28
28
T HE WOMAN AT THE front desk looks at you very carefully. You are wearing a fixed smile, which you direct at her. You are doing this because you are trying to look nice and polite and not like a street urchin. You feel like a street urchin. You feel like the trip on the London Underground has covered you in a layer of dirt that’ll take years to come off. Also, you are spending all your birthday money today. This means you feel poor – much like a street urchin.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman at the front desk says. ‘I still don’t understand. Are you someone’s kids?’
You nod because, yes, you are both indeed someone’s kids. But at the same time, Bobby shakes his head emphatically and says no.
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head emphatically, prompting you to change your nod to a shake. When you realise this is a weird sequence of gestures for you to do, you try to style it out by pretending you’re bopping your head to some non-existent music.
‘We are not anyone’s kids,’ Bobby continues. ‘We’re just here because we have learnt all about the Voynich Manuscript and we want to see it. It’s for our research.’
The woman continues to regard you with evident curiosity. You can tell this place is very different from your local library. Everything about it is very smart. No one is eating chips or shouting.
‘I see,’ she says, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. ‘And is this research a school thing?’
Bobby shakes his head once more. ‘It’s not a school thing. We’re independent researchers doing independent research.’ As if to seem impressive, he adds: ‘We came here on the train then the Tube by ourselves. We would like to view the Manuscript for our research. By ourselves.’
The woman smiles. You can’t tell if the smile is a smiling-at-you smile or a smiling-with-you smile. In any case, you suspect she is not impressed by people doing things by themselves. She is an older lady. Maybe even twenty-five. In your opinion, it’s likely she does everything by herself.
‘The thing is,’ the woman at the front desk says, ‘this is a university library. We’re not open to the general public. People can only come in if they’re part of the university.’
‘But we won’t be very long,’ Bobby says. ‘And we might actually end up studying here anyway. After we leave school, we will want to study somewhere to further our research.’
The woman at the front desk shakes her head, still smiling. ‘It doesn’t matter. If you’re not a member of the university now, you can’t come in now. I’m sorry.’
Starting to feel impatient, you roll on the balls of your feet. Bobby exhales, turns his head to look towards the turnstiles. Beyond the turnstiles, the library apparently starts properly. You can see its ground-floor printers and the edges of its infinity of bookshelves. At the moment, you are just in the entrance hall, which is cavernous but devoid of books. London is so big, you think, that it doesn’t need to put things everywhere. It can have whole cathedral-sized areas filled with just empty space.
You follow Bobby’s gaze. You wonder if he is imagining making a break for it, jumping the turnstiles, and heading to hide in the stacks. Bobby does not do this. Instead, he bows deeply. ‘Thank you for your time, Chantelle,’ he says, using the name displayed on the woman’s name badge. ‘We won’t bother you any further.’
The woman at the front desk – Chantelle, apparently – appears startled by Bobby’s brazen use of her name. You offer her a half-bow of apology, which she doesn’t acknowledge or maybe even see. Then, you follow Bobby out the door, trotting to keep up with his brisk pace.
You get to the other side of the entrance. The entrance is huge. Through it, pint-sized students and staff come and go, wearing headphones and backpacks and frowns of concentration. They whoosh by you, wearing clothes you wouldn’t see in your town centre library. After a small amount of consideration, you decide that not only would you not see their clothes but you wouldn’t see the people wearing the clothes. These people, you decide, could only exist here.
‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,’ Bobby says, shuffling from one foot to the other.
The pair of you hover outside. It’s really cold and windy. Dead leaves skirt the floor. Your jumper is not coat-like enough to keep you warm. You regret not bringing a more coat-like jumper, or perhaps just a coat-like coat.
‘We’ll just have to go home,’ you say, rubbing your hands together while Bobby does his thinking.
Bobby shakes his head. ‘We’ve come all this way.’
You also shake your head. ‘They won’t let us in. And it’s getting dark. And cold. And I’m hungry. And my parents’ll think I’ve been killed or something. They’ll probably be phoning the police soon.’
Bobby puts a finger up to your lips – a gesture borrowed from the scene of a film. ‘I have an idea.’
‘Oh, great,’ you say. ‘What is it, then?’
Bobby looks at you. ‘We just have to wait for Chantelle to go on a break.’
‘Oh, god.’
‘Then we try again with her replacement. But we will have to have a different story this time. A better story. Like, maybe we should actually say we’re someone’s kids.’
‘How would that even work?’
Bobby looks as though he can’t understand why you don’t get the significance of being someone’s kids. Then he presses his face against the door. His breath fogs up the glass and the glass squooshes his nose. You do the same. It doesn’t take long for Chantelle to spot you. Clasping her hand to her forehead, she then picks up a phone to have an animated-looking conversation.
