Night Music

  “Oh God,” said Mr. Gedeon.

  Then there was Hardy.

  Tess of the d’Urbervilles now culminated in Tess’s escape from prison, engineered by Angel Clare and a team of demolition experts, while The Mayor of Casterbridge had Michael Henchard living in a rose-covered cottage near his newly married stepdaughter, and breeding goldfinches. At the conclusion of Jude the Obscure, Jude Fawley escaped the clutches of Arabella and survived his final desperate visit to Sue in the freezing weather, whereupon they both ran away and went to live happily ever after in Eastbourne.

  “This is terrible,” said Mr. Gedeon, although even he had to admit that he preferred Mr. Berger’s endings to Thomas Hardy’s.

  Finally he came to Anna Karenina. It took him a little while to find the alteration, because this one was subtler than the others: a deletion instead of an actual piece of bad rewriting. It was still wrong, but Mr. Gedeon understood Mr. Berger’s reason for making the change. Perhaps if Mr. Gedeon had experienced similar feelings about one of the characters in his care, he might have found the courage to intervene in a similar way. He had been a witness to the sufferings of so many of them, the consequences of decisions made by heartless authors, the miserable Hardy not least among them, but his first duty was, and always had been, to the books. This would have to be put right, however valid Mr. Berger might have believed his actions to be.

  Mr. Gedeon returned the copy of Anna Karenina to its shelf and made his way to the station.

  XV

  Mr. Berger woke to the most terrible hangover. It took him a while even to recall where he was, never mind what he might have done. His mouth was dry, his head was thumping, and his neck and back were aching from having fallen asleep at Mr. Gedeon’s desk. He made himself some tea and toast, most of which he managed to keep down, and stared in horror at the pile of first editions that he had violated the night before. He had a vague sense that they did not represent the entirety of his efforts, for he dimly recalled returning some to the shelves, singing merrily to himself as he went, although he was damned if he could bring to mind the titles of all the works involved. So ill and appalled was he that he could find no reason to stay awake. Instead he curled up on the couch in the hope that, when he opened his eyes again, the world of literature might somehow have self-corrected, and the intensity of his headache might have lessened. Only one alteration did he not immediately regret, and that was his work on Anna Karenina. The actions of his pen in that case had truly been a labor of love.

  He rose to sluggish consciousness to find Mr. Gedeon standing over him, his face a mixture of anger, disappointment, and not a little pity.

  “We need to have words, Mr. Berger,” he said. “Under the circumstances, you might like to freshen up before we begin.”

  Mr. Berger took himself to the bathroom and bathed his face and upper body with cold water. He brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and tried to make himself as presentable as possible. He felt a little like a condemned man hoping to make a good impression on the hangman. He returned to the living room, and smelled strong coffee brewing. Tea, in this case, was unlikely to be sufficient for the task at hand. He took a seat across from Mr. Gedeon, who was examining the altered first editions, his fury now entirely undiluted by any other emotions.

  “This is vandalism!” he said. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Not only have you corrupted the world of literature, and altered the histories of the characters in our care, but you’ve also damaged the library’s collection. How could someone who considers himself a lover of books do such a thing?”

  Mr. Berger couldn’t meet the librarian’s gaze.

  “I did it for Anna,” he said. “I just couldn’t bear to see her suffer in that way.”

  “And the others?” said Mr. Gedeon. “What of Jude, and Tess, and Sydney Carton? Good grief, what of Macbeth?”

  “I felt sorry for them, too,” said Mr. Berger. “And if their creators knew that, at some future date, they might take on a physical form in this world, replete with the memories and experiences forced upon them, would they not have given some thought to their ultimate fate? To do otherwise would be tantamount to sadism!”

  “But that isn’t how literature works,” said Mr. Gedeon. “It isn’t even how the world works. The books are written. It’s not for you or me to start altering them at this stage. These characters have power precisely because of what their creators have put them through. By changing the endings, you’ve put at risk their place in the literary pantheon, and by extension their presence in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to go and inspect the lodgings and find a dozen or more unoccupied rooms, with no trace that their occupants ever existed.”

  Mr. Berger hadn’t thought of that. It made him feel worse than ever.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so very, very sorry. Can anything be done?”

  Mr. Gedeon left his desk and opened a large cupboard in the corner of the room. From it he removed his box of restorer’s equipment: his adhesives and threads, his tapes and weights and rolls of buckram cloth, his needles and brushes and awls. He placed the box on his desk, added a number of small glass bottles of liquid, then rolled up his sleeves, turned on the lamps, and summoned Mr. Berger to his side.

  “Muriatic acid, citric acid, oxalic acid, and tartaric acid,” he said, tapping each bottle in turn.

  He carefully mixed a solution of the last three acids in a bowl, and instructed Mr. Berger to apply it to his inked changes to Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

  “The solution will remove ink stains, but not printer’s ink,” said Mr. Gedeon. “Be careful, and take your time. Apply it, leave it for a few minutes, then wipe it off and let it dry. Keep repeating until the ink is gone. Now begin, for we have many hours of work ahead of us.”

