The Book of Thomas
a story from the Library of Time
Thomas woke to the smell of toast and tea in the kitchen below, filtering up the stairs, stealing beneath his door in a single, tantalising thread. He slipped his hand under his pillow and found the book he had left there the night before, still faintly warm.
He listened. No noise came from the kitchen, nor did anyone call his name. He took a folded blanket from the foot of the bed and propped it behind his pillow, drawing up the bedclothes into a nest about his feet. He opened the book and read, the fingers that turned the pages growing slowly cold, while the rest of him kept warm under the blankets.
“Thomas.”
He said nothing.
“Thomas, love, I know you’re awake.”
He turned a page.
The voice was amused. “Breakfast, Thomas. Bring your book down.”
Reluctantly, he crawled out of bed, dressed, and padded down the creaking stairs. His grandmother was already at the table, a mug of tea at her hand and a book lying next her plate. His place was set opposite hers, and his own particular egg cup with the leaf-shaped chip held a fresh egg.
“Late night?” his grandmother asked.
“Not very,” he said.
“Should I send for more candles?”
He considered, then grinned. “Probably.”
His grandmother smiled in return. They finished their breakfast in companionable silence. Then Thomas’ grandmother washed the dishes, while he dried them and put them away on the blue-painted shelves. Once the table was clear, he tucked his book under his arm and sat on a stool to put on his shoes.
“Going out?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. School did not begin again until tomorrow.
“Be back in time for tea. Hand me my bag, will you?”
Thomas gave her the big black leather bag, like a doctor’s, only with innumerable book-sized compartments.
“Shall I make you lunch?”
“No,” said Thomas, feeling immensely grown-up, “I’ll find somewhere.”
“Don’t wander too far.”
“I won’t.”
He said goodbye to his grandmother and left by the front door. The house was set in a clearing surrounded by long grasses and tall pines, ancient trees with a constant mist caught among the tops of their feathering branches. He took the path – winding and narrow – between the trees, and a quick left followed by a right brought him to a pair of arched doors covered in fruits and flowers. High and heavy as they were, a touch opened them, and he passed through into a long glass-walled gallery, whose windows looked out on a distant orange nebula, and whose length was crowded with readers just arrived. They chattered like starlings and looked about with eyes as bright.
Thomas thought of finding a Library phone box (his grandmother had been teaching him how to use them, though it would be another year before they got to it at school), but when he did see one the line in front of it was twenty librarians deep and two wide.
“Excuse me,” he said to one of them, a tall man in a high collar and silver-rimmed spectacles. But the man carried on talking about the implied ethics of something in Dostoevsky. He spoke in a very loud voice that seemed to impress everyone listening, and Thomas gave up. Instead of waiting, he jammed his hands in his pockets and slouched away. No one looked after him or asked why he wasn’t in school.
There was a door behind a steel column at the end of the room (marked Staff Only) and he slipped through it into a long, empty reading room. Rain streamed down the high leaded windows and tapped on the outside of the vaulted roof, whose timbers were black with years of smoke. Here books were strewn across the long tables and benches, books full of Gothic type and capital letters like coiling snakes, their frontispieces rimmed with borders of skeletons and horned devils and many-tailed fiends. One was a book of allegorical pictures, and Thomas idly turned the thick, grey-cream pages of Pride, History, Feast, Amity, and Desire until he grew bored.
Later on, he set himself to wandering the Library. He found the History of the Deer section in a medieval hall, all hung about with hunting tapestries and managed by solemn, pale-faced librarians in long gowns. From there a narrow door behind a bookcase gave onto Ancient Astronomy, a vast observatory with a working telescope, where he spent several happy hours. After that he passed quickly through a warren of grey corridors, blacked-out windows, and rooms partitioned by grotty beige dividers and battered desks, all covered in the memos and books pertaining to the Third Salician War – here he saw, or thought he saw, a single reader in the distance, but the silence was otherwise absolute.
At length Thomas came to an eighteenth-century coffeehouse where both librarians and readers mingled. Feeling more than ever immensely grown-up, he ordered lunch for himself (a dark sort of stew he was not entirely sure he liked, and two pasties he liked very much) which came on battered pewter trays. The walls were papered with playbills and extracts from articles, some of which he was forced to read with his head upside down, and so he did, once he had licked his spoon clean.
He left the coffeehouse to drift through Early Tudor Politics, which was filled with the hum of constant conversation and the smell of beeswax. Sunlight filtered through intricate rose windows – red roses, white roses, golden roses too. Some of the books were chained to the shelves, though when he opened them they were printed, and their bindings were rich leather stained blue and red and green, the titles picked out with gold. He took his hands out of his pockets, and felt very tall under the soaring ceilings.
Then to his great misfortune, he entered an anteroom whose door bore a red rose outlined with white, and there at a great square table he found three of his classmates. He made to back out of the room, but they had seen him.
“Oh, look, it’s Thomas,” one said.
