Death and Mr. Pickwick (125 page)

‘Well, I have now completed about a third of
Pickwick
. And I shall finish it, believe me, I shall.'

Mr N then struck his hands on his thighs, to indicate that it was late, and that we should be on our way, and he added that he would like to work on a few more words before bed. I was sufficiently curious – astounded, really – about the work, to write down my address and say that if he ever happened to be in my area, he should call, as I would be interested to hear how he was progressing.

*   *   *

It was ten years later, and an evening of incessant rain in March, when I received a knock. I opened the door – and there was Mr N. He was older, and thinner, but I recognised him in an instant. He still had the spectacles on a cord around his neck, even though he had been walking in the streets in the rain. He carried a briefcase. I shook his hand, invited him in, and saw that he was soaked. I said he should have brought an umbrella.

‘I don't like umbrellas,' he said. ‘Where do you put them when they're wet? That's the trouble with umbrellas.'

I took his coat and sat him down by the fire. Before I could ask the question he said: ‘The concordance was finished this afternoon. I wanted to tell someone. You remember the gentleman you came with? I went in search of him, but he seems to have moved. I still had your address, and so I came here. I hope you do not mind. I will not stay long.'

‘I do not mind at all. I am delighted that you have come. Is the concordance in your briefcase?'

‘No, sir! Can you image my
horror
if the case were stolen? Or if I left it somewhere? And the rain! What damage might that do? Even I could not spend
another
fifteen years on this work. No, the concordance is safe in my house. Though –
how safe
is a matter that troubles me. May I tell you some things I have learnt, sir, in compiling the work? I shall not be long, because I must return.'

‘Please do.'

There was a long pause, in which he held the first fingers of his hands together, like an arrowhead, in front of his lips. Then, in one burst of speech he said: ‘The word “friend” appears 439 times, “little” 396, “hand” 367, “eye” 350, “time” 310. I know those figures by heart. I often wondered which word would appear most. Leaving aside grammatical words like “the” and suchlike, “friend” was the winner; I had hoped for “eye”. There seemed to be so many eyes. I was sorry that word did not achieve what I had hoped for it. I even felt – you may find this hard to believe – but I almost felt a sympathy for “eye”, as a valiant loser, sir.'

‘Indeed.'

‘Words appearing but a handful of times were another pleasure. Here I would mention “anchor”, “elephant”, “hearth” and “depth”. They are three-timers. While “muffle”, “oblong” and “languidly” all appear twice. But then there are the Pickwickian equivalents of prime numbers – the single-appearance words. They are especially fascinating. There are about five thousand of those, and my concordance reveals their diversity. Some of these words I would like to mention are “sincere”, “terribly”, “unlock”, “vicissitude”, “wavy”, “yielding” and “zest”. Such are the hidden themes of
Pickwick
that I have discovered.'

‘May I offer you a drink?'

‘How kind. Perhaps a small one would not be out of order.'

As he took the glass he said: ‘You may think that I have lived in a small and confining world for fifteen years, sir. But the three hundred thousand words of
Pickwick
are, to me, a vast landscape in which I have travelled, with many extraordinary features.'

‘I am surprised you did not state the exact number of words.'

‘I do know it, sir, though it differs slightly depending on the edition of
Pickwick
. And I am ignoring in that total various things, such as the work's prospectus – the prefaces – the contents pages – the errata slip – the instructions to the binder – the addresses to readers – and of course the
Pickwick Advertiser
and the many other advertising leaflets which were inserted in the first issue in numbers. Things which may perhaps one day inspire an even larger concordance than mine.'

His face underwent changes which I never expect to see in my life again. There was an initial aspiration on the face, a looking heavenwards, followed by a downward glance of humility. He took another sip, and continued.

‘The first edition of
Pickwick
is my main concern. The total number of words in that edition is what I think of as
the
number, though I know the numbers for other editions. I do not like revealing that number, sir. I keep it to myself. I do not know why. A little superstition which has grown upon me. I think I shall say that number aloud with my last breath upon this earth.'

‘I hesitate to ask you this—'

‘Do not be embarrassed, sir. I can guess what your question is. You are wondering whether a life like mine is worthwhile.'

‘I would not put it in quite those terms.'

‘However it would be expressed – I am sure most people will think there are better ways to spend a life. But you see, sir, people call
Pickwick
the immortal book, about an immortal character. And in compiling the concordance, I have found my own little corner of immortality. I admit my concordance will never be published. Every publisher I have approached has told me, with regret, that even
Pickwick
– even a thing as great and as universally appealing as
Pickwick
– would
never
justify the costs of printing a concordance. Still, people have expressed keen interest in such a work existing. I had to make it real, sir. Someone had to. It
could
be published, and that is enough for me.'

‘How have you coped? Were you never bored?'

‘Sometimes I felt my spirit flag a little. To give myself some recreation, I have made lists concerning
Pickwick
. Take characters. What a crowd! Has a book ever thronged like
Pickwick
before?'

Without my asking for supporting evidence, he provided it, scarcely stopping to breathe.

‘Allowing for some arbitrariness in what is meant by an important character, there are fifty-six important characters in
The Pickwick Papers
. Forty-one are men and fifteen are women. There are then 164 characters of minor importance. Of those, 119 are men, and forty-five are women. Then there are people who are mentioned but who do not appear in the story, such as Napoleon. There are 195 of those, of whom 157 are men, and thirty-eight are women. If one totals everyone, including references to functionaries such as clerks, and people connected with horses and so on, there are 865 people in
Pickwick
. So many people, and all in
one work
, the most in any work any Englishman has ever written.

‘I have even sorted characters into professions. There are twenty-two clerks. There are fifty-seven people connected with jail.'

