The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books (31 page)

Fortunately, they didn’t spoil Smyke’s performance by making him sing, which would have ruined the scene and robbed the treacherous scholar’s character of its menacing quality. The silent horror inherent in his person was, therefore, able to develop as sluggishly as Smyke himself moved. I saw theatregoers fidgeting in their seats, simultaneously revolted and fascinated, as if uncertain whether to applaud or take to their heels. I felt just the same. It was like watching a spider spinning its web. You knew it was at work on a lethal weapon, yet you couldn’t help admiring its dexterity and precision. Villains are always the most interesting characters and Smyke was no exception. My own character paled into insignificance beside the charismatic scoundrel, and his skilfully made puppet outacted my own so effortlessly that I felt positively envious of a creature composed of inanimate materials, of wood and rubber, wire and glue. I degenerated into a mere cue for Smyke’s grandiose monologues, which constituted the literary highlight of the play to date. His insane desire to destroy everything beyond his control by means of murder, intrigue and machination, and his burning hatred for everything of no use to art and himself – all these were conveyed by every word of his hypnotic pontifications. This was theatre of the
calibre
of Wimpersleake’s historical dramas! Dialogue and puppetry, music and olfactory dramaturgy became welded into an artistic synthesis such as I had never before seen or heard, let alone smelt, on the stage.

The two puppets performed what resembled a very slow, old-fashioned, formal dance to the ballet music. Meanwhile, I was manoeuvred ever closer to the trapdoor in the centre of the stage until everyone in the audience must have realised that Smyke meant to entice his visitor to go down into the cellar with him. Down into the catacombs!

And here I noticed for the first time, and with some displeasure, that it hadn’t been like this at all. Large parts of my book were missing. They had boiled down my two visits to Smyke into a single encounter and simply omitted the whole of the trombophone concert I’d attended in the interim. That was a bold and brutal cut. In retrospect, though, it strikes me as quite understandable because it would not only have created a hiatus in the dramatic flow but would probably have proved too much for the audience, who couldn’t wait for the scene of the action to be transferred to the Labyrinth at last. This cut didn’t worry me for long, however, because an artistic representation of what was doubtless the most momentous decision in my life was now being shown onstage: the two puppets disappeared through the trapdoor without a word and the music ended. It seemed remarkably undramatic, but the actual course of events had been no more spectacular. Then the curtain fell and the auditorium was once more wrapped in total darkness and silence. But only for a few moments, dear friends, for the ensuing applause was louder than I’d ever heard in any theatre. To say that the play really took off thereafter would be a gross understatement.

1
See
The City of Dreaming Books
, p. 112. (Tr.)

2
See
The City of Dreaming Books
, p. 114 ff., the trombophone concert. (Tr.)

3
See
The City of Dreaming Books
, p. 101. (Tr.)

A Dream Within a Dream

ONCE THE STORM
of applause had died down, darkness and silence fell once more. All that could be heard were the murmurs of the audience and sounds of activity from the stage area. Before long, however, my attention was sufficiently aroused by the appearance of something on the edge of the main stage for me to resort to my opera glasses again. It was a metal-framed glass receptacle with a flickering object inside it – a so-called jellyfish lamp. This was a lantern such as people often used when exploring the Labyrinth. Although the phosphorescent jellyfish inside it gave off only a meagre and fitful light, it lasted for as long as the jellyfish survived – which, if the creature was kept well-nourished, could be a good few years.

Soon afterwards, another prop appeared onstage in the ghostly light of this jellyfish lamp. I initially thought it was an untidy stack of books – until it started to speak unaccented, stageworthy Zamonian in a deep and resonant voice:

‘A place accurséd and forlorn

with walls of books piled high
,

its windows stare like sightless eyes

and through them phantoms fly
.

Of leather and of paper built
,

worm-eaten through and through
,

the castle known as Shadowhall

brings every nightmare true …’

It was a puppet! A book puppet in the most literal sense, reciting the verses with which I had prefaced the second part of my book. On closer examination I saw that it was composed of publications of my own: a volume of early poems, two volumes of essays, my works on the Orm theory, a collection of fairy tales and several novels. My own
oeuvre
in puppet form! I was entranced. Then grey dust billowed into the air and the speaking head, bowing in all directions to subdued applause from the audience, sank through the floor of the stage.

Music struck up again and with it came noises. All one heard at first was the whisper of the curtains opening – one could hardly see them in the gloom. I cannot find words to describe the sound that then came wafting through the theatre, but I must try nonetheless. It was a mournful, high-pitched sound such as might have been made by some creature in terrible pain. If ghosts existed, they would probably attract attention in that way. Although I was firmly seated in my armchair, I had a frightful feeling that beneath me yawned a miles-deep shaft in which this creature was imprisoned. I turned cold as ice, and I noticed that Inazia was drawing her cloak more tightly around her. There came a low, soughing sound, as of wind that had strayed inside the walls of a ruined castle and was seeking a way out. The music was no less ghostly and eerie: now and then, isolated notes on the piano were struck or harp strings plucked like raindrops landing in puddles. At the same time, something in the middle of the stage slowly took shape in the gloom. It looked like a bundle of cloth or a heap of old blankets – until it suddenly stirred. Then a scaly, saurian head emerged from it. It was
me
! Once again, I started at the sight of myself. The Yarnspinner puppet was just waking up in the catacombs, crawling out from under its cloak and slowly struggling to its feet.

So they’d cut several more passages out of my book, dear friends! The scene in Pfistomel Smyke’s gigantic subterranean library was entirely missing. My being anaesthetised by the poisonous book had also been left out, likewise my waking up in the catacombs in the company of Smyke and Claudio Harpstick.

