by David Bishop
Caroline Walker’s living room was largely how you’d expect one belonging to a librarian to look. All of the walls were hidden behind bookcases; each bookcase was full, of both books standing upright and other volumes which lay sleeping across their tops. A space crammed with words, well-loved and well-used. Despite working in a building full of books, this was the room that Caroline saw as her sanctuary: a cosy, papery womb shielding her from the uncaring outside world.
Until tonight. Caroline considered the stranger who sat opposite her in the other dark green armchair which sat in front of the fire. Thus far he’d refused to give Caroline his name; and so she’d silently christened him Franz, his angular, pointed face, dark hair and dark eyes reminding her of Kafka. On the low table between them (also littered with books and a shimmering blue bowl of gemstones that reflected the fire-light) there was a half empty bottle of red wine, two glasses and the remains of a hastily prepared dinner: a pair of shallow, blue and white striped bowls smeared with red sauce and stray curls of pasta.
‘You’re welcome,’ Caroline was saying. ‘You look like someone who hasn’t eaten in a while.’ Franz took a sip from his glass. ‘Maybe now you can explain what was happening in my library.’
Franz’s hair was subtly grey around the edges, a colour repeated with more certainty in the stubble of his chin. His slim body seemed to quiver with energy; Caroline had the impression he was never totally at ease, but would always be ready to react.
‘What do you know about James Joyce?’
This wasn’t what Caroline was expecting. ‘Oh, well – quite a lot, actually, once upon a time. I wrote my dissertation on him, but that was thirty-odd years ago.’
‘How about this one?’ The stranger pulled a well-used paperback out of the battered leather satchel at his feet and tossed it across to Caroline, who caught it awkwardly. Her librarian’s eye took in the damage first: a spine scarred with creases, dog-eared corners and the splayed and crinkled pages which were the hallmarks of a book immersed in water, probably more than once. A frustrated reader perhaps, intent on drowning Joyce’s final (and most frustrating) work. ‘You’ve read it?’
Caroline laughed. ‘As much as anyone ever does.’
She watched as a genuine smile seemed to play across Franz’s lips. ‘Isn’t that part of the game?’
Caroline shrugged, flicking through the book’s pages. Each was thick with annotations, delicate as a spider’s web; words, lines, arrows and peculiar little drawings (many of them phallic), written in at least five or six different hands. Memories of pushing through the book at university came flooding back to Caroline, but she was surprised that not all of them bad. Finnegans Wake was a dense, allusive text, the spelling gloriously non-standard and stuffed with puns and references it would take several lifetimes to unpick. Caroline had often thought that Joyce would have loved the internet, and understood it instinctively. ‘I admire his attempts to push at boundaries, but -’
‘He wasn’t writing for an audience, certainly not by then. He was writing for himself, and – in the Wake’ – Franz paused, a nervous tongue running over his lips – ‘for other reasons.’
‘So those men who came to the library earlier? It was because of our first edition?’
The stranger nodded. ‘How did you acquire it? The library, I mean.’
‘Good question. It’s part of a collection we inherited from a local man. James Ward. His father had made his money in industry, moved out to Hadfield when he retired. His son James was something of a bibliophile, travelled all over Europe and America before the First World War and during the twenties. Met everyone worth meeting, if you believe his memoirs.’
‘Including Joyce?’
‘I’d have to check, but probably. Our copy of the Wake was inscribed by Joyce – with fond appreciation, I think it says. It’s quite a collection – signed copies of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lovecraft, Ford, Maugham, amongst others.’
‘And worth a fortune.’
‘So they wanted to steal it? Your friends?’
‘Not exactly. And they’re certainly not my friends.’
‘So what, exactly? If my collection is in danger I think I need to know about it.’
Franz refilled both glasses. ‘Those men didn’t want to steal your book. They wanted to destroy it.’
Caroline looked down at the copy of Finnegans Wake on her lap. It was a Penguin Modern Classics edition – Caroline had plenty of these scattered around her home. She could see at least six of their lime-green spines from where she was sitting. Above the title and author’s name the cover was dominated by a cartoon: a caricature of Joyce, his body forming a question mark with the dot underneath represented by a globe. You and me both, Jimmy.
‘Destroy? What does that mean?’
‘Obliterate, remove from existence.’
‘And that’s why they followed you to my library?’
‘I was following them. I’m trying to stop them. They want to destroy every first edition of that book.’
‘But why?’
‘Because it has power.’
***
I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is in her downstairs toilet at nearly nine o’clock on a Tuesday evening and there is a strange man in Caroline Walker’s living room and even though he seems normal Caroline Walker doesn’t know if she can trust him.
