The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [428]
“Good evening,” I said, staring out at the sea of faces, “I am here to read the nominations and announce the winner of the Best Chapter Opening in the English Language category.”
I started to feel hot under the lights. I composed myself and read the back of the envelope.
“The nominations are The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.”
I waited until the applause had died down and then opened the envelope.
“And the winner is . . . Brideshead Revisited!”
There was thunderous applause and I smiled dutifully as the emcee bent closer to the microphone.
“Wonderful!” he said enthusiastically as the applause subsided. “Let’s hear the winning paragraph, shall we?”
He placed the short section of writing into the Imagino TransferenceDevice that had been installed on the stage. But this wasn’t a recording ITD like the ones they used to create books in the Well—it was a transmitter. The words of Waugh’s story were read by the machine and projected directly into the crowd’s imagination.
“. . . I have been here before,” I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and although I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest . . .”
There was more applause from the guests, and when finally it stopped, the emcee announced, “Mr. Waugh can’t be with us tonight, so I would like to ask Sebastian to accept the award on his behalf.”
There was a drumroll and a brief alarum of music as Sebastian walked from his table, up the steps to the podium and after kissing me on the cheek shook the emcee’s hand warmly.
“Goodness!” he said, taking a swig from the glass he had brought with him. “It’s a great honor to accept the award on behalf of Mr. Waugh. I know he would want me to thank Charles, from whose mouth all the words spring, and also Lord Marchmain for his excellent death scene, my mother, of course, and Julia, Cords—”
“What about me?” said a small voice from the Brideshead table.
“I was getting to you, Aloysius.” Sebastian cleared his throat and took another swig. “Of course, I would also like to say that we in Brideshead could not have done it all on our own. I’d like to thank all the other characters in previous works who have done so much to lay the groundwork. I’d particularly like to mention Captain Grimes, Margot Metroland, and Lord Copper. In addition . . .”
He droned on like this for almost twenty minutes, thanking everyone he could think of before finally taking the Bookie statuette and returning to his table. I was thanked by the emcee and walked off the stage feeling really quite relieved, the voice of the emcee echoing behind me:
“And for the next category, Most Incomprehensible Plot in Any Genre, we are very pleased to welcome someone who has kindly taken a few hours’ leave of his grueling schedule of sadistic galactic domination. Ladies, gentlemen and things, his Supreme Holiness Emperor Zhark!”
“You’re on,” I whispered to the emperor, who was trying to calm his nerves with a quick cigarette in the wings.
“How do I look? Enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions of merciless life-forms?”
“Terrifying. Have you got the envelope?”
He patted his thick black cloak until he found it and held it up, gave a wan smile, took a deep breath and strode purposefully onto the stage to screams of terror and boos.
I reentered the Starlight Room as the Most Incomprehensible Plot was awarded for the fifth year running to The Magus. I glanced at my watch. There was an hour to go until the last and most prestigious award was due to be announced—the Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male).