The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  Orphan sighed and rubbed his eyes; he needed a shave. He took another sip of (by now cooling) coffee and continued reading, though his mind wasn't in it: his head was awhirl with images of Lucy, and he kept returning to the night before, to the words they spoke to each other, to their kiss like a seal of the future… He sighed and scratched the beginning of a beard and decided he'd take the afternoon off to go see her. Let Jack do some work, for a change: he, Orphan, had better things to do on this day.

  "Though there is official silence regarding the investigation (Kipling continued) this reporter has managed to make a startling discovery. It has come to my attention that, though Irving's co-star, the young Beerbohm, was apparently killed in the explosion alongside his master, a man corresponding exactly to Beerbohm's description was taken in for questioning earlier today! If Beerbohm is still alive, who was the man delivering the book on stage? If, indeed, it was a man at all…"

  The doorbell rang again, and Orphan lifted his head at the new set of approaching footsteps. He knew who it would be before looking. At that time of day, in this shop, no casual browser was likely to come in. Only members of what Orphan, only half-jokingly, had come to call the Parliament of Payne.

  "Greetings, young Orphan!" said a booming voice, and a hand reached out and plucked a well-worn penny from behind Orphan's ear. Orphan grinned up at John Maskelyne. "Hello, Nevil."

  Maskelyne frowned and scratched his bushy moustache. "No one," he said, "dares use my second name, you lout." He threw the coin in the air, where it disappeared. "Jack in?"

  Orphan mutely nodded towards the basement door.

  "Good, good," Maskelyne said, but he seemed in no hurry to depart. He began wandering around the shop, pulling books at random from the shelves, humming to himself. "Have you heard about Beerbohm?" his disembodied voice called from the black hole of the COOKERY – BEETON TO GOODFELLOW section. "Rumour has it the police found him trussed up like a turkey with its feathers plucked out, but alive and safely tucked away at home, if a little dazed around the edges."

  "I'm sure that it must be a mistake," Orphan called back. "I was at the Rose last night and I can assure you Beerbohm was as effectively made extinct as the dodo." He tried to follow Maskelyne's route through the shop; now he could see the top of his head, peeking behind the BERBER COOKERY shelf; a moment later, his voice rose from the other end of the room, muttering the words of an exotic recipe as if trying to memorise it. Then Orphan blinked, and when his eyes reopened, only a fraction of a second later, the magician stood before him once again, his eyes twinkling. "I hope I didn't give you a start."

  Orphan, who luckily had laid the coffee back on the counter a moment earlier, waved his hand as if to say, think nothing of it. "He is still alive, young Orphan," Maskelyne said, and his countenance was no longer cheery, but deep in an abyss of dark thoughts. "And what's more, no doctor was called to treat the man at the Rose. Let me riddle you this, my friend. When is a man not a man?"

  He opened his hand, showing it empty. He laid it, for a moment, on the surface of the counter, and when it was raised a small toy rested on the wood, a little manlike doll with a key at its back. "Come to the Egyptian Hall when you next have need of counsel," the magician said, almost, it seemed to Orphan, sadly, and then he turned away and was gone through the door to the basement.

  But Orphan had no time to think further of the magician's words. No sooner had Maskelyne departed that the door chimed again, and in walked an elegant lady. Enter the third murderer, Orphan thought, and hurriedly came around the counter to hold the door. It was the woman for whom an entire section of a bookcase was dedicated, and he had always felt awed in her presence. "Mrs Beeton!"

  "Hello, Orphan," said Isabella Beeton cordially. "You look positively radiant today. Could it be that the rays of marital bliss have finally chanced upon illuminating your countenance?"

  Orphan grinned and shut the door carefully after her. "Can't get anything past you," he said, and Isabella Beeton smiled and patted his shoulder.

  "I know the look," she said. "Also, Jack did happen to mention something of the sort in this morning's missive. Congratulations." She walked past, her long dress held up demurely lest it come in touch with the dusty floor. "I won't keep you, Orphan. You are no doubt eager to go in pursuit of your newly bound love." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled at him; her hair was gold, still, though woven with fine white strands that resembled silk. "Our number is complete. Go, seek out Tom, and get that idle fellow to replace you. Your watch is done."

  And, so saying, she too disappeared through the small door that led to Jack's basement, and was gone.

  Orphan managed to locate Tom Thumb in his quarters near Charing Cross Station, and after rousing the small man from his slumber extracted from him a promise to take his place at the shop for the day.

  "Bleedin' poets," Tom Thumb muttered as he exchanged his pyjamas for a crumpled suit. "Always bleating of love and flowers and sheep grazing in fields. The only sheep I like are ones resting on a spit."

  "I owe you one," Orphan said, grinning, and Tom shook his head and buttoned his shirt and said, "I've heard that one before, laddie. Just show me the shekels."

  "Soon as Jack pays me," Orphan promised, and before Tom could change his mind he was out of the door and walking down the Strand, whistling the latest tune from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore.

