The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (51 page)

“Intrigued,” said Lyra carefully. “Would those things make a big difference?”

“You're not trying to fool your friends or anyone who knows you well. It won't do that. What you're trying to do is make someone who's got a picture in his mind of a blondish girl without glasses not look at you twice. They'll be looking for someone who doesn't look like you. It's superficial, but superficial is the level most interactions work at. Do they know you haven't got your dæmon with you?”

“I'm not sure about that.”

“Because that's a pretty big giveaway.”

“I know. But I've tried to make myself invisible….”

“Hey! I'd love to do that. You must tell me how. But first, can I cut your hair?”

“Yes. And dye it. I can understand the reason—all you said makes sense. Thank you.”

Bud brought Lyra the letter from Malcolm, and then he had to leave. He shook Lyra's hand and said, “Seriously, you're in real danger. Don't forget that. It might be safer to stay in Smyrna till Mal gets here. We could keep you out of sight.”

“Thank you. I'll think hard about that.”

Lyra was burning to read the letter, but she put it away for now and focused on Anita, who was keen to hear about the witches and their way of becoming invisible. Lyra told her everything she knew. And that led to Will, and how he'd worked the same sort of spell without knowing it; and that led somehow to Malcolm, and everything he'd told her about the flood, and how she'd never known about it when she was his pupil, and how differently she saw him now.

It was the sort of conversation she hadn't had for a long time, and she had no idea how much she'd missed that sort of easy, friendly chatter. She thought, This woman would make an irresistible interrogator. No one could help telling her things. She wondered how often Anita had helped her husband with Oakley Street business.

Meanwhile, Anita was cutting Lyra's hair, a little at a time, stepping back and looking critically, checking in the mirror.

“We're aiming to change the shape of your head,” she said.

“That sounds alarming.”

“Without surgery. Your hair's naturally wavy and thick and takes up a lot of space, even though it isn't very long. We just want to make it a bit self-effacing. The dye will make a bigger difference. But a lot of what you call being invisible depends on the way you hold yourself. I recognize that. I acted with Sylvia Martine once.”

“Really? I saw her Lady Macbeth. Terrifying.”

“She could put it on at will. I was walking down the street with her one day. We'd just been rehearsing and it was a normal sort of busy city street, people going past, not noticing anything. And she said—you know her name was really Eileen Butler—she said, ‘Let's call Sylvia.'

“I didn't know what she meant. But we'd been talking about audiences, and fans, and followers, and she said that, and I didn't know what to expect.

“Well, her dæmon was a cat, as you probably remember if you saw her onstage. A perfectly ordinary cat. But something happened to him then, or he did something, and instantly he became—well, I don't know how to put it. He became more visible. As if a spotlight had come on, focused right on him. And the same was true of her. One second she was Eileen Butler, nice-looking, but just an ordinary passerby. The next second she was Sylvia Martine, and everyone in the street knew it. People saw her, they came up to speak, they crossed the street to ask for her autograph, and within a minute she was pretty well surrounded. It happened outside a hotel—I think she knew exactly what would happen, and did it somewhere where we could escape. The commissionaire let us in and kept everyone else back. Then she was Eileen Butler again. I wasn't a bad actress, but she was a star, and the difference is colossal, magical. Something supernatural about it. I was too shy to ask how she did it,
becoming
Sylvia in that way, but her dæmon had something to do with it. He said very little; he just—I don't know—became more visible. Extraordinary.”

“I believe it,” said Lyra. “I believe every word of it. I wonder if you can learn to do it. Or whether it's only possible for a few people.”

“I don't know. But I've often thought it would be dreadful to have that sort of power and not be able to turn it off. Sylvia could manage it—she was full of good sense—but in the case of someone vain or silly, it would drive them mad in the end. Make them a monster. Well, I can think of a few stars like that.”

“I want to do just the reverse. Can I see what it looks like now?”

Anita stood aside, and Lyra looked in the mirror. Her hair had never been so short. She liked it, liked the lightness, liked the air it gave her of being alert and birdlike.

“We've only just started,” said Anita. “Wait till you see it dyed.”

“What color do you suggest?”

“Well, dark. Not hard black—that wouldn't go with your general coloring. A darkish chestnut brown.”

