The Museum of Literary Souls

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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.