The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books (36 page)

Of all the scenes set in Shadowhall Castle, the one I liked best was the one in which the Shadow King recounted his own story. For this, the director had fallen back on one of the simplest but most effective theatrical devices: the shadow play. Back-projected on the walls of the throne room were big planes of different colours – red, yellow, blue –
on
which cut-out figures and scenery were moved around while the Shadow King was speaking. These were sometimes living creatures, sometimes buildings or landscapes, but also flames and rivers, birds in flight, scudding clouds, rushing rivers and windswept seas of grass, imaginary figures, picturesque dream personnel and whole spirit worlds. This was the way in which the play depicted the Shadow King’s life and ideas, his childhood, his development into a writer and also, of course, the terrible part of his story in which Pfistomel Smyke and Claudio Harpstick transformed him into a creature made of paper and banished him to the catacombs.

Despite the magnificently detailed treatment of the Shadowhall Castle scenes, however, it did not escape me that, here too, my book had been drastically abridged. My fight with the Animatomes had been cut, for example, and so had my visit to the Library of the Orm. Why, I couldn’t say, nor could I tell why the chapter with the giant in the castle’s cellar had been left out. Perhaps there had been a reluctance to spoil the elegiac mood of the foregoing scenes by introducing another change of location and scenery and further rapid twists and turns in the plot. But the authors of the stage play may possibly have felt, like some readers of my book, that the episode with the giant was imaginary – that it was a flight of fancy and a figment of my overexerted brain. I do, however, have the utmost sympathy with that point of view, for in hindsight I myself often wonder if I actually underwent those experiences or only dreamt them.

Instead, my departure from the castle followed in short order. The Shadow King’s exit from his subterranean place of exile in my humble company was celebrated on a grand theatrical scale with the use of countless puppets, brilliant lighting effects produced by hundred of candles, and musical backing from the famous intermezzo by Gipnatio Sacrem, which I have never been able to hear since without tears coming into my eyes.

The Shadow King’s reconquest of the Leather Grotto, which
actually
entailed the merciless slaughter of the Bookhunters and was an implacably brutal and bloodthirsty act of revenge, had wisely been presented as another shadow play. This lent the whole thing an artistic touch and made it acceptable even to the children in the audience. One Bookhunter after another could be seen sinking to the ground, felled by the infuriated Shadow King. Indeed, we even saw blood spurt and severed heads roll, but not in all the unappetising detail this scene would have called for if played by three-dimensional puppets. Presented thus, these terrible events seemed no more genuine than a bad dream.

As you know, dear friends, this ghastly episode marked the real end of my visit to Netherworld. The story ends with me ascending to the surface in the Shadow King’s company. I saw the Booklings hypnotise the surviving Bookhunters into killing one another. I also saw the Shadow King execute Claudio Harpstick with a blow of his paper hand, only to set fire to himself and, once thoroughly ablaze, drive Pfistomel Smyke down into the catacombs of Bookholm. You know all this only too well, so I’ve no need to give you a more detailed account of these sad and horrific scenes, even though they were among the most memorable of the entire play. In view of this, I shall spare myself the task of describing them.

Let me, therefore, conclude my account of the Puppetocircus Maximus by describing the final set. It was a model of the
City of Dreaming Books
so extensive and detailed that it filled the largest of the stages. Even before the first flames appeared, a whiff of smoke foretold what was about to happen. Then little tongues of flame rose above the roofs here and there. The smell of smoke grew stronger, becoming so pungent, acrid and alarming that many of the audience looked around apprehensively for the emergency exits. And we heard, at first only faintly, the first notes of the fire tocsin. At the same time, Perla la Gadeon’s well-known poem was declaimed by a powerful, resonant bass voice that seemed to come from all directions at once:

‘Hear the loud Bookholmian bells —

brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

how they screamed out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak
,

they can only shriek, shriek …’

The fires burning in the city onstage became still bigger and more alarming, and sent thin columns of smoke rising to the roof of the theatre. One heard distant screams and crackling flames, glass shattering and the crash of buildings as they collapsed. The flames spread like blood welling from an open wound and raced along the streets and alleyways. The tolling of the tocsin grew more insistent. A commotion broke out in the audience, many of whom began to sob, so convincingly was the disaster being reproduced in miniature. I clung to the parapet of our box, once more fighting back my tears. Several members of the audience were already rising from their seats. The doors of the auditorium opened and they streamed out, not in panic but as quickly as they could under the supervision of solicitous members of the theatre staff. I couldn’t bring myself to leave, although Inazia was already standing beside the door of our box. I found the panorama of the burning city simultaneously heartbreaking and fascinating. It was, in a dismayingly authentic way, the same sight that had presented itself to my gaze when I had escaped from the city and turned for a last look. A voice rang out from above. It was doubtless meant to be my own, for it was reciting words from the description of this event that had appeared in my book:

‘The Dreaming Books had awakened. Miles-high columns of black smoke were rising into the heavens fraught with paper transformed into weightless ash: the residue of incinerated thoughts. Swirling within them were myriad sparks, every one a fiery word ascending ever higher to dance with the stars. The rustle of the countless awakening books reminded me sadly of the rustling
laughter
of the Shadow King. He, too, was ascending in the biggest, most terrible conflagration Bookholm had ever undergone.’