Lyra submitted willingly. In all her life it had never occurred to her to have her hair colored; it was curious to find herself in the hands of someone so good at this whole business, so interested in it, so knowledgeable.

After applying the dye, Anita made some lunch, just bread and cheese and dates and coffee, and told Lyra about her journalistic work. She was currently writing a piece for an English-language paper in Constantinople about the state of the Turkish theater. Journalism sometimes overlapped with her husband's diplomatic work, and she'd seen something of the crisis in the world of rose gardens and precious oils and perfumery. She told Lyra about the numbers of gardens she knew about that had been destroyed, and of the merchants who dealt in those goods and who'd seen their factories and warehouses burned down.

“It's happening much farther east as well,” she said, “as far as Kazakhstan, apparently. A kind of mania.”

Lyra told her about her friend Miriam, whose father had gone bankrupt. “That was when I first heard about it. Only a few weeks ago—it feels like a lifetime. Am I really going to be a brunette? Miriam wouldn't recognize me. She always wanted me to do more with my hair and so forth.”

“Well, let's look,” said Anita.

They rinsed out the dye, washed her hair, and then Lyra sat impatiently as Anita dried it.

“I think that's worked very well,” she said. “Let me just…”

She ran her fingers through Lyra's hair, settled it slightly differently, and stood back.

“A success!” she said.

“Show me! Where's the mirror?”

It was a new face that looked back at her. Lyra's main thought, almost her only thought, was would Pan like this? But at the back of her mind was another: as soon as Olivier Bonneville finds me again with the alethiometer, he'll know I look like this, and then so will the Magisterium.

“Haven't quite finished yet,” said Anita. “Put these on.”

It was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. Now Lyra was a different person altogether.

“You'll have to go on doing all that witch stuff about being invisible,” Anita reminded her. “That won't change. Dowdy. You need to be dowdy. Dull. Low-powered. You need dull clothes, not bright colors. And I'll tell you something else,” she added, brushing Lyra's new hair, “you'll have to hold yourself differently. You've naturally got a springy, active way of moving. Think yourself heavy. Slow.”

Then her dæmon spoke. He'd been watching all this, saying little, occasionally nodding with approval, but now he perched on the back of a chair and said directly, “Make your body heavy and slow, but don't forget what your mind's doing. You need to look like someone who's suffering from a depression of the spirits, because that makes people turn away. They don't like looking at suffering. But it's very easy to become depressed by mimicking it. Don't fall into that trap. Your dæmon would tell you that, if he was here. Your body affects your mind. You need to act, not be.”

“That's it,” said Anita. “That's your note from Telemachus.”

“It's a very good one,” said Lyra. “Thank you. I'll do the reverse of what Eileen Butler did to become Sylvia Martine, but not in my mind.”

“And what are you going to do now?” said Anita.

“Buy a railway ticket for Aleppo. Get some dowdy clothes.”

“The Aleppo train leaves tomorrow. Where are you going to stay tonight?”

“Not in the same hotel. I'll find another one.”

“You certainly won't. You'll stay here tonight. Anyway, those glasses need adjusting. They keep sliding down your nose.”

“Are you sure? I mean, about me staying?”

“Yes. I know Bud will want to hear more from you.”

“Then…thank you.”

The spectacles adjusted, Lyra went out in her new persona. She bought a dull brown skirt and as dowdy a sweater as she could find; she bought a ticket for the Aleppo train; and then she found a small café and ordered hot chocolatl. When it was on the table in front of her, a mound of whipped cream slowly subsiding into the liquid, she looked at her name on the envelope in his clear hand. It wasn't one of the heavy college envelopes, but a flimsy one of coarse yellowing paper, and it bore a Bulgarian stamp. How absurd to find her hands shaking as she tore it open!

Dear Lyra,

I wish you'd keep still so I could catch up with you. This part of the world is becoming more unstable by the day, and the kinds of thing I can say in a letter are getting fewer and fewer the more likely it is that the letter will have been opened before it reaches you.

If you come across an Oakley Street friend in Smyrna, you can rely on him with total confidence. Actually, if you're reading this letter, you know that already.

