite put to rights. Might I ask now, terribly ignorant of me, might I ask, exactly what is it do you think?’

  Lemprière looked up from his reading.

  ‘It is a dictionary,’ he replied. He would write a dictionary. But as he was about to announce his decision, Lemprière had the strangest sensation. The events of his life, his infancy, childhood and youth, his love for Juliette, his father’s death, even his tattered memories of the previous night, all of these seemed suddenly to come into view. The events and travails of his life hurtled forward, closing on one another like a hundred chariots with their horses and charioteers crashing together in a tangle of limbs and broken shafts. Lemprière was at its epicentre. From a stillness that lengthened, gathered pace and moved on, he watched them ride off once more, fanning out over the plain like the spokes of their wheels. They were his emissaries, agents of the dictionary.

  ‘Angels of the dictionary?’ Septimus’ tone was suddenly sharp. Lemprière had mumbled the title aloud without knowing.

  ‘Agents,’ he corrected his friend. ‘Nothing.’ The three of them were watching, waiting for him. It was quite clear.

  ‘I will write a dictionary,’ he told them, and they closed upon him, suddenly celebrants of his decision.

  A little later, after mutual congratulations and prolonged leave-takings, Lemprière and Septimus were retracing their earlier steps, past the same terraces and through the same streets as before. Lemprière recalled his friend’s account of his own outburst the night before. True, he had listed all that had happened to Lemprière, yet Lemprière knew he had told him more. How much more? He agonised over this as they continued their progress in silence, Lemprière stewing in uncertainty, Septimus preoccupied with thoughts which remained opaque. At length, Lemprière could contain his curiosity, or dread, no longer.

  ‘You did not mention the girl,’ he challenged Septimus.

  ‘The girl? Which girl? When?’ Lemprière had framed the question ambiguously, Juliette perhaps, or another. The girl on the bed, whom he had drunkenly mistaken for the one he loved, but that was impossible. It had not been her. Now Septimus had called his bluff.

  ‘I believe I was … confused.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you were,’ Septimus readily agreed. They walked a little further, but the silence, which earlier had been somehow agreed upon, was now onerous. Lemprière felt compelled to speak again.

  ‘I don’t believe either of them credited a word of it,’ he burst out.

  ‘Ernst and Elly? What does it matter? After all, it is still possible you imagined all these things. I don’t say you did, but it is possible. Monsters and gods in fields, in stores, Circe in the Craven Arms. You read of them, certainly, and they appeared. But only for you perhaps. They were real to you, but imaginary, you see?’ Red on grey, pool, sky.

  ‘Not the dogs,’ Lemprière said. ‘I didn’t imagine the dogs.’

  ‘No,’ Septimus conceded. ‘The dogs were real. And the girl, of course.’

  ‘The girl?’ Lemprière turned on Septimus sharply.

  ‘The girl in the pool, bathing, like Diana. That girl.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lemprière began walking again. That girl. Juliette, naked in the pool.

  It was mid-afternoon and as the two of them moved through Holborn towards Covent Garden, the streets began to grow more crowded
. Gangs of ‘prentices and labourers were moving to and fro between tea gardens and ale houses, noisy ill-mannered gangs roved aimlessly and various seekers of amusement on the Sabbath pursued various paths, cutting through the streets with airs of vacancy and vague desperation. It was Sunday; there was little or nothing to do. Lemprière and Septimus edged their way through a narrow and crowded alleyway to emerge on a wider street. A group of twenty or thirty workmen had just been paid in the drinking shop a little way up the street and were beginning to pour into the road, bringing a black coach and four to a halt. Lemprière sniffed, and noticed a smell which he recognised from his ill-fated enquiry as to the whereabouts of the Thames in the Jerusalem over a week ago: coffee.

  His headache and nausea had reached a fragile equilibrium and although eating was still an unpleasant prospect, Clementi’s tea had proved liquids were possible, with a little effort. Septimus seemed to have smelt it too, indeed was already moving away from the coach and the crowd of workmen, crossing the road for the coffee shop, it was Galloway’s, on the other side.

