Dead Voices, page 5
The only thing I could see, however, was the Jester was spinning his web of jests around me and I had to get out of there fast while I still had any wit left.
It took me two days to try to digest what the Jester told me. There was only one way to corroborate his views, however. I had to get it from the horse’s mouth.
I called Thursby. “Can you arrange a phone interview with the Bookman? I’ve heard conflicting information. The story has more turns than a Dolly Parton.”
The next day he called late at night. I had just watched the opening monologue on a popular talk show. The host, a guy with a lantern jaw and the head of pumpkin, said we weren’t to worry. The Bookman was only vacationing in Florida. Sources, however, maintained he had brought enough books to last him for a year. The audience ate it up. I felt so embarrassed. I could picture the Jester watching the same show and guffawing.
“I have the Bookman on the line,” Thursby said. “We’ve identified him through voice recognition. You have ten minutes.”
Though I was caught with my pants down, I couldn’t miss my opportunity. Maybe the Bookman had seen the same show and wanted to set things straight. Maybe he had heard I had been snooping around. Whatever the case, I was adept at phone interviews and maybe this was the best-case scenario.
“How you doing, Bookman?” I said on my smartphone. “Read any books lately?”
“The last thing I need right now is flippancy.”
“Sorry, it’s just the nature of my job. We get callused after a while. Too many scandals and wars and crimes, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What can you tell me?”
“You’re Bobby Joe, aren’t you? The guy who’s written all those shallow articles on the way I fight crime?”
“That’s me. I have to write it the way I see it.”
“You don’t see it very well.”
“Sorry, Bookman, but I gotta do my job to the best of my ability. And the readers always come first. Sometimes they don’t understand what you’re all about.”
His voice got stern. “Sure, but we either cater to the lowest common denominator or we try to scale the quotient.”
“I can’t scale any quotient, Bookman. That’s the thing. I’m not a prophet. I’m just a Press Prufrock.”
He paused — and I could hear the wheels turning. Either he was reconsidering his estimation of me or he had a squeaky stomach.
“All right, listen,” he said, his voice becoming very businesslike. “I want your readers to try to understand what’s going on without any misunderstandings. So you ask and I’ll answer.”
“OK,” I said. “One of my sources has informed me that you’re bored with the way things are and you need your batteries re-charged. Is that true?”
I could hear a snort at the other end.
“That’s just like the Jester,” the Bookman said. “To take something that’s very serious and turn it upside down and make it frivolous. The Jester is the person who sees the possum hanging on the tree upside down with a frown and mistakes it for a happy face.”
“You can’t use parables and such with our readers, Bookman. They want things super straight and literal.”
“And I’ve had enough of the literal.”
“Explain.”
“What good would it do? You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. Though I write down to the yin, I know a bit of the yang.”
“So you know the Tao. Big deal.”
We had come to the crucial, I could see. If he was going to confide in me, I had to prove that I was more than the average press hack. And the thing about superheroes, as the Commish had told me, was that ordinary life was their biggest bug-bear. It was one thing to fly through the air like a speeding bullet (which was about the worst metaphoric description of a superhuman feat I had ever heard), but it was another to get up each morning and take a dump.
“All right, Bookman,” I said, “but I might be the only one who does understand what you’re going through. I may be the only one, besides the Jester, who understands what a malaise of soul means. Maybe I know what going metaphysical means.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yeah. He also posed a question: Why did God create Adam before Eve?”
The Bookman guffawed. “What does he know? And what, for that matter, do you know?”
“Maybe a lot more than you think, Bookman. Maybe there’s more to it than the Jester’s answer, for example. Maybe there’s an entirely different POV than the Genesis story. Maybe we should consider the Timaeus and the Gnostic origin stories, for example. Maybe some of us know a few things about the metaphysical, eh. One thing about the metaphysical: How can anyone be sure of anything? Once the back of the physical is broken, everything becomes relative and open to shifting views. Am I right, or am I wrong?”
The Bookman was silent. Maybe I had gone too far. But I had to do a rope-a-dope to get out of this one and convince him.
I pressed on.
“I sympathize with you, Bookman. I know what you’re going through. You’d be doing something that’s never been done in superhero history. You’d be adding some deep thought to your work. You wouldn’t just be a onedimensional caped crusader. You’d become mindful, contemplative, even recondite. Are you following me?”
“Yeah, I’m following you.”
“But it wouldn’t all be good, that’s the thing. Nothing would be clear anymore. You’d be at the mercy of moral ambiguity. You’d lose your physical edge.”
I heard nothing but silence on the other end of the line.
“It’s just not done,” I said. “Your fan base wouldn’t follow you.”
“You underestimate them.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been in the news biz for too long.”
