Salamander

by Thomas Wharton

  – In imagining your alam, Mr. Flood, you became a member of the world’s oldest reading society, one that has existed for centuries, under countless names, in every part of the world. A society dedicated to the dreaming of fabulous, impossible, imaginary books. Have you heard of the ninety-eight volume History of Silence?

  – No.

  – There are many others, only a few of which I myself have heard of, and even fewer of which I’ve read. The Book of Water. A Universal Chronopticon. The Almanac of Longing. The Formulary of the Ten Thousand Things. They are all books imagined by the society, and some of them, beginning as insubstantial dreams, have become paper and ink.

  – I’ve done that, too, Pica said. Sometimes, before I open a book, I imagine it’s some other book.

  Flood stared at her.

  – Thank you, Countess, Kirshner said. Over the years I’ve come to understand that a book itself desires to be. Dream a book, no matter how outlandish or unlikely, and that book will find a way to exist, even if it must wait a thousand years.

  A gust of wind stirred the tops of the trees and died away again.

  – Twelve years ago I began to think again about infinity, Kirshner said. And books.

  He lifted a green cloth from the tabletop to reveal an iron chase about the size of a large folio volume, already filled with a forme of assembled type.

  – There’s still an empty space, Pica said. There, in the middle.

  Kirshner nodded.

  – Good. You’re observant. I left one letter out.

  He pulled open a drawer in the cabinet, plucked out a single sort and dropped it into the tiny square hole in the forme. When he had tightened all the quoins around the edge of the iron frame he held one hand just above the surface of the type, his fingers trembling.

  – Like you, Mr. Flood, for years I never suspected the existence of such a society. At least not until I began to work on this, for you. What would once have taken me mere days when I was young and blessed with eyesight has taken a very long time.

  He pushed the chase across the table and Flood saw, in place of the expected lines of type, a dull, solid plate of metal.

  – I’ve always found it intriguing, Kirshner said, that an alphabet is both the most durable and the most ephemeral of the world’s elements. In the language of my people the alphabet consists of twenty-two letters. Twenty-two rivers, twenty-two bridges.

  He smiled at Pica and gestured to the chase.

  – Now, if you will, breathe lightly on the forme.

  She leaned over the chase and blew softly across its surface. All at once letters began to rise in relief from the metal, until the entire forme had reappeared. Pica laughed.

  – Gooseflesh type, she said.

  – In my daybook this batch was noted down as Kirshner galliard roman thirty-seven, but I like your suggestion much better. Gooseflesh type it shall be.

  Flood was unable to tear his eyes from the backwards letters that lay before him, untouched by ink and seeming to blaze in the sunlight so that he could not read them.

  The metallurgist’s hand brushed lightly over the raised type and the letters rose and sank, bobbing in a pool of mercury. Forme after forme appeared and disappeared, as if within the depths of the metal pages were being turned.

  – Is it just random, Flood asked, or is there some order … ?

  – You could ask the same thing of the universe, Kirshner said. Whatever else infinity may be, it is generous.

  Flood watched, spellbound, and thought of the book he had printed for Irena. Desire. Her name hidden within it like these letters rising from the metal.

  – The pieces are more fragile when they’re unassembled, Kirshner said. As they watched, the type solidified again into an ordinary, unmoving block of text.

  – Handle them carefully. They are somewhat volatile, as I have discovered.

  He held his hands out and Flood saw, burned into his fingertips, slender Hebrew characters.

  – The sefirot. Essential ingredients of the alloy, and which I should have taken more care and time to understand. But they did teach me much. We think of the world as filled. With things, phenomena, a vast drawing room stuffed with objects, solid and imperishable. When read by the light of the sefirot, however, this world reveals itself to be impermanent, illusory, mostly empty space, until the mind begins to furnish it.

  With the quoin key, Kirshner unlocked the chase and slid out the slender wedges of metal furniture.

  – If such is the nature of the world, then imaginary books are not absurd dreams but intimations of reality.

  He lifted the lid of the typecase and with methodical care began returning the sorts to their compartments. A dragonfly whirred past and vanished into a bed of hollyhocks. When Kirshner had finished he closed the lid of the case and slid it across the table to Flood.

  – You want me to have this?

  – My work is done. It’s up to someone else to find out what can be made of it.

  They followed Kirshner through his garden as he finished gathering vegetables for supper. He told them that over the centuries the society had attracted enemies as relentless as they were powerful. If they took the gooseflesh type with them they would have to be on their guard.

  – I’ve been told the Council of Ten is watching you, Flood said.

  – They are indeed. And now they will be watching you, too, I’m afraid. I recommend you remain here until the carnival begins. You will more likely go unnoticed in a crowd.

  They stayed the evening with the old man, who insisted they dine with him and his grandson. They ate and drank at a table outside until the light declined, then the boy lit torches around the garden. The flames bent and twisted in the night wind. From beyond the walls they heard the rising noise of laughter and merrymaking.

  As Flood and Pica were taking their leave of Kirshner they heard a flap of great wings. A pelican glided down over their heads, skimmed the surface of the canal, and rose again, vanishing into the lilac dusk. The first stars began to appear and the boy took them back through the tunnel to the door of the house.