  The doorway of the coffee shop was crowded. Septimus had already reached it and was looking back for Lemprière. As he signalled to him over the crowd, a woman dressed in blue, her skirts grimy even from this distance, pushed her way out of the door and through the knot of people clustered outside. They stared at her, as did Lemprière, recognising her as one of the unfortunate bookmakers from the previous night. He tried to gesture the fact to Septimus, but the woman was moving quickly away behind him. In fact, it seemed to Lemprière that she was trying to catch the attention of someone ahead of her. He strained for a view, but was buffeted at that moment by a large man. Apologies followed and when Lemprière was able to look again, she had disappeared; the object of her pursuit likewise.

  Lemprière’s passage across the road was full of jolts and bumps as he cut through the men and women moving up and down the street. He reached the door with some difficulty and, imagining a haven within, knocked a departing patron to the floor in his haste. Lemprière reached down to help the man up, but this only confused matters as the victim rose, readjusted a broad-brimmed hat and moved through the door in a single, quick motion. Lemprière’s apology went unacknowledged.

  The interior of the coffee shop was crammed with men disputing points with their neighbours, holding forth on the iniquitous state of the roads, the ban on dancing, the King’s health, cat torture, departed trends, and the poor, all with a noisy brio as they sank foaming pots of coffee and belched contentedly in the smoky air. Septimus had moved to the back of the shop and was already engaged in debate with its proprietor who sweated and wiped his hands on a stained apron as he explained, ‘This is a coffee shop….’ Septimus was insisting upon tea. Lemprière joined them and wearily attended their debate as Septimus grew more impassioned.

  ‘Tea, tea, tea! Were the eyelids of Bodhidkarma shorn off for nothing? Did the serendipitous Emperor Sri Nong suffer his happy accident in vain? When a man is weary of tea, he is weary of life! Doctor Johnson said that….’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ the proprietor interrupted.

  ‘But he believed it,’ Septimus came back at him, then launched into a series of long, dull quotations from the Ch’a Ching of Lu Yu and obscure tracts by the late Kitcha Yojoka before switching abruptly to the France of Joan de Mauvillain.

  ‘“An the chinensium mentis confert”? A rhetorical title if ever I heard one, pah!’ But the proprietor was rallying his cause and, when Septimus quoted the advice of Doctor Bontekoe that two hundred cups a day was not excessive, he pointed out that the good doctor had been paid by the Dutch East India Company, major importers of tea then as now, to say just that.

  ‘Profits don’t come into it.’ Septimus rejected the insinuation of sharp practice, but his opponent was off and Lemprière listened as the man countered with an impassioned defence of the coffee-bean, its pedigree, provenance and usage, a long, rambling tale of Arab slave raiders riding hard over the stones of Ethiopia, Kaldi the goat-herd whose frisky goats first alerted mankind to the berry’s insomniac qualities and Ali bin Omar al Shadhilly’s restitution to the king’s good graces (after enjoying the favours of his daughter) by curing an itching-fever with the same red berries ‘which even now I am roasting, grinding and boiling, risk of fire notwithstanding, and serving to ingrates such as yourself. Does the self-sacrifice of Mathieu de Clieux Nantes mean nothing to you!’

  Septimus retorted that it did indeed mean nothing at all to him, prompting the man to recount the whole story of Mathieu’s theft of a coffee-plant from the King of France’s conservatoire and his transport of the same to Martinique in his jacket, even going so far as to share his water ration with it whilst enduring the most grievous taunting and pranks from his fellow passengers. ‘Scum! Ignorant scum all of them!’ he spat with polyphenol vehemence and was about to launch into the yet more extravagant story of Francesco de Melho Palheta, a coffee plant and the wife of the governor of Martinique (being a kind of sequel to the first) when Lemprière himself intervened and said that thank you they would both be very pleased to take a mug of coffee, which, when it came, he found rather to his taste. Septimus was peeved at being interrupted in mid-debate and it did not suit him. Lemprière eyed him defensively over his mug, sipping cautiously at the hot bitter liquid.

  ‘The man where we ate.’ Lemprière spoke to break the silence as much as anything. ‘The sad-looking man. Who was he?’

  ‘Oh, there are lots of sad men,’ Septimus replied, and Lemprière realised that what he had taken to be peevishness was in fact preoccupation or something of the sort. ‘Coffee makes you barren, did you know that?’ he added. Lemprière shrugged and resumed his sipping.