Another long pause. I could see now that the Bookman was truly in the transitional stage between the physical and the metaphysical. He was giving each question some thought. He was deliberating. Instead of just using his fists or his superhuman powers, he was hedging and hawing. It would be brutal, I knew, if he went metaphysical. He wouldn’t last a fortnight. I had to get at the cause and try to convince him otherwise or we’d lose our only superhero crime fighter. And if we did, we’d be at the mercy of Kitty Kat and Antiquarian and the Jester.
“Listen, Bookman,” I said, “maybe you’re totally convinced that going metaphysical is your only option. But you have to reconsider. I’m speaking not only for all of Bibliopolis, but for the whole comics universe. You’d lose all your superhero-powers. You’d never be able to fight evil since everything would become relative and open to interpretation. At least tell us why you want to go metaphysical. What’s wrong with the physical? What’s wrong with the literal? It’s solid enough, isn’t it? It’s sure. It’s unquestionable. It’s true. And, most importantly, it’s easy to understand, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, right on all counts,” he said. “But you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“My adversaries are getting too smart for me. I have to keep up with them. And it’s not just about them as individuals. It’s about the nature of crime, the nature of evil. What is evil, after all, but the absence of good?”
Right there I could see it was too late. He was into dualism and the nature of reality. He had already gone metaphysical. Superheroes didn’t speak like that. What the hell was the world coming to?
“Bookman,” I said. “Answer me one thing. What made you have a change of heart? What was the cause of this turn-around? What made you go metaphysical?”
He gave the question some thought. And yet his answer was right to the point.
“Death.”
“You gotta explain that. My readers can’t take a oneword answer.”
Then he went into his story. What I wanted to hear all along. The human interest bit. What I had to get from the Bookman’s own mouth.
It had happened a couple of months ago, he said, when he had been called to fight a crime in progress. Five of Antiquarian’s henchmen were in the process of sabotaging a computer and electronics super-store. He had come upon the scene when it was too late, however, and discovered it was a trap. Just as he was about to enter the store, Antiquarian spoke through a megaphone on the outside. They had booby-trapped the whole store with trick wires. And the manager’s ten-year-old daughter was in the thick of the trap. If the Bookman didn’t surrender immediately and expose his true identity, the store would be blown up.
“You can see my dilemma,” the Bookman said over the phone. “If I didn’t do what Antiquarian wanted, the girl would be killed. If I did, maybe thousands of other little girls would be killed in the future. It was an Either-Or, Bobby Joe. It was the end justifying the means. And I had to choose quickly.”
I could picture the Bookman caught in the trap of a moral dilemma. He’d be in his Bookman’s costume with the red tights and blurbs under his cape and the big B on his chest. And under his book mask he’d be in a quandary.
“Was the life of one little girl worth maybe hundreds of others?” he said. “Tell me, Bobby Joe, what would you have done?”
“I’m not a superhero, Bookman. It’s not my job.”
“Right. You’re just an average press hack. You just write the stories. You don’t put yourself on the line. Well, write it the way I tell it, press-man. I’m going metaphysical because of that little girl who died. And because of all the other little girls and boys who die every day.”
“Sure, I’ll write it, Bookman. But you’re being a little melodramatic, aren’t you? No superhero has the power to fight death. Death happens. No one can stop it. You have to fight evil, not death.”
“Right. But how do you fight evil, Bobby Joe? Answer me that.”
It was a tough question. I gave it some thought. Superheroes fought criminals who were evil. But they had never fought evil itself.
“I don’t know, Bookman. You tell me.”
“That’s the thing. There’s only one way of finding out. I just can’t read the books in the box anymore. The mysteries and thrillers and bodice-rippers. I have to go where no superhero in comics history as ever gone before.”
A big light exploded in my head.
“I see it, Bookman. I see where you’re coming from and where you’re going. You’re only doing what you were destined to do from the very beginning. You’re fulfilling your destiny as a true Bookman, are you not?”
“You got it, Bobby Joe. I gotta do what I gotta do.”
“OK, I got my angle and I’ll write the story. But tell me one thing. And the readers will want to know this. Will you expect them to follow you? Will you expect them to change their reading habits as well?”
He laughed over the line. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I know I’ll have to change my vocab, not to mention my modus operandi. Maybe I won’t need to use my fists anymore. Maybe I’ll have to engage in dialectics. Maybe my new methods just won’t take. And maybe I’ll lose my fan base. That’s the risk.”
“OK, Bookman. But I wanna compliment you on trying to change the whole comic book universe. I’m going to do my best to explain your situation. Maybe I’ll become your sidekick and explain things for the reading public. Maybe things are not too late to fight crime at its base.”
“I can use all the help I can.”
I ended the call and smiled.
Maybe this was the beginning of a great alliance. I could see it now. The Bookman would go metaphysical and the press would heighten the consciousness of the reading public.
Dead Voices
When his heart was sore and he needed a little pick-me-up, Mark liked nothing better than to spend a few hours in the BDV bookstore.
