by Zizou Corder
‘I was telling you what I am,’ I said mildly. ‘Before I was interrupted.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Carry on.’
So I carried on.
‘Nebo lived in his temple at Borsippa. Every New Year he was carried out in style to visit his father across the river at Babylon. He was given a beautiful and clever wife, Tashmet, who helped him in all his projects and was as beloved as he. He was known as the Prophet, the Proclaimer, the Teacher, the Hearer, Nizu – the God Who Knows, All-Wise, All-Knowing, Dim Sara – Creator of the Writing of the Scribes, the Mighty Son, the Director of the Whole of Heaven and Earth, Holder of the Tablet, Bearer of the Writing Reed of the Tablet of Destiny, Lengthener of Days, Vivifier of the Dead, Stabilizer of Light for Men who are Troubled… well, he was known as all sorts of things and he was god of astrology and wisdom, agriculture, schools, reading and writing. All sorts of useful things.
‘And I lived with him, and he wrote on me. I loved the feeling of being written on. It was as if something already in me was being released. And I stayed a long time in Nebo’s courtyard. He created the first library: more and more clay was brought, and divided into lumps, and smoothed into tablets, and scratched on, and dried.
‘But I was not like the others. I was special. Nebo kept using me over and over. I never dried out. I was alive! I would lie in the shade, and I never got baked, and he became fond of me. He would try things out on me and then have them copied tidily on to other tablets. Sometimes at night, when the yellow moon rose high and the nightingales sang down by the river, when Nebo would retire to his platform to sleep, he would take me with him, so he could write down his dreams when he woke in the night…
‘I was the tablet he held. I was the Tablet of Destiny.
‘And all the time I sensed, all around me, the rush and flurry of the human beings. I especially liked the small ones – the babies who gasped in amazement at their own fingers and toes, the tiny ones who were beginning to notice things outside of themselves. Most of all I liked the bigger ones who were beginning to learn how to think.
‘And, bit by bit, they began to Wonder about love and death, and sex and truth. And for every stage, the stories Nebo had scratched were there to guide them through.’
I paused, rather pleased with my turn of phrase.
And that blighter boy interrupted again.
‘So how come you’re a book?’ he asked. ‘And how come you were the Beano? How come you can talk? And how come you were blank? And how come in the paper they said you were myths from Mesopotamia? In French?’
‘Boy!’ I said. ‘Little boy! I am from the clay which made man! The god who breathed life into Adam breathed life into me! The god who created writing, created it on me! I can do… many things.’
He was silent.
I could feel his confusion and puzzlement.
‘Dude!’ he cried. ‘That is… But…’
‘Of course you don’t understand,’ I said kindly. ‘It is a great mystery and has been baffling humans for a long long time. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you, but of course you will worry about it whatever I say… You look puzzled.’
I paused.
And he replied, ‘How do you know?’ Not in a cheeky way. ‘Can you see me?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How?’ he asked keenly. ‘Have you got eyes?’
‘In a way,’ I said cautiously.
‘Have you got a brain? It said in Harry Potter never trust anything if you can’t see where it keeps its brain. Where would you keep your brain?’
Well.
As I had never talked to a human before, I hadn’t any experience of what wonderful and absurd questions they might ask. Of course the boy was just awash with curiosity.
‘My brain is of the spirit,’ I said. ‘So are my eyes.’
‘Yer what?’ he said.
‘The spirit,’ I said. ‘Like – like a ghost. Can a ghost see?’
‘Course,’ said the boy.
‘Do you know where a ghost keeps its brain?’
‘It keeps its ghosty brain in its ghosty head, but anyway I don’t trust a ghost.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘I –’ He thought for a moment. ‘I trust you a lot, but I don’t know what you are and I’m talking to a book and it’s just possible I’ve lost my marbles, or you’re, I dunno, some big trick. I’d like to know what you are.’
‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I was telling you.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Carry on. It’s just…’
‘What?’
‘I’d like to see your face.’
Well, that took me by surprise. My face!
Never underestimate a human…
‘Well, that might be a bit difficult,’ I said. ‘Now may I continue?’
But he wouldn’t let it go.
‘Have you got a face?’ he asked. He was staring at me, rather desperately, as if trying to find a face that he could read and communicate with, a face with warmth and expressions, and eyes revealing the thoughts, and a mouth to smile and a nose to wrinkle, cheeks to crease up with laughter… For human communication the words alone are not enough.
‘Yes, I have a face,’ I admitted. Now why did I tell him that?
‘Where is it?’ he said. ‘Where do you keep it?’
‘Hidden,’ I said, and my tone of voice let him know it was to remain so. ‘Now. Where were we…? Ah yes. Mesopotamia. Nebo spent much time at his great temple at Nineveh. I lived there in the special book-room, in a jar. We were all tidily arranged and catalogued. It was a very pleasant place. The Babylonians and the Assyrians were very organized about libraries, you know. People could come and borrow us. Each tablet had a little tag on it saying what book it was part of, and what number it was, with a curse for bringing it back late. We’d just sit in our jars, waiting…’
I went off in a little dream of the happy quiet days in the library at Nineveh.
