Dead Voices, page 4
I tilted my head, but wrote it down as she said it.
“Aren’t you being a little harsh?” I said. “You women always like to kick a guy where it hurts.”
I could see I had said the wrong thing. Her face hardened. Her hand went to her whip. Her eyes shone in the dark like a wildcat. I took a few steps back, ready for anything.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounds. I’m just saying you might be a little slanted in your views.”
“You women?” she said with a snarl. “What do you mean, you women?”
“Just a slip of the tongue.”
“Which deserves a few cuts of the cat.”
“No, please,” I said, raising my hands. “Can’t you forgive someone for making a mistake? Call it a little Freudian slip. Have a heart, please.”
“Which needs a Freudian whip,” she said, exposing her fangs, keeping her hand on the handle of the whip. “Let’s see you grovel, reporter-man.”
As I was inching back, my feet hit something and I fell backwards. She stepped over my supine form, her blackclad gams like two columns of rippling muscle, stoking me with both fear and lust.
She gave out a roar of laughter, as if she had subdued another prey with the power of her stealth and seduction.
“Let me give it to you straight, reporter-man,” she said, snarling down at me. “We women are into romance because it works. It softens us, prepares us to accept the seed willingly. And from that comes the good of the offspring. But make no mistake. If you men don’t carry out your side of the bargain, if you’re not hard and courageous and go the distance, then we’ll bury you, balls and all. Print that.”
As I hightailed out of there, I could hear her HA-HAs at my discomfiture. But I did manage to keep my notepad — and I got it all down as soon as possible. Slanted as her views were, she might’ve been closer to the truth than she knew. Fighting crime in Bibliopolis was hard work. It took more than brawn and brain. The Bookman had to keep up on his reading. He could still use his fists and his superpowers, sure, but he had to use vocab skills and plot twists and literary devices as well. Sometimes he had to quote from the great poets. The only problem these days, though, was that fewer and fewer people were reading. Especially guys. Bibliopolis was in serious decline.
After seeing Kitty Kat, I didn’t want to go into any more smelly alleys and put myself at risk. So I asked to see Antiquarian next. He didn’t operate in alleys and rooftops like Kitty Kat. He wasn’t a burglar. He was more of an anarchist, a chaos man, a contrarian. His crimes involved sabotaging the day-to-day running of the economy and city. Like spraying bleach in clothing stores. Hacking and destroying government computers. Blocking rush hour traffic. He and the Bookman had grappled on more than a few occasions, however, and if anyone knew the workings of the Bookman’s mind it was Antiquarian. They both had blotter brains, able to absorb words like no others, not to mention having a respect for books unparalleled in our modern age. You could even say they were brothers under the skin, though one worked on the wrong side of the law and was known to be a nasty SOB.
At the last minute he changed our place of rendezvous, I suspect, because he was wary of a take-down. We met, instead, at the only remaining used bookstore in the city, run by this curmudgeon, Timothy Galt, who operated the store on a loss every year just for the satisfaction of giving the Net the finger. Again it was the paper that arranged the rendezvous. One of the terms, as I was told, was that Antiquarian wanted the paper to print an ad for a rare and very expensive first edition. He’d give me the details himself.
The store was in this dilapidated building, in a walkdown. It smelled of incense and musty books. Timothy, his white hair curled in a pompadour, was hunched over the counter. No one else was in the store. He looked over to the back where an open door led to the storage area. The dingy store was overflowing with crammed shelves, floor to ceiling, with piles on the floor. No one came here anymore. It was like a cemetery of decaying books.
Antiquarian was seated and waiting for me in the dimly lit storage room. He was thin and bald, a little over fifty, with intense eyes and a mild-mannered disposition, dressed in his usual holey Hudson’s Bay sweater. I didn’t let the outer façade fool me, however. Inside his innocuous camouflage was a brutal man.
“I’m assuming you’re legit,” he said immediately, not even waiting for me to sit down on the chair facing him. “At the least sign of trouble, you’ll be the first to get whacked.”
I had to smile at his threat. “Don’t worry. I’m only after a few answers.”