  He crossed the river at Westminster, still whistling. Already, on the other side of the river, he could see the whales, and their song rose to meet him, weaving into his whistle like a chorus. He felt light and clear-headed, and he stepped jauntily on, descending the steps towards the figure that was standing on the water's edge.

  "Orphan?"

  He was suddenly shy. Lucy, turning, regarded him with a dazzling smile. Behind her, a whale rose to the surface and snorted, and a cloud of fine mist rose and fell in the air.

  "I missed you," Orphan said, simply.

  They stood and grinned at each other. The whale exhaled again, breathed, and disappeared inside the blue-green waters of the Thames.

  "I hoped you'd come," Lucy said. Her eyes, he noticed, were large and bright, the colour of the water. Sun speckled her irises.

  He said, "I'd follow you anywhere," and Lucy laughed, a surprised, delighted sound, and kissed him.

  Later, he would remember that moment. Everything seemed to slow, the wheel of the sun burning through the whale's cloud of breath and breaking into a thousand little rainbows; a cool breeze blew but he was warm, his fingers intertwined with Lucy's, and her lips tasted hot, like cinnamon-spiced tea. He whispered, "I love you," and knew it was true.

  He saw his face reflected in her eyes. She blinked. She was crying. "I love you too," she said, and for a long moment, the world was entirely still.

  Then they came apart, the cloud of mist dispersed, blown apart by the breeze, and the sun resumed its slow course across the sky. Lucy, pointing at a bucket that stood nearby, said, "Help me feed the whales?" and Orphan, in response, purposefully grabbed the stillwrithing tentacles of a squid and threw it in an arc into the river.

  A baby whale rose, exhaled loudly (the sound like a snort of laughter), and descended with its prey.

  On the opposite bank of the river Big Ben began to chime, and the strikes sounded, momentarily, like the final syllables of a sonnet.

  FOUR

  Gilgamesh

  And all the while his blind brown fingers

  Traced a webbed message in the dirt

  That said

  Gilgamesh was here.

  – L.T., "The Epic of Gilgamesh"

  When they parted it was dusk, and the first stars were rising, winking into existence like baleful eyes. Orphan felt buoyant: and he was going to see Lucy again that night, at Richmond-upon-Thames, for the Martian probe ceremony. He'd promised he'd be there as soon as he saw Gilgamesh again. The truth was, he was worried about his old friend. He was the closest thing to a family Orphan ever had. Gilgamesh lived rough,
and the years had not been kind to him. "Seven-thirty!" Lucy said as she kissed him a last time. "And don't be late!"

  He walked the short distance along the embankment to Waterloo Bridge. He thought he'd talk with Gilgamesh, but when he reached the arches there was no sign of his old friend there.

  Orphan called for him; his voice came back in a dreary echo. He went closer to the edge of the water. There was the small ring of stones where Gilgamesh's fire had burned. Cold ash lay between the stones, dark and fine. "Gilgamesh?" he called again, but all was quiet; even the sounds of the whales had died down, so that Orphan felt himself in a vast silence that stretched all around him, across the waters and into the city itself. "Gilgamesh?"

  Then he saw it. An arc of dark spots, leading from the fire towards the river. He bent down and touched them with his fingers, and they came back moist.

  He looked around him wildly. What had happened? Resting against the wall he found Gilgamesh's blanket. It was stained, in great dark spots, with a smell that left a metallic taste in the back of his throat.

  But not blood.

  Oil? Or, he thought for a moment, ridiculously – ink?

  The blanket was torn. No, he saw. Not torn. Cut, with a sharp implement, like a knife… or a scythe.

  He rolled the old blanket open, panic mounting. What had happened to Gilgamesh? The blanket was empty, but soaked in some dark liquid. Wide gashes opened in the dirty cloth like gaping mouths.

  Orphan knew he should call the police. But what would they do? They had better things to do than worry about an old beggar, with the explosion at the Rose and the Ripper loose in Whitechapel. He stood up, pulling away from the blanket. His hands were smudged.

  Orphan felt ill, and panic settled in the pit of his stomach like a snake, coiling slowly awake and rising with a hiss. What had happened? What could he do?

  The silence lay all around him. He could hear no birds and no traffic. The light had almost disappeared entirely, and the world was one hair's breadth away from true and total darkness.

  Frightened, he nevertheless followed the arc of spilled ink from the dead fire to the water's edge. He bent down to the river and washed his hands in the cold, murky water.

  It occurred to him that Gilgamesh's fishing-rod, too, was missing. He looked sideways and down, but could see nothing.

  Then a curious sound made him turn. It came from the water, to his left, a clinking sound, like champagne glasses touching. Still crouching, he made his way carefully to the left, his fingers running against the side of the embankment. The stones were slimy and cold, unpleasant to the touch – then he found it. His fingers encountered something solid and round, and the sound stopped.