  – I will escort you to San Marco, he said, slipping on a cloak.

  – I can find it, Pica said, already walking away.

  – I think he likes you, Flood whispered when he had caught up to her.

  – I really can find the way, she said. I have it in my head now. You’ll see.

  Flood steered for the streets where the crowds were thickest, Pica close at his side and the case of gooseflesh type clutched tightly under his arm. He was not sure just what he had been given, but the familiar heft of the case, the muffled rattle of the sorts, reassured him.

  Grotesque and comical faces swam up at them and vanished. The familiar harlequins, beaked plague doctors and zanies were in abundance, but every so often masks swept past that left them only with a vague sense of recognition and unease, as if they had encountered these faces before in dreams.

  They were hurrying along an unlit arcade, hoping to elude any pursuers, when two cowled figures and a man dressed as Don Quixote stumbled drunkenly out of the shadows into their path. All three carried thick wooden staves. The lanky knight stepped forward and in a slurred voice demanded that they all go for a drink, even the lad. Flood refused and asked to be left in peace, as he was on urgent business. He was not sure what sign indicated it to him, but in the next instant he knew that the three men were as sober as he was.

  – We can guess your urgent business, Don Quixote said. You were in the Jewish quarter. You brought something out with you. Alchemist’s gold, perhaps, to ferret out of the city.

  – We have nothing you would want.

  Don Quixote scratched his chin.

  – Are you absolutely sure of that, friend? After all, this is the night of forse. I think my friends and I will have to see for ourselves.

  Flood leaned down to whisper in Pica’s ear.

  – Run. Warn Djinn.

  – But –

  – Do it.


  As she darted away, Flood turned back the way they had come and was instantly seized from behind. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Pica bolting down the arcade, then their staves cracked against his skull, his shoulders, drove into his stomach. Pain dazzling as lightning illuminated the borders of a realm he had not imagined, the dark ranges of agony When it had subsided he was lying with his face pressed against the cold stones, tasting his own blood.

  – What are they?

  – Lead slugs. Trash.

  He heard the case crack as it hit the ground, the scuff of footsteps receding.

  Slowly, with laboured breathing, he climbed to his knees. The case lay open and overturned nearby, its lid split down the middle. His attackers had kicked the slugs in every direction before fleeing. Pie, he thought absurdly, his father’s word for a mess of spilled type.

  On hands and knees he began to gather the sorts that were scattered over the stones, dropping them with trembling fingers back into the case without concern for the proper order. A few stray pieces lay at the canal’s edge. Just beyond his reach the moon slithered on black water. He watched its silent dance for a moment, spellbound.

  It was likely that some of the type was lost forever, lying now in the murk and mire at the bottom of the canal. Perhaps he could bring Pica here in daylight to search for the missing pieces.

  Pica.

  He heard the sound of footsteps and climbed unsteadily to his feet. He lurched into a staggering run and as his legs gave way a sturdy pair of arms caught him.

  – I’m ready now, he said. Lock me up and don’t let me out this time.

  They brought him back to the ship, where he lay, delirious, in his bunk, while Turini set sail and took them out to sea.

  Three days later he awoke with a throbbing head and a terrible thirst, to find that they were bound for Alexandria.

  When he was well enough, he had Pica bring him the gooseflesh type. Under his direction, he had her set a forme. As she had done at the metallurgist’s garden, she tried breathing on it, then shaking it, and brushing the letters with ink. She and Djinn heated the chase, immersed it in brine, and set it out in the sun. Nothing produced the slightest tremor in the metal. The slugs, some with letters and others blank, remained as they were, dull and inert.

  – We’ll keep rearranging the letters, Flood said, like the pieces of a puzzle, until something happens.

  She remembered how she had first glimpsed him through the spyhole in his cell at the Castle Ostrov, oblivious to everything else around him as he printed an invisible book.

  She had been searching the Bee up and down ever since they first came on board, with no idea what she was hoping to find. Now she spent all her spare time prowling the decks, learning every passageway, every sliding panel and trapdoor, every secret recess where someone or something might have been hidden away.

  A letter. A map. Some sort of clue. The more she learned of the ship’s devious intricacies, the greater was her sense that there was something hidden just beyond her knowledge. Sometimes when she was climbing through one of the sliding panels she had the feeling that her mother had just disappeared behind another panel or through a hidden door, that she was actually somewhere on the ship and that they were both looking for each other but never quite meeting.

  She spent most of her time with the Turinis, aware of the way the four of them existed as a kind of single being. They had soon overcome their fear of her, although the carpenter still insisted on addressing her as Countess. From him and Darka she learned to steer, keep the sails trim, and judge the wind. With the encouragement of the children she began to feel at home high up in the rigging. She sensed, running through the daily shipboard routines, the invisible web that bound the parents together, the parents to the twins, and the twins to each other. Lolo and Miza often woke her early in the morning, crawling into her bed and asking for the stories she had learned as a child. She would rise with the family, eat with them, share their talk and laughter, their squabbles and reconciliations. Often she would spend an entire day among them without once seeing her father. In the evening, she would bring him a meal and he would grope for his cup of tea with his eyes on the forme of type before him.