I was pulled back by the boy’s voice.
‘And what happened?’
‘The palace was burned,’ I said. ‘The temple was razed to the ground and the library was scattered.’ I could hear the bitterness entering my voice. This was part of the story I did not like to linger on – the first I saw of the worms in human nature, of war and violence and hatred. I gathered myself, and continued: ‘Nebo, after some centuries, moved to Egypt, where he lived as the bird-headed Thoth. Those were good years… He weighed the hearts of men against the feather of truth at their death, and wrote their judgement… In Greece too he was loved. They called him Hermes. In Rome they named him Mercury, and put Mushusshu’s wings on his heels and his helmet. Later, he was required to retreat from the world of men. Rival gods grew up. Judaism and later Christianity… He was no longer loved and respected, and the world of men was no longer a safe place for him.’ I paused. ‘I, meanwhile – due to an oversight – had been borrowed, and the oaf never took me back. He wrote a list on my back of what he was shipping to Memphis – phials of different qualities of oil of roses, if I remember – and gave me to the captain of the felucca –’
‘What’s a felucca?’
‘A boat on the Nile – anyway, I fell in. Plop. And sank. The cool water rushed up over me and enveloped me, and for months I just lay, mingling with mud and watching the pale bellies of the Nile perch swim up and swim down above me, and the reeds blow this way and that, and the pink granite glow beneath the surface of the clear water when the angle of the sun was right, and the lines of the fishermen come down, and rise up, sometimes with a Nile perch on them and sometimes without. Sometimes at night when the water was still and glassy I could see the moon, high up above me, through the water and the night, and I remembered Nebo’s platform by the Tigris and how useful I had been, and how he loved me… I thought I would just wash away altogether…
‘But one day the river was hugely changed – a great movement came upon it, a flowing and flooding and lurching of water, cloudiness and cold washing t
hrough, and all the fishes panicked, and the reeds clutched their patch of mud, and the birds flew up in tatters of fear and the water spread out across the land, so that flowers bloomed underwater like the faces of drowned maidens, and their leaves trailed behind them like their drowned hair. It was the annual great inundation, when the Nile floods the surrounding lands. The mud became water and water became mud, and I was spread across a field of warm swamp, and I settled into a new life around the roots of a papyrus patch.
‘And the next thing I knew was I was green and feathery and waving in the wind, solid and fresh and reaching for the sun, hot and happy. I was like that for many months of the spring and summer, and I enjoyed it very much. I loved to watch the beautiful white egrets, swinging like clean laundry in the acacia trees, and some of them were foolish enough to try and sit on me, which was funny.
‘And then one bright and beautiful morning in the fullness of my feathery days, I was sliced down, and slit open, and my innards were scraped from me with a sharp knife and I was dried out, spread flat, layered and kippered, and cut and trimmed and put out for sale as several fine pages of Hieratica parchment, top quality, very white and clean, much favoured by priests. My trimmings were used for Emporetica – wrapping paper. I lost touch with them.
‘And what did those Egyptian priests do with me? They pasted me together till I was fifty metres long, wrote The Book of the Dead on me, rolled me up and stuck me in with a mummy for the rest of eternity…’
The boy had been staring in gratifying amazement, but at this he found his voice again. ‘What was that like?’ he whispered. ‘I’ve seen mummies. When I was at school we went to the British Museum…’
I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking of real dried-up dead people, and their coffins all covered in curses.
‘Dark,’ I told him. ‘Not lonely, because the tombs were full of magic things. There was a very nice canopic jar which became a particular friend, and the heart scarabs were always sweet – they always chose the gentlest ones for the job. And my darling mice, of course… but the murmurings got a bit much. You know, all I wanted really was light, and air, and life, and people to read me so I could tell them all the stories I know…’
‘You probably don’t like being down here then,’ said Lee. ‘In the dark, and underground again, and all…’
‘Well, I don’t mind,’ I said. And then I rather surprised myself. I found myself saying, ‘It’s nice having you here. You’re interesting – you see…’
I hesitated a moment.
‘What?’ said the boy.
‘This may sound strange,’ I said, ‘especially c nsidering how many many centuries, indeed millennia, I have existed, and how many peasants and slaves and illiterates must have passed by me, but I’ve never really met an illiterate person before… not close up. Because of always being with priests, and in libraries. And in Babylon everybody learned to read and write… I’ve never had to deal with someone who can’t read me.’
The boy, I could see, didn’t know whether to feel big or small.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘It’s quite nice,’ I said. ‘I like that you’re interested in me even though you can’t read me.’
‘Oh,’ said Lee again. ‘Well – of course I am. Real books are no use to me. But you’re different.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Well, thank you,’ he said, and we sat there in silence for a moment. I think we were both a little embarrassed.
‘And thank you for being the Beano,’ he said. ‘I liked that.’
‘You’re welcome.’
What a funny mixture of boy he was! So brave and tough, and yet so sad; a thief, a desperado, but with a heart that left to itself would be as pure as a young stream.
