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Authors: Walter Moers

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The Fire Demons of Nether Florinth
I
tried to move, but it was impossible. Every bone, every muscle hurt as if it had been smashed or torn apart. Then I remembered: I’d fallen down the shaft. Now I was lying at the bottom, breathing my last.
I strove to raise my head. That, at least, I found I could do. Homuncolossus was sitting beside me, leafing through a book. Beyond him I saw a tunnel whose walls were lined with bookshelves.
‘Maybe you should write poems instead of novels,’ he said. ‘Verse might be better suited to your constitution.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘You fell asleep while climbing. I only just managed to catch you.’
I looked down at myself. I was still in one piece but suffering from the worst aches and pains I’d ever experienced.
‘You carried me the rest of the way? For two whole days?’
Homuncolossus tossed the book aside. ‘Hear that?’ he said.
‘What?’ I listened. True, I could hear noises - lots of noises. A medley of gurgles and crashes, rumbles and roars, clatters and bangs.
‘That’s the city,’ said Homuncolossus. ‘They’re the sounds of Bookholm.’
I sat up, wide awake in an instant.
‘Are we there?’
‘Not quite, but close beneath the surface. From here it would be child’s play to reach it by way of some second-hand bookshop.’ He looked at me with a cryptic expression. ‘But my own route goes via Smyke’s library.’
‘Mine too.’
‘You don’t have to come with me. I wouldn’t feel hurt if you preferred to take an easier route. I can show you one.’
‘As long as Smyke’s still around I wouldn’t get much further up there than you. There’s a price on my head, remember?’
‘In that case, let’s go.’
Homuncolossus left his torch behind. This part of the catacombs was lit by jellyfish lamps. They were everywhere, those lamps I hadn’t seen for such a long time, and so were books. Not ancient, malodorous tomes written in indecipherable runes, but normal second-hand books. Taking one from a shelf as we walked on, I flicked through it.
It was
The Fire Demons of Nether Florinth
, a thriller set in the Graveyard Marshes and featuring at least one large-scale conflagration in every chapter, so the blurb bombastically confided. Nothing could have interested me less than the literary glamorisation of the abnormal proclivities of the dwarfish Fire Demons, a tribe of disreputable arsonists. What interested me far more was the age of the book. It was a
pyromanic excitation novel
, a peculiarly nasty offshoot of Zamonian light fiction designed to appeal to readers who got their kicks from descriptions of huge, all-consuming fires. This literary genre had existed for only a century. I replaced the book, took out another, opened it and read the first few words aloud: ‘
The world is a jagged, rusty can of worms - if you ask me, not that anyone ever does.
’ ‘Is that your philosophy of life?’ asked Homuncolossus.
‘No, it’s from Glumphrey Murk, the superpessimist,’ I replied. ‘This is another book that can be found in every modern Zamonian bookstore. We really must be quite close to the surface.’
‘I told you so,’ Homuncolossus retorted.
‘Have you worked out a way of getting to Smyke’s library?’ I asked.
‘Not really. I only know where the labyrinth surrounding it begins.’
‘How will you recognise the entrance?’
‘Oh, you can’t miss it. It’s signposted. There’s a corpse sitting outside.’
‘A corpse?’
‘A mummified body. It looks a bit like . . . But you’ll see what I mean when we get there.’
‘Are mysterious allusions a legitimate literary device?’ I demanded slyly.
‘No. Only second-rate authors make use of them to hold their readers’ attention. Why do you ask?’
The White Sheep of the Smyke Family
W
alking around so close to the surface of Bookholm was almost more claustrophobic than being somewhere deep down in the catacombs. I now knew why Homuncolossus had ended by burying himself as far away as possible. You could not only hear the life of the city but feel it. The incessant rumbles and bangs overhead made the books tremble on their shelves. Once I even thought I heard the voices of children. To hear and feel all this while imprisoned below ground was far more intolerable than being exiled to distant Shadowhall Castle.
In spite of the city’s proximity I would probably have failed to get out unaided. The catacombs here were just as confusing, if not more so, as those further down, not least because they were so cramped. The passages were low-ceilinged and narrow, with countless forks and intersections, small rocky chambers and flights of steps, and there were piles of books everywhere. Books! At this juncture, nothing could have interested me less. I had got to know every type of book at first hand, whether ‘Dreaming’ or ‘Hazardous’ or ‘Animatomic’, and if I ever did get out my first act would be to make straight for some uncivilised wilderness where no one could read or write at all.