A few minutes later, you see her marching in your direction. She is accompanied by a security guard. You know he is a security guard because on the front of his jacket is the word ‘SECURITY’ and on the back of his jacket is also the word ‘SECURITY’.
‘Hi, guys,’ Chantelle says to you, the security man lurking behind her.
You open your mouth to say ‘Hi, Chantelle’ back, then think better of it. In any case, she proceeds to ignore you and addresses the security guard. ‘These two need to leave, please,’ she says, pointing at you both without looking at either of you. ‘They don’t have permission to be here. They’re not part of the university and they’re not anyone’s kids.’
The security guard regards you, then Bobby, then you, then Bobby. He has a babyish face. Even though you are bad at telling how old people are, you can tell this man is young. This is confirmed by the fact that, when he speaks, he does so in a high voice. ‘They’re kids, though. I can’t manhandle kids.’
She frowns at him. ‘Then don’t manhandle them. But whatever you do, they need to leave.’ At this, Chantelle makes her way back inside, leaving the small security guard to deal with the situation at hand. The security guard clicks his tongue.
‘Hi, guys,’ the security guard says to you both, as if you hadn’t both overheard the conversation he was just having. ‘Would you mind not standing here?’
Bobby frowns. ‘We’re technically on a public pavement.’
The security guard nods. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But they want you to leave so would you mind leaving? Maybe you could hang out over there.’ He points at what you assume is the far distance but could also just be the park opposite.
Bobby pauses, then nods. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘We’ll be back, though. We have business here. Things to do. Things to see.’ He touches his temple with his index finger. ‘Research.’
YOU SIT ON A bench in the park. The Sun is starting to go down but it’s not that late – it’s just December. When you look at your hands, you notice they have taken on a blueish tinge. When you look at the air in front of you, you notice it is making clouds. It doesn’t take too long to get past the feeling of cold and arrive at a feeling of death. Your feet feel especially cold. Unlike the rest of you, they feel so cold you imagine they might drop off at some point.
‘Can we just go home?’ you say to Bobby, who has buried his face in the hood of his hoodie.
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he says. ‘I guess it didn’t work out.’
You nod. ‘How do we get home? Do you know?’
‘I only really looked up how to get here.’
‘Oh.’
‘I guess we’ll just try to do the same journey as before but backwards.’
‘OK.’
But you don’t move. Instead, you sit there – struck by the feeling you really don’t want to return home. Indeed, if there were an option for you to stay in this park forever, you might take it, start a new life with Bobby and the squirrels. In this new life, you would occasionally write letters to your mum and dad, saying things like, ‘All is well in my new life, I hope you are also well.’
As for Bobby, he’s not moving either. I imagine he isn’t struck by a feeling that he doesn’t want to go home. At some point, he will want to go home because home is where all his stuff is. Instead, he isn’t moving because he is still thinking about the Manuscript. He is wondering if he cares about it any more.
And so, both of you sit on the bench in a mutual sort of silence, your bodies becoming as cold as the roots of the winter trees. If you stayed there forever, you’d get hypothermia and die, you think. If you stayed there forever, you would disintegrate into the earth.
At the other end of the park, someone rings a bell. After this, out of the falling darkness, a man approaches you. His hair is long and greasy and his clothes curiously formal.
‘Hey, kids,’ the man says, ‘they lock up the park when it gets dark. Didn’t you know?’
You look at Bobby. You don’t know if this man is an OK person to talk to. Bobby doesn’t seem to be fazed. Instead, he just responds in an ordinary fashion, as if this stranger is no danger at all.
‘Oh, we’ll just have to leave, then,’ Bobby says, mildly, adding to you: ‘Come on.’
You stand up and the pair of you make your way to the exit. You walk briskly, and your feet come back alive. But you can still feel the stranger’s eyes boring into the back of your neck.
He does a jog to catch up with you again. ‘Hey, kids,’ he says again. ‘Were you two outside the library just before? Trying to get in?’
You both stop, turn to face the stranger.
‘Yeah, that was us,’ Bobby says.
‘You wanted to get in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you say you were someone’s kids?’
‘No.’
‘What did you say you wanted to see?’
‘The Voynich Manuscript.’
The man nods. ‘I thought that’s what you said. You know, I actually have something to do with that.’
You perk up. ‘You work on the Voynich Manuscript?’
The man looks you up and down and side to side, as though trying to suss you out. ‘That’s what I said,’ he says eventually, before returning his focus to Bobby.
‘I can let you in, if you want. Then you can see it.’