‘Um,’ said the boy, after a while.
‘What, my dear fellow?’ I answered.
‘If we’re to have conversations, I think I ought to know your name. We should introduce ourselves.’
‘Well, you’re Lee,’ I said.
‘How do you know that?’ he asked.
‘Because I know things,’ I said. I wasn’t going to tell him how I know what I know. It’s just there. I catch it, somehow. Or perhaps it was there all along. I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I think that what I have is the ability to catch everything from the humans and not forget it. I’m sure the stories start from the humans, not from me. Certain. How I catch their thoughts and stories and knowledge, I don’t know. But I do.
‘So what do I call you?’ he enquired. ‘Tablet of Destiny seems a little formal, but if you like…’
‘Well, I’m most often known as the Book of Nebo nowadays,’ I said.
‘Bit of a mouthful,’ he observed. ‘What do your friends call you?’
Had I eyes, I would have shot him a look. I just sighed in a very slightly exasperated fashion.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there hasn’t really been any occasion in the past 12,000 years for anybody to address me by name.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘But…’
I just waited for it to sink in.
Finally he exclaimed, ‘What – but – have you never talked to anybody else?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘For 12,000 years?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I’m the first?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But that’s – that’s amazing – that’s completely bliddy –’ He was really really pleased.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘First person a book like you ever talks to is me! Little old Lee, who can’t even read! Ha ha ha!’
His laughter was a delightful sound. After a bit it subsided.
‘So what would you like me to call you?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I could just call you Nebo,’ he suggested.
‘Oh no, no, no,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t think so. We’ll think of a name for me. Later. But now you’ll be getting tired. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.’
I could see he was peeved.
Ah well. Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ‘em wait, as one great story-teller said.
CHAPTER 8
The Story According to Nigella Lurch
My father was a writer, you know. A wonderful writer. Throughout my childhood he would write and write and write and write. I was not allowed to disturb him, of course. His writing was too important. Whenever I rested my head against his study door I would hear him tapping away behind it on his computer. I would sit there for long hours, thinking about how hard he worked and what a great writer he was.
When he came out he was very kind to me. But he didn’t come out that much.
‘Don’t disturb your father, he’s writing,’ my mother would say. When I was very young she would say it sweetly, with an air of excitement. As I grew older the tone gradually changed. I learned to associate the new tone with the fact that although he wrote all the time, there were no books. He was a writer, but he was unpublished. No publisher was bright enough to see how talented he was. It was the great bitterness of his life, and my mother’s. It was a blight on our family.
Well. When I was quite young, we were staying in Cairo. He had taken a job – his first – and everyone was ashamed by it, because great writers should not have to take jobs in museums in Cairo. This was where I first heard of the book. Of course I thought it was nonsense.
My mother was unhappy. My father was aware of this, and shamed by his inability to give her lots of money and a glamorous life. The apartment was too hot, too grubby. There were too many other people. She took rooms instead in a rich-world hotel out by the pyramids, where she could remain cool. Her father paid for it.
My father was working hard, at the museum, and in the evenings writing his novel which was going to change the world. He suggested my mother and I take a trip up the Nile.
‘Temples,’ he suggested. ‘Tombs. Palms. Hippopotamuses!’
My mother yawned.
> ‘Camels! And crocodiles!’ he said, with a cheerful glance at me.
I smiled back at him. It was so lovely to have him chatting with us.
‘A clean, modern white ship with a shady deck, running water, good fresh food, a river breeze,’ he said, and started humming a little Arab tune that sounded like the wind. He very much wanted to please my mother. She looked up. She liked to lie in the sun, reading romances and showing off her legs.
‘A rich-world boat?’ she asked.
‘I was thinking about a small boat, a small party…’
Not up my mother’s street at all. I knew that some people liked to go slumming into what they called ‘reality’, but not my mother.
‘Oh, lord, no,’ said my mother. ‘I should be bored to sobs. Find a nice ship with some fun people. You know. My kind of people. Cocktails? Cards?’
So I found myself on a large shining ship cruising the Nile, having my cheeks pinched by gin-drinking old women, and being sent to bed every night at seven so that my mother had more time to try on all her dresses and powder her nose. In order to annoy her, I pretended to mind very much that I was hardly allowed to visit any of the temples and tombs. In truth I was not at all bothered. Mummies and sphinxes and bird-headed gods from thousands of years ago meant nothing to me. I had seen pictures of these things. Why should I bother to leave the cool and airy ship and go out in the flaming African sun? If my father had been with me to show me it might have been different.
The only person who was at all kind to me was a young lieutenant, John Matthews. I spent most of my time reading, and I had some schoolwork I was meant to complete before our trip was over, so he showed me the small library on the ship, where I was able to inveigle him into going on the Internet, getting me all the information I needed and writing a lot of it up for me. He also tried to interest me in stories and tales of ancient Egypt, and it was he who told me of the legendary Book of Nebo, in which all stories are written.
It was a particularly hot afternoon and I decided to torment him for my amusement.
‘How could all stories be written in one book? No book could be big enough.’