The City of Dreaming Books

by Walter Moers

  All those tattered, mouldering, worm-eaten books - all that torn paper, splintered wood and other debris - really did resemble the surface of a sea in that multicoloured light, the more so because every part of it was ceaselessly stirring, heaving and subsiding. I preferred not to speculate on the nature of the creatures that were causing these upheavals - probably hosts of maggots and rats, worms and beetles busily engaged on the final destruction of literature. Wasn’t there a poem on decay by Perla la Gadeon entitled ‘The Conqueror Worm’?

  Yes, my faithful readers, I had clearly gone down another level and descended even deeper into the bowels of the cave system. I even knew what this place was called: it couldn’t be anywhere but Unholm, the rubbish dump of the catacombs. Colophonius Regenschein had visited this ill-famed cave and devoted a whole chapter of his book to it and its environs. He called it the dirtiest and seediest part of the labyrinth. This was where its inhabitants had dumped all their literary rubbish over the centuries. But not that alone. Many of the inhabited caves on the upper levels had shafts leading to the holes in the roof of Unholm and into these were thrown everything of no further value. Book pirates used them to dispose of their murdered victims, decadent book tycoons of their everyday rubbish and excrement, Bookemists of their toxic trash and failed experiments. Regenschein had claimed that some of the shafts led to the surface of the city and came out inside the ancient buildings in Darkman Street.

  Centuries of rubbish had accumulated down here, forming a compost conducive to the growth of all kinds of fearsome fauna and flora. Here existed insects and parasites, plants and animals to be found nowhere else in the catacombs. Even Bookhunters gave this place a wide berth because it had nothing to offer but frightful diseases. Unholm was the morbid underside of Bookholm, the putrid, stinking entrails of the catacombs and their merciless digestive system. No one ruled here, neither the Bookhunters nor the Shadow King: decay alone prevailed. Anyone who had made it through the catacombs to Unholm would sooner or later decompose and become part of the restlessly stirring sea of books on which I now stood with legs atremble.

  I surveyed the cave. I was roughly in the middle, or half a mile from the edge. Not too far, but picking my way across that heaving mass of paper would not be without its dangers. There were numerous exits on the periphery of the cave, probably gateways through which the inhabitants of the catacombs used to cart their rubbish in ancient times. It didn’t matter which exit I chose - they were all potentially hazardous - so I simply made for one at random.

  I kept sinking in, sometimes ankle- or knee-deep and sometimes up to my waist, but never so far that I was unable to extricate myself. There were scuttlings and rustlings wherever I trod, and I carefully avoided looking down to see what creatures I’d disturbed.

  I was white as a ghost with book dust from head to foot, every muscle in my body ached from my fall and subsequent contusions, and tears of despair were streaming down my cheeks. Nonetheless, dear readers, although this ordeal undoubtedly represented the nadir of my existence to date, I trudged defiantly on. I had survived a book trap and a long fall, I had been buried alive and risen from the grave - never would I have believed myself cut from such hard-wearing cloth. I wasn’t destined to die down here, oh no! I had made Dancelot a vow on his deathbed that I would become Zamonia’s greatest writer, and I intended to keep that promise despite all the Smykes, Bookhunters and other vermin in the catacombs. I would extricate myself from this living hell even if I had to burrow my way to the surface with tooth and claw.

  Hundreds of ideas went whirling through my head - ideas for novels, poems, essays, short stories and stage plays. Born of my rage and defiance, the foundations of a whole oeuvre, a whole shelf filled with Yarnspinners, took shape at this moment - now, when I had absolutely no chance of making any notes. I strove to memorise my ideas, to nail them to the walls of my brain, but they eluded me like slippery eels. I had never been in a more creative state of mind - and I had nothing to write with! It was both tragic and comical. I laughed and cursed by turns, and even the oaths I uttered were of breathtaking originality.