“Just so that you know, I had you followed here. And there are five guns pointing at you as we speak.”
Then he proceeded to give me the particulars of this rare first-edition of a prized nineteenth century book. I got it all down as dictated, with the original olive green cloth, boards with gilt-stamped triple-rule frames and titles, blind-stamped leaf-and-vine designs, all edges gilt. His voice resonated with emotion, his words like honey on a comb. I felt a twinge of envy. For me, however, it was never the artefact or rarity of the book.
“All right,” he said afterwards, “whatta ya wanna know about the Bookman?”
“What’s happened? Why’s he retired, indisposed, whatever?”
He paused, shook his head, gave me a sarcastic smile. “You entitled press punks piss me off. All you print is surface-copy, info-babble, trash-speak.”
“I understand. You deal in depth and quality, and the masses don’t want depth and quality.”
“Oh, a smart-ass, huh?”
“Let’s just say you and the Bookman, not to mention Kitty Kat, aren’t the only ones who’ve read a few books.”
“You gotta put bread on the table, right?”
“That’s right, Antiquarian. I’m a realist. And I don’t break the law.”
His lips curled in condescension. “Don’t talk to me about the law, press punk. Laws are made by the One-Percent under the guise of democracy, as empty a word as you’ll ever find. The only true democrats are the anarchists and free spirits who aren’t shackled to the norms and laws of the present.”
“We’re not here to talk about you.”
“All right. The Bookman, right? OK, let’s talk about the Bookman. If you want my humble opinion, I think he’s gone batty.”
“Explain.”
“The last time we tangled wasn’t pretty. Let’s just say it was a Pyrrhic victory for him. In between the POWS and the BANGS and KA-POWS, he was quoting some strange people, to say the least.”
“I don’t get it.” I looked at him with my best quizzical expression.
“Ever read Fahrenheit 451?”
“Can’t say I have.”
He shook his head with distaste.
“Media people are the least qualified, least articulate, and most dumb-assed people around. How did you become a reporter, anyway?”
“Hey, this isn’t about me.”
“If you’re going to write it, of course it’s about you, you idiot.”
At this point I got a little sick and tired of being insulted by these super villains. I realized I had to keep my objective slant, be impartial, and get the facts, but I’m human, too, all too human, as a matter of fact.
“One thing we learned in Journalism School,” I said, holding my head high, “was that stick and stones may break our bones, but names will never hurt us.”
Antiquarian jabbed a finger in my chest with a menacing scowl. “You don’t know the first thing about broken bones, Journal-head. Open your ears and listen good. The Bookman had gone haywire. He was quoting and misquoting, as if he didn’t give a shit anymore. As if all his sources and footnotes had been crossed.”
I had to ask him to repeat that, as I got it down word for word, since I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You’ve lost me, Antiquarian.”
“You were lost before you entered this store,” he said in a sneering tone. “Just print it as you hear it and maybe some readers out there will get the gist.” He paused. “The point is that the Bookman’s finally discovered the enormity of his task. He’s not just fighting me and Domina and the Jester and the all the others. He finally figured it out.”
Well, the mystery of the Bookman’s indisposition wasn’t being clarified. It was being mystified even more.
I had to go to the only man who could put a different slant on all this. The Jester. He was the only one who could laugh at anything, render it innocuous, and take the stuffing out of it. The Jester didn’t take anything seriously, just like the Ironic Age we were in. Even when he was committing a crime, he was laughing at himself as well as us. He’d leave little jokes at the crime scene. Or make a YouTube video of the event, with some flashes of comic brilliance.
Once he and his henchmen had robbed a high-end clothing store, dressed a few piglets in women’s undergarments, and filmed them scurrying around the store. Another time he and his men had taken a high school hostage, kicked all the students out, barricaded the doors from the inside, and forced the teachers to read Hegel for two days straight.
