The City of Dreaming Books (2 page)
Read The City of Dreaming Books Online
Authors: Walter Moers
You can smell the place from a long way off. It reeks of old books. It’s as if you’ve opened the door of a gigantic second-hand bookshop - as if you’ve stirred up a cloud of unadulterated book dust and blown the detritus from millions of mouldering volumes straight into your face. There are folk who dislike that smell and turn on their heel as soon as it assails their nostrils. It isn’t an agreeable odour, granted. Hopelessly antiquated, it is eloquent of decay and dissolution, mildew and mortality. But it also has other associations: a hint of acidity reminiscent of lemon trees in flower; the stimulating scent of old leather; the acrid, intelligent tang of printer’s ink; and, overlying all else, a reassuring aroma of wood.
I’m not talking about living wood or resinous forests and fresh pine needles; I mean felled, stripped, pulped, bleached, rolled and guillotined wood - in short, paper. Ah yes, my intellectually inquisitive friends, you too can smell it now, the odour of forgotten knowledge and age-old traditions of craftsmanship. Very well, let us quicken our pace! The odour grows stronger and more alluring, and the sight of those gabled houses more distinct with every step towards Bookholm we take. Hundreds, nay, thousands of slender chimneys project from the city’s roofs, darkening the sky with a pall of greasy smoke and compounding the odour of books with other scents: the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and fresh-baked bread, of charcoal-broiled meat studded with herbs. Again we redouble our rate of advance, and our burning desire to open a book becomes allied with the hankering for a cup of hot chocolate flavoured with cinnamon and a slice of pound cake warm from the oven. Faster! Faster!
We reach the city limits at last, weary, hungry, thirsty, curious - and a trifle disappointed. There are no impressive city walls, no well-guarded gates in the shape, perhaps, of a huge book that creaks open at our knock - no, just a few narrow streets by way of which Zamonian life forms of the most diverse kinds enter or leave the city. Most of them do so with stacks of books under their arms - indeed, many tow whole handcarts laden with reading matter behind them. Were it not for all those books, the cityscape would resemble any other.
So here we are, my dauntless companions - here on the magical outskirts of Bookholm. This is where the city has its highly unspectacular beginnings. Soon we shall cross its invisible threshold, enter its streets and explore its mysteries.
Soon.
But first I should like to pause for a moment and tell you why I came here at all. There’s a reason for every journey, and mine was prompted by boredom and the recklessness of youth, by a wish to break the bounds of my normal existence and familiarise myself with life and the world at large. I also wanted to keep a promise made to someone on his deathbed. Last but not least, I was on the track of a fascinating secret. But first things first, my friends!
Lindworm Castle
W
hen a youthful inhabitant of Lindworm Castle
1
becomes old enough to read, his parents assign him a so-called authorial godfather. The latter, who is usually some relation or close family friend, assumes responsibility for the young dinosaur’s literary education from that time on. The authorial godfather teaches his charge to read and write, introduces him to Zamonian literature and tutors him in the craft of authorship. He makes him recite poems, enriches his vocabulary and undertakes all the steps required to ensure his godchild’s artistic development.
hen a youthful inhabitant of Lindworm Castle
1
becomes old enough to read, his parents assign him a so-called authorial godfather. The latter, who is usually some relation or close family friend, assumes responsibility for the young dinosaur’s literary education from that time on. The authorial godfather teaches his charge to read and write, introduces him to Zamonian literature and tutors him in the craft of authorship. He makes him recite poems, enriches his vocabulary and undertakes all the steps required to ensure his godchild’s artistic development.
