The City of Dreaming Books

by Moers, Walter

  You’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned . . .

  Was this death? Was it death when the last thing you’ve seen, heard or thought is endlessly repeated until your body finally decomposes?

  You’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned, you’ve just been poisoned . . .

  All at once I saw light again, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I would, if capable of doing so, have uttered a startled cry. What was happening to me?

  Then I saw Pfistomel Smyke. All I could make out at first was his vague silhouette, but the image became more and more distinct. He was bending over me and beside him stood . . . Yes, believe it or not, it was Claudio Harpstick, the friendly Hoggling and literary agent! They were regarding me with curiosity.

  ‘He’s coming round,’ said Harpstick.

  ‘This is the active phase,’ said Smyke. ‘Amazing how well the poison still works after all these years.’

  I tried to say something, but my lips appeared to be sealed. My eyesight was steadily improving, however - indeed, it had never seemed as keen or clear before. The two figures emitted an unnatural radiance. I could make out every hair and pore as distinctly as if I were looking at them through a magnifying glass.

  ‘I’m sure you’d like to give me a piece of your mind,’ said Smyke, ‘but the poison paralyses the tongue as effectively as it stimulates the eyes and ears. You’re temporarily endowed with the eyesight of a Gloomberg eagle and the hearing of a bat, but please don’t be alarmed. Your body will remain entirely paralysed and soon you’ll relapse into profound unconsciousness. That’s all the poison will do to you, however. You won’t die of it, you’ll simply go to sleep and wake up again. Do you understand?’

  I tried to nod but couldn’t move a muscle.

  ‘Oh dear, how tactless of me!’ Smyke exclaimed and Harpstick gave an asinine laugh.

  ‘How could you have answered? Well, I may lack manners but I don’t murder people - that I leave to others. Plenty of merciless creatures down here are only too happy to relieve me of that dirty work.’

  ‘Quite,’ Harpstick said impatiently, glancing around with an anxious expression. ‘Let’s get out of here, Pfisto.’

  Smyke ignored him. It was incredible how clearly I could see them both. They seemed to glow from within in cold, unreal colours. My pupils must have expanded to an extraordinary extent and my heart was pumping three times as fast as usual, yet my body was as stiff as a board. I was a living corpse.

  ‘Yes, my friend,’ said Smyke, and his voice sounded painfully loud and harsh, ‘you scratched at the surface of Bookholm a trifle too hard. We’ve taken you deep into the catacombs beneath the city - so deep that we had to lay a very, very long string to guide us back. Look on this as a form of exile. I could have killed you, but this is far more romantic. Console yourself with the thought that you’re going to meet the same end as Colophonius Regenschein. He made the same mistake as you. He confided in the wrong person. Me, in other words.’

  Harpstick emitted a nervous laugh. ‘We ought to get going now,’ he said.

  Smyke gave me a friendly smile. ‘And please regard it as part of your punishment that I can’t explain about the manuscript. It’s a long story and I really don’t have the time.’

  ‘Come on,’ urged Harpstick.

  ‘Look,’ said Smyke, ‘the passive phase is starting, you can tell by his shrinking pupils.’

  I was overcome by profound weariness.

  ‘Pupils . . . pupils . . . pupils . . . pupils . . .’ Smyke’s voice steadily faded in a series of dwindling echoes. I was being snuffed out like a candle flame in the wind. It went dark again.

  ‘Goodnight, my friend,’ said Smyke. ‘And give my regards to the Shadow King when you see him.’

  I heard Harpstick utter another mirthless laugh. Then I lost consciousness.

  The Hazardous Books

  My first thought on coming to was that I was hallucinating, and that another trombophone concert had deluded me into believing myself in the catacombs of Bookholm. I was looking down an endless passage lined on either side with bookcases and lit by jellyfish lamps.

  However, it dawned on me as my anaesthetised body gradually lost its rigidity that I really was in the labyrinth beneath the city. I was half lying, half sitting with my back propped against a bookcase. I felt the warmth seeping back into my feet, legs, torso and head in turn. At length I rose with a groan and patted the dust from my cloak.