Bobby eyes the man narrowly. ‘I’m not sure Chantelle will be keen. She doesn’t like us much.’
‘Chantelle?’
‘The lady on the front desk.’
‘Oh. She’ll get over it. We’ll just have to tell her you’re my kids.’
As if this suggestion makes sense, Bobby says OK.
‘OK,’ he says.
The man addresses you now. ‘OK?’
‘OK,’ you say, though you are less sure.
The three of you make your way to the park gate. But by the time you reach it, it’s closed. Each of you tries to open the gate to no avail.
‘What do we do?’ you say.
For a few moments, you panic. You start to think that you might actually have to start a new life in this central London park. It doesn’t seem so appealing now. You wonder what you will do for food. You wonder if you will have to steal nuts from the squirrels. You wonder if your parents will be sad without you. You wonder if they will come to visit you sometimes – look on at you mournfully as you sit in your tree. You wonder if you will miss them, then you are sure that you will.
‘What do we do?’ you say again, louder, and more frantically.
‘Don’t worry,’ the man says. ‘I’ll give you a leg-up.’
You don’t know what a ‘leg-up’ is, but it soon transpires it means helping someone climb over something. The man turns his hands into a kind of makeshift step and kneels down. Bobby goes first, stepping on the man’s hands with confidence, scrambling up the fence nimbly, before landing on the ground.
Then it’s your turn. You bluster forward, step on the man’s hands with one foot, and grab the railing. After this, the man pushes you upwards. But becoming suddenly taller and hauling your body over the slightly pointy top of the fence alarms you. In the end, you sort of just fall over the top, landing splat on your belly on the ground. When you get up, you swear you can feel bruises already forming on your knees and torso.
‘Steady!’ the man says, pointlessly.
‘You OK?’ Bobby asks, also pointlessly.
You dust off your hands, which you used to break your fall. You are not OK. Not only are you cold, hungry, and tired but you are also now hurting and hurt.
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ you say.
Bobby nods, apparently reassured.
The man launches himself over with more elegance than you but less elegance than Bobby. Then the three of you make your way back to the library, enter through the massive doors.
‘They’re my kids,’ the man says, to a confused-looking Chantelle.
‘For god’s sake,’ she says, shaking her head.
The man ignores her, uses a blank card to beep you all through the turnstiles. When he does so, you are in the library proper. It’s that simple.
The library is really nice and really handsome. Its dark wooden bookshelves house rows upon rows of lovely-looking books. The books are not bound in protective plastic jackets like they are in your local library. Instead, they are bound in fabric. The mere sight of them makes you want to twirl around in a marvelling manner, like people do in films.
But you don’t do this. Instead, you crane your neck upwards. All around are windows of stained glass. Street lamps beam through them, casting a Technicolor light upon the people sitting at their desks. The ceiling is really high. There are some stairs leading up to something called a mezzanine. Here, the books seem to be arranged according to the colour of their spines. Intentionally or not, the spines spell out the colours of the rainbow. The library is huge. Like a museum-library aircraft hangar.
The man takes you down some handsome stairs to a basement.
‘Wow,’ you say again, grinning involuntarily.
‘Wow,’ Bobby says also.
The man starts talking. He comes here every day, he says, to work on his research on undeciphered and untranslated codices. He has been working on the Manuscript for over seven years now. He has many theories but, as of yet, no breakthrough.
‘This place is open twenty-four hours a day, you know?’ the man says. ‘So, if you didn’t ever want to leave, you wouldn’t ever have to.’
You like the idea of a twenty-four-hour library. In fact, you feel you’d like a twenty-four-hour library so much that you try and fail to emit a low whistle of appreciation.
The man whisks you down some more stairs, up some more stairs, and through some more doors. He really does walk like he owns the place. His confidence reassures you. It seems that he is allowed to be here – that he didn’t lie to you about being a researcher who researches things in this place.
Still, you wonder why he is being so nice.
Eventually, he shows you to a room that appears to be your final destination. It looks like somewhere between an office and a panic room. Much like an office, there is a large desk and ample bookcasing. Much like a panic room, there are no windows. If he wanted to murder you, this would be the perfect place.
As if reading your mind, Bobby asks the man if this is his office. ‘Um, is this really your office?’ he asks.
‘No, it’s not anyone’s office. More of a shared space.’
‘Where is everyone?’
The man looks at Bobby, says nothing.
You scan the books. One is titled Deciphering Cyphers . Another is titled The History of Zodiac Signs . Still another is called Who Was Roger Bacon? You know some people think the Voynich Manuscript isn’t written in a language but a cypher. You also know that zodiac signs are some of the recognisable pictures in the text. You also know that, once upon a time, people thought a scholarly man called Roger Bacon was responsible for writing the Voynich Manuscript.