‘Have you any idea how many references to alcohol there are in
Pickwick
?'

‘I have not checked the figure, but I made a brief tally in my mind when I was suffering from eye strain and I came to a total in the region of three hundred. I
should
know the precise number. And I will. I would trust myself more on food. There are ninety-five separate occasions for food, divided into thirty-five breakfasts, thirty-two dinners, ten luncheons, ten teas and eight suppers. But yes, I must have an accurate figure on alcohol. There are priorities, you see, sir. Etymological analysis of the words has a greater claim on my time, for the insights I hope it will reveal.'

He paused there, seeing whether I would ask about these insights. To be polite, I said: ‘Please explain.'

‘Boz was paid for the quantity of work he produced. Rather like those who reported minor news events. Like them, he had to fill the pages of the number. How great the pressure to replace short native English words with Latin and Greek polysyllables! Yet he had to be lively and amusing, and aim at the most pleasing mix of verbosity and life. One day I shall explore this.'

Suddenly he said: ‘I was asked to give up all work on the concordance by my wife.'

‘You have
a wife
? I am sorry, I did not mean that the way it sounded.'

‘It is quite all right. She is deceased now. We should not have married. She was the type of woman to read a book and tuck it back anywhere in a bookcase. Sometimes even on its side.

‘She often made fun of the concordance. I can hear her saying now: “How many times does the word ‘pointless' appear?” So I told her. The answer is none. She was not at all amused. That was the first time she asked me to give it up – and when she asked, I felt the anger rising inside me, because she was attempting to deprive me of all meaning to my life, sir. I said to her “
No
!”; and it came from deep within me. I had never said a “No!” like it. I can hear myself saying it now, “
No
!” Then another time, when her sister and brother-in-law visited, I absented myself to work on the concordance. After they left, my wife said how embarrassed she was, and she asked me to give it up again. “No”, I said. I was calmer on this occasion, but with iron-hard resolution. She said, “Stop this work, or I will leave.” She left, sir. I had my priorities. Though she came back, a few days later.

‘Her death happened three years ago. Even when she lay ill, I admit – I was thinking of the concordance. And I will admit too that at the very end, when I looked down at her silent mouth, on the pillow, I thought of a peculiar clustering of the word “said” within the book – because there is one page of
Pickwick
in which the word “said” is used seventeen times – seven times in successive remarks.

‘I can see you are disturbed by this admission of mine, but we are what we are, sir. I have been haunted, I admit, by my own inadequacy – sometimes I have thought even
Pickwick
's punctuation marks should be included in the concordance. You see, the punctuation of
Pickwick
is most idiosyncratic, sir. The commas are shaken over the paragraphs like – like…'

‘Like a man applying pepper to his dinner?'

‘Yes, but the wrong shape of granule, sir.'

‘So how will you fill your days now?'

He finished his drink before answering. ‘I confess – as much as I have wanted the work to be finished, I have dreaded the abyss that waits at the end. What do I do? Of course there are still studies I could conduct, like the etymological analysis. But it is not enough. Could I trouble you for another drink, sir?'

‘It is no trouble.'

‘I have thought of reading every word written
about Pickwick
– they say more has been written about
Pickwick
than any other work of fiction. I did read some studies, as recreation, during my fifteen years. That it was
some
did not satisfy me. To read
everything
would be pure and unbiased. But I shall not do this. I know I would fall into another sort of abyss. How could I confirm my knowledge was encyclopedic? What if a piece were in German or Japanese, and I could not understand a word?

‘I have also thought of compiling a list of allusions to
Pickwick
. But that would be a
gargantuan
task! Though its pleasures en route would be considerable. One's mind would be taken on a journey more exotic than any trip undertaken by the Pickwickians. All sorts of things mention
Pickwick
in a footnote, or in the main text. There are editions of the Acts of the Apostles – commentaries on Syriac literature – no man could list them all.

‘There is
one
other task. It can be completed part by part, even if not in totality.'

‘You have me intrigued,' I said.

‘In her last days, my wife extracted a promise. She said, “Promise me, when I am gone, that you will lay down work on the concordance for one month. Just one month. If I ever meant anything to you, pause, out of respect, when I am gone.” I did not know how to answer. Then she said: “You cannot do it, can you? Not even for a month.” And I said, “I shall, for one month.”

‘It was a penance, sir. The days dragged. It must have been far, far worse than the agony of the original readers of
Pickwick
waiting for the next monthly part – far worse. You may think me a monster – for my wife lay dead. But we cannot help what we are. For a week I walked around, not knowing how to occupy myself. So I went off to Bury St Edmunds.'

‘Which is in
Pickwick
.'

‘It is. But also, by coincidence, I lived there some years ago, when I was a very young man. I worked briefly as a clerk in the Angel.'

‘The inn where Mr Pickwick stayed.'

‘It was. In room eleven. Do you know the Angel?'

‘Not as well as you, I am sure.'

‘It is old, sir. Huge. But it fascinates. From the outside it is forbidding, in Suffolk brick and ivy. Inside, the floors creak, and the corridors wind around. I wish that Boz had known the stories of the Angel that I have heard, and had put them in
Pickwick
. You see, the Angel is built upon the site of a much older building of the same name, a building that had crypts and cellars, which are still in existence and which are said to go all the way to the grounds of the ruined abbey, and even further. When I was a young man, I used to look through the Angel's windows, across to the gateway of the abbey – some say it is picturesque – but it was the dark crypts and cellars that fascinated me most. I would walk around the courtyard at night, and I wondered about the area below the surface. Where did it go? How large was it? What could be found there? I wanted to map that underworld. In my imagination, I saw a place of innumerable caverns and winding passages.'