  I wasn’t overcome with panic, strangely enough, perhaps because my nerves were still too benumbed by the poison. What also served to calm me was the venerable company of so many old books. Yes, dear readers, despite this unpleasant and surprising turn of events I felt thoroughly optimistic. I was alive. I had lost my way in one of Bookholm’s subterranean bookshops, that was all. This was no dark and savage underworld: it contained passages, lights, bookcases and books. The books themselves were the clearest indication that people had found their way down here and returned to the surface. There were hundreds of exits somewhere overhead. I need only look for long enough - even if it took days - and I would be bound to find one. Smyke and Harpstick couldn’t have dragged me very far, the fat slobs. They looked much too unathletic for that.

  So I set off, trying to analyse my predicament as I went. Yes, there was no doubt about it: Pfistomel Smyke and Claudio Harpstick, my supposed friends, were really my most dangerous enemies in Bookholm. Years of seclusion in Lindworm Castle seemed to have done little to educate me in the ways of the world. I was far too trusting.

  Precisely what they had against me remained a mystery, however. Or was I just a random victim of theirs? Were they something in the nature of book pirates, an experienced team that preyed on unsuspecting visitors? Harpstick had deliberately lured me into the spider’s web at 333 Darkman Street, that much was certain. They were doubtless selling my manuscript to some wealthy collector at this minute. It was probably lost for ever, which meant that my search for its mysterious author was at an end. Reflecting on that sad circumstance, I instinctively felt for the vanished manuscript - and promptly found it in one of the pockets of my cloak!

  I came to a halt, took it out and stared at it in disbelief. Smyke must have stuffed it into my pocket - he had banished it to the catacombs in my company. But that didn’t make sense; it only made everything more mysterious still!

  He was afraid of the manuscript, that must be his motive - afraid it might become public knowledge. He considered it dangerous for some reason, so dangerous that he wasn’t content to hide it in his underground library and wanted to get rid of it altogether - it and me both. What perturbed him about it? And why had it thrown such a scare into Kibitzer and the Uggly? Were they in league with Smyke and Harpstick? Had I missed something - had I failed to detect some hidden message decipherable only by experienced antiquarians and literary scholars? No matter how hard I stared at the manuscript, it refused to disclose its secret. I replaced it in my pocket and walked on.

  Books, nothing but books. I was careful not to touch any. The more the poison’s effect on my system waned, the more suspiciously I eyed them. I would never again open a book without hesitating first. Printed matter had lost its innocence for me. The Hazardous Books! How urgently Regenschein’s memoirs had warned me against them! He had devoted a whole chapter to Toxicotomes. It all came back to me now - now that it was too late.

  The story of the Hazardous Books had probably originated when one book pirate stove in another’s skull with a weighty tome. It had become clear at that historic juncture that books were potentially lethal, and from then on the ways in which they could wreak havoc multiplied and underwent refinement over the centuries.

  The Bookhunters’ book traps were only one variant. Mainly for the purpose of eliminating competitors, they fabricated imitations of especially valuable and sought-after works, which rese
mbled the originals perfectly on the outside but were equipped inside with lethal devices. The hollowed-out interiors contained poisoned darts and firing mechanisms, needle-sharp slivers of glass propelled by tiny catapults, caustic acids in hypodermic syringes or toxic gases in airtight cylinders. One had only to open such a book to be blinded, badly injured or killed. Bookhunters armed themselves against these contrivances with masks, helmets, chain-mail shirts, iron gauntlets and other protective garments - in fact, book traps were the main reason for their fanciful martial attire.

