Lost in a good book (23 page)

MILLON DE FLOSS
,
“Great Expectations”: A Study

I
FOUND MYSELF
in a large and dark hall which smelt of musty decay. The windows were tightly shuttered, the only light from a few candles scattered around the room; they added little to the room except to heighten the gloominess. In the center of the room a long table was covered with what had once been a wedding banquet but was now a sad arrangement of tarnished silver and dusty crockery. In the bowls and meat platters dried remnants of food were visible, and in the middle of the table a large wedding cake bedecked with cobwebs had begun to collapse like a dilapidated building. I had read the scene many times, but it was somehow different when you saw it for real—for a start, it was more colorful—and there was also a smell of mustiness that rarely comes out in the readings. I was on the other side of the room from Miss Havisham, Estella and Pip. I stood silently and watched.

A game of cards had just ended between Pip and Estella, and Miss Havisham, resplendently shabby in her rotting wedding dress and veil, seemed to be trying to come to a decision.

“When shall I have you here again?” said Miss Havisham in a low growl. “Let me think.”

“Today is Wednesday, ma’am—” began Pip, but he was silenced by Miss Havisham.

“There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Havisham sighed deeply and addressed the young woman, who seemed to spend most of her time glaring at Pip; his discomfort in the strange surroundings seemed to fill her with inner mirth.

“Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.”

They left the darkened room, and I watched as Miss Havisham stared at the floor, then at the half-filled trunks of old and yellowed clothes that might have accompanied her on her honeymoon. I watched her as she pulled off her veil, ran her fingers through her graying hair and kicked off her shoes. She looked about her, checked the door was closed and then opened a bureau that I could see was full, not of the trappings of her wretched life, but of small luxuries that must, I presumed, make her existence here that much more bearable. Amongst other things I saw a Sony Walkman, a stack of
National Geographics
, a few Daphne Farquitt novels, and one of those bats that has a rubber ball attached to a piece of elastic. She rummaged some more and took out a pair of trainers and pulled them on, with a great deal of relief. She was just about to tie the laces when I shifted my weight and knocked against a small table. Havisham, her senses heightened by her long incarceration in silent introspection, gazed in my direction, her sharp eyes piercing the gloom.

“Who is there?” she asked sharply. “Estella, is that you?”

Hiding didn’t seem to be a worthwhile option, so I stepped from the shadows. She looked me up and down with a critical eye.

“What is your name, child?” she asked sternly.

“Thursday Next, ma’am.”

“Ah!” she said again. “The
Next
girl. Took you long enough to find your way in here, didn’t it?”

“Sorry—?”

“
Never
be sorry, girl—it’s a waste of time, believe me. If only you had seriously attempted to come to Jurisfiction after Mrs. Nakajima showed you how up at Haworth—well, I’m wasting my breath, I have no doubt.”

“I had no idea—!”

“I don’t often take apprentices,” she carried on, disregarding me completely, “but they were going to allocate you to the Red Queen. The Red Queen and I don’t get along, I suppose you’ve heard that?”

“No, I’ve—”

“Half of all she says is nonsense and the other half is irrelevant. Mrs. Nakajima recommended you most highly, but she has been wrong before; cause any trouble and I’ll bounce you out of Jurisfiction quicker than you can say ketchup. How are you at tying shoelaces?”

So I tied Miss Havisham’s trainers for her, there in Satis House amongst the rotted trappings of her abandoned marriage. It seemed churlish to refuse, and I really didn’t mind. If Havisham was my teacher, I would do whatever she reasonably expected of me. I’d not get into “The Raven” without her help, that much was obvious.

“There are three simple rules if you want to stay with me,” continued Miss Havisham in the sort of voice that seeks no argument. “Rule One: You do
exactly
as I tell you. Rule Two: You don’t patronize me with your pity. I have no desire to be helped in any way. What I do to myself and others is my business and my business alone. Do you understand?”

“What about Rule Three?”