My own authorial godfather was Dancelot Wordwright. A maternal uncle who might have been hewn from the primeval rock on which Lindworm Castle stands, he was over eight hundred years old when he became my sponsor. Uncle Dancelot was a workmanlike writer devoid of any exalted ambitions. He wrote to order, mainly eulogies for festive occasions, and was considered to be a talented composer of after-dinner speeches and funeral orations. More of a reader than an author and more of a connoisseur of literature than an originator thereof, he sat on countless juries, organised literary competitions, and was a freelance copy-editor and ghost-writer. He himself had written only one book,
The Joys of Gardening
, in which he expatiated in impressive language on the cultivation of cauliflowers and the philosophical implications of the compost heap. Almost as fond of his garden as he was of literature, Dancelot never tired of drawing comparisons between the taming of nature and the art of poetry. To him, a home-grown strawberry plant was the equal of an ode of his own composition, a row of asparagus comparable to a rhyming pattern and a compost heap to a philosophical essay. You must permit me, my long-suffering readers, to quote a brief passage from his book, which has long been out of print. Dancelot’s description of a common or garden blue cauliflower conveys a far more vivid impression of my authorial godfather than I could transmit in a thousand words:
The Joys of Gardening
, in which he expatiated in impressive language on the cultivation of cauliflowers and the philosophical implications of the compost heap. Almost as fond of his garden as he was of literature, Dancelot never tired of drawing comparisons between the taming of nature and the art of poetry. To him, a home-grown strawberry plant was the equal of an ode of his own composition, a row of asparagus comparable to a rhyming pattern and a compost heap to a philosophical essay. You must permit me, my long-suffering readers, to quote a brief passage from his book, which has long been out of print. Dancelot’s description of a common or garden blue cauliflower conveys a far more vivid impression of my authorial godfather than I could transmit in a thousand words:
T
he cultivation of the blue cauliflower is a rather remarkable process. What pays the price in this case is not the foliation, for a change, but the inflorescence. The gardener encourages the umbel’s temporary obesity. Crowded together into a compact head, its countless little buds swell, together with their stalks, into an amorphous mass of bluish vegetable fat. Thus, the cauliflower is a flower that has come to grief on its own obesity before flowering; or, to be more precise, a multiplicity of unsuccessful flowers, a degenerate panicled umbel. How in the world can such a bloated creature, with its plump and swollen ovaries, propagate itself? It, too, would return to nature after an excursion into the realm of the unnatural, but the gardener gives it no time to do so: he harvests the cauliflower at the zenith of its aberration, the highest and most palatable stage in its obesity, when the taste of this adipose plant approximates to that of a rissole. The seed collector, on the other hand, leaves the bulbous blue mass in its corner of the garden and permits it to revert to its better self. When he goes to look at it after three weeks, instead of three pounds of vegetable obesity, he finds a very loosely freely flowering bush with bees and flying beetles humming round it. The unnaturally swollen pale-blue stalks have converted their thickness into length and become fleshy stems tipped with a number of sparsely distributed yellow flowers. The few buds that have proved durable turn blue and swell up, then flower and produce seeds. Honest and true to nature, these gallant little survivors are the saviours of the cauliflower fraternity.
he cultivation of the blue cauliflower is a rather remarkable process. What pays the price in this case is not the foliation, for a change, but the inflorescence. The gardener encourages the umbel’s temporary obesity. Crowded together into a compact head, its countless little buds swell, together with their stalks, into an amorphous mass of bluish vegetable fat. Thus, the cauliflower is a flower that has come to grief on its own obesity before flowering; or, to be more precise, a multiplicity of unsuccessful flowers, a degenerate panicled umbel. How in the world can such a bloated creature, with its plump and swollen ovaries, propagate itself? It, too, would return to nature after an excursion into the realm of the unnatural, but the gardener gives it no time to do so: he harvests the cauliflower at the zenith of its aberration, the highest and most palatable stage in its obesity, when the taste of this adipose plant approximates to that of a rissole. The seed collector, on the other hand, leaves the bulbous blue mass in its corner of the garden and permits it to revert to its better self. When he goes to look at it after three weeks, instead of three pounds of vegetable obesity, he finds a very loosely freely flowering bush with bees and flying beetles humming round it. The unnaturally swollen pale-blue stalks have converted their thickness into length and become fleshy stems tipped with a number of sparsely distributed yellow flowers. The few buds that have proved durable turn blue and swell up, then flower and produce seeds. Honest and true to nature, these gallant little survivors are the saviours of the cauliflower fraternity.
Yes, there you have Dancelot Wordwright as he lived and breathed: in tune with nature, in love with language, unfailingly accurate in his observations, optimistic, a trifle eccentric, and - where the subject of his literary labours, the cauliflower, was concerned - as tedious as could be.
All my memories of him are pleasant, discounting the three months that followed one of Lindworm Castle’s numerous sieges, during which a stone launched by a trebuchet struck him on the head and left him convinced that he was a cupboard full of dirty spectacles. Although I feared at the time that he would never re-emerge from his delirium, he did, in fact, recover from that severe blow on the head. Unfortunately, no such miraculous recovery occurred in the case of his final and fatal bout of influenza.