  Toxicotomes impregnated with poisons transmissible by touch had been particularly popular in the Zamonian Middle Ages. They were used to remove political opponents and topple kings, but also to eliminate rival authors or persistently hostile reviewers. The wealth of imagination with which the Bookemists of the era had developed a multitude of such poisons was extremely impressive. Contact with a single page could strike you deaf and/or dumb, paralyse or drive you mad, infect you with an incurable disease or send you to your eternal rest. Many toxins induced lethal paroxysms of laughter or loss of memory, delirium or the shakes. Others caused your hair and teeth to fall out or desiccated your tongue. There was even a poison which, if you came into contact with it, filled your ears with a chorus of voices so shrill and piercing that you ended by jumping out of a window of your own accord. The book that had drugged me was innocuous by comparison.

  According to Colophonius Regenschein, a certain publisher of this period had not only impregnated one copy of each of his editions with a deadly contact poison but actually advertised the fact. You would have thought that such books would languish on the shelves, but the opposite happened. They sold like hot cakes because they offered a thrill no normal book could provide: a frisson of genuine danger. They were the most exciting books on the market. People read them with hands atremble and foreheads filmed with sweat, no matter how boring their contents. Books of this kind were especially popular with retired soldiers and elderly adventurers who could not afford to expose themselves to undue physical exertion for health reasons.

  Toxicotomes had gone out of fashion at the end of the Zamonian Middle Ages because their dissemination was incompatible with modern laws. What now spread fear and consternation were Analphabetic Terrortomes, imitations and developments of book traps smuggled into bookshops by a radical sect of bibliophobes. When someone opened an Analphabetic Terrortome the entire bookshop blew up. The sect that manufactured these bombs had no name because its members were opposed to words on principle. They also rejected sentences, paragraphs, chapters, novels, any form of prose, any form of verse and books in general. To them, commercial establishments that sold books constituted an affront to their fanatical illiteracy and were hotbeds of evil that had to be wiped off the face of Zamonia. They smuggled their treacherous explosive volumes into bookshops and libraries, concealed them among popular bestsellers and beat a retreat. It wouldn’t be long, they reckoned, before no one dared to open a book at all.

  However, they had underestimated the passion for literature common among Zamonians, who were quite prepared to risk getting their heads blown off for the sake of a good read. Explosions became rarer as time went by and the sect eventually broke up because its leader blew off his own head while constructing a bomb that detonated prematurely. For all that, opening books remained a risky business. Analphabetic Terrortomes might still be lurking anywhere, even after centuries, because vast numbers had been put into circulation. Hence the sporadic destruction of antiquarian bookshops in particular, some of which were reduced to little more than deep craters. Fifteen of them had been blown sky-high in Bookholm alone.

  There were as many Hazardous Books in Zamonia as there were reasons for wishing someone ill. Among the motives that prompted their manufacture were revenge, greed, envy and resentment - and, when jealousy or unrequited love were involved, infatuation. Poisoned dog-ears with razor-sharp edges, vignettes whose touch arrested the breathing, ex-libris impregnated with olfactory poisons - nothing remained untried. Those who habitually moistened their fingertips with saliva when turning pages were more at risk than most because they might convey tiny amounts of poison from the paper to their tongues and then collapse, gasping for breath, their lips flecked with bloodstained foam. Small cuts sustained from gilt-edged pages infected with bacteria could cause blood poisoning. Encoded posthypnotic commands hidden in Bookemists’ books were capable, days later, of causing their readers to jump off a cliff into the sea or drink a pint of mercury.

  As time went by, stories about the Hazardous Books proliferated to such an extent that it became almost impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction. The catacombs of Bookholm were reputed to contain books capable of self-propulsion, books that could crawl or even fly, books more ferocious and voracious than many a predator or insect - books that could only be defeated by force of arms.

  It was rumoured that some books whispered and groaned in the dark while others strangled people with bookmark ribbons if they nodded off while reading them. It could even happen that a reader was devoured alive by a Hazardous Book and never seen again. All that remained was his empty armchair with the book lying open on it, his sole memorial the fact that it now featured a new protagonist who bore his name.

  Such were the ideas and stories that ran through my mind as I roamed the catacombs, dear readers. Although I’m no believer in ghosts or witchcraft or Ugglian curses or hocus-pocus of any description, the existence of the Hazardous Books was something I knew from personal experience. I resolved never to touch another of the books down here.

