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And the people who would burn the words, the people who would take the books from the shelves, the firemen and the ignorant, the ones afraid of tales and words and dreams and Hallowe’en and people who have tattooed themselves with stories and Boys! You Can Grow Mushrooms in Your Cellar! and as long as your words which are people which are days which are my life, as long as your words survive, then you lived and you mattered and you changed the world and I ca
I learned your books. Burned them into my mind. In case the firemen come to town.
But who you are is gone. I wait for it to return to me. Just as I waited for my dictionary or for my radio, or for my boots, and with as meagre a result.
All I have left is the space in my mind where you used to be.
And I am not so certain about even that.
I was talking to a friend. And I said, ‘Are these stories familiar to you?’ I told him all the words I knew, the ones about the monsters coming home to the house with the human child in it, the ones about the lightning salesman and the wicked carnival that followed him, and the Martians and their fallen glass cities and their perfect canals. I told him all the words, and he said he hadn’t heard of them. That they didn’t exist.
And I worry.
I worry I was keeping them alive. Like the people in the snow at the end of the story, walking backwards and forwards, remembering, repeating the words of the stories, making them real.
I think it’s God’s fault.
I mean, he can’t be expected to remember everything, God can’t. Busy chap. So perhaps he delegates things, sometimes, just goes, ‘You! I want you to remember the dates of the Hundred Years’ War. And you, you remember okapi. You, remember Jack Be
I don’t know.
I don’t know where to look. Have I lost an author, just as once I lost a dictionary? Or worse: did God give me this one small task, and now I have failed him, and because I have forgotten him he has gone from the shelves, gone from the reference works, and now he only exists in our dreams . . .
My dreams. I do not know your dreams. Perhaps you do not dream of a veldt that is only wallpaper but that eats two children. Perhaps you do not know that Mars is heaven, where our beloved dead go to wait for us, then consume us in the night. You do not dream of a man arrested for the crime of being a pedestrian.
I dream these things.
If he existed, then I have lost him. Lost his name. Lost his book titles, one by one by one. Lost the stories.
And I fear that I am going mad, for I ca
If I have failed in this one task, oh God, then only let me do this thing, that you may give the stories back to the world.
Because, perhaps, if this works, they will remember him. All of them will remember him. His name will once more become synonymous with small American towns at Hallowe’en, when the leaves skitter across the sidewalk like frightened birds, or with Mars, or with love. And my name will be forgotten.
I am willing to pay that price, if the empty space in the bookshelf of my mind can be filled again, before I go.
Dear God, hear my prayer.
A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . . F . . . G . . .
Jerusalem
Jerusalem, thought Morrison, was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly. It had engulfed him, engulfed both of them, and he could feel the pressure of time pushing him up and out. Like swimming down too deep.
He was glad to be out of it.
Tomorrow he would go back to work once more. Work was good. It would give him something to focus on. He turned on the radio and then, mid-song, turned it off.
‘I was enjoying that,’ said Delores. She was cleaning the fridge before filling it with fresh food.
He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He couldn’t think straight, with the music playing. He needed the silence.
Morrison closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was back in Jerusalem, feeling the desert heat on his face, staring at the old city and understanding, for the first time, how small it all was. That the real Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, was smaller than an English country town.
Their guide, a lean, leathery woman in her fifties, pointed. ‘That’s where the sermon on the mount would have been given. That’s where Jesus was arrested. He was imprisoned there. Tried before Pilate there, at the far end of the Temple. Crucified on that hill.’ She pointed matter-of-factly down the slopes and up again. It was a few hours’ walk at most.
Delores took photos. She and their guide had hit it off immediately. Morrison had not wanted to visit Jerusalem. He had wanted to go to Greece for his holidays, but Delores had insisted. Jerusalem was biblical, she told him. It was part of history.
They walked through the old town, starting in the Jewish Quarter. Stone steps. Closed shops. Cheap souvenirs. A man walked past them wearing a huge black fur hat, and a thick coat. Morrison winced. ‘He must be boiling.’
‘It’s what they used to wear in Russia,’ said the guide. ‘They wear it here. The fur hats are for holidays. Some of them wear hats even bigger than that.’
Delores put a cup of tea down in front of him. ‘Pe
‘Remembering the holiday.’
‘You don’t want to brood on it,’ she said. ‘Best to let it go. Why don’t you take the dog for a nice walk?’
He drank the tea. The dog looked at him expectantly when he went to put the lead on it, as if it were about to say something. ‘Come on, boy,’ said Morrison.
He went left, down the avenue, heading for the Heath. It was green. Jerusalem had been golden: a city of sand and rock. They walked from the Jewish Quarter to the Muslim Quarter, passing bustling shops piled high with sweet things to eat, with fruits or with bright clothes.
‘Then the sheets are gone,’ their guide had said to Delores. ‘Jerusalem syndrome.’
‘Never heard of it,’ she said. Then, to Morrison, ‘Have you ever heard of it?’
‘I was miles away,’ said Morrison. ‘What does that mean? That door, with all the stencils on it?’
‘It welcomes someone back from a pilgrimage to Mecca.’
‘There you go,’ said Delores. ‘For us, it was going to Jerusalem. Someone else goes somewhere else. Even in the Holy Land, there’s still pilgrims.’
‘Nobody comes to London,’ said Morrison. ‘Not for that.’
Delores ignored him. ‘So, they’re gone,’ she said to the guide. ‘The wife comes back from a shopping trip, or the museum, and there’s the sheets gone.’
‘Exactly,’ said the guide. ‘She goes to the front desk, and tells them she does not know where the husband is.’
Delores put her hand around Morrison’s arm, as if assuring herself that he was there. ‘And where is he?’
‘He has Jerusalem syndrome. He is on the street corner, wearing nothing but a toga. That’s the sheets. He is preaching – normally about being good, obeying God. Loving each other.’
‘Come to Jerusalem and go mad,’ said Morrison. ‘Not much of an advertising slogan.’