The Uggly leant over to me. ‘The treasures found in Smyke’s underground library made a sizeable contribution to Bookholm’s reconstruction and new-found prosperity,’ she whispered. ‘People are loath to remember that chapter in your book. That’s probably why the playwright left it out.’

I brushed this aside. Although the cut verged on censorship, it didn’t bother me at all. I wanted to know how the play went on, everything else was secondary. While Yarnspinner was patting the dust off his cloak, his surroundings became a little lighter. We could now make out earth walls, beams, worm-eaten bookshelves with mouldering volumes on them, cobwebs, sheaves of age-old paper on the ground. Glowworms drew calligraphic curlicues of light in the air. We could also hear disturbing noises: a dull, throbbing sound, subterranean gurgles, a persistent hiss. The music had become some thing that no longer merited the description. It was more of a noise, a menacing
basso continuo
produced by the orchestra’s organ. In the darkest corners of the stage, behind the bookshelves and between the books, movement could be discerned here and there: sometimes a groping tentacle, sometimes the glossy chitin of an insect, sometimes a monstrous, multicoloured, faceted eye – but they withdrew as quickly as they had emerged.

I suddenly felt as short of breath as I did during my bouts of asthma, which my doctor attributes to hypochondria. In my growing enthusiasm, I had almost forgotten that the bulk of my book was set in the catacombs of Bookholm and, thus, that the rest of the play would be so too. Things could yet turn very unpleasant, my friends, but I’d resolved to overcome my fears.

I smelt worms. I smelt coal. I smelt mildew, wet rat’s fur and the nutty effluvium of the Papyrus Cockroach, which, as Colophonius Regenschein states, lives only in the upper reaches of the catacombs. I smelt petroleum, the fishy exhalations of phosphorescent jellyfish, the liquorice tang of black seaweed. I also, of course, smelt books in such diverse states of decay as I had never smelt since the old days. There it was again, the alluring and unmistakable perfume of the
Dreaming Books
– not that which pervades the streets of Bookholm, however, but the exclusively subterranean scent of the huge, dark repository of antiquarian books that extended beneath the city. It was only now that I took another look at the Murkholmer organist, whose subtle olfactory musicianship I now took so much for granted that I’d
almost
forgotten about him. He was impassively manipulating the stops with his fingertips.

‘Incredible,’ I said in an awestruck voice. ‘This is just how the upper reaches of the catacombs smell.’

‘That’s not quite right,’ the Ugly whispered back. ‘It’s how the catacombs
used to
smell. Today they smell of burning.’

The melancholy background music that now struck up consisted only of some soft but endlessly repeated piano notes with rhythmical string accompaniment. Wasn’t this the moving
Andante con moto
by Zach Brestrunf? At all events, it was admirably suited to this phase of the drama, for now began the less felicitious part of my first visit to Bookholm – one that marked the all-time low of my life hitherto, dear friends! Betrayed and hijacked, a helpless victim buried alive in the catacombs of Bookholm – even a death march would have suited the context pretty well. The set was simple but realistic. Dark, earth-brown colours occasionally interspersed with grey granite: that’s what the walls down there really looked like. All that broke the monotony were some old books picturesquely mouldering away on rotting shelves. My character now launched into a rather silly sung monologue that somewhat detracted from the scene, which was perfect in other respects.

‘Alas, a prisoner am I
,

far from the sight of open sky
.

I can no hope at all discern
,

and do not know which way to turn
.

Accurséd be that poisoned book

which me so far from daylight took!

Why has that monster Pfistomel

entrapped me in the bowels of hell?’

… and so on and so forth in the same appalling style. I myself had never written such doggerel, even in the depths of despair over
writer’s
block. Still less had I sung it, dear brothers and sisters in spirit, especially as in this case the music had obviously been composed off the peg by some singerettist and was in sharp qualitative contrast to the classical quotations hitherto. I cast a sceptical glance at Inazia, who responded with a resigned shrug. At least she shared my opinion that this was the low point of the production to date. The scene soon ended, however, and its dramatic sledgehammer tactics had made it clear, even to the most dull-witted member of the audience, what had happened to the hero. Enough said!

The very next scene delighted me so much that I soon forgot about the embarrassing warbling that had preceded it. The curtain mercifully fell and another rose to reveal a wonderful model of the catacombs. Or rather, of a part of them. It looked like the cross-section of an anthill, the difference being that roaming its passages were no creepy-crawlies but a tiny Yarnspinner no bigger than my paw! The little puppet made its way ever deeper down serpentine tunnels until it came out in a cave at the foot of the model. This gave the audience a very good idea of the ramifications of the Labyrinth, which were conveyed with great structural and dramaturgical skill. The curtain fell, another rose and Yarnspinner, a full-sized puppet once more, was discovered standing in a wonderful dripstone cave that occupied the entire stage.

‘It gets a bit silly now,’ Inazia warned me with a grin, stuffing a biscuit into her mouth at lightning speed, ‘but I like it.’

Eerie but beautiful, the dripstone cave was bristling with stalagmites and stalactites. The stage designers had striven to recreate the subterranean light of phosphorescent algae, so the dripstones, some of which were three-dimensional and some painted, glowed in a variety of colours like the late, demented oil paintings by Vochtigang Venn. In the centre stood a big, dark bookcase adorned with a wealth of carving and filled with ancient tomes – around a hundred of them. As soon as Yarnspinner entered the cave, these books came to life. Their spines started to wobble and jostle, but they didn’t stir from the spot.
Enlisting
the aid of my opera glasses, I examined the curious old volumes more closely. In truth, the ribs on the leather spines were opening up into blithely chattering mouths and expressively rolling eyes. The whole bookcase was, in fact, a colossal puppet. A puppet composed of numerous little puppets!