The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [1]
"Ahh…"
Gilgamesh's brown fingers broke a piece of the bread and shoved it into his mouth, and he followed it by taking a swig of wine from the open bottle. "Château des Rêves," he said appreciatively, "now where would a young lad like you find a bottle like that?"
"I stole it," Orphan said.
The old man turned his blind eyes on Orphan and slowly nodded. "Yes," he said, "but where did you steal it, young Orphan?"
Orphan shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. "From Mr. Eliot's Wine Merchants on Gloucester Road. Why?"
"It's a long way to come, with a bottle of red wine," Gilgamesh said, as if reciting a half-forgotten poem. "As much as I appreciate the visit, I doubt you came all this way on a social call. So," the blind eyes held Orphan in their gaze, "what is it you want?"
Orphan smiled at that. "Tonight," he said, "is the night, I think."
"Indeed?" The eyes turned, the hands checked the anchored fishing-rod, returned to the bread. "Lucy?"
Orphan smiled. "Lucy," he said.
"You will ask her?"
"I will."
Gilgamesh smiled, but his face looked old and, for a moment, wistful. "But you are both so young…"
"I love her." It was said simply, with the honesty only the young possess. Gilgamesh rose, and surprised Orphan by hugging him. The old man felt frail in Orphan's arms. "Let's drink. For the two of you."
They drank, sharing the bottle, Orphan grinning inanely.
"Read me the paper," Gilgamesh said. They sat together, looking at the Thames.
Obligingly, Orphan reached for the stained newspaper. He scanned the small print, the ink already running, searching for an item of news to interest Gilgamesh. "Here," he said at last. He cleared his throat and read the title, which was: "TERRORIST GANG STRIKES AGAIN!"
"Go on," Gilgamesh said, spraying him with crumbs of bread.
"'Last night,'" read Orphan, "' notorious terrorist organisation known as the Persons from Porlock struck again at the very heart of the capital. Their target this time was none other than the famed playwright Oscar Wilde, who was engaged, by his own words, in a work of composition of the highest order when he heard an insistent knock on the door, followed by shouts from outside. Rising to see what the commotion was about – having, for reasons of his own, dismissed all his servants for the night – Wilde was confronted by several men dressed as clowns who shouted fragmented lines from Lear's A Book of Nonsense at him, enclosed him in a circle and danced around him until his mind, so he himself says, had been set awhirl with chaos. The Persons departed as suddenly as they had come, evading the police force that was already on its way to the scene. In his statement, a confused Wilde said the title of his new play was to be called The Importance of Being Something, but for the life of him he could no longer recall what that something was. "How long will this campaign of terror continue?" Wilde asked, and called for the Prime Minister's resignation. "This cannot go on," he said; "this is a violation of everything our country stands for." Prime Minister Moriarty's Office was not available for comment.'"
He finished, and all was quiet save for Gilgamesh's chuckle. "Was he really 'engaged in a work of composition of the highest order'?" he said, "or was he entertaining the young Alfred Douglas? I suspect the Persons from Porlock wasted their time on this one. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" he said.
Orphan glanced away and was silent. Again, Gilgamesh chuckled. He took another long swig on the bottle and said, "What else is there?"
"Moriarty to launch Martian space-probe," Orphan said, "ceremony to take place tomorrow at dusk. The probe will carry an Edison record containing the songs of birds and whales, as well as a small volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese."
Gilgamesh nodded approvingly. "Lucy is going to be there," Orphan said. "She has been doing the whale recordings for the past two months, and she was selected to put the record and the book