  Then night would come, broken up into its long, tedious watches. The children would finally fall asleep, and she would take her turn alone at the helm, keeping the lanterns lit and the sails braced. And then she would hear, amid the other moans, murmurs and stirrings of the dreaming ship, the dull clink of the sorts.

  Djinn suggested trying a different ink. He was thinking of a formula he had glimpsed in an occult treatise on geometry in the Count’s library. The author, Johannes Trithemius, suggested that this forbidden ink, which was reputed to be of the same chemical composition as a fallen angel’s blood, might be efficacious in the summoning of mournful, tormented spirits.

  Ad faciendum atramentum divinum, recipe gallas et contere minute in pulverum; funde desuper aquam mutabilem, cerevisiam teneum, et oleum igneum, et impone de vitalo quantum sufficit juxta existationem….

  Flood, his Latin grown rusty, attempted to translate for Pica’s benefit. To make supernatural ink, gather oak-galls, and grind minutely …

  – Aquam mutabilem?

  – We could try vinegar, Djinn said.

  – Good. Now, put in as much – vitalo? What is that? Vitality? Life? – as is sufficient to your judgement and permit it to stand for some days …

  Alexandria was white, a city of salt on the edge of the sea.

  On the first day, Flood, Djinn, and Pica left the Bee only for short forays into the narrow alleyways around the harbour, dazed into near-imbecility by the heat. Flood’s right leg had remained stiff and sore since the attack, and now the pain flared up again, so that he limped along. Before they left the ship, Pica had looked through the seventh volume of the encyclopedia, in search of something that would help them orient themselves in this unfamiliar world. All she could come up with was the entry on language, which speculated that the tower of Babel might have been in Egypt.

  Alexandria had been cobbled together from the ruins of its ancient lives, so that one might see the stumps of Roman columns framing a doorway, or bits of ancient mosaic tile stuck into the plaster of a wall. To ascend these crumbling colonnades, where cloaked and veiled figures drifted past or lurked in curtained recesses, was to imagine that they had come to a cemetery where the dead had not quite settled down to rest. The impression of their own swiftness in relation to these spectres continued until they reached the souk, where the sun finally pummelled them into submission and they took refuge under an awning’s thin moon of shade.

  As they rested, panting like dogs, Djinn found his vision splitting in two like the halves of a lemon, so that it seemed everything was happening to him in two places at once. Like a man carrying a mirror on his shoulder, he moved through two worlds unfolding from one. In the lifeless dust he caught the delicious scent of rain. A curving pathway of sand shimmered for a moment with the tree-shaded green of a canal. Above him a pagoda rose, a horned and scaly dragon perched among the slender minarets. Out of the buzz and murmur of tongues he had carried in his head since childhood, two words came together, spoken in a voice so clear that he started as if it had been whispered in his ear.

  Xian Shu.

  – My name, he said.

  – What’s that? Flood said, looking up.

  – I know my name.

  The sun slid from its zenith and the marketplace began to fill with people. The three of them rose from their shelter and set out again, keeping the twin spires of the palace before them above the flat rooftops. By now Djinn was caught in a maze of reflections so persistent that every doorway of beaded curtains, every yawning camel, every pair of eyes flashing from the covert of a yashmak, had its counterpart in his memory. This was both a leafy city in China and salt-crusted Alexandria, and thus somewhere other than both, and Djinn sensed in this joining and splintering of worlds that his history was more than a single sad tale, or eve
n a chain of such stories told one after another.

  Flood spoke, and the vision folded in upon itself again, the jade towers of China melting away like ice spires in the heat.

  – Here it is.

  They were at the gates of the palace.

  – Do you have an appointment? the doorwarden asked. You have to have an appointment.

  – How do we get one?

  – You have to see the vekil of appointments.

  – Then we’d like to see him.

  – Do you have an appointment?

  Unable to puncture this hermetically sealed logic, they retreated.

  – Don’t worry, Djinn said as they turned away. He will let us in tomorrow.

  – How do you know that? Flood asked.

  – I remember.

  On the morning of the second day, in the crowded souk, Flood lost her. He and Djinn turned this way and that, jumped to look over heads, called her name into the chorus of a hundred voices crying their wares.

  On the edge of the marketplace they were caught up in a hurrying mob. From the gossip around them Djinn was able to glean that there was to be an unexpected public execution. The condemned man, a supplier of coffee to the Mamluk garrison, had been caught dealing with the despised Turkish janissaries. This was not an execution, in other words, so much as a message from the powerful Egyptian troops to the Ottoman pasha, and it was clear the people in the streets were eager to see it delivered. Flood and Djinn shouldered through to the front of the crowd just as the curved blade flashed down. After a long still moment the spectators stirred, the talking and jostling beginning anew as the crowd transformed from a single body into people heading every which way back to their lives.

  He caught sight of her then, not far from him, staring at the headless body slumped on the stone, the blood darkening in the sand.

  He took hold of her wrist and led her out of the square.

  The next day the three of them set out again for the palace.

  – Do we have an appointment? Djinn asked the doorwarden.

  – With who?