You're now being watched and followed, though you probably haven't noticed yet. And those who are watching now know that you've been warned about it.

I understand your reason for taking the route you've chosen, and why you want to travel through that particular region. I shall search for you there if our paths don't cross beforehand.

There's a lot I'd like to say to you, but nothing I want to share with the other eyes that may read this letter along the way. I've learnt a number of things I want to talk to you about: matters of philosophy not least. I want to hear about everything you've seen and felt.

I hope with every fiber of my being that you're safe. Remember everything Coram told you, and keep watchful.

With the warmest of wishes,

Malcolm

Lyra had seldom been so frustrated. All those general warnings! And yet he was right. She looked carefully at the envelope again and saw that the flap had been stuck down twice, the second time not quite over the first. When she wrote back, which she'd do as soon as she had paper and a pen, she'd have to write in exactly the same terms to Malcolm.

She read the letter through again twice, and then drank her cooling chocolatl and walked (carefully, dowdily, aware of everything around) back to the Schlesingers' apartment.

But before she even turned the corner into the quiet street where their building stood, she heard the sound of sirens, and the harsh engines of police cars or fire trucks, and she saw above the rooftops a plume of dirty smoke rising into the air. People were running; the engines and the sirens came closer.

She went to the corner of the street and looked round. It was the Schlesingers' building, and it was ablaze.

Lyra turned away from the blazing building at once and walked steadily (dowdily, heavily) towards the center of the city. Her mind carried on half of a dialogue with Pan, urgent and frightened, but none of it showed on her face or in her bearing.

“I should stop—I should find out if they’re safe—I know I can’t—it would only make it worse for them, apart from anything else—it’s because of me that it happened—whoever set the fire is probably watching to see if anyone runs out, or…I’ll write to them as soon as—I can’t stay here in Smyrna now. Got to get out as soon as possible. Who am I? What was my witch-name? Tatiana…And a patronymic—Tatiana Asrielovna. Maybe that gives too much away. Giorgio…Georgiovna. If only I had a passport in that name—but witches don’t need
passports
—I’m a witch. A witch disguising herself as a, what was it,
dowdy
girl—depressed and dowdy—just so people don’t look at me. Oh, God, I hope Anita and Bud are all right. Perhaps he’s still at his office and doesn’t know about it—I could go and tell him—but I don’t know where that is….I must be Oakley Street–ish about this. If it was intended for me, then I’d be dangerous for them. What should I do? Get away. But the train doesn’t leave till—oh, get
another
train. Where does the next train stop? No trains for Aleppo. There’s one for a place called Seleukeia—Agrippa mentioned that! Go there today and…the Blue Hotel. The City of the Moon. Between Seleukeia and Aleppo. That’s what I’ll do. Maybe first find somewhere quiet and try the new method again…People get their sea legs and then they stop feeling seasick….Perhaps I could try that. And get together with Malcolm. Yes! But I don’t know where he is—the letter was posted in Bulgaria but he could be anywhere now—he could have been arrested—in prison—he could be dead….Don’t think like that. Oh, Pan, if you’re not at the Blue Hotel, I don’t know if I can go any further….Why do dæmons go there? But I’ve got the princess’s list of names in Aleppo—and that merchant there Bud Schlesinger told me about this morning, what was his name—Mustafa Bey. Oh, this is horrible. Danger all around…People who want to kill me—even the Master of Jordan only wanted to put me in a smaller room—not
kill
me—I wonder how Alice is now? Pan, we might not like each other much, but at least we’re on the same side—and if they kill me, then you…you won’t survive, in the Blue Hotel or anywhere else—self-preservation, Pan, if only for that—why did you go there? Why
there
? Did someone kidnap you? Is it a kind of prison camp? Will I have to rescue you? Who’s keeping you captive? The secret commonwealth will have to help—if I get there—if I find Pan—if…”

The one-sided conversation sustained her for part of the way to the station. It was so hard to make herself move slowly, though, to be dull and depressed; every particle of her body wanted to run, to dart across the squares and open spaces, to look all around every second, and she had to keep a firm hold on the image she wanted to project. Being invisible was hard work, unrewarding, soul-crushing work.

