The Museum of Literary Souls (A Short Story) (5 page)

In the end it proved to be slightly duller than Mr. Berger had expected. Each
of the characters had a small but clean suite of rooms, personalized to suit
their time periods and dispositions. Mr. Gedeon explained that they didn’t
organize the living areas by authors or periods of history, so there weren’t
entire wings devoted to Dickens or Shakespeare.

“It just didn’t work when it was tried in the past,” said
Mr. Gedeon. “Worse, it caused terrible problems and some awful fights. The
characters tend to have a pretty good instinct for these things themselves, and
my inclination has always been to let them choose their own space.”

They passed Room 221B, where Sherlock Holmes appeared to be
in an entirely drug-induced state of stupor, while in a nearby suite Tom Jones
was doing something unspeakable with Fanny Hill. There was a brooding
Heathcliff, and a Fagin with rope burns around his neck, but like animals in a
zoo, a lot of the characters were simply napping.

“They do that a lot,” said Mr. Gedeon. “I’ve seen some of
them sleep for years, decades even. They don’t get hungry as such, although
they do like to eat to break the monotony. Force of habit, I suppose. We try to
keep them away from wine. That makes them rowdy.”

“But do they realize that they’re fictional characters?”
said Mr. Berger.

“Oh yes. Some of them take it better than others, but they
all learn to accept that their lives have been written by someone else, and
their memories are a product of literary invention, even if, as I said earlier,
it gets a bit more complicated with historical characters.”

“But you said it was only fictional characters who ended up
here,” Mr. Berger protested.

“That is the case as a rule, but it’s also true that some
historical characters become more real to us in their fictional forms. Take
Richard III: much of the public perception of him is a product of Shakespeare’s
play and Tudor propaganda, so in a sense that Richard III
is
a fictional
character. Our Richard III is aware that he’s not actually
the
Richard
III but
a
Richard III. On the other hand, as far as the public is
concerned he is
the
Richard III and is more real in their minds than any
products of later revisionism. But he’s the exception rather than the rule:
very few historical characters manage to make that transition. All for the
best, really, otherwise this place would be packed to the rafters.”

Mr. Berger had wanted to raise the issue of space with the
librarian, and this seemed like the opportune moment.

“I did notice that the building seems significantly larger
on the inside than on the outside,” he remarked.

“It’s funny, that,” said Mr. Gedeon. “Doesn’t seem to matter
much what the building looks like on the outside: it’s as though, when they all
move in, they bring their own space with them. I’ve often wondered why that
might be, and I think I’ve come up with an answer of sorts. It’s a natural
consequence of the capacity of a bookstore or library to contain entire worlds,
whole universes, and all contained between the covers of books. In that sense,
every library or bookstore is practically infinite. This library takes that to
its logical conclusion.”

They passed a pair of overly ornate and decidedly gloomy
rooms, in one of which an ashen-faced man sat reading a book, his unusually
long fingernails gently testing the pages. He turned to watch them pass, and
his lips drew back to reveal a pair of elongated canines.

“The Count,” said Mr. Gedeon in a worried manner. “I’d move
along if I were you.”

“You mean Stoker’s Count?” said Mr. Berger. He couldn’t help
but gawp. The Count’s eyes were rimmed with red, and there was an undeniable
magnetism to him. Mr. Berger found his feet dragging him into the room as the
Count set aside his book and prepared to welcome him.

Mr. Gedeon’s hand grasped his right arm and pulled him back
into the corridor.

“I told you to move along,” he said. “You don’t want to be
spending time with the Count. Very unpredictable, the Count. Says he’s over all
that vampiric nonsense, but I wouldn’t trust him farther than I could throw
him.”

“He can’t get out, can he?” asked Mr. Berger, who was
already rethinking his passion for evening walks.

“No, he’s one of the special cases. We keep those books
behind bars, and that seems to do the trick for the characters as well.”

“But some of the others wander,” said Mr. Berger. “You met
Hamlet, and I met Anna Karenina.”

“Yes, but that’s really most unusual. For the most part, the
characters exist in a kind of stasis. I suspect a lot of them just close their
eyes and relive their entire literary lives over and over. Still, we do have
quite a competitive bridge tournament going, and the pantomime at Christmas is
always good fun.”

“How do they get out, the ones who ramble off?”

Mr. Gedeon shrugged. “I don’t know. I keep the place well
locked up, and it’s rare that I’m not here. I just took a few days off to visit
my brother in Bootle, but I’ve probably never spent more than a month in total
away from the library in all of my years as librarian. Why would I? I’ve got
books to read and characters to talk to. I’ve got worlds to explore, all within
these walls.”

