Topics About Which I Know Nothing

by Patrick Ness

  Hitler Tried to Fake the Second Coming

  ‘I heard this on the radio when I was driving through the country one day. There was this historian, a German historian, I think, who’d found evidence that Hitler had started a plot to fake the Second Coming of Christ. It’s true. It was all part of that, um, that Third Reich thing being blessed by some sort of supernatural power and being historically founded on Aryan myths.

  ‘It didn’t start out that way, of course. At first, they tried to invent a new religion for Germans to believe in during the war. Things like, uh, the Christ child was really supposed to be the Winter Child for Christmas, and it was a festive season rather than a Christian one with Northern Gods bringing gifts and good luck to the Germans fighting in the war.

  ‘Well, it didn’t work, surprise, surprise. Even the Germans weren’t ready to give up Christmas, and this guy said there’s archive footage of people having a pretty miserable time trying to pretend that it wasn’t really Christmas, that it was this Nordic, Aryan Festival-type thing. The people were unhappy with it but tried to play along because the Führer said so. But again, even Hitler, as insane as he was, could tell that everyone was pretty unhappy about it. There was the war going on, too, which didn’t help.

  ‘So Hitler got together with his, um, Third-Reich planning committee people and wondered if they were taking the wrong track. This historian guy on the radio - actually, he might have been a call-in guest - said that there were extended, um, extant? Is that a word? There were extant records of these meetings that were all done in code because he didn’t want anyone to find out what he was up to, but this, uh, this caller, I think he was a historian, he had cracked the code and found out the most amazing thing.

  ‘Since Hitler couldn’t quite kill Christianity, he thought he’d take it over by, um, sort of staging the Second Coming. They decided they’d have Christ be this blond, blue-eyed Aryan fellow, which is what I’d always thought Christ looked like anyway, but I guess not, if you think about it. They’d even gone as far as finding someone to play him. This soldier, called Hans, uh, something, who was part of the Reich’s Elite Forces, SS or SAS or SSS or whatever it is, and they did some plastic surgery on him so no one would recognise him. What would happen, the plan, was to have him make an appearance at Easter in 1945 when things weren’t going so well for them in the war. And they’d have him appear to an army unit which would be supposed to have filmed it, but they had a special film already made, of course, with special effects and so on. Then they were going to introduce him to the world media with people planted in the audience for him to perform miracles on. Water and wine, and, um, fishes and loaves, and things like that.

  ‘The whole point, according to this guy on the radio-I can’t remember what university he worked for or why he was calling in but he seemed really passionate - the point was to try and convince the world’s Christians that God was on Hitler’s side and to delay the armies of the world long enough for Hitler to win the war. At which point, Hitler would declare himself the father of Christ, uh, which would make him God Himself, I guess. The whole project was only abandoned because the soldier they picked died of flu, and then it was just too much trouble to train anyone else. And then the war ended.

  ‘I can’t remember what radio program it was, but I’m sure it’s true.’

  Henry Kissinger Is the Antichrist

  ‘Hey, hey, that one is not an urban myth at all! Listen …’

  quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

  1

  The only applicant for the janitorial position was ___________, a hermaphrodite whose name was impossible.

  Over half-spectacles (kept on a leather lariat around his leathery lariat of a neck), Pemberton glowered at ___________ with a look he hoped was penetrating and scrutinising, a look he had spent considerable time failing to perfect in all the empty hours that were the onus of the keeper of dead languages. Pemberton’s official title was Associate Dictionary Writer - Dead Languages Division, but unlike the other ADWs, he did little actual writing. Or rather, he did no actual writing. Once in a great while he fended off an attack on the integrity of a Latinate or, even less often, stubbornly maintained the strictures of a millennia-old African language to the exasperation of a post-Lacanian archaeologist, but usually he just sat or doodled or fidgeted or generally whiled, ex officio a guardian of corpses in the land of the living. It gave him the opportunity to practice the odd incisive glance, the disdainful pucker, the punctuating fart.

  Which was why the Head Dictionary Writer had selected him to perform the interview. Everyone else was too busy.

  Pemberton cleared his throat.

  ___________ exhaled lightly.

  Pemberton opened his eyes wide as a conversational transition.

  ___________ sat unblinking.

  Pemberton said, ‘Mmm-hmmph!’ with what he hoped sounded like conviction.