She was passing through a district where a number of temporary camps had been set up for the people displaced from their homes further east. In the next few days, perhaps, these people would be trying to find passage across the sea to Greece, and perhaps some of them would suffer shipwreck and drown. Children were running about on the stony ground, fathers stood in groups talking or sat smoking in the dust, mothers washed clothes in galvanized buckets or cooked over open fires, and there was a barrier that was invisible and intangible between them and the citizens of Smyrna, because they had no homes; they were like people without dæmons, people missing something essential.

Lyra wanted to stop and ask them about their lives and what had brought them to this state of things, but she had to be invisible, or at least forgettable. Some of the young men glanced at her, but not for long; she felt their flickering attention like the touch of a snake’s tongue, and then it withdrew. She was successfully uninteresting.

At the railway station she tried one counter after another until she found someone who could speak French, which she thought would be safer than English. The train for Seleukeia was a slow one, stopping at what seemed like every station on the way, but that suited her. She bought a ticket and waited on the platform in the late-afternoon sun, hoping she was transparent.

There was an hour and a half to wait. She found an empty bench near the cafeteria, and she sat there and kept watch all around while trying to seem invisible. She had one shock as she came to the bench and saw her reflection in the café window: who was this dark-haired stranger in glasses?

Thank you, Anita, she thought.

She bought some food and drink for the journey and returned to the bench. She couldn’t stop her thoughts circling back to the Schlesingers’ apartment building. If Anita hadn’t spotted the fire soon enough…If she hadn’t managed to get out…Thoughts that didn’t bear thinking kept crowding in and shouldering aside her pretended passivity.

A train came in and disgorged a platform-full of travelers. Among them were several families who looked only a little better off than the people she’d seen in the camp and on the streets: mothers in heavy clothing and headscarves, children carrying toys or torn shopping bags or sometimes younger brothers or sisters, old men harassed and exhausted, carrying suitcases or even cardboard boxes containing clothes. She remembered the riverboat docking in Prague and the refugees getting off. Would any of these people make it that far?

And why was the cause of this great movement of people not reported in Brytain? She had never heard of anything like it. Did the press and the politicians think that it would have no effect on her country? Where were these desperate people hoping to get to, anyway?

She mustn’t ask. Mustn’t show any interest at all. Her only hope of getting to the city of the dæmons and finding Pan was to hold her tongue and restrain every instinct of curiosity.

So she watched as the newcomers gathered their possessions and slowly dispersed. Perhaps they’d make for the port. Perhaps they’d find a shelter in one of the camps. They might have a little more money than the people she’d seen shipwrecked, which had allowed them to take the train; they might find somewhere affordable to lodge. Before very long they had all left the station, and then Lyra found the platform getting busier with people from Smyrna itself, commuting home after their day’s work. When the Seleukeia train came in, it filled up quickly with these commuters. She realized that if she wanted a seat, she’d better move quickly, and hurried to get on board, and found one just in time.

It was a corner seat. She made herself small and insignificant. The first person to sit next to her was a heavy man in a homburg hat who looked at her curiously as he set his bulging briefcase down beside him. It was only when his mongoose dæmon whispered in his ear, curling herself around his neck and peering myopically at Lyra, that he realized something was wrong. He said something sharply in Turkish.

“Pardon,”
Lyra murmured, sticking to French.
“Excusez-moi.”

If she had been a child, her dæmon would be a puppy abjectly wagging his tail and trying to appease this big, important, powerful man. That was the mood she tried to project. He wasn’t happy about it, but as the only result of moving away from her would be that he’d have to stand, he remained in his seat and turned away in extravagant distaste.

No one else seemed to notice, or they were all too tired to care. The train steamed slowly from one suburban station to the next, and then out of the city and through a series of country towns and villages, the carriage gradually emptying as it went. The heavy man with the bulging briefcase said something as he stood up to leave, half to her, half to the other people nearby, but again no one took any notice.

After an hour or so the towns and villages thinned out, and the train gathered speed a little. The evening was advancing; the sun had vanished behind the mountains, the temperature in the compartment was falling, and when the conductor came through to inspect tickets, he first had to light the gaslamps before he could see.