“All in good time. I shall call you Thursday and you may call me Miss Havisham when we are together; in company I shall expect you to call me ma’am. I may summon you at any time and you will come running. Only funerals, childbirth or Vivaldi concerts take precedence. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

I stood up and she thrust a candle nearer to my face and regarded me closely. It gave me a chance to look at her too— despite her pallid demeanor, her eyes sparkled brightly and she was not nearly as old as I supposed; all she needed was a fortnight of good meals and some fresh air. I was tempted to say something to enliven the dismal surroundings but her iron personality stopped me; I felt as though I were facing my teacher at school for the first time.

“Intelligent eyes,” muttered Havisham. “Committed and honest. Quite, quite sickeningly self-righteous. Are you married?”

“Yes—” I mumbled. “That is to say—no.”

“Come, come!” said Havisham angrily. “It is a simple enough question.”

“I
was
married,” I answered.

“Died?”

“No—” I mumbled. “That is to say—yes.”

“I’ll try harder questions in future,” announced Havisham, “for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones. Have you met the Jurisfiction staff?”

“I’ve met Mr. Snell—and the Cheshire Cat.”

“As useless as each other,” she announced shortly. “ Everyone at Jurisfiction is either a charlatan or an imbecile—except the Red Queen, who is both. We’ll go to Norland Park and meet them all, I suppose.”

“Norland? Jane Austen? The house of the Dashwoods?
Sense and Sensibility
?”

But Havisham had moved on. She held my wrist to look at my watch and took me by the elbow, and before I knew what had happened we had joggled out of Satis House to the library. Before I could recover from this sudden change of surroundings, Miss Havisham was reading from a book she had drawn from a shelf. There was another strange joggle and we were in a small kitchen parlor somewhere.

“What was that?” I asked in alarm; I wasn’t at all accustomed to the sudden move from book to book, but Havisham, well used to such maneuvers, thought little of it.

“That,” replied Miss Havisham, “was a standard book-to-book transfer. When you’re jumping solo you can sometimes make it through without going to the library—so much the better; the Cat’s banal musings can make one’s head ache. But since I am taking you with me, a short visit is sadly necessary. We’re now in the backstory of Kafka’s
The Trial
. Next door is Josef K’s hearing; you’re up after him.”

“Oh,” I remarked, “is that all?”

Miss Havisham missed the sarcasm, which was probably just as well, and I looked around. The room was sparsely furnished. A washing tub sat in the middle of the room, and next door, from the sound of it at least, a political meeting seemed to be in progress. A woman entered from the courtroom, smoothed her skirts, curtsied and returned to her washing.

“Good morning, Miss Havisham,” she said politely.

“Good morning, Esther,” replied Miss Havisham. “I brought you something.” Havisham handed her a box of Pontefract cakes and then asked: “Are we on time?”

There was a roar of laughter from behind the door which quickly subsided into excited talking.

“Won’t be long,” replied the washerwoman. “Snell and Hopkins have both gone in already. Would you like to take a seat?”

Miss Havisham sat, but I remained standing.

“I hope Snell knows what he’s doing,” muttered Havisham darkly. “The Examining Magistrate is something of an unknown quantity.”

The applause and laughter suddenly dropped to silence in the room next door and we heard the door handle grasped. Behind the door a deep voice said: “I only wanted to point out to you, since you may not have realized it yet, that today you have thrown away all the advantage that a hearing affords an arrested man in every case.”

I looked at Havisham with some consternation, but she shook her head, as though to tell me not to worry.

“You scoundrels!” shouted a second voice, still from behind the door. “You can keep all your hearings!”

The door opened and a young man with a red face and dressed in a dark suit ran out, fairly shaking with rage. As he left, the man who had spoken—I assumed this to be the Examining Magistrate—shook his head sadly and the courtroom started to chatter about Josef K’s outburst. The Magistrate, a small fat man who breathed heavily, looked at me and said: “Thursday N?”