  I had completed about half of my laborious trek when the ocean of books emitted a rumbling sound. No, it wasn’t just small creatures going about their work in the usual manner. Something more dramatic was in progress - something far bigger was stirring. Not far away the rubbish was heaving and subsiding in a way that reminded me of the movements I’d felt while buried in books. Yes, something was stirring beneath the surface. I could tell from the waves the thing created that it was circling me ever more closely. A roar arose from the depths, a sound so irate and menacing that it not only extinguished my rage and defiance but banished all the ideas that had been running through my mind. My heart and brain turned to ice. This was what it must feel like to be circled by a primeval shark in the sea or a werewolf in a forest at night. Where was the monster now? Immediately beneath me with its jaws gaping?

  And then it surfaced. Hundreds of books flew in all directions, paper dust billowed into the air, pages fluttered, startled insects buzzed - and from their midst emerged the biggest creature I’d ever seen.

  The Conqueror Worm!

  Yes, it might have been a worm, Unholm’s biggest bookworm, but it might also have been a serpent or an entirely new life form - at that moment the monster’s genealogy was a matter of supreme indifference to me. Its visible portion, which jutted above the sea of books, was as wide and high as a bell tower, its skin was pale yellow and sprinkled with brown warts. Protruding from its whitish belly were hundreds of waving antennae or atrophied arms or legs - I couldn’t tell which. The yawning maw at its upper extremity was surrounded by long, curved fangs as sharp, pointed and lethal as scimitars. The huge creature froze for a moment and all I could hear was its whistling intake of breath. It reared up still higher, emitted an earsplitting roar and threw itself flat on the sea of paper with a crash that sounded like a whole forest of trees being felled simultaneously. The megaworm was completely obscured by the dense clouds of grey dust that went whirling into the air. Then they subsided and I saw its huge form heading straight for me.

  Those who have never had to make their way across a mass of decaying books can have no idea how difficult this is. I don’t know how often I tripped, fell head over heels and tumbled down hillsides of yellowing paper, how often I scrambled to my feet or proceeded on all fours. Again and again I trod on books that fell to dust or disintegrated into colonies of mealworms, on paper that cracked like the thinnest of ice.

  The creature’s greedy roars filled the cave, drowning the squeaks of the panic-stricken bats and setting the sea of books in violent motion. Believe me, dear readers, I would have preferred not to know exactly what was lurking beneath the surface of Unholm, but alas, that mercy was denied me. The megaworm’s paroxysms had alerted every last one of the rubbish dump’s inhabitants, and they came to the surface to see who had been impertinent enough to intrude on their digestive slumbers.

  It was as if the gates of hell had opened and were spewing out an endless succession of creatures, each of which strove to be more hideous and outlandish than its fellows. Glossy black beetles the size of loaves burrowed their way out of the rubbish, grinding their mandibles. The cover of one huge tome opened and a spider with a flowing white mane and legs longer than my own emerged, glaring at me with its eight sapphire-blue eyes. I stumbled on, terrified, expecting to feel its hairy limbs on the back of my neck at any moment. Instead, the ground around me rustled and crackled as a long, scaly black tentacle rose from the depths and groped around blindly. A fleshy, bloated sphere swelled up amid the yellowing paper like a bubble of marsh gas, then burst with a disgusting noise and released the clouds of book dust pent up inside it. Colourless crabs, luminous scorpions and ants, transparent snakes and gigantic caterpillars of every hue emerged. Creatures whose names I didn’t know - hybrids equipped with scales and wings, horns and pincers - scrambled into the open and fanned out in all directions. I was making my way ac
ross a sea of living refuse, the product of centuries of insanitary habits and physical degeneration.

  But this was all to the good, dear readers, because the megaworm was blind and reliant on its hearing for a sense of direction, so it lost track of me in the surrounding pandemonium. It hurled itself this way and that, burrowing through the dusty detritus and cleaving the sea of paper and its denizens asunder with razor-sharp fangs, but I was long since out of range of its sensory perception.