Caroline opened her eyes and stared at her reflection in the mirror, the advice from her counsellor running through her head. Whilst it often helped to ground her when she was feeling overwhelmed, this time… Seriously, the stranger in her living room could be anyone. Charming, but potentially certifiable. Was she safe, alone in the house with him? Caroline had inherited it from an elderly aunt who had herself lived in it for nearly sixty years. That was the only reason Caroline could now afford to live in one of the oldest (and most expensive) areas of the Garden City.
The toilet was off the kitchen, adjacent to a back door half-glazed with small rectangular panes. Beyond them Caroline’s back garden was disappearing in the thickening darkness. Light from nearby houses was some comfort, but it was still worryingly distant. She checked the door was locked, but decided not to close both bolts as she would normally. Not yet. Then she went back through the hall to the living room.
The stranger was swirling the wine in his glass and staring into the fire. ‘What do you know about Joyce’s family?’ he asked without looking up.
‘Nora Barnacle was his common-law wife. Together some years before they married. Two children, both born in Italy I think.’
Franz nodded. ‘Georgio was the eldest, then Lucia was born in 1907. They were living in Trieste, Joyce scraping a living as a teacher alongside the writing. Father and daughter were very close. Both artistic. As she grew older, Lucia had ambitions to become a dancer. She studied in Paris and England, showed some talent. A bright future seemed ahead of her. And then, as she grew into adulthood -’
‘She was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Carl Jung thought the same about Joyce.’
Franz raised his eyebrows. ‘You do know your stuff.’
‘It’s like riding a bike,’ Caroline said, tapping the side of her forehead. ‘My dissertation was on parent-child relationships in Ulysses.’
‘Lucia was diagnosed in 1932,’ Franz continued. ‘She was twenty-five. By that time the family were living in Zurich. Poor Lucia spent most of the remaining fifty years of her life in and out of various institutions. When Nora died in 1951 Lucia was moved to England. She died in a hospital in Northampton in 1987.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ Caroline said quietly. It hit her differently now, thirty years older.
The stranger emptied his glass, fingers tapping on one arm of the chair. ‘What I’ve told you so far is largely a matter of record. But what I’m going to say next Caroline is -’ That was the first time Franz had used her name. ‘It isn’t something you’ll find in any of the biographies, and if you know as much about Joyce as I think you do, you’re probably going to think I’m crazy.’
‘Maybe I already do,’ Caroline said, thinking back to when she was alone in the toilet.
Franz smiled. ‘There have been times when I’ve not believed it myself. Maybe there still are. But the fact is, it doesn’t matter whether you or I believe it’s true or not. What matters is the men you encountered earlier – they believe it’s true, and it’s their belief that makes them dangerous.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘In 1938 Joyce was approached by a man called Gustav Gerber, a self-described psychotherapist and paranormal investigator. Gerber was a great admirer of Joyce’s work; he believed himself capable of curing Lucia and eventually he convinced Joyce to allow him to visit her in hospital. After several weeks, Gerber gave them his expert opinion: he believed Lucia’s schizophrenia was caused by a malevolent spirit. The only way of curing her was to expel it.’
‘An exorcism?’
Franz shrugged. ‘I don’t know if Gerber would have called it that. But the Joyces were desperate, and he was eventually persuasive enough to convince them. Gerber was given permission to remove Lucia from the hospital for one weekend. That was when he arranged for this ritual to take place.’
‘Wait, how do you know all this? If it’s not in any of the biographies?’
‘Gerber left an unpublished memoir about his relationship with Joyce. Unpublished for a reason. Any serious researcher has dismissed it as fiction or fantasy -’
‘Not unlike Joyce.’ Franz nodded. ‘So what happened next?’
‘Gerber borrowed a villa just outside Zurich, apparently from another wealthy client. But whilst he was confident in his ability to expel the evil spirit inhabiting Lucia, Gerber knew this would be useless without somewhere to trap it and prevent it from re-entering her body. He needed help.’
Caroline flexed the copy of Finnegans Wake back and forth between her fingers. I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is sitting in her living room and starting to feel anxious and maybe even excited. Puzzle pieces started to click lightly into place.
‘Words gave Joyce power,’ Franz continued. ‘Gerber believed the evil spirit had first been attracted to Lucia because of her father’s status as a writer, and so now Gerber wanted to use those same words as a weapon, against the demon hiding inside Lucia.’ Franz pointed at the book Caroline was bending. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that Finnegans Wake starts -’
‘- in the middle of a sentence,’ finished Caroline. ‘A sentence which happens to begin -’
‘- at the end of the book.’ Franz’s eyes were ablaze, despite himself. ‘It’s a circle: no beginning, no end. No escape. The perfect trap.’
