The Museum of Literary Souls

CHAPTER NINE

Lights came on. They were dim, and the illumination they offered had a touch of jaundice to it, but they revealed lines of shelves stretching off into the distance, and that peculiar musty smell distinctive to rooms in which books are aging like fine wines. To his left was an oak counter and behind it cubbyholes filled with paperwork that appeared not to have been touched in many years, for a fine film of dust lay over it all. Beyond the counter was an open door, and through it Mr. Berger could see a small living area with a television and the edge of a bed in an adjoining room.

The old gent removed his hat and his coat and scarf and hung them on a hook by the door. Beneath them he was wearing a dark suit of considerable vintage, a white shirt, and a very wide gray-and-white-striped tie. He looked rather dapper in a slightly decaying way. He waited patiently for Mr. Berger to begin, which Mr. Berger duly did.

“Look,” said Mr. Berger, “I won’t have it. I simply won’t.”

“Won’t have what?”

“Women throwing themselves under trains, then coming back and trying to do it again. It’s just not on. Am I making myself clear?”

The elderly gentleman frowned. He tugged at one end of his moustache and sighed deeply.

“May I have my bag back, please?” he asked.

Mr. Berger handed it over, and the old man stepped behind the counter and placed the bag in the living room before returning. By this time, though, Mr. Berger, in the manner of bibliophiles everywhere, had begun to examine the contents of the nearest shelf. The shelves were organized alphabetically, and by chance Mr. Berger had started on the letter D. He discovered an incomplete collection of Dickens’s work, seemingly limited to the best known of the writer’s works. Our Mutual Friend was conspicuously absent, but Oliver Twist was present, as were David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, The Pickwick Papers, and a handful of others. All of the editions looked very old. He took Oliver Twist from the shelf and examined its points. It was bound in brown cloth with gilt lettering and bore the publisher’s imprint at the foot of the spine. The title page attributed the work to Boz, not Charles Dickens, indicating a very early edition, a fact confirmed by the date of publisher and date of publication: Richard Bentley, London, 1838. Mr. Berger was holding the first edition, first issue, of the novel.

“Please be careful with that,” said the old gent, who was hovering nervously nearby, but Mr. Berger had already replaced Oliver Twist and was now examining A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps his favorite novel by Dickens: Chapman & Hall, 1859, original red cloth. It was another first edition.

But it was the volume marked The Pickwick Papers that contained the greatest surprise. It was oversized and contained within it not a published copy but a manuscript. Mr. Berger knew that most of Dickens’s manuscripts were held by the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the Forster Collection, for he had seen them when they were last on display. The rest were held by the British Library, Wisbech Museum, and the Morgan Library in New York. Fragments of The Pickwick Papers formed part of the collection of the New York Public Library, but as far as Mr. Berger was aware, there was no complete manuscript of the book anywhere.

Except, it seemed, in Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, of Glossom, England.

“Is it…?” said Mr. Berger. “I mean, can it…?”

The old gentleman gently removed the volume from Mr. Berger’s hands and placed it back in its place on the shelf.

“Indeed,” said the gentleman.

He was looking at Mr. Berger a little more thoughtfully than before, as though his visitor’s obvious appreciation for the books had prompted a reassessment of his probable character.

“It’s in rather good company as well,” he said.

He gestured expansively at the rows of shelves. They stretched into the gloom, for the yellow lights had not come on in the farther reaches of the library. There were also doors leading off to the left and right. They were set into the main walls, but Mr. Berger had seen no doors when he had first examined the building. They could have been bricked up, but he had seen no evidence of that either.

“Are they all first editions?” he asked.

“First editions or manuscript copies. First editions are fine for our purposes, though. Manuscripts are merely a bonus.”

“I should like to look, if you don’t mind,” said Mr. Berger. “I won’t touch any more of them. I’d just like to see them.”

“Later, perhaps,” said the gent. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

Mr. Berger swallowed hard. He had not spoken aloud of his encounters since the unfortunate conversation with Inspector Carswell on that first night.

“Well,” he said, “I saw a woman commit suicide in front of a train, and then sometime later I saw her try to do the same thing again, but I stopped her. I thought she might have come in here. In fact, I’m almost certain that she did.”

“That is unusual,” said the gent.

“That’s what I thought,” said Mr. Berger.

“And do you have any idea of this woman’s identity?”

“Not exactly,” said Mr. Berger.

“Would you care to speculate?”

“It will seem odd.”

“No doubt.”

“You may think me mad.”

“My dear fellow, we hardly know each other. I wouldn’t dare to make such a judgment until we were better acquainted.”

Which seemed fair enough to Mr. Berger. He had come this far; he might as well finish the journey.

“It did strike me that she might be Anna Karenina.” At the last minute, Mr. Berger hedged his bets. “Or a ghost, although she did appear remarkably solid for a spirit.”

“She wasn’t a ghost,” said the gent.

“No, I didn’t really believe so. There was the issue of her substantiality. I suppose you’ll tell me now that she wasn’t Anna Karenina either.”

The old gent tugged at his moustache again. His face betrayed his thoughts as he carried on an internal debate with himself.

Finally, he said, “No, in all conscience I could not deny that she is Anna Karenina.”

Mr. Berger leaned in closer and lowered his voice significantly. “Is she a loony? You know…someone who thinks that she’s Anna Karenina?”

“No. You’re the one who thinks that she’s Anna Karenina, but she knows that she’s Anna Karenina.”

“What?” said Mr. Berger, somewhat thrown by the reply. “So you mean she is Anna Karenina? But Anna Karenina is simply a character in a book by Tolstoy. She isn’t real.”

“But you just told me that she was.”

“No, I told you that the woman I saw seemed real.”

“And that you thought she might be Anna Karenina.”

“Yes, but you see, it’s all very well saying that to oneself or even presenting it as a possibility, but one does so in the hope that a more rational explanation might present itself.”

“But there isn’t a more rational explanation, is there?”

“There might be,” said Mr. Berger. “I just can’t think of one at present.”

Mr. Berger was starting to feel light-headed.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” said the old gent.

“Yes,” said Mr. Berger, “I rather think I would.”