At last they reached a closed door, upon which Mr. Gedeon
knocked tentatively.

“
Oui?
” said a female voice.

“
Madame, vous avez un visiteur
,” said
Mr. Gedeon.

“
Bien.
Entrez, s’il vous
plaît
.”

Mr. Gedeon opened the door, and there was the woman whom Mr.
Berger had watched throw herself beneath the wheels of a train and whose life
he felt that he had subsequently saved, sort of. She was wearing a simple black
dress, perhaps even the very one that had so captivated Kitty in the novel, her
curly hair in disarray, and a string of pearls hanging around her firm neck.
She seemed startled at first to see him, and he knew that she recalled his
face.

Mr. Berger’s French was a little rusty, but he managed to
dredge up a little from memory.

“
Madame, je m’appelle Monsieur Berger, et
je suis enchanté de vous rencontrer
.”

“
Non
,” said Anna, after a short pause,
“
tout le plaisir est pour moi, Monsieur Berger
.
Vous vous
assiérez, s’il vous
plaît
.”

He took a seat, and a polite conversation commenced. Mr.
Berger explained in the most delicate terms that he had been a witness to her
earlier encounter with the train, and it had haunted him. Anna appeared most
distressed and apologized profusely for any trouble that she might have caused
him, but Mr. Berger waved it away as purely minor and stressed that he was more
concerned for her than for himself. Naturally, he said, when he saw her making
a second attempt—if attempt was the right word for an act that had been so
successful first time round—he had felt compelled to intervene.

After some initial hesitancy, their conversation grew
easier. At some point Mr. Gedeon arrived with more tea and some more cake, but
they barely noticed him. Mr. Berger found much of his French returning, but
Anna, having spent so long in the environs of the library, also had a good
command of English. They spoke together long into the night, until at last Mr.
Berger noticed the hour and apologized for keeping Anna up so late. She replied
that she had enjoyed his company, and she slept little anyway. He kissed her
hand and begged leave to return the next day, and she gave her permission
willingly.

Mr. Berger found his way back to the library without too
much trouble, apart from an attempt by Fagin to steal his wallet, which the old
reprobate put down to habit and nothing more. When he reached Mr. Gedeon’s
living quarters, he discovered the librarian dozing in an armchair. He woke him
gently, and Mr. Gedeon opened the front door to let him out.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Mr. Berger as he stood on the
doorstep, “I should very much like to return tomorrow to speak with you and Ms.
Karenina, if that wouldn’t be too much of an imposition.”

“It wouldn’t be an imposition at all,” said Mr. Gedeon.
“Just knock on the glass. I’ll be here.”

With that the door was closed, and Mr. Berger, feeling both
more confused and more elated than he had in all his life, returned to his
cottage in the darkness and slept a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning, once he had washed and breakfasted, Mr. Berger returned to
Caxton Library. He brought with him some fresh pastries that he had bought in
the local bakery in order to replenish Mr. Gedeon’s supplies, and a book of
Russian poetry in translation of which he was unusually fond but which he now
desired to present to Anna. Making sure that he was not being observed, he took
the laneway that led to the library and knocked on the glass. He was briefly
fearful that Mr. Gedeon might have spirited away the contents of the
premises—books, characters, and all—overnight, fearful that the discovery by
Mr. Berger of the library’s true nature might bring some trouble upon them all,
but the old gentleman opened the door to Mr. Berger’s knock on the glass and
seemed very pleased to see him return.

“Will you take some tea?” asked Mr. Gedeon, and Mr. Berger
agreed, even though he had already had tea at breakfast and was anxious to
return to Anna. Still, he had questions for Mr. Gedeon, particularly pertaining
to Anna.

“Why does she do it?” he asked as he and Mr. Gedeon shared
an apple scone between them.

“Do what?” said Mr. Gedeon. “Oh, you mean throw herself
under trains.”

He picked a crumb from his waistcoat and put it on his
plate.

“First of all, I should say that she doesn’t make a habit of
it,” said Mr. Gedeon. “In all the years that I’ve been here, she’s done it
no more than a dozen times. Admittedly, the incidents have been growing more
frequent, and I have spoken to her about them in an effort to find some way to
help, but she doesn’t seem to know herself why she feels compelled to relive
her final moments in the book. We have other characters that return to their
fates—just about all of our Thomas Hardy characters appear obsessed by them—but
she’s the only one who reenacts her end. I can only give you my thoughts on the
matter, and I’d say this: she’s the titular character, and her life is so
tragic, her fate so awful, that it could be that both are imprinted upon the
reader and her in a particularly deep and resonant way. It’s in the quality of
the writing. It’s in the book. Books have power. You must understand that now.
It’s why we keep all of these first editions so carefully. The fate of
characters is set forever in those volumes. There’s a link between those
editions and the characters that arrived here with them.”