‘Don’t be scared!’ Homuncolossus said suddenly. He had been striding resolutely ahead all the time. ‘The mummy is in a cave round the next corner. It looks quite lifelike at first glance, perhaps because of the skeletons in its vicinity. They’re probably the remains of people with weak nerves who died of heart failure at the sight of it.’
Thus forewarned, I peered cautiously round the corner - and jumped back despite myself. A familiar figure was sitting there.
‘Smyke!’ I gasped.
‘Yes, he does look a bit like Smyke, doesn’t he?’ Homuncolossus whispered behind me. He had stepped aside to let me go first.
‘No, not like Pfistomel Smyke,’ I said. ‘Like Hagob Salbandian Smyke.’
We entered the little cave together and examined the mummy. Yes, it really was Hagob Salbandian Smyke, Pfistomel’s great-uncle. He looked exactly as he had in the oil painting I’d seen - well,
almost
exactly, because his corpse was completely desiccated. He had resembled a corpse in his lifetime, however, so this made little difference.
He was seated on the floor of the cave with his back against an overflowing bookcase, his dead eyes staring into space. In addition to books the cave contained two skeletons - their bones were strewn all over the floor - and suspended from the roof was a jellyfish lamp whose half-dead occupant emitted only a feeble, irregularly pulsating orange glow. The strangest aspect of the scene was that the uppermost pair of the mummy’s fourteen hands was raised and that one skeletal hand seemed to be pointing to the other. It was a mystery to me how Hagob had managed to die in such a pose.
‘You knew him?’ asked Homuncolossus.
‘Not personally, but I know who he is: a member of the Smyke family.’
‘He looks pretty thin for a Smyke.’
‘Yes, Hagob was a bit of a one-off. He was Pfistomel’s great-uncle. He left him all he owned and then disappeared. They say he was insane.’
‘He certainly looks it. What’s he doing down here?’
‘He probably lost his way and died of thirst and starvation, then shrivelled up into a mummy.’
‘What about his hands? Why is he holding them in such a funny way?’
‘He’s pointing to something,’ I said.
‘Yes, his own fingers.’
‘He really was insane.’
‘No, wait,’ said Homuncolossus. ‘He isn’t pointing to his fingers, he’s pointing to something in them.’
‘You mean he’s holding something?’ I said. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Yes. There’s a hair between his finger and thumb.’
I looked more closely. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s an eyelash.’
Just then I remembered how Smyke had discoursed about his great-uncle while we were standing in front his portrait: ‘
Hagob was an artist. He produced sculptures. My home is full of them.
’
‘
Really?
’ I had interposed. ‘
I haven’t seen a single sculpture on your premises.
’
‘
No wonder. They’re invisible to the naked eye. Hagob made microsculptures.
’
‘
Microsculptures
?’
‘
Yes. He began with cherry stones and grains of rice, but his works steadily diminished in size. He ended by carving them out of the tip of a single hair. I’ll show you some of them under the microscope when we get back. He carved the whole of the Battle of Nurn Forest on an eyelash.
’
‘It’s a microsculpture,’ I said.
‘You mean this hair has been worked on in some way?’
‘Possibly. Smyke claimed that Hagob could produce the tiniest sculptures imaginable. But that doesn’t get us anywhere. We’d need a microscope to see it.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Homuncolossus. ‘I could see it unaided.’
‘You could?’
‘I already told you: I’ve no idea what Smyke implanted in me instead of eyes, but I can see as well as a Gloomberg eagle looking through a telescope. Or a microscope, whichever.’
‘Really? Then take a look! Perhaps this eyelash bears a clue of some kind.’ Homuncolossus carefully plucked the hair from between Hagob Salbandian’s bony finger and thumb, then held it close to his cavernous eye sockets for several seconds. I seemed to hear a series of faint clicks and whirrs.
‘You’ll never believe this!’ he said.
‘What won’t I believe?’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘I’ll believe anything you tell me!’
Homuncolossus looked at me.
‘Really? A bit sudden, isn’t it?’
‘Tell me what you can see!’
‘You’ll never believe it.’
‘Please!’
Homuncolossus concentrated on the eyelash again.
‘It’s a will,’ he said. ‘Engraved on this hair.’
‘No!’
‘You see? You don’t believe me.’
‘You’re driving me crazy! Read it out!
Read . . . it . . . to . . . me!
’
‘
Will,
’ said Homuncolossus.
‘Yes, yes, I know!’ I croaked. ‘It’s a will, you already said that.’
‘No, that’s what it says here: “
Will
”. It’s the heading. Shall I read the rest or not?’
‘Please!’ If any word could sound as if it were down on its knees, it was that ‘Please!’ of mine.
Homuncolossus cleared his throat. ‘Will,’ he read,
 