  And now a fight broke out between the inhabitants of Unholm, a war in which each did battle against all. I had never witnessed more terrible scenes, not even in my worst nightmares. The white-maned spider was torn to pieces by black tentacles. A huge blind rat was cornered by dozens of beetles and flayed alive by their mandibles. Two luminous red scorpions were dancing round each other, stings poised to strike, when they were suddenly swallowed by a bellowing maw that yawned beneath them. Three giant crabs used their powerful claws to dismember a creature that defied description. And there was I in the midst of this hellish scene, panting and ploughing my way through the rubbish. I expected the ground to open beneath my feet at any moment, expected to be engulfed by a gigantic mouth or seized and strangled by a tentacle, but the monsters were so intent on mutual annihilation that none of them seemed to be interested in me. They sprayed each other with venom, snarling and screeching, they throttled and stung and bit each other with the utmost brutality and savagery - and I threaded my way between them as if wearing a cloak of invisibility. That free-for-all may have been a purificatory ritual performed at regular intervals, a bloodbath from which outsiders were exempt on principle. Perhaps I gave off a scent that rendered me an uninteresting adversary or victim, who knows? The unwholesome nature of that accursed place remains an abiding mystery.

  All that mattered was that I eventually reached the edge of the cavern alive and unscathed. I scrambled on to a rock, utterly exhausted, but allowed myself only a few moments’ rest. Panting hard, I looked back for the last time. Not far away two millipedes the length of trees were grappling and exchanging spurts of corrosive venom amid a sea of pulverised paper. Elsewhere, however, the fighting was almost at an end. All manner of rending, gulping, chomping sounds filled the air, for the victors’ banquet was just beginning. A peculiar emotion, a mixture of revulsion and relief, overcame me at the sight of that terrible scene, a more detailed description of which, dear readers, I should prefer to spare you.

  For that, had I been a little less fortunate, could have been my own fate too: to be devoured and digested by Unholm, the gigantic belly of the catacombs. Feeling sickened, I turned away.

  The Kingdom of the Dead

  Now that I had cheated death my creative terrors reared their heads once more. What if I had caught some frightful infection on that rubbish dump? I must have inhaled and come into contact with milliards of viruses and bacteria - in fact, many of the creatures had themselves resembled terrible diseases. I shook myself and patted the noxious dust off my cloak.

  The cave’s numerous exits varied in size. Many were completely choked with books, but marching in through others were whole armies of insects attracted by the sounds of the funeral feast. I chose a tunnel in which I could discern only a few books lying on the dusty floor and no living creatures save a long procession of jellyfish crawling along the roof, bound for who knew where.

  The euphoria I’d felt when setting foot on terra firma quickly evaporated. I was far from clear of Unholm, and I knew from Colophonius Regenschein’s book that the environs of the rubbish dump were little less dismal and dangerous. The inhabitants of the catacombs had used these tunnels and caves as burial places for centuries, so umpteen thousand corpses lay buried in them. There were even reputed to be secret mausoleums equipped with the most ingenious booby traps. Wealthy book tycoons had been buried in these graves together with their most valuable literary gems. Remarkably enough, even the most rapacious Bookhunters left them alone and avoided the area on principle, many of them being convinced that it was haunted by phantoms and mummies, roaming skeletons and the vengeful ghosts of victims of murder. It was said that the Shadow King himself had been born among the graves of Unholm. This was the cheerless Kingdom of the Dead, into which only underworld insects and vermin had ventured for many a long year.

  Although I’m sure I need not emphasise how little I myself believe in such nonsense, dear readers, even the most enlightened soul finds the idea of walking over thousands of anonymous graves distasteful. I shun graveyards even in daylight and attend burials and cremations only when unable to avoid doing so, as in the case of my authorial godfather. I have no morbid propensities and would sooner not look death in the face until the time comes - which is why these surroundings had such a disastrous effect on my state of mind. Beset by memories of reading horror stories in my youth, I couldn’t help thinking of skeletal hands that emerged from the ground, seized wayfarers by the ankles and dragged them into the bowels of the earth; of groaning spirits that walked through walls and enfolded one in their chilly embrace; of crazily cackling skulls glowing in the darkness. The further I proceeded from the rubbish dump the quieter it became until, in the end, all I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps.