  ___________ cocked his/her head slightly.

  Truth to tell, Pemberton hadn’t the slightest idea whether s/he was qualified or not. How could he possibly be expected to know, a posteriori or a priori? He was an ADW, for pity’s sake. Who was he to evaluate the qualifications of a broom-pusher? What possible criteria was to be used? How could one judge a person, a living thing, against a printed curriculum vitae? And for that matter, what kind of apologia pro vita sua would be satisfactory for a custodian?

  But there were no other applicants, Deo gratias, so he was freed from having to make a decision.

  ‘It’s not a difficult job,’ Pemberton said, ‘but it is one we expect to be done exceptionally well. We are busy people, scholarly people, and ipso facto we do not concern ourselves with dust.’ He paused, wondering whether he had emphasised the correct syllable. ‘We have exceedingly high standards,’ he tried.

  ‘I understand,’ ___________ said, neither unfolding his/her hands nor uncrossing his/her legs.

  ‘Good,’ said Pemberton, surprised that someone did, ‘as long as we’re clear.’ He himself was entirely unclear in re the situation. He really had no idea what the Head wanted in or even with a janitor, but as an Associate he was grateful to be able to bow to a higher authority. ‘You will start immediately,’ he said. ‘Did you bring your own equipment?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said ___________, his/her face giving away nothing.

  2

  The Head Dictionary Writer had a perfectly good reason for wanting a janitor: the room where the Dictionaries were written was dirty. Even here, in this place, a certain amount of dust could be expected to collect. True, the room was as hermetic as life allowed, but the Associate Dictionary Writers (Larksley and Felix in particular, though there was really no need to name names) need be allowed some small carriage of dirt and grime. An exceedingly small amount, to be sure, but over time, over a very long time, the tables had become smudged, the window (for there was only the one) cloudy, the floor cluttered, et alii and et cetera.

  The Head had noticed the grime a-piling. Despite being aware of the potential consequences, perhaps even more than he realised, he decreed that a janitor should be hired. The Associate Dictionary Writers, all eighteen of them, acquiesced because the Head was the Head. He knew all the languages. All of them. All seventy-eight thousand, three hundred and forty-four of them, living and dead. The Associate Dictionary Writers knew their share, of course; each was in charge of sections, geographic or thematic, and each had a good handle on at least three or four thousand, but it was the Head who knew them all. He was the Head. That was the way it was. That was the way it had always been.

  At least, so far as anyone could remember.

  The Head had said they needed a janitor. It had been done promptly and most efficaciously, consensu omnium.

  3

  ___________ worked his/her first shift that very night. At the request of the Head, s/he started after all the Dictionary Writers had made their exits so they would not be disturbed by his/her presence. The Head knew the ADWs could be disturbed by the presence of a strong opinion
or too bright overhead lighting or the wrong aftershave; a cleaning hermaphrodite could conceivably trigger aneurysms.

  And so, with only the languages and a stipend’s worth of new supplies for company, ___________ began with the window. S/he cleaned it with vinegar and a rag, believing the old-fashioned way to be the best, erasing a layer of grime and stubborn flakes of limescale. S/he took the rest of the room top down. Light fixtures, then desks and tables, then chairs. S/he worked long and well, dusting and polishing the wooden tables, chipping off elderly pieces of gum, smoothing over well-worn scratches.

  Six hours in, it was at last time for the floor. S/he decided on the classic sweep/mop/wax three-step, brushing away ancient candy-wrappers and hairballs (shed from the ever-balding ADWs), then running a steaming mop over the wooden lacquer of the floor. A wax that smelt of pummelled oranges gave the darkened room a floor of mercury, reflecting shadows and starlight back up to the dictionaries, to the languages almost audibly humming on shelf after shelf. ___________Fancied s/he could hear them trying to speak from their volumes, reaching out for him/her or anyone to talk to.

  What would they say, these dictionaries on their perches? What did they say to the listening ear?

  Morning approached. His/her shift neared its end. S/he inspected his/her work as the sun climbed to its place in the newly transparent window. The night’s work had paid obvious dividends. This single libris under his/her care was as clean as a showroom, as antiseptic as newspaper. It sparkled and shone, glistened and gleamed.

  There would be considerably less to do on following nights, s/he realised.