He shifted in his chair and pursed his lips.

“I’ll share something with you, Mr. Berger, something that
I’ve never shared with anyone before,” he said. “Some years ago we had a leak
in the roof. It wasn’t a big one, but they don’t need to be big, do they? A
little water dripping for hours and hours can do a great deal of damage, and it
wasn’t until I got back from the picture house in Moreham that I saw what had
happened. You see, before I left I’d set aside our manuscript copies of
Alice
in Wonderland
and
Moby Dick
.”

“
Moby Dick?
” said Mr. Berger. “I wasn’t aware that
there were any extant manuscripts of
Moby Dick
.”

“It’s an unusual one, I’ll admit,” said Mr. Gedeon. “Somehow
it’s all tied up with confusion between the American and British first
editions. The American edition, by Harper & Brothers, was set from the
manuscript, and the British edition, by Bentley’s, was in turn set from the
American proofs, but there are some six hundred differences in wording between
the two editions. But in 1851, while Melville was working on the British
edition based on proofs that he himself had paid to be set and plated before an
American publisher had signed an agreement, he was also still writing some of
the later parts of the book, and in addition he took the opportunity to rewrite
sections that had already been set for America. So which is the edition that
the library should store? The American, based on the original manuscript, or
the British, based not on the manuscript but on a subsequent rewrite? The
decision made by the Trust was to acquire the British edition and, just to be
on the safe side, the manuscript. When Captain Ahab arrived at the library,
both editions arrived with him.”

“And the manuscript of
Alice in Wonderland
? I
understood that to be in the collection of the British Museum.”

“Some sleight of hand there, I believe,” said Mr. Gedeon.
“You may recall that the Reverend Dodgson gave the original ninety-page
manuscript to Alice Liddell, but she was forced to sell it in order to pay
death duties following her husband’s death in 1928. Sotheby’s sold it on her
behalf, suggesting a reserve of four thousand pounds. It went, of course, for
almost four times that amount, to an American bidder. At that point the Trust
stepped in, and a similar manuscript copy was substituted and sent to the
United States.”

“So the British Museum now holds a fake?”

“Not a fake but a later copy made by Dodgson’s hand at the
Trust’s instigation. In those days the Trust was always thinking ahead, and
I’ve tried to keep up that tradition. I’ve always got an eye out for a book or
character that may be taking off.

“So the Trust was very keen to have Dodgson’s original
Alice
.
So many iconic characters, you see, and then there were the illustrations too.
It’s an extremely powerful manuscript.

“But all of this is beside the point. Both of the
manuscripts needed a bit of attention—just a careful clean to remove any dust
or other media with a little polyester film. Well, I almost cried when I
returned to the library. Some of the water from the ceiling had fallen on the
manuscripts—just drops, nothing more, but enough to send some of the ink from
Moby
Dick
onto a page of the
Alice
manuscript.”

“And what happened?” asked Mr. Berger.

“For one day, in all extant copies of
Alice in Wonderland
,
there was a whale at the Mad Hatter’s tea party,” said Mr. Gedeon solemnly.

“What? I don’t remember that.”

“Nobody does; nobody but I. I worked all day to clean the
relevant section and gradually removed all traces of Melville’s ink.
Alice
in Wonderland
went back to the way it was before, but for that day every
copy of the book, and all critical commentaries on it, noted the presence of a
white whale at the tea party.”

“Good grief! So the books can be changed?”

“Only the copies contained in the library’s collection, and
they in turn affect all others. This is not just a library, Mr. Berger; it’s
the
ur
-library. It has to do with the rarity of the books in its
collection and their links to the characters. That’s why we’re so careful with
them. We have to be. No book is really a fixed object. Every reader reads a
book differently, and each book works in a different way on each reader. But
the books here are special. They’re the books from which all later copies came.
I tell you, Mr. Berger, not a day goes by in this place that doesn’t bring me
one surprise or another, and that’s the truth.”

But Mr. Berger was no longer listening. He was thinking
again of Anna and the awfulness of those final moments as the train approached,
of her fear and her pain, and how she seemed doomed to repeat them because of
the power of the book to which she had given her name.

But the contents of the books were not fixed. They were open
not just to differing interpretations but to actual change.

Fates could be altered.