The carriage consisted of a number of separate compartments linked by a corridor along one side. In Lyra’s compartment, once the commuters had all got off, there were three other travelers, and in the new light of the gaslamp she studied them without looking directly. There was a woman in her thirties with a pale-looking child of six or so, and an elderly man with a mustache and heavy-lidded eyes, wearing an immaculate light gray suit and a red fez. His dæmon was a small and elegant ferret.

The man was reading an Anatolian newspaper, but not long after the conductor had lit the lamp, he folded the paper with great care and set it on the seat between himself and Lyra. The little boy was watching him solemnly, thumb in mouth, head leaning against his mother’s shoulder. When the old man folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes, the child turned to stare at Lyra, sleepy, puzzled, troubled. His mouse dæmon kept up a whispering conversation with the mother’s pigeon dæmon, the two of them flicking glances at Lyra and looking away again. The woman herself was thin, drawn, poorly dressed, and seemed worn down by anxiety. They had one small suitcase, battered and clumsily repaired, on the rack above them.

Time went past. The daylight vanished, and the world outside the compartment narrowed to the reflection of the little space itself in the window. Lyra began to feel hungry, and opened the bag of honey cakes she’d bought at the station. Seeing the child gazing at them with obvious desire, she held out the bag to him, and then to his mother, who flinched as if in fear; but they were both hungry, and when Lyra smiled and gestured to say, “Please take one,” first the little boy and then his mother slowly reached in and took one out.

The woman murmured a phrase of thanks almost too quietly to be heard, and nudged the boy, who whispered the same words.

They ate the honey cakes at once, and it was clear to Lyra that it was the first food they’d had for some time. The elderly man had opened his eyes, and he was watching the little transaction with serious and considered approval. Lyra held out the bag to him, and after a brief interval of surprise, he took a cake, and unfolded a snow-white handkerchief and laid it across his lap.

He said to Lyra a sentence or two in Anatolian, obviously in appreciation, but all she could do in response was say,
“Excusez-moi, monsieur, mais je ne parle pas votre langue.”

He inclined his head, smiled with dignified courtesy, and ate the cake in several small bites. “That was a most delicious honey cake,” he said in French. “Very kind of you.”

There were two left in the bag. Lyra was still hungry, but she had some bread and cheese too, so she offered the cakes to the mother and her child. The boy was keen but anxious, and the woman at first tried to refuse; but Lyra said in French, “Please take them. I bought far too many for myself. Please do!”

The man translated her words, and finally the woman nodded and let the boy have one; but she wouldn’t take the last for herself.

The man had an attaché case of brown leather, and he opened it and took out a vacuum flask. It was the sort that had two cups as part of the top, and he unscrewed them both and set them on the case next to him, where his ferret dæmon held them steady as he filled them with hot coffee. He offered the first cup to the mother, who refused, though she seemed to want it; and then to the child, who shook his head, doubtful; and then to Lyra, who took it gratefully. It was intensely sweet.

And that reminded her of the bottle of carbonated orange drink that she’d bought at the station. She found it and offered it to the child. He smiled, but looked up to his mother, who smiled too and nodded her thanks; and Lyra unscrewed the top and handed it to him.

“Are you traveling a long way, mademoiselle?” the old man said. His French was flawless.

“A very long way,” Lyra said, “but on this train, only to Seleukeia.”

“Do you know that city?”

“No. I shan’t be there long.”

“Perhaps that would be wise. I understand that civil order is somewhat disturbed there. You are not French, I think, mademoiselle?”

“You’re right. I come from further north.”

“You are traveling a long way from your homeland.”

“Yes, I am. But it’s a journey I have to make.”

“I hesitate to ask, and if I am being impolite, I most sincerely beg your pardon, but it seems to me that you are one of the women of the far north, those known as the witches.”

He used the word
sorcières.
Lyra, intensely wary, looked at him directly, but could see only courteous interest.

“That is true, monsieur,” she said.

“I admire your courage in coming so readily among the lands of the south. I am emboldened to speak like this because I traveled a great deal myself at one time, and many years ago I was so lucky as to fall in love with a witch from the far north. We were very happy, and I was very young.”

“Such encounters do happen,” she said, “but in the nature of things, they cannot last.”