“Which was the name of cowards and doubters of Our Lord,” a second added sententiously, making the third snort.
“And three traitors besides,” the first said. “Wasn’t it?”
“Leave me alone,” Thomas said.
“Oh, no. Remind me, who was it passed that history test? That everyone else failed? The one we have to take again tomorrow? Now, who was that? I thought it started with T.”
“Traitor?” suggested the third. “Twat?”
“Teacher’s Pet,” the second said. All three stood up and advanced on him.
Thomas ran. He was ill-suited for running, but he had no wish to stay. The other boys were slower; no matter, they could outrun him – he heard them already, not breathing hard, closing in behind him. He dodged through the shelves desperately, through strange doors and once, a window. He ran through rooms he had never seen, that were no more than a blur of books and faces.
The breathing of the boys behind him grew fainter and finally the sound of their feet died away. The last he heard of them was a burst of laughter as he blundered through a dark doorway, and then nothing at all. Thomas was alone.
The room was very dark. He could see the shadows of shelves against the wall, and a sliver of light coming from one corner. He moved very slowly towards the light, shuffling his feet against the floor.
When he reached the light, he discovered that it came through a doorway, which he passed through only to find himself in a long empty room lined with mirrors. A hundred other Thomases stared back at him. As he returned their gazes, the door behind him shut with a click, revealing itself as yet another mirror. He tugged at it in vain, and almost cut his fingers feeling frantically around its edges, but it would not open. When he turned away, all the other Thomases looked back at him with the same despair. He held back a sob – there was no one to hear him, but he felt too old to cry just because he was lost.
The hall of mirrors stretched far into the distance, airless and bright, farther than he could see. On the chance that he might find a door (or perhaps a librarian) later on, he began to walk. After a while, he noticed that every mirror had a thin silver frame, inscribed with verses. He bent to look at one, and, since he was still alone, read the words aloud.
“Achilles’ baneful wrath resound, O Goddess, that impos’d
Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls los’d
From breasts heroic; sent them far to that invisible cave
That no light comforts; and their limbs to dogs and vultures gave;
To all which Jove’s will gave effect; from whom first strife begun
Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis’ godlike son.”1
The surface of the mirror seemed to dim, and he saw a battlefield in a storm. Tiny men fought with swords and spears, some on foot, others driving chariots, and the field was littered with the bodies of the dead. Curiously, Thomas put his hand out. It went through what should have been glass, and he felt instead the wind of the storm. His fingers stung as rain lashed against them.
Could I go through it? he wondered.
No harm in trying, I suppose, his reason said, though dubiously.
He put his foot up on the bottom of the frame, and grasped the sides tightly. He took a deep breath, and plunged through –
Rain, wind, shouting, the screaming of horses and men, the splintering of wood as chariots met –
– and he tumbled face first onto a very thick rug. It was choked with dust, enough to make him sneeze several times as he rose.
He had landed in a small study, lined with paper-back novels. Everything was covered in a layer of grime and neglect: the desk, the chair, the artificial flowers on the windowsill. Nothing had been touched for years, and as he made his way to the door, he left footprints in the dust.
There were, he knew, deserted sections of the Library. Places where nobody came or went. But he had never been there – he had always heard they were very far away. He worried, now, over how far he had gone.
Each successive door he opened gave on more empty rooms – vast damp palazzos, silent neoclassical halls, rainy courtyards filled with statues, yellow-walled rooms containing reams of self-help books and mildewed ceiling tiles. His legs grew weary and his stomach grumbled. How much farther? he thought. And, I didn’t run so very far.
Once he opened a tall wooden door which groaned and protested at his touch. The hall beyond was unfurnished save a few dim portraits along the walls. Light came from some window above that he could not see, though not enough light to see the subjects of the portraits, nor the dark pattern of the wallpaper. He was only halfway down its length when the whispering began.
I bade thee, when I was distracted of my wits,
Go kill my dearest friend, and thou hast done ’t….2
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come…3
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that….4
Frightened, he began to run, as another voice boomed out behind him:
In life there is not time to grieve long
But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,
An instant eternity of evil and wrong.5
He finally reached the door and hurled himself through it, as one last voice rose above the others, a voice that was almost a wail, afraid of itself:
Down, down to hell, and say I sent thee thither,
I that have neither pity, love, nor fear…6
He closed the door on it and heard no more.
Now, he stood in another long room with a black stone floor and wooden columns, the air so cold he could see his breath hang in it. There was nothing else in the room save, at the very far end, a statue of a hooded figure reading. He went up to it, and stared at the strange symbols on its plinth, which he could not read. After a moment, to his amazement, the statue sighed and turned a page of its book.
It’s alive, Thomas thought.
“Please,” he said aloud. “Please, I’m lost.”
The statue looked down at him coldly. He could not see its eyes.
“What is this to do with me?”
“I want to go home,” he said, ashamed of the tremor in his voice.
“What have I to do with home? Let me alone.” And the statue turned its head to its book once more.