  So I simply walked on without paying them much attention. My optimism had evaporated by now. All I could see were walls lined with books I dared not touch and the occasional dead jellyfish. I might just as well have been walking through a clump of stinging nettles. Apart from my own footsteps, I heard just about every sinister noise to be found in Zamonian horror stories: rustles and bangs, whimpers and howls, whispers and giggles. It was like listening to a piece of gruesic composed by Octavius Shrooti. The noises undoubtedly emanated from the city’s sewers and were of Overworldly origin, but they had been transformed into entirely new sounds on their way through all those layers of soil and along all those tunnels and passages. I was hearing the ghostly music of the catacombs.

  At some stage I sank to the ground. How long had I been walking? Half a day? A day? Two days? I was utterly disorientated, temporally, spatially and psychologically. My legs ached, my head rang like a bell. I simply lay there and listened to the unnerving sounds of the catacombs. Then I fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The Sea and the Lighthouses

  I awoke unrefreshed, not only hungry and thirsty but in unwelcome company. Crawling and scrabbling around on my face and stomach were dozens of insects and other noisome creatures: transparent maggots, worms, snakes, phosphorescent beetles, long-legged Bookhoppers, ear-wigs armed with outsize pincers, eyeless white spiders. I leapt to my feet with a horrified scream and lashed out wildly. The creatures flew in all directions as I performed a grotesque dance, flailing away at my cloak in a panic. A gigantic bookworm emitted one last, vicious hiss and rattled its scales at me before disappearing behind a heap of books. It wasn’t until I was certain of having put the last of the vermin to flight that I recovered some of my composure.

  Then I set off again. What else could I do? By now all my confidence had left me. There was no reason to believe that I was any nearer an exit. I might even have gone deeper still, and those insects had shown how quickly one could become part of the underworld’s merciless food chain. Nor was the recurrent sight of half-dead jellyfish calculated to raise my spirits; their futile attempts to escape were all too reminiscent of my own predicament. Like them I would soon be lying dead on some tunnel floor, a desiccated, emaciated cadaver eaten away by vermin. And all because of a manuscript.

  The thought of it made me call a brief halt and take it out again. Could I decipher the underlying message that had landed me in this tick
lish situation and might possibly help to extricate me from it? It was a foolish, desperate idea, but the only one I could come up with at that moment. So I proceeded to study the manuscript once more. I perused it with the same enthusiasm, the same reactions I’d displayed at first reading, and it afforded me temporary relief. Then I came to the last sentence:

  ‘This is where my story begins.’

  It sounded so hopeful, so boundlessly optimistic, that tears of joy welled up in my eyes. No story could have got off to a more confident start. I pocketed the manuscript and set off once more, pondering on the words that had reactivated my brain. I was suddenly overcome by a feeling that the mysterious author had meant to tell me something; that, wherever he might be at this moment, he was speaking to me.

  ‘This is where my story begins.’

  But what was he implying? That my own story was only just beginning? That would be a very consoling thought. Or ought I to take the sentence even more literally?

  Don’t ask me why I believed this, my faithful readers, but I felt sure the sentence was a riddle whose solution would help me to regain my freedom. Very well, I would take it literally.

  ‘This is where my story begins.’

  Where was ‘this’? Here in the catacombs? Here where I happened to be at this moment? Agreed! But whose story did the author mean, if not mine? What else was here apart from myself? Insects, of course. And, needless to say, books.

  That flash of inspiration almost killed me, it hit me so hard! Books, you idiot! It was thoroughly idiotic of me to ignore the books. If I could expect help from any quarter, it was from them. Although surrounded by thousands of wise potential advisers, I had been deterred from enlisting their aid by one unpleasant experience and a handful of legends about the Hazardous Books.

  I was involuntarily reminded of the way in which Colophonius Regenschein had found his bearings by means of the books around him. It was mainly the order in which the various libraries and collections in the catacombs were arranged that had led him to his discoveries. That being so, wouldn’t it be logical if the books could also guide a person back to the surface?