  And each step took me ever deeper, ever further into this Kingdom of the Dead. Not even a beetle scurried across my path. The squeaking of the bats, which had got on my nerves so much, had died away completely. The only living things apart from myself appeared to be the mutated jellyfish, which had evidently seized the chance to conquer and populate a deserted sector of the catacombs. Varying widely in size and colour, they were everywhere. Isolated individuals or whole colonies of them adhered to the walls and roofs of the tunnels, clinging to stalactites and rocky outcrops. The creatures were beginning to nauseate me - there was something sinister and repellent about their silent presence and adaptability. More and more often now, I encountered things that matched Regenschein’s descriptions. One tunnel I entered was lined with empty graves and strewn with bones and skulls. Books, on the other hand, were becoming steadily rarer. If there ever had been any in this area, they must long ago have disintegrated into the dust through which I was wading. I rested for a while in a cavern filled with stone pyramids some six feet high - possibly gravestones - but the oppressive silence of the place soon spurred me on.

  In one series of interconnecting grottoes I saw vast quantities of bones and skulls, skeletal hands and feet, all of which had been sorted into separate piles. Regenschein had mentioned that many of the catacombs’ primeval inhabitants hadn’t troubled to bury their dead. They simply piled them up and left them to rot, heedless of the health risks attendant on that method of disposal. Whole stretches of the catacombs owed their depopulation to a frightful plague spread by a particular species of rat. It continued to rage until the Bookemists finally developed an effective poison against the vermin. I passed innumerable mounds of skeletons, repeatedly telling myself that there could be no danger of infection after so many hundreds of years.

  From now on there were bones everywhere. Cave dwellers of an artistic bent had used them for decorative purposes, affixing bone ornaments to walls or lining whole tunnels with skulls. Their artistic aspirations and abilities must have developed in the course of time, because I soon saw, all along my route, reconstructed skeletons frozen in everyday poses: standing, walking, leaning against walls, seated on the ground, even dancing in a circle. Shuddering, I traversed a cave full of skeletal sculptures arranged to form scenes typical of the market place: haggling with each other, sauntering along, crying their wares or making purchases - except that their merchandise consisted of skulls instead of cabbages.

  In the end, because you become inured to anything you meet in vast numbers, I grew accustomed to the sight of these innumerable skeletons. I ceased to flinch whenever I rounded a bend in a tunnel and was confronted by a skeletal figure with its arm raised in salutation. There was even something comforting about this world of the dead, because the absence of
life betokened the absence of danger. All that is evil stems from the living; the dead are a peaceable bunch.

  For all that, I wouldn’t have minded exchanging their presence for some antiquarian books. Corpses and graves provided no indication of my whereabouts, so I simply had to trudge on, willy-nilly, through this seemingly endless subterranean cemetery. One cave was so full of urns that I inadvertently kicked one over while passing through. It set off a positive chain reaction that caused hundreds more to topple over and spill their dusty contents on the ground. Just then a gust of wind blew through the cave and sent dense clouds of this fine powder whirling into the air. It flew up into my face and down into my lungs, coated my tongue and gummed my eyelids together. I had the dust of the dead in my eyes and mouth, and who could tell what dire diseases had carried them off! Even hours later I felt obliged to spit whenever I thought I’d discovered a grain of dust lodged between my teeth.

  On my trek through this dismal world I saw gravestones and evidence of burial methods of all kinds, stone mausoleums and glass coffins, corpses entombed in amber and sarcophagi so huge that they could only have contained the mortal remains of giants. I came across a stalactite cave mentioned by Colophonius Regenschein: the Hall of Clay Warriors, in which a tribe of warlike giants had buried their dead in a standing position. After encasing them in clay and covering them with logs, they set them ablaze. All that remained thereafter was a fired clay figure with a baked cadaver inside it.

  Five different tunnels led out of the Hall of Clay Warriors. I simply opted for the nearest one, only to realise an instant later that this was a terrible mistake. Although I had never seen a Spinxxxx before, I knew from Regenschein’s accurate description that I was immediately beneath one. It lowered three, four, five, six or more long grey insectile legs and hemmed me in on all sides. I was captured, dear readers - imprisoned in a living cage!