The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [49]
"You look like a kid," Tom said, not quite hiding his laugh. "If you were performing with Barnum and me, that's what you'd 'ave been billed as. The Kid." He laughed again, but Orphan didn't. The Kid, he thought. It resonated with him.
"The Kid," he said out loud. Tom stopped laughing and regarded him almost solemnly. "Take care of yourself, Orphan."
"I will," Orphan said. He turned away from the mirror and marched out of the Nell Gwynne.
"And bring back my gun!" Tom shouted after him. "It was a present from Colt himself!"
He leaned against the doorframe and watched Orphan disappear as he walked out of the alleyway.
"I wonder if I'll see you again," he murmured into the empty night, "Take care of yourself, Orphan. For all of us."
He walked along St Martin's Lane and thought of endgames. There are many players, he thought. But only two sides. And the objective of the game is to topple the king. But what if there was no king? What if a queen ruled the board? The objective, he thought, would be the same.
It was a cold night, the earlier warmth departing under the threat of a bank of clouds that sailed overhead, a fleet of warships announcing their dominion of the weather. The street was almost empty, the gas lamps casting weak light and strong shadows. They twisted and turned like barbarians in a dance. He thought, I want to come back to my old life. To return to the shop, sell books, write poetry. Talk to Gilgamesh by the bridge, watch the theatre, love Lucy and be loved… but it had already happened, and passed. And here I am.
He turned left into Cecil Court. Payne's stood in darkness. His footsteps made the only sound.
He stepped into the interior of the shop. Age-old books dozed in the darkness on countless shelves. They seemed to murmur sleepily to him when they sensed his presence. He thought again of the bible at Guy's, the book that lay in wait in every room, the one Irene Adler had glanced at, nervously it seemed to him, before falling silent.
The books have ears, he thought, and giggled.
The sound was muffled by the room, absorbed by all the paper. He thought, There is nothing sadder than an unused bookshop. Volumes of words, ideas and stories, blueprints and diagnostics, illustrations and notes scribbled in the margins – they did not exist unless there was someone there to hold them, to open their pages, to read them and make them come alive, however briefly.
Out of habit he went to his room. His bed lay undisturbed beneath the burden of the bookcase. The table was bare. His eyes were used to the darkness now, and he ignored the stub of a candle still sitting in its saucer. The dark was better, he thought. His days of sunshine and light were gone, the clock his body followed had been twisted and changed. He did not like night, yet now he lived inside it. I will live in it for just a little while longer, he thought. He left his room and returned to the main area of the shop. There.
He approached the door to the basement and put his palm against the wood. He pushed, and it opened.
Worn stone stairs led underground. The stairwell was dark. Orphan walked down the steps, placing each foot carefully before continuing to the next one.
At the bottom of the stairs was a second door. Faint light spilled through the narrow gap with the floor underneath it. A small sign on the door said, BIBLIOTHECA LIBRORUM IMAGINARIORUM.
He paused for a long moment, unsure of himself. He could hear nothing behind the door. He thought he could hear the Turk speaking, inside his head. You are a pawn, it said, laughing at him. Pawns can never go back. They can only move forward. To capture or be captured.
This isn't chess, he wanted to say, but the Turk had already faded away, had never been there to begin with.
He pressed the door handle down and pushed, and the door opened.
The basement was in reality a small, rather comfortable room. Bookshelves lined the walls here just as they