He was a master of disguise as well. No one knew what he actually looked like. Sometimes he wore the mask of comedy, sometimes the mask of tragedy. Sometimes he quoted Seneca, sometimes Euripides. Sometimes he held the sceptre of a fool in his hand, sometimes the sceptre of the globe. He was known to have the only extant edition of the entire Loeb classics. He could be mystifyingly erudite and childishly silly in a heartbeat.
I was a little suspicious, however. It was he who had called me to arrange a meeting. The voice over the smartphone said he had been informed by certain distinguished colleagues that I was after the lowdown on the Bookman’s change of heart and he would oblige. He had the key to the superhero’s turnabout.
We were supposed to meet in a chain coffee shop in the middle of the city and I was very curious as to how he’d present himself. Would he come disguised in a mask and draw attention to himself? Would he wear a false beard and wig? Would he use some sort of computer tech savvy and not even physically be there? I had my smartphone, after all, and could talk face to face with anyone in the world in present time.
I was seated at a table, sipping on a café-latte, when a young woman in a loose-fitting top and trousers sat down with me. To my horror, however, her face had been so misshapen by plastic surgery she looked like a banged up Barbie. Her lips were large rubber discs. Her cheekbones were sculpted out of cheese. Her nose seemed but a burp with two holes. And her eyes were like hard glass. Over her ugly features was a finely sculpted head of blond hair. In her hand she had a plastic cup of coffee with a straw.
“Relax,” she said through her hard lips, her voice high and strained. “Don’t be shocked. This is what happens when we go to a cosmetic surgeon much too often. I’ve had the injections, the lasers, the nips and tucks, the microdermabrasions, the rhinoplasty, the vein removal, the liposuction, the whole nine yards. I may not look pleasing, but at least I’ve defied time.”
“What can I do for you, lady?”
“You can laugh your head off, for one.”
And then it hit me. “Are you the Jester?”
“I jest you not,” she said. “I’m the sweet transvestite from Transylvania.”
When I looked closer I could see the full-head silicone mask, as fine a work of special effects as anything in the movies. It wasn’t the Rocky Horror Picture Show I was reminded of, however. It was a small-budget horror movie in which a female student in medical school, adept with the scalpel and desperate for money, does slash and cash jobs on people who’re into body modification. Some want to look like dolls, some want to be de-sexed, and others are just bored. Though such things only happened in the movies, they weren’t far from the improbable. And I could only marvel at the Jester’s social iconoclasm at work, while being wary of his motives and methods, of course.
“Do I refer to you as a he or a she?” I said.
“Jester is fine,” he said, now in a more masculine tone. “What would you like to know about the Bookman?”
“You said over the phone you had the key to the Bookman’s turnaround. Apparently he’s had a crisis and a change of heart. He’s gone into seclusion. What can you tell me?”
“First of all,” he said, looking around suspiciously, “I have to have your word that you will honour your code and not reveal your sources. Even under oath.”
“And I have to have your word that you’ll honour your comic’s code that you aren’t party to horrendous crimes or sexually deviant behaviour.”
His laughter, I could see, was painful through the silicone. A few of the patrons turned to give us the one-eye. I couldn’t see what was so funny.
“Let me put you and your readers straight, buddy,” he said. “I don’t commit crimes against humanity. I commit crimes against those who commit crimes against humanity. And if you can’t see the difference, then you’re as much a problem as a solution. Are you reading me?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “Your paper has been misinforming the public about me for profit.
I don’t mind if you do it for fun, but to do it for profit is a crime against humanity. Get it?”
“Hey, we’re barely staying afloat, if you wanna know. Hard copy is becoming obsolete as we speak. Let’s not change the topic. What can you tell me about the Bookman?”
“Have I got your word?”
“Sure, sure. I won’t reveal my source.”
“Why did God create Adam before Eve?”
“You tell me.”
“Because he didn’t want any advice.”
To be honest, the joke was so chintzy all I could do was raise my eyebrow. I wasn’t going to amuse him. I had to be true to my sense of humour. I remained impassive, giving him a sceptical eye. The Jester was one elusive dude, I knew. A master of irony and deception. Since not too many people were as well-read as he was, he had to use subterfuge.
“Good,” he said. “No false fronts.”