Dully, Thomas walked away. He went unseeing through a treasure-room full of emeralds and crowns and golden tablets. He passed through a room with nothing in it save two half-carven blocks of marble, one labeled Immortal Horrors and the other Everlasting Splendours, and did not stop to look. When at last he came to a small reading room, with two high armchairs drawn up to an empty fireplace and every wall crammed with bookshelves, he sat in one of the chairs and wept. He had promised his grandmother that he wouldn’t wander, and that he would be back in time for tea – now he did not know what time it was, nor what day.
When he had exhausted his tears, he lay curled up in the chair for a while. His eyes wandered to the books on the walls, and he took a few down to examine them.
He read:
For by this and by all such things we know, that the world is not infinite, yet contains multitudes, and in time has recorded in that book which has no name, innumerable variations upon this theme which men call life.
And in another book:
I said to the one who is my lover
Why do you wait?
And another:
Georgiana shut the door, and at once began to weep and laugh alternately, giving vent to those passions which had already near burst her heart though she dared not speak before.
And then he saw, at the very end of the shelf nearest him, a small book. There were no letters on its blue-green spine, and it had a dusty, neglected look. He stretched an arm up and stood on his toes – the shelf was just a little higher than he could have reached with comfort – and took it down. On the cover, in copper letters, was printed: The Book of Thomas.
Curious, he opened it and read the first page.
Thomas woke to the smell of toast and tea in the kitchen below, filtering up the stairs, stealing beneath his door in a single, tantalising thread. He slipped his hand under his pillow and found the book he had left there the night before, still faintly warm.
He almost shut the book then, in surprise. Hesitatingly, he turned the page.
Here books were strewn across the long tables and benches, books full of Gothic type and capital letters like coiling snakes, their frontispieces rimmed with borders of skeletons and horned devils and many-tailed fiends. One was a book of allegorical pictures, and Thomas idly turned the thick, grey-cream pages of Pride, History, Feast, Amity, and Desire until he grew bored.
He turned another two pages.
It’s alive, Thomas thought.
“Please,” he said aloud. “Please, I’m lost.”
He nearly shut the book again, then, ashamed of himself. But he could not bring himself to stop reading, quite, and what he saw on the next page astonished him.
Thomas closed the book, and crossed the room to the far door. Once through it, he found himself in a winter garden, the shrubs all wrapped in burlap, the kale still green and towering. He passed through the gate at the far end and turned to the right along the narrow, winding path…
Thomas did close the book then, and stood up. He looked at the empty fireplace for a moment, and crossed the room, and turned the door handle. As the book had said, he found himself in a winter garden, where the cold made his nose itch. When he looked again, the book described it as in the early morning, the ground covered with a fresh layer of frost. He left through the gate at the far end, and turned right along the path which led between two rows of cypress trees. He blinked, and found that he was standing in the nave of a small chapel, its walls covered with chalky, faded saints.
He opened the book once more.
Thomas turned, and saw a tiny door to his right. He waited a moment, then scrambled between the pews and went through it, into a vast and echoing hall…
He saw the door – wood and iron, barely wide enough to allow even him to pass through. And in the stone hall beyond, his lightest footstep echoed like a bell.
The book guided him through the empty rooms and showed him to each door he must take. It pointed out the hidden ways (the hatch behind a portrait, the door barely visible beneath a pattern of papered cherries), and the moments at which he must pass through each. When at last he burst through a window, which became a pair of silver doors, which opened into a tiny room teeming with illuminated manuscripts and silent readers, he could have danced, or howled for joy. Instead he shadowed the progress of his second self in the book, following each page, until he came upon his own path, and saw the light shining from his own windows. He tumbled through the doorway, and found his grandmother at the stove, with the clock on the wall just striking half-past five.
“I’m back,” said Thomas.
His grandmother turned around and smiled.
“So you are. Come and eat. Best put away your book first, though.”
Thomas closed the book and put it on the shelf over the fireplace. He and his grandmother sat down at the table.
“Good day?” his grandmother asked.
“Not so bad,” he said.
“Did you go very far?”
“Farther than I meant to. But I got back.”
“You always do,” his grandmother said.
“Well, I have to eat, haven’t I?”
They had roast chicken, and potatoes, and boiled cabbage, which last Thomas heroically swallowed without saying a word, while his grandmother laughed at the faces he made. Then they washed the dishes and put them away, and closed the cabinet doors, and made tea. Afterwards, they sat down by the fire to read. Thomas looked up once at the book above the fireplace, where the cover’s copper lettering winked up at the ceiling.
But he did not open it. Instead he read his own book until the words on the page dimmed and wavered, and then he watched the fire until it blurred before his eyes, and when at last he fell asleep his grandmother wrapped him in a blanket and carried him up to bed.
Previous Entries in The Library of Time:
Homer, trans. George Chapman, The Iliad
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
William Shakespeare, King Lear
T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3
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