That was just how I felt at this moment. I was as stirred and saddened as I had been then. But I also felt absurdly alive and greedy for all that was to come: as highly charged as if I’d been connected to an alchemical battery! It was only a stage play performed by puppets, but I had felt I was reliving my own past!

I remained standing beside the parapet for a while, being embarrassed to weep in front of the Uggly. Not until my tears finally ceased to flow did I tear my eyes away from the sight of the burning city and plunge into the throng of theatregoers making for the exit.

‘That was a bit more than I’d bargained for,’ I said to Inazia when we were outside at last, standing in the forecourt of the theatre with members of the audience streaming past us, chattering excitedly. It was the biggest possible understatement I could think of at that moment. ‘I’d give anything to meet the people who staged it.’

‘Really?’ said the Uggly, favouring me with one of her hideous smiles. ‘What if I were to introduce you to the person who bears artistic responsibility for the whole production? The director of the Puppetocircus Maximus himself?’

‘You could do that?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘Well …’ she drawled with ill-concealed pride. ‘It might be arranged. After all, I’m one of the patrons of this wonderful theatre. Look down.’

Inazia pointed to the ground between us. I noticed only then that the theatre forecourt we were standing on was paved with thousands of red and white stones laid alternately, and that they all had names carved on them. I looked more closely at the stone she had indicated.

There were two names on it:

Inazia Anazazi
and
Ahmed ben Kibitzer
.

Puppetism for Beginners

FROM THE FOLLOWING
day onwards and for quite a time thereafter, I was treated to some free and informative tours of modern Bookholm on which Inazia Anazazi the Uggly acted as my guide, theatre critic and expert on Puppetism. I rented some quiet rooms in a small boarding house, frequented mainly by writers, where I could not only get a peaceful night’s sleep but also do some work occasionally. Whenever her shop’s opening times permitted, or mostly at night, I accompanied Inazia on strolls through the various city districts and thus became acquainted with the new sights, theatres and, on occasion, restaurants and coffee houses. We must have looked an extremely odd couple: a Lindworm with his face forever hidden by a cowl, arm in arm with a tall, gaunt Uggly. We were usually deep in conversation, but I tended to supply the cues while Inazia spouted an endless stream of information about our special subject.

‘When Bookholm had been burnt to the ground,’ began the first of her series of lectures, ‘many of its inhabitants were utterly destitute. Their houses, their shops and all their possessions had gone up in smoke. There are many ways of starting again from scratch, and putting on puppet plays was a very popular one. For two reasons.’

She inhaled deeply as though intending to tell me the rest of the story in a single breath.

‘One reason was that a puppet theatre, and even the puppets for it, could be very easily fabricated out of the ruins of the gutted city. Nail a few charred planks together and there’s your stage. Sew some scraps
of
cloth together and there’s your cast. Sew two buttons on a sock: the principal character. A leafy branch in the background: an enchanted forest. The other reason was the immense demand for entertainment after the disaster, not only from children but from adults hard at work on the city’s reconstruction. Seated around their campfires at night – many of them still didn’t have a roof over their heads, don’t forget – they were eager to exchange their hardships for the world of the imagination. Readers and extempore poets, ballad singers and little puppet theatres – all took these traditional forms of communication to a higher level. Now, people could not only hear stories but see them enacted as well. They roasted potatoes in the fire, rejoicing in their survival, and the puppet theatres played to audiences of clamouring children. For many people that was a good end to a hard day. A lot of them still look back on those times with pleasure.’

We paused beside the remains of a huge, charred oak tree standing in the centre of a small square. I could still remember when, two centuries earlier, this ancient tree and its countless branches were in sap and had been one of Bookholm’s most vibrant sights. Now it was a horrible black skeleton serving only as a surface for billstickers. The leaves it now bore were made of paper and advertised a wide variety of services or cultural events.

‘Look,’ the Uggly told me. ‘Half those posters are to do with Puppetism.’

We slowly circled the huge, dead tree to enable me to read the posters and announcements:

‘You must also read the small print,’ Inazia prompted me.

I enlisted the help of my monocle in order to decipher the smaller notices.