‘I sincerely hope that the first person to read this does not bear the name Pfistomel Smyke. If that should be the case, however, be advised, Pfistomel, you confounded rogue, that I hereby curse you! I curse you to the end of time and I shall anoint your grave with my ghostly piss until our planet collides with the sun!
 
 
‘But, should you not bear the name Pfistomel Smyke, unknown stranger, listen to the following sad story. Pfistomel is, alas, my misbegotten grand-nephew and a scion of my equally degenerate family. When he knocked on my door one day - probably on the run from creditors or guardians of the law - I hadn’t the slightest notion of the depths of villainy to which he could sink. Like many other people before me, I succumbed to his innate charm. I opened the door and bade him welcome, and it was not long before I was treating him like my own son. I shared everything with him, my home, my food - everything with one exception: the secret of our family library, which had been handed down for centuries from generation to generation. I was the first of the Smykes to break the chain. Instead of misusing that monstrous possession for my personal aggrandisement, I decided simply to ignore it altogether.
 
 
‘For I am, as you will perhaps see from my stature, rather different from the rest of my corpulent family. There is good and evil in all the Smykes, but it must unfortunately be stated, in view of our family history, that reprehensible characteristics predominate.
 
 
‘In contrast to most Smykes I tend towards asceticism, have artistic leanings and abominate power in any form. It must truly be said, therefore, that the Smykean bequest went astray when it came into my hands. On inheriting the library I resolved that it should not, while I lived, be used for any nefarious purpose - indeed, for any purpose at all. On one occasion I even briefly considered setting fire to it, but could not bring myself to do so. It was only rarely that I visited the place to read a book there.
 
 
‘Many people may think it insane of someone endowed with such a potential abundance of power to spend his life producing works of art which no one can see. Well, my own ideas of morality prescribe that only a lunatic would aspire to subordinate the fate of others to his own wishes. I leave it to a higher authority to decide which view is the right one.
 
 
‘Pfistomel must have grasped the truth one day. I now feel sure that he had discovered the secret of the library by keeping my movements under constant surveillance. That was my death warrant. He drugged me with a poisoned book and consigned me to the catacombs. I fear I am only the first in a succession of luckless individuals who do not accord with his diabolical dreams of absolute power.
 
 
‘My strength is failing fast. I have been repeatedly foiled by the cunning mechanism that cuts off the library from this side of the catacombs, nor have I succeeded in finding another exit. All I can still do is to formally disinherit Pfistomel Smyke and unmask him as my murderer. The library of the Smykes shall belong to whomsoever finds this document and makes it public. It only remains for me to hope that he is a person of integrity.
 
 
‘Hagob Salbandian, the white sheep of the Smyke family.’

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