  ‘So, a dictionary …’ he began brightly, a few moments later. This had more success, prompting Septimus to recount a long meandering tale about a work of reference he had once read which had marshalled one of the Flemish dialects numerologically. The tale became more anecdotal and the language changed from Flemish to Assyrian, then back again, until Lemprière was forced to challenge him gently.

  ‘I have never come across such a work,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ Septimus thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken. That would be the explanation, do you think?’ A short silence followed. Septimus gazed vacantly around the room. Several times it seemed to Lemprière that he was about to speak, but his companion remained silent. Septimus pressed one of his fingers hard against the table, then looked at it as the colour returned.

  ‘I fear I must leave you now,’ he said, then stood up. Lemprière stood up too, briefly bewildered. Together they made their way to the door, Septimus pausing to pay the proprietor who thanked him (’A goodnight to you Mister Praeceps!’) as they left the shop.

  ‘Mister Praeceps,’ echoed Lemprière. ‘You know him?’ He had not realised. Their argument had not revealed it.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Septimus responded, ‘he is a….’

  ‘He is a friend of mine!’ Lemprière finished the sentence for him and laughed noisily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Septimus blankly. Lemprière stopped laughing.

  ‘The dictionary then,’ he said as if it were a toast. This seemed to focus Septimus.

  ‘The dictionary, yes. The dictionary is very important.’ The last two words were enunciated with some emphasis. ‘You must begin just as soon as possible.’

  ‘I shall begin this very evening,’ Lemprière promised confidently. Septimus looked away. He seemed lost, detached somehow. The moment dragged on.

  ‘Well, good night to you then.’ Lemprière clapped him on the arm.

  ‘Yes, good night John,’ he returned. Lemprière smiled, then turned on his heel and strode out into the street, on a determined path homeward. Septimus stood there for a few seconds longer, looking about, then wandered off in the other direction.

  That night, Lemprière sat at the desk in his room. Ranged before him were his pen, an ink-well and a single sheet of white paper. He dipped the pen quic
kly in the well, then held it still and watched as three black beads of ink slid down to drop back silently from the nib. He looked down at the sheet of paper on his desk. The pen moved quickly in rehearsal just above its surface. Lemprière paused, then, in the top left-hand corner, he carefully inscribed the letter A.

  Now down through the city’s tight skin to the hotch-potch of rocks and earth beneath. Through blue-grey and stiff red clay, crumbly slabs of sediment, black granite and water-bearing formations, past fire-damp flares, shale and veins of coal to pierce a second, more secret skin and enter the body of the Beast. Here, long fluted chambers twist away into honeycombs and open into caverns the size of churches with cradles of silica hanging from brittle calcified threads, ridges, flanges and platforms all frozen in stone to wait for centuries beneath the city. Once it was a mountain of flesh, red throbbing meat and muscle. Now it is dead stone with its veins sucked dry as dust and all its arteries blown out clean by time; an ignorant monument playing host to nine, then eight men who crawl through its passages like parasites and who differ in their understandings of its chambers, tunnels and lattices, not unnaturally - it can be accounted for in so many ways.

  Boffe, vast and red in his bath tub, splashed vigorously and tried to imagine the stone creature which surrounded him on all sides. He sat now in his liquids, contemplating the chamber, as was his custom during bath-time, faintly aware of the millions of tons of ground, rocks and earth pressing down on him from the surface, hundreds of feet above. Sheer weight, a deep bass rumble in his badly orchestrated thoughts. Damn Vaucanson, who had called him ‘the weak link’ and who was nothing without him, he the show’s imperator, the pilot of illusion. Boffe sploshed and gurgled through his ablutions then emerged to towel his steaming bulk dry in the chamber’s colder air. Vaucanson, Boffe’s surface irritant, rose like a rash, deepening Boffe’s irritation. His theatricals (marvellous things), his spectacles and seances, composed, planned, passed and performed were dependent on the other man’s genius; his mechanical contrivances. Boffe needed engines and machines, occasionally actors (though the latter, being invariably stiff-limbed and speechless, taxed his invention so that he had to remind himself that all great art is produced in the face of resistance from the medium). Boffe! he regarded himself in the mirror at the far end of the chamber. He was unmistakable.