  They worked through the night, and into the next morning. Exhaustion forced them to sleep for a few hours, but they both returned to the task in the early afternoon. By late in the evening, the worst of the damage had been undone. Mr. Berger even remembered the titles of the books that he had returned to the shelves while drunk, although one was forgotten. Mr. Berger had set to work on making Hamlet a little shorter, but had got no further than Scenes IV and V, from which he had cut a couple of Hamlet’s soliloquies. The consequence was that Scene IV began with Hamlet noting that the hour of twelve had struck, and the appearance of his father’s ghost. However, by halfway through Scene V, and after a couple of fairly swift exchanges, it was already morning. When Mr. Berger’s excisions were discovered many decades later by one of his successors, it was decided to allow them to stand, as she felt that Hamlet was quite long enough as it was.

  Together they went to the lodgings and checked on the characters. All were present and correct, although Macbeth appeared in better spirits than before, and remained thus ever after.

  Only one book remained unrestored: Anna Karenina.

  “Must we?” said Mr. Berger. “If you say yes, then I will accept your decision, but it seems to me that she is different from the rest. None of the others are compelled to do what she does. None of them is so despairing as to seek oblivion over and over. What I did does not fundamentally alter the climax of the novel, but adds only a little ambiguity, and it may be that a little is all she requires.”

  Mr. Gedeon considered the book. Yes, he was the librarian, and the custodian of the contents of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, but he was also the guardian of its characters. He had a duty to them and to the books. Did one supersede the other? He thought of what Mr. Berger had said: if Tolstoy had known that, by his literary gifts, he would doom his heroine to be defined by her suicide, might he not have found a way to modify his prose even slightly, and thus give her some peace?

  And was it not also true that Tolstoy’s ending to the novel was flawed in any case? Rather than give us some extended reflection on Anna’s death, he chose instead to concentrate on Levin’s return to religion, and Koznyshev’s support for the Serbs, and Vronsky’s
committal to the cause of the Slavs. He even gave the final word on Anna’s death to Vronsky’s rotten mother: “Her death was the death of a bad woman, a woman without religion.” Surely Anna deserved a better memorial than that?

  Mr. Berger had crossed out three simple lines from the end of Chapter XXXI:

  The little muzhik ceased his mumblings, and fell to his knees by the broken body. He whispered a prayer for her soul, but if her fall had been unwitting then she was past all need of prayer, and she was with God now. If it were otherwise, then prayer could do her no good. But still he prayed.

  He read the preceding paragraph:

  And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.

  You know, thought Mr. Gedeon, Chapter XXXI could end just as easily there, and it might mean peace for Anna.

  He closed the book, allowing Mr. Berger’s change to stand.

  “Let’s leave it, shall we?” he said. “Why don’t you put it back on its shelf?”

  Mr. Berger took the book reverently and restored it gently, lovingly to its place in the stacks. He thought about visiting Anna one last time, but it did not seem appropriate to ask Mr. Gedeon’s permission. He had done all that he could for her, and he hoped only that it was enough. He returned to Mr. Gedeon’s living room and placed the key to the Caxton Library on the desk.

  “Good-bye,” he said. “And thank you.”

  Mr. Gedeon nodded but did not answer, and Mr. Berger left the library and did not look back.

  XVI

  In the weeks that followed Mr. Berger thought often of the Caxton Library, and of Mr. Gedeon, and of Anna most of all, but he did not return to the lane, and he consciously avoided walking near that part of town. He read his books and resumed his walks to the railway track. Each evening he waited for the last train to pass, and it always did so without incident. Anna, he believed, was troubled no more.

  One afternoon, as summer drew to its close, there came a knocking on his door. He answered it to find Mr. Gedeon standing on his doorstep, two suitcases by his side, and a taxi waiting for him at the garden gate. Mr. Berger was surprised to see him, and invited him to step inside, but Mr. Gedeon declined.

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m tired, and I no longer have the energy that I once had. It’s time for me to retire, and bequeath the care of the Caxton to another. I suspected as much on that first night, when you followed Anna to the library. The library always finds its new librarian and leads him to its door. I thought that I might have been mistaken when you altered the books, and I resigned myself to waiting until another came, but slowly I grew to understand that you were the one after all. Your only fault was to love a character too much, which caused you to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and it may be that we both learned a lesson from that incident. I know that the Caxton and its characters will be safe in your care until the next librarian comes along. I’ve left a letter for you containing all that you need to know, and a number at which you can contact me should you have any questions, but I think you’ll be just fine.”

  He held out to Mr. Berger a great ring of keys. After only a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Berger accepted them, and he saw that Mr. Gedeon could not stop himself from shedding a tear as he entrusted the library and its characters to its new custodian.

  “I shall miss them terribly, you know,” said Mr. Gedeon.

  “You should feel free to visit at any time,” said Mr. Berger.

  “Perhaps I will,” said Mr. Gedeon, but he never did.