‘So, I have to leave you here for a minute to fetch it, all right?’ he says.
‘OK,’ Bobby says.
‘It’s in a safe just next door. Won’t be long.’
‘Right,’ Bobby says again.
‘Don’t steal anything while I’m gone. If you do steal something, I’ll probably catch you red-handed.’
‘We won’t.’
The man leaves through the door you all came through. As soon as he does, you turn to Bobby. ‘Do you think this was a bad idea?’ you say, in a voice only just louder than a whisper.
Bobby looks serious. ‘He’s a bit odd, isn’t he?’
‘Do you think he’s going to kill us?’
Bobby scratches his nose. ‘Maybe.’
‘Do you think he’ll strangle us?’ you ask. ‘Or shoot us?’
‘I don’t know how people usually get killed.’ Bobby pauses. ‘Maybe he just wants to help us with our research.’
‘Why would he want to do that? Why would he want to help us with anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It seems more likely he wants to kill us.’
Bobby purses his lips. ‘Maybe he wants to nurture the minds of tomorrow with the resources of today.’
You regard him suspiciously. ‘Where did you read that?’
‘What?’
‘That phrase you just said.’
Bobby looks sheepish. ‘I think it’s my school motto.’
‘You think?’
‘I know it’s my school motto.’
‘It’s your school motto?’
‘Yes, it’s my school motto.’
‘Well, I don’t think he goes to your school, Bobster.’
Bobby does a half-smile, and your conversation lulls into quiet.
You are aware of time passing. It has been more than a minute. You wonder if something has happened to the man. You wonder if he has been killed – if a rival researcher has struck him down. Perhaps the secrets of the Manuscript were too terrible to let out and he needed to be taken out of the equation, metaphorically speaking.
‘This room is so weird,’ Bobby says.
You look around. It is. Not only are there no windows, but the walls appear to have padding on them – noise insulation, maybe. You wonder if the man is already killing you. Perhaps he is using some newfangled device to suck all the air out of the room to suffocate you.
‘Maybe this is the only room you’re allowed to observe the Manuscript in?’ Bobby says. ‘Maybe that’s why it’s such a weird room.’
You frown. This may be the case. After all, there is no possibility of sunlight damage in a room without windows. Also, the air is dry in here – like an aeroplane – the gentle hum in the background indicative of climate control. In the centre, there is a long dining-room-type table, over which lamps hover. The only thing that doesn’t look quite right is the noise insulation. You’re not sure what that’s for. Perhaps, you think, it’s simply there to stifle your screams.
A woman arrives through the same door the man left through. She has a lot of hair and walks in a business-like manner. She approaches you purposefully – her high heels going clip-clop – wielding what you suspect is the Manuscript in her hands. At this, your heart or stomach does a leap. It does indeed look like it’s the Manuscript. You find it surprising to see just her holding a fifteenth-century tome. You had imagined it would be too delicate for holding. You thought you would need to touch it with tongs or at least wear gloves or something.
‘Hi, guys,’ the woman says. ‘Martin was called away.’
Bobby frowns. ‘Who’s Martin?’
The woman also frowns. ‘The man who showed you in.’
Bobby nods. ‘Oh, right. We didn’t catch his name.’
The woman shakes her head in a disapproving or disbelieving way. She sits on a chair at the long table. She turns on a lamp. The light of the lamp seems special. It seems like daylight, only an artificial version. When you look down, you can see every centimetre of the Manuscript’s goatskin cover, which from your reading, you know is not the original. According to your reading, before the goatskin cover, there was a wooden cover.
She points to you. ‘You,’ she says. ‘Come sit here.’
You oblige and sit to her right.
‘And you,’ she says, pointing at Bobby. ‘Come sit here.’
Bobby obliges, sits to her left.
‘Do we need to wear gloves?’ you say.
‘Only if you’re going to touch it,’ the woman says, ‘which you’re not, I’m afraid.’
Bobby lets out a small laugh. It’s not really a laugh, though. More of a slightly forceful exhalation.
The woman ignores him. ‘There’s to be no touching or coming too close, OK?’
You nod. You feel like you’re being told off before you’ve done anything wrong, but you accept it.
‘As I gather you know,’ the woman says, ‘this Manuscript is on loan from a university in America, and rumour has it you’re not part of the university here, so I’ll be doing the touching and you’ll be doing the looking.’
You nod. ‘OK, sorry, great,’ you say. You feel she’s hamming it up a bit now. You’re not allowed to touch or come too close. You get it. In any case, your eyes haven’t left the book. The codex. The Manuscript.