“Yes sir?”

“You’re late.”

And he shut the door.

“Don’t worry,” said Miss Havisham kindly, “he always says that. It’s to make you ill at ease.”

“It works. Aren’t you coming in with me?”

She shook her head and placed her hand on mine. “Have you read
The Trial
?”

I nodded.

“Then you will know what to expect. Good luck, my dear.”

I thanked her, took a deep breath, grasped the door handle and with heavily beating heart, entered.

18.
The Trial of Fräulein N

The Trial,
Franz Kafka’s enigmatic masterpiece of bureaucratic paranoia, was unpublished in the writer’s lifetime. Indeed, Kafka lived out his short life in relative obscurity as an insurance clerk and bequeathed his manuscripts to his best friend on the understanding that they would be destroyed. How many other great writers, one wonders, penned masterworks which actually
were
destroyed upon their death? For the answer, you will have to look in amongst the subbasements of the Great Library, twenty-six floors of unpublished manuscripts. Amongst a lot of self-indulgent rubbish and valiant yet failed attempts at prose you will find works of pure genius. For the greatest nonwork of non-nonfiction, go to subbasement thirteen, Category MCML, Shelf 2919/B12, where a rare and wonderful treat awaits you—
Bunyan’s Footscraper
by John McSquurd. But be warned. No trip to the
Well of Lost Plots
should be undertaken alone. . . .

UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT
,
The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library

T
HE COURTROOM
was packed full of men all dressed in dark suits and chattering and gesticulating constantly. There was a gallery running around just below the ceiling where more people stood, also talking and laughing, and the room was hot and airless to the point of suffocation. There was a narrow path between the men, and I slowly advanced, the crowd merging behind me and almost propelling me forward. As I walked the spectators chattered about the weather, the previous case, what I was wearing and the finer points of my case—of which, it seemed, they knew nothing. At the other end of the hall was a low dais upon which was seated, just behind a low table, the Examining Magistrate. He was on a high chair to make himself seem bigger and was shiny with perspiration. Behind him were court officials and clerks talking with the crowd and each other. To one side of the dais was the lugubrious man who had knocked on my door and tricked me into confessing back in Swindon. He was holding an impressive array of official-looking papers. This, I assumed, was Mathew Hopkins, the prosecution lawyer. Snell was standing next to him but joined me as soon as I approached and whispered in my ear:

“This is only a formal hearing to see if there is a case to answer. With a bit of luck we can get your case postponed to a more friendly court. Ignore the onlookers—they are simply here as a narrative device to heighten paranoia and have no bearing on your case. We will deny all charges.

“Herr Magistrate,” said Snell as we took the last few paces to the dais, “my name is Akrid S, defending Thursday N in
Jurisfiction v. The Law,
case number 142857.”

The Magistrate looked at me, took out his watch and said:

“You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago.”

There was an excited murmur from the crowd. Snell opened his mouth to say something, but it was I that answered.

“I know,” I said, having read a bit of Kafka in my youth and attempting a radical approach to the proceedings, “
I am to blame.
I beg the court’s pardon.”

At first the Magistrate didn’t hear me and he began to repeat himself for the benefit of the crowd: “You should have been here an hour and—What did you say?”

“I said I was sorry and begged your pardon, sir,” I repeated.

“Oh,” said the Examining Magistrate as a hush fell upon the room. “In
that
case, would you like to go away and come back in, say, an hour and five minutes’ time, when you
will
be late through no fault of your own?”

The crowd applauded at this, although I couldn’t see why.

“At your honor’s pleasure,” I replied. “If it is the court’s ruling that I do so, then I will comply.”

“Very good,” whispered Snell.

“Oh!” said the Magistrate again. He briefly conferred with his clerks behind him, seemed rattled for a moment, stared at me again and said: “It is the court’s decision that you be one hour and five minutes late!”

“I am
already
one hour and five minutes late!” I announced to scattered applause from the room.