The store stood out amongst the older restaurants and specialty shops on Bloor in the Annex, close to Ye Olde Pub. It had a bright turquoise façade and a large movie theatre marquee and full plate glass exterior. Its first two floors were spacious, with high shelves and display tables stacked with all manner of books, both used and new, in every category. Its top floor had a full assortment of comics and children’s lit. And the basement, devoted to discs and videos, completed its triple-bill logo.
As soon as he stepped into the bookstore, he felt immediately uplifted, as if he were inside a treasure trove of earthly delights, the likes of which could feed both mind and heart.
As a kid he had been the Comic Boy of his ethnic neighbourhood, going from house to house with his stack of comics to make his trades. After the negotiations, he couldn’t wait to get home and sample the new additions, whether they were used or new, with their shiny covers and largerthan-life figures performing super-human deeds. As a teen he had graduated to being a collector of dirty paperbacks with more potent shiny covers that offered private gratification for his insatiable appetites. Eventually he had become a voracious reader of any book in his small city library in the wilds of the northern bush. If someone would’ve asked him why a guy like him, with no pedigree, had been so drawn to words on the page, he’d say he got off on the smell and feel of paper, the hot black blood of words, the power of the voices speaking to him from nowhere and everywhere.
The words on the solid white page, in their silent power, had opened up realities and worlds, both visible and invisible, that could hold him in thrall.
He was more of an anomaly these days, however. He saw so few males in libraries and bookstores actually picking up a book. They were either students or much older. To see a young or middle-aged male who was still curious to learn for no other reason than for the pleasure of knowing would’ve shocked him indeed. Unless they were one of those seedy and nerdy-looking guys he’d sometimes see talking to bookstore clerks spouting their verbal diarrhoea, as if they had been backed up for months.
Of course, the tech world was changing so fast he could hardly keep up. Fewer and fewer people were reading — and the digital world was putting the solid book on the block.
He didn’t consider himself a bookworm, however. He had lived his life outside of books, had known love through the good and bad years, helped raise a son who had been the joy of his life, wrote a few books himself, and was still physically active. He ran every day summer and winter, played a good game of tennis, and was a fan of all the major sports. But he could also quote from Kant via Horace (Sapere aude) one minute and from Berra via Hegel (Baseball’s 90% mental — the other half is physical) the next. Not only had he dared to know like Immanuel, settling into his daily routines like clockwork in his older years, but he had been a catcher in his younger years like Yogi, able to throw out runners at second with zingers.
For all his forays into conventional and esoteric thought, not to mention his knowledge of world literature, he wasn’t much different from that kid who used to carry his bag of comics from door to door, expecting to increase his stash and find those rare editions that promised to reveal the ultimate secrets. Like the identity of the Lone Ranger. How disappointed he had been when he finally got the copy and saw the Texas Ranger’s face, though unmasked, was still shaded and indecipherable!
Better perhaps to live in the expectation, in the hot flush of words on the page, than in the reality that always disappointed.
He knew, for one, that he hadn’t yet made what the initiates of the esoteric traditions would consider the ultimate conversion — the big turn, as he called it. The turn away from the tyranny of the visible world, with its hard fact of time and space.
He knew himself well enough to realize he was still stuck in the Way Station, as it were, a seeker still, looking for his comics and books, living in the expectation rather than the reality.
The BDV, however, wasn’t a bad place to be stuck. He could go from book to book and feel the hot pulse of the printed words come up to meet him and be instantly transported to the St. Petersburg of Prince Myshkin or the Dublin of Stephen Dedalus — or be in the mind of Paul of Tarsus — the borders of time and space obliterated. It was as if those words, in the expert re-invention of the world and actions of the characters, with the insight into their thoughts and feelings that only words could give, revealed the workings of the only soul that made rational sense. The inner person, and the world that lay within. And every step closer to the language of that soul could bring him closer to the big turn.
At this stage in his life, the words of the great avatars and sages were no longer to be admired or worshipped from afar, but followed as simple guides of instruction. Once he lost himself in the words, the author, no matter who it was or from where or from what time, was beside him, alive, whispering in his ear. It was a state of mind halfway between being awake and being asleep, partly there and partly not there, in a gentle torpor of soul, as he called it, that was in between the physical and the metaphysical.
It had been words on the page, ever since he could remember — whether they had come from the crudest or the most sublime sensibility — that had held this power over him.
Luckily he wasn’t addicted to the high-end retail stores or the Stock Exchange or the glitz of the casino, killers all of them. And BDV Books was large enough that he could spend the whole afternoon browsing without drawing the least attention amongst the high shelves, going from book to book, searching for the words that he could re-animate with his breath and his eyes.
Though the clerks who were constantly stacking the shelves never bothered him, there was one who knew him on sight and always made eye-contact when she saw him. She was older than the rest, maybe in her mid-forties, attractively slim and dark-haired, always dressed in black and in a black beret. The Dark Lady, he called her.