  They shook hands, and Mr. Gedeon departed, and they did not meet or speak again.

  XVII

  The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository is no longer in Glossom. At the beginning of this century the town was discovered by developers, and the land beside the library was earmarked for houses and a modern shopping mall. Questions started to be asked about the peculiar old building at the end of the lane, and so it was that one evening a vast fleet of anonymous trucks arrived driven by anonymous men, and in the space of a single night the entire contents of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository—books, characters, and all—were spirited away and resettled in a new home in a little village not far from the sea, but far indeed from cities and, indeed, trains. The librarian, now quite old and not a little stooped, liked to walk on the beach in the evenings, accompanied by a small terrier dog and, if the weather was good, by a beautiful, pale woman with long, dark hair.

  One night, just as summer was fading into autumn, there came a knock on the door of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, and the librarian opened it to find a young woman standing on the doorstep. She had in her hand a copy of Vanity Fair.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “I know this may sound a little odd, but I’m absolutely convinced that I just saw a man who looked like Robinson Crusoe collecting seashells on the beach, and I think he returned with them to this”—she looked at the small brass plate to her right—“library?”

  Mr. Berger opened the door wide to admit her.

  “Please come in,” he said. “It may sound equally odd, but I think I’ve been expecting you. . . .”

  THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB

  She looked at her husband, who had just placed a mug of tea on the good dining table, the one she’d spent an hour polishing to a high sheen, and him not even bothering to pick up a coaster along the way, and she despaired. Sometimes she wondered if he wasn’t going soft in the head.

  “Jesus, what are you doing?” she asked.

  “What? I’m having a mug of tea. Can’t a man have a mug of tea in his own house without asking permission?”

  She scuttled past him, picked up the offending item, and placed it on the mantelpiece instead.

  “Aren’t I only just after cleaning that table? You’ll leave a mark on it.”

  She squatted before the table, peering along the length of it.

  “Ah, look,” she said. “I can see it. I can see the mark.”

  She retrieved her cloth from under the kitchen sink and went to work again. Her husband put his hands in his trouser pockets. The ironing board still stood in the center of the room, in front of the television. It reminded him uncomfortably of a funeral bier, the kind that Clancy’s undertakers used for the resting of the coffin at a wake. She’d forced him to buy a new shirt, even though his old shirts were perfectly fine, and then insisted on ironing it to get the creases out, no matter that he promised he’d keep his jacket and cardigan on over it, so that even the Lord Himself wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was creased or not.

  He wasn’t sure that he wanted his tea now. It would taste of polish. The whole house smelled of polish and soap and bleach. It hadn’t been this clean in years—and his wife was a house-proud woman, so it was no small matter. He was nearly afraid to walk on the floor, even though he was only wearing slippers. In fact, he suspected that he was making his own home look untidy just by being in it.

  “It’s grand,” he said.

  “It isn’t grand. Nothing is grand. Nothing.”

  She started to cry. He took his hands out of his pockets and patted her awkwardly on the back, as though she’d just had a piece of bread go down the wrong way. He was no good at this kind of thing. He loved his wife dearly, but he wasn’t one for hugging and holding hands, and he never knew what to do with her when she cried. It was seldom that she did it, but it was still too often for his liking.

  “Come on, now,” he said. “Come on. There’s no need for that.”

  And she knew that he was right, but wrong as well. She wasn’t crying over the table. It was everything else. Really, she didn’t know what to think. They’d be here tomorrow, and she’d never had anyone so important in her house before, never even thought that she would. It was bad enough when Father Delaney came, but these
others . . . God, it might as well have been the pope himself who was coming to call.

  She found a tissue somewhere in the folds of her apron and wiped her eyes and nose with it.

  “Look at the place,” she said. “I’m ashamed to let anyone see it in this state.”

  He bristled now. He’d worked hard for this house. He was still working hard for it, and would be for a few years yet. It was no palace, but it was theirs, and he wasn’t about to be made to feel embarrassed about it, especially not after his wife had been breaking her back getting it ready for the visitors, her and their daughter both working at it until their hands were raw.

  The thought of the girl upstairs was like a punch to the gut.

  “Don’t say that,” he said. “They’ll never set foot in a house cleaner than this one, nor one more loved either.”

  She stood and rubbed at his right arm, feeling the muscles of him, the heat. God, she loved him, fool that he was for loving her.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m just . . .”

  But she didn’t have the words for it, and neither did he.

  “I know,” he said, and that was enough. But she kept her hand on his arm, drawing strength from him just as he drew it from her, although he’d never have confessed as much to his wife, and she’d have dropped dead on the spot if he did.

  “What if they tell us that there’s something wrong with her?” she asked. “What if they take her away?”

  “Why would they do that?” he replied. “And there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just different, that’s all. Special. Whatever she has is a gift from God.”

  “I wish He’d given it to someone else, if it is. I wish He’d left her alone, and let her be a normal girl. Maybe they can get rid of it, the priests. Maybe they can, I don’t know, say a prayer and send it back where it came from.”