  It was a tall round shape made of smooth glass, and it was tied with a fishing line, Orphan discovered, to a rusting hook that protruded underwater from the side of the embankment. His fingers growing numb with cold, he managed to untie it and finally lifted his find from the water. It was a bottle.

  Raised voices came suddenly from the river path and Orphan, jolted, withdrew into the darkness of the arches. The final rays of the sun faded and now the streetlamps began to come alive all along the river, winking into existence one by one, casting a comforting yellow haze across the darkened world. His heart beating fast, Orphan waited in the safety of the shadows until the voices, sounding drunk, passed. Then, clutching the bottle in his hands, he hurried away from the bridge, away from the blood-like substance and the dark absence of his friend. For when he withdrew it from the water Orphan recognised two things about the bottle: that it was the one he had brought Gilgamesh only the night before, the stolen bottle of Chateau des Rêves, and that though it had been emptied of wine it was not yet empty: for the bottle was sealed tight, and a dry sheaf of paper rustled inside it, like a caged butterfly the colour of sorrow, waiting to be freed.

  He took shelter on the other side of the river, in the welcoming, warm and well-lit halls of Charing Cross Station. He stood alone amidst the constant, hurried movement of people to and from the great waiting trains that stood like giant metal beasts of burden along the platforms, bellowing smoke and steam into the cool night air. His back against the wall, the smell of freshly baked pastries from a nearby stall wafting past him, Orphan broke the crude seal on the bottle and withdrew, with great care, the sheaf of paper that nestled inside.

  Gilgamesh's jagged handwriting ran along the page in cramped and hurried lines that left no blank space. It was addressed – and here Orphan stopped, for he felt cold again despite the warmth of the station, and his fingers tingled as if still dipped in the cold water of the Thames – to him.

  Alone amidst the masses of humanity at the great station of Charing Cross, his ears full of the short, sharp whistle-blows from the platforms and their accompanying clacking of wheels as trains accelerated away into the dark, and his stomach (despite all that he had found) rumbling quietly at the pervading smells of pastries baking and coffee brewing, he began reading Gilgamesh's letter to him:

  My Dear Orphan –

  As I write this a hot explosion lights up (I imagine) the skies above the Thames, and rather than worry I am exhilarated – for that ball of fire and heat is a signal, and it tells me of my impending doom. I shall try to post this to you, but already I grow anaesthetised and dull, for I do not believe I will have the time. He is coming back for me, me who had been forgotten for all those centuries. But the Bookman never forgets, and his creations are forever his –

  You scoffed when I spoke of the Bookman. You called him nothing but a legend. But the Bookman is real, as real – more so – than I am. Who am I, Orphan? You and I played together in believing me Gilgamesh, the lone remnant of an ancient civilisation, a poet-warrior of a bygone age. We were humouring each other, I think – though the truth is not that far from the fiction, perhaps. In either case you, of all people, deserve to know–

  Every creed has its myth of immortals. The sailors have their Flying Dutchman, the explorers their Vespucci, the Jews their Lamed-Vav. Poets, perhaps, have Gilgamesh–

  I, too, have been immortal. Until the knife descends I shall be immortal still, but that, I fear, is soon to end. Who was I? I, too, was a poet, and of the worst kind – one with delusions of grandeur. When Vespucci went on his voyage of exploration I went with him, for there must always be someone to record great discoveries. I was with him on Caliban's Island, when he roused Les Lézards from their deep slumber in the deep metal chambers inside the great crater at the heart of that terrible island. Almost alone, I managed to escape, blinded by the terrible sights I had seen. I took to sea and for days I floated, half-crazed and dying. When at last he found me I had all but departed this earth–

  He – fixed me? Healed me? But he did more than that – and he took the knowledge of the island from me, and then let me go. But he had not repaired my sight. Perhaps, already, he thought I had seen too much–

  I had thought he had forgotten me, but the Bookman never forgets.

  Now, I fear, he is coming back for me, and perhaps it would finally be an end. Perhaps I could rest, now, after all the cold long years. But I fear him, and know that he would not rest, not until what was started on that cursed island can be brought to an end. He is bound with the lizards, I believe, and vengeful. Perhaps he was theirs, once. Their stories are interlinked–

  But why, you ask, I am telling you this? Perhaps because I suspect you, too, will have a role to play in this unfolding tragedy. Perhaps because I knew your father, who was a good man, and your mother, who you didn't know–

  No. I have not the heart to tell their story. Not now. For me, as I sit here, alone, on the water's edge, waiting for him to come, no words remain, and language withers. Only a final warning will I deliver to you, my friend: beware the books, for they are his servants. Above all, beware the Bookman.

  Yours, in affection–

  Gilgamesh

  Orphan, stunned, leaning against the wall as if seeking support in the solid stone, scanned the letter again
, the words leaping up at him like dark waves against a shore. He felt pounded by them, and fearful. His vision blurred and he blinked, finding that tears, unbidden, unwanted, were the cause. He wiped them away, and a drop fell onto the page, near Gilgamesh's signature, and he noticed something he had missed.