Dancelot’s Death
W
hen Dancelot breathed his last at the conclusion of a long and fulfilled dinosaurian existence spanning eight hundred and eighty-eight years, I was a mere stripling of seventy-seven summers and had never once set foot outside Lindworm Castle. He died of a minor influenzal infection that proved too much for his weakened immune system (an occurrence which reinforced my fundamental doubts about the reliability of immune systems in general).
hen Dancelot breathed his last at the conclusion of a long and fulfilled dinosaurian existence spanning eight hundred and eighty-eight years, I was a mere stripling of seventy-seven summers and had never once set foot outside Lindworm Castle. He died of a minor influenzal infection that proved too much for his weakened immune system (an occurrence which reinforced my fundamental doubts about the reliability of immune systems in general).
On that ill-starred day I sat beside his deathbed and noted down the dialogue that follows. My authorial godfather had requested me to record his last words in writing. Not because he had grown so conceited that he wished his moribund sighs to be preserved for posterity, but because he thought it would provide me with a unique opportunity to gather authentic material in this special field. He died, therefore, in the execution of his duty as an authorial godfather.
Dancelot
: ‘I’m dying, my boy.’
: ‘I’m dying, my boy.’
I
(
inarticulately, fighting back my tears
): ‘Huh . . .’
(
inarticulately, fighting back my tears
): ‘Huh . . .’
Dancelot
: ‘I far from approve of death, either from fatalistic motives or with the philosophical resignation of old age, but I suppose I must come to terms with it. Each of us is granted only one cask and mine is tolerably full.’
: ‘I far from approve of death, either from fatalistic motives or with the philosophical resignation of old age, but I suppose I must come to terms with it. Each of us is granted only one cask and mine is tolerably full.’
(
I’m glad in retrospect that he employed the cask metaphor because it indicates that he regarded his life as rich and fulfilled. A person who looks back on his life and likens it to a brimming cask, not an empty bucket, has accomplished a great deal.
)
I’m glad in retrospect that he employed the cask metaphor because it indicates that he regarded his life as rich and fulfilled. A person who looks back on his life and likens it to a brimming cask, not an empty bucket, has accomplished a great deal.
)
Dancelot
: ‘Listen, my boy. I have little enough to leave you, at least from the pecuniary aspect. That you already know. I have never become one of those opulent Lindworm Festival authors with sacks full of royalties piled high in their cellars. I intend to bequeath you my garden, although I know you aren’t too keen on vegetables.’
: ‘Listen, my boy. I have little enough to leave you, at least from the pecuniary aspect. That you already know. I have never become one of those opulent Lindworm Festival authors with sacks full of royalties piled high in their cellars. I intend to bequeath you my garden, although I know you aren’t too keen on vegetables.’
(
This was true. As a young Lindworm I had little use for the glorification of cauliflowers and hymns to rhubarb in Dancelot’s treatise on gardening, and I made no secret of it. Dancelot’s seed germinated only in later years, when I had established a garden of my own, grew blue cauliflowers and derived much inspiration from the taming of nature.
)
This was true. As a young Lindworm I had little use for the glorification of cauliflowers and hymns to rhubarb in Dancelot’s treatise on gardening, and I made no secret of it. Dancelot’s seed germinated only in later years, when I had established a garden of my own, grew blue cauliflowers and derived much inspiration from the taming of nature.
)
Dancelot
: ‘I’m rather clammy at present . . .’
: ‘I’m rather clammy at present . . .’
(
I couldn’t help laughing, despite the depressing situation, because ‘clammy’ is Zamonian slang for ‘broke’, and there was something unintentionally amusing about his use of that word in his present sweaty state. Had I myself employed this ill-judged resort to black humour in an essay, Dancelot would probably have red-pencilled it. I managed to smother my guffaw in a handkerchief and pass it off as tearful nose-blowing.
)
I couldn’t help laughing, despite the depressing situation, because ‘clammy’ is Zamonian slang for ‘broke’, and there was something unintentionally amusing about his use of that word in his present sweaty state. Had I myself employed this ill-judged resort to black humour in an essay, Dancelot would probably have red-pencilled it. I managed to smother my guffaw in a handkerchief and pass it off as tearful nose-blowing.
)
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