Caroline stopped kneading the book and breathed for the first time in what felt like minutes. ‘I’ve seen them carved into old buildings and churches. Shapes and knots that have no end, designed to distract and trap evil spirits. But never with words.’
‘You’ve never heard of a magic spell?’ Caroline snorted. ‘Words are powerful,’ Franz said more quietly. ‘Do I really need to tell you that? A librarian?’
‘I’ve lived my whole life believing books have power, but this? It’s – it’s too fantastical.’
‘The first time I heard it, I too thought it was nonsense. But that doesn’t matter,’ Franz said, leaning forward in his chair, ‘so long as there are men out there who believe it to be true, and who are willing to kill in order to get what they want.’
‘Destroy the book, break the spell, free the demon.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But that’s – hang on -‘ Caroline paused, trying once again to get a grip on her breathing. ‘Surely that would be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of copies, even for something so niche. They can’t hope to destroy them all. Can they?’
‘They’re fanatics, but they’re not stupid. They want to destroy every first edition copy of the Wake. The only one published whilst Joyce was still alive. The only one he signed off and approved. He was dead two years later, unable to impose his exacting standards. If we assume all subsequent editions are imperfect – as far as Joyce is concerned – then maybe they aren’t the ones with the power.’
‘That’s still a lot of books.’
‘Not really. And much more realistic, if your deadline is as soon as possible and you’re driven by religious zeal. The first UK edition only numbered 3,400 copies, and almost a thousand of those were destroyed unsold. Of the rest, 2,255 were bound and sold, whilst the remainder were given away: friends, patrons, reviewers.’
‘And one of them is in my library,’ Caroline said. ‘They’re going to come back, aren’t they?’
‘I think that’s probably -’ And then the phone rang. Caroline and Franz looked at each other.
‘No one ever calls me in the evening.’
‘Answer it.’
Caroline held the phone to her ear and listened, unsure of what was happening at the other end of the line. There was the whisper of air, as if whoever was on the other end was outside. ‘Hello?’ Caroline asked, before the line went abruptly dead. Immediately there came a sound of breaking glass from the kitchen. Caroline’s eyes widened as Franz stood up, pulling a gun from inside his jacket.
‘Wait here,’ he said, moving away. Franz switched off the light and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Now alone in the dark, Caroline struggled to believe what was happening. Was this all real? The once familiar books covering every wall suddenly seemed utterly unfamiliar. Caroline felt trapped in this room of words that now felt like a cage, claustrophobic and half drunk and on the edge of panic – until, from the kitchen, there were shouts. Three gunshots rang out, quickly. And then, silence. Caroline held her breath, Franz’s copy of Finnegans Wake rolled tightly in her hands. Not much of a weapon, unless she was going to read to them. On the edge of hysterical laughter, Caroline waited for Franz to call out, to tell her he was safe. What if he had been killed? What would she do? How would she explain to the police who the dead stranger in her kitchen was? How could she make them understand the ridiculous story that she herself still struggled to believe?
From the direction of the kitchen Caroline heard footsteps. More than one set, clumsy, and quite unlike Franz’s light and careful tread. She needed to ground herself, stop the panic, think of herself in the third person.
I’m Caroline Walker, she began, I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is a librarian at Hadfield Central Library
and the footsteps sounded closer, definitely more than one person out there and
I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is a librarian at Hadfield Central Library and Caroline Walker lives here in the house she inherited from her Aunt Maud and
she watched as the door handle turned slowly and began to open, a column of light creeping in from the hallway and
I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is a librarian at Hadfield Central Library and Caroline Walker lives here in the house Caroline Walker inherited from her Aunt Maud and she’s sitting in her favourite green armchair and
a dark figure taller and bulkier than Franz moved into the dark room, scanning it carefully and
I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is a librarian at Hadfield Central Library and Caroline Walker lives here in the house Caroline Walker inherited from Caroline Walker’s Aunt Maud and Caroline Walker is sitting in Caroline Walker’s favourite green armchair and
clearly looking for someone and Caroline thought she saw that he was holding a gun which he began to raise and
I’m Caroline Walker and Caroline Walker is a librarian at Hadfield Central Library and Caroline Walker lives here in the house Caroline Walker inherited from Caroline Walker’s Aunt Maud and Caroline Walker is sitting in Caroline Walker’s favourite green armchair and Caroline Walker is about to be murdered in
David Bishop is a father, husband and secondary school English teacher. He’s been a writer for as long as he can remember, success first coming at primary school when he won the Easter story competition for his tale about a dinosaur hatching from a chocolate egg. He particularly enjoys the work of George Orwell, Shirley Jackson, Celia Dale and Daphne DuMaurier.