“Would you please tell me about the Bookman,” I said. “Another source has already told me that the Bookman has gone batty for some reason. That he had his wires crossed or something. Did you ever see him batty?”
“You’re scaling up a red herring, buddy. The source of the Bookman’s malaise goes deeper than that.”
“Malaise?”
“Yeah, a word your paper rarely uses. And, if by chance, some reporter or sports writer uses it to be cute, they always get it wrong. If anyone would ever use it seriously he or she would be laughed out of the business.”
“What’re you insinuating?”
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m telling you straight. You guys write for a grade-eight audience with a gradeseven vocabulary and a grade-four sensibility.”
“Sticks and stones will — ”
“Shut up and listen,” he barked out like a nagging housewife. “The key to the Bookman’s malaise is that he’s bored. That’ll be your headline.”
I had to digest this for a few seconds.
“How can he be bored when he’s dealing with the likes of you?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, buddy. The fact is that the Bookman has reached a point in his life when the ordinary world, in spite of its physical grandeur and awesome beauty, has ceased to interest him anymore. When all the ordinary and normal things — like meeting new people, enjoying the company of friends, being a wealthy and handsome bachelor, fighting crime, and so on — just isn’t enough any more to satisfy the demands of his soul.”
The word created a frisson in the coffee shop. I couldn’t be sure because I was too shocked to be totally aware, but it seemed that everyone, when they heard the word, simply stopped talking and became anguished and tormented, as if racked by guilt.
“What’re you actually saying, Jester? That he’s gone religion?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Superheroes don’t go religion, or they’d get laughed out of the business. Just use that pea-brain of yours. He’s doing something even more dramatic, more drastic, more . . . outer-worldly. He’s actually going outside all the boundaries, all the boxes that the comic world has confined him in. He’s doing what no superhero has ever done before in comic history. He’s going metaphysical.”
Now I heard everything. I shook my head. I became fidgety on my seat. I laughed. I made unusual sounds. Maybe the Jester was putting me on. Maybe he was putting everyone on. That was his métier, after all. Just looking at him as a pretend transvestite was enough to know he was a born clown, a fool, and he couldn’t be taken seriously. I had to test the waters.
“How do I know you’re being serious?” I asked him.
I could see he was trying to grin, but it was a difficult manoeuvre, given his silicone mask and the makeup.
“You don’t know, buddy,” he said, “that’s the thing, see. It’s the Jester’s Paradox. If I’m jesting, then I’m not telling you the truth. But if I’m not telling you the truth, then I must be jesting.”
“Are you putting me on?”
“Only a fool can answer that.”
I shook my head again. It was a manoeuvre I was getting very adept in.
“I don’t know, Jester. It sounds just too incredible for any reader to believe. I’ll have to corroborate this with a higher source. I just can’t take you at your word. Imagine if you’re actually right. It would be a contradiction in terms. A superhero going metaphysical. Why, it wouldn’t compute. It would be like a cop going Gandhi. Or a cowboy with a book in his holster. Nobody would buy it. A superhero, by his or her very definition, is entirely physical, even super-physical, sure, with his or her super-strength and powers and so on, but all within the realm of the physical.”
“Take it as you will, buddy,” he said. “Either the Bookman will go quietly into superhero oblivion or he’ll accomplish what no superhero has ever done. Either way, it’s winwin for me, see. If he goes into oblivion, I’ll have free rein in Bibliopolis. I’ll bring it to its knees in jesterdom. No one will know where I’m coming from. All sense of decency and normalcy will be obliterated. Irony and depth will triumph. The cops will have to turn in their uniforms for dhotis. The Commish will have to die of laughter. On the other hand, if he goes metaphysical, then he’ll bring me along with him. I’ll have to add that dimension to my tactics. I’ll have to brush up on my metaphysical irony, my metaphysical jesting. And I can’t wait. It’s never been done before in comic history. It’ll blow the field wide open. And with my jesting powers, in the metaphysical realm, I’ll be more than a rival to the Bookman. If you have the wit to see it, that is.”