  4

  The Head was impressed. From the first day of ___________ ‘s hiring and in the days that followed, the room where the Dictionaries were written had never looked so nice, so clean, so crisp, not even on his first day as Head when the room had been brand new once again. In fact, this morning, with the sun glaring off a floor shiny enough to blind, the room was so clean he almost frowned. Almost.

  He was the first one in, as usual, as necessary. The ADWs, his dramatis personae, waddled into work in ones and twos as the morning slowly aged. Albert and Larksley, Franklin, Rowan and Montague, Pemberton and Ethelred and the rest, a shuffling, crumply, droopy bunch, a source of comforting bad smells and gentle paranoia about anything new. Their bodies were apple-shaped to a man, varying only in minor degrees from a rotund Tolliver to an obese Rupert, and there were times when even the Head himself got confused as to who was who, their distinct identities disappearing in a flurry of dirty cuffs and moustache crumbs.

  But, as created, they were loyal, dedicated and capable, and if they were not particularly bracing or, heaven help us, innovative, the Head did not require them to be so.

  ‘Permission to insist on the capitalisation of “Internet”, sir,’ asked Delbert.

  ‘In which language?’ the Head asked.

  Delbert swallowed, his chins gulping in a nervous rhythm. ‘All of them, Sir.’

  The Head sighed. ‘We’ve had this discussion before, Delbert …’

  ‘I know, sir, but -’

  ‘You’re already losing the battle.’

  ‘Already lost, more like it,’ said an eavesdropping Marmaduke sotto voce. Several ADWs snickered. Delbert was the unfortunate ADW in charge of English, the most hair-pullingly impure and disobedient language of them all. The other ADWs regarded him with a mixture of pity and disdain, though none of them could have done any better and they knew it. The Head ignored the interruption.

  ‘You have to let it go,’ he said.

  ‘But I let so many things go, sir,’ Delbert said, looking as beaten as a bearded man could. ‘“Microwave” as a verb, the invention of “alright”, don’t even get me started on “hopefully” …’

  ‘I know, Delbert, but you have to pick your fights. Remember what we discussed about the forthcoming text message assaults?’

  Delbert shivered involuntarily, and a low murmur wandered around the room. When language started responding to the abbreviation wave, things were going to get ugly.

  ‘Save your strength,’ said the Head.

  ‘But sir -’

  ‘Dixi,’ the Head said, gently.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Delbert returned to his desk, looking downtrodden.

  ‘Hey, Delbert,’ the Head called across the working brows of his ADWs.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Are you still interested in inventing more British spelling variants?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Head smiled. ‘Why not see what we can do about that?’

  Delbert beamed (as much as a bearded man could beam). ‘Yes, sir!’

  The work carried on.

  5

  The work, what there was of it, carried on. ___________ had almost nothing to do. The room was designed to need very little cleaning, so the barest minimum after the first huge job was all that was necessary.

  But ___________ was never bored. If you could see him/her on any night, s/he would never seem to be doing much, sometimes sitting at a random table, looking through an ADW’s work (Marmaduke’s, say, with his red corrective script that leant leftwards and an eraser that, for some reason, he kept chained to his inkwell; or Pemberton’s, with its comparatively empty scratchpads and alphabetised lists of his favourite linguistic zombies: ‘festina lente’ or ‘inter spem et metum’ or ‘ne cede malis’ (Pemberton was an optimistic caretaker). Sometimes ___________ would just stand and stare at the dictionaries on the shelves. Never opening one, never taking one down, never doing more than slow, thoughtful movements, never even singing to him/herself.

  But never bored. No, never that.

  And then one night, whilst giving the room a peremptory sweep from perimeter to centre, s/he found, just under the edge of the central table, a book lying on the floor. The word ‘Belgian’ was discernible among seventy-eight thousand, three hundred, forty-three other interpretations of the word ‘Belgian’. The Dictionary was suffering severe book rot. Bright brown dust from the cover and spine disintegrated on his/her fingers and drifted in clouds onto his/her white uniform. The pages were well thumbed, sometimes torn, often badly repaired with Sellotape and Tipp-Ex. Smudges covered nearly every inch, and what wasn’t smudged was yellow with great, great age, greater even than the room, which, ___________ thought, shouldn’t actually have been possible.