One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

“But you were once popular,” he said, “so you might be again. Do you know how many characters have high hopes of a permanent place in the readers’ hearts, only to suffer the painful rejection of eternal unreadfulness at the dreary end of Human Drama?”

He was right. A book’s life could be very long indeed, and although the increased leisure time in an unread novel is not to be sniffed at, a need to be vigilant in case someone does read you can keep one effectively tied to a book for life. I usually had an understudy to let me get away, but few were so lucky.

“So,” said Whitby, “how would you like to come out to the smellies tonight? I hear Garden Peas with Mint is showing at the Rex.”

In the BookWorld, smells were in short supply. Garden Peas with Mint had been the best release this year. It only narrowly beat Vanilla Coffee and Grilled Smoked Bacon for the prestigious Noscar™ Best Adapted Smell award.

“I heard that Mint was overrated,” I replied, although I hadn’t. Whitby had been asking me out for a date almost as long as I’d been turning him down. I didn’t tell him why, but he suspected that there was someone else. There was and there wasn’t. It was complex, even by BookWorld standards. He asked me out a lot, and I declined a lot. It was kind of like a game.

“How about going to the Running of the Bumbles next week? Dangerous, but exciting.”

This was an annual fixture on the BookWorld calendar, where two dozen gruel-crazed and indignant Mr. Bumbles yelling, “More? MORE?!?” were released to charge through an unused chapter of Oliver Twist. Those of a sporting or daring disposition were invited to run before them and take their chances; at least one hapless youth was crushed to death every year.

“I’ve no need to prove myself,” I replied, “and neither do you.”

“How about dinner?” he asked, unabashed. “I can get a table at the Inn Uendo. The maîtred’ is missing a space, and I promised to give her one.”

“Not really my thing.”

“Then what about the Bar Humbug? The atmosphere is wonderfully dreary.”

It was over in Classics, but we could take a cab.

“I’ll need an understudy to take over my book.”

“What happened to Stacy?”

“The same as happened to Doris and Enid.”

“Trouble with Pickwick again?”

“As if you need to ask.”

And that was when the doorbell rang. This was unusual, as random things rarely occur in the mostly predetermined BookWorld. I opened the door to find three Dostoyevskivites staring at me from within a dense cloud of moral relativism.

“May we come in?” said the first, who had the look of someone weighed heavily down with the burden of conscience. “We were on our way home from a redemption-through-suffering training course. Something big’s going down at Text Grand Central, and everyone’s been grounded until further notice.”

A grounding was rare, but not unheard of. In an emergency all citizens of the BookWorld were expected to offer hospitality to those stranded outside their books.

I might have minded, but these guys were from Crime and Punishment and, better still, celebrities. We hadn’t seen anyone famous this end of Fantasy since Pamela from Pamela stopped outside with a flat tire. She could have been gone in an hour but insisted on using an epistolary breakdown service, and we had to put her up in the spare room while a complex series of letters went backwards and forwards.

“Welcome to my home, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.”

“Oh!” said Raskolnikov, impressed that I knew who he was. “How did you know it was me? Could it have been the subtle way in which I project the dubious moral notion that murder might somehow be rationalized, or was it the way in which I move from denying my guilt to eventually coming to terms with an absolute sense of justice and submitting myself to the rule of law?”

“Neither,” I said. “It’s because you’re holding an ax covered in blood and human hair.”

“Yes, it is a bit of a giveaway,” he admitted, staring at the ax, “but how rude am I? Allow me to introduce Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.”

“Actually,” said the second man, leaning over to shake my hand, “I’m Dmitri Prokofich Razumikhin, Raskolnikov’s loyal friend.”

“You are?” said Raskolnikov in surprise. “Then what happened to Svidrigailov?”

“He’s busy chatting up your sister.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“My sister? That’s Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova, right?”