‘So this is it,’ the woman says, her eyes now firmly planted on you. ‘What do you think? Do you like it?’
You swallow. You find the woman’s gaze piercing and intrusive. ‘It’s small,’ you say, wondering why she is addressing you and not Bobby.
The woman nods. ‘Everyone says that. It’s indeed small for a book so important and so talked about.’
You do a half-smile.
‘And shall I show you the inside?’ the woman asks, still addressing only you. ‘Shall I turn the cover?’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, then, I will. The cover isn’t very interesting, is it?’
You force a polite laugh. ‘Ha.’
‘No need to laugh,’ the woman says.
‘Um, OK, sorry.’
‘No need to apologise either.’
You exchange a look with Bobby. You wonder if he is thinking the same thing as you.
‘The first section is the plant section,’ she says, opening the pages to show the herbal section.
‘The herbal section,’ you correct her.
‘That’s the one.’
‘Do you like it?’ she asks again.
‘It’s great,’ you say, instinctively.
‘Have a proper look.’
You lean in to look at the pages before you.
‘Not so close, though.’
You lean back to look at the pages before you. The pages are thicker than the pages in normal books – you can tell when the woman turns them. On the page, there are pictures of plants accompanied by rows of text written in brown ink. It doesn’t look any different from the images you’ve seen online. But it does feel different. It feels special – as though you are in the room with a small but special piece of history – which you suppose is exactly the case.
‘That one looks like a weed to me,’ Bobby says, almost touching the Manuscript with his index finger.
The woman turns to him abruptly. ‘Absolutely not. You cannot get that close.’
‘Bobby,’ you say, shooting him what you hope is a reprimanding look.
The woman seems annoyed. ‘Are you the one who’s interested in language and languages or the one who’s interested in plants and flowers?’ she asks him.
Bobby blinks. ‘I’m just Bobby,’ he says eventually.
‘Then maybe you should stop pointing at ancient artefacts. Sit back.’
The woman shows you the rest of the Manuscript. She doesn’t linger too long on any page but she doesn’t rush either. She lets you ask questions, and makes the occasional comment.
‘Naked ladies,’ the woman says, rolling her eyes. ‘This is the page your friend Martin is working on.’
‘Oh really?’
The woman frowns. ‘He didn’t tell you that either?’
You shake your head.
‘Interesting,’ the woman says. ‘Well, he’s trying to get a computer to translate this page.’
‘What, really?’ You think it sounds so far-fetched: a computer that can translate.
But the woman just nods. ‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’ Bobby asks.
‘Oh, I actually sent him home. I told him to stop luring children into the university premises. It’s not allowed. It’s against library policy and, to be honest, it’s a bit untoward.’
‘Untoward?’ Bobby says.
The woman flashes Bobby a look of warning. ‘Yes. Exactly that.’
The woman takes the Manuscript away. When she does so, you feel a pang of surprise, then a pang of another more lingering feeling – the flavour of an emotion you can’t quite put your finger on. When she comes back without it, and shows you out of the room, you feel the feeling even more. i
‘I’ve had Chantelle call you two a taxi,’ she says, marching you through the entrance hall. ‘It should be here soon.’
The woman waits with you outside the library. It is pitch-black now. When you look up, you see a star shining through the light pollution. Then the star blinks and moves and disappears.
‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,’ Bobby says, rubbing his hands together.
‘Don’t your parents tell you not to go places with strangers?’ the woman asks, addressing Bobby.
Bobby shrugs. ‘It’s just my mum at home. And she’s a bit of an odd one.’
You hadn’t realised Bobby’s mum was a bit of an odd one. Though in hindsight, you suppose this makes sense.
‘Well, take it from someone older and wiser,’ the woman says, ‘you shouldn’t go places with strangers. Even if they’re charming like my colleague. He could’ve killed you or something.’
Your eyes widen. ‘So he was going to kill us?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the woman says. ‘But he could’ve done.’
A pause passes between the three of you. The Moon is visible between two buildings. Its light green and yellow and blue.
‘Do you have an idea what it’s all about, then?’
You assume she’s talking to Bobby, and so don’t respond. Instead, you return your gaze to the multicolour Moon. It’s pretty and big.
‘Hm?’ the woman prompts.
‘Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking to Bobby,’ you say.
The woman smiles, maybe for the first time. ‘I was asking you about the Manuscript. About what you think it is. It would help me if you had a bright idea. After all these years studying it, I’m at a loss.’
You shrug. ‘If it’s a natural language,’ you say, not making eye contact, ‘but no one can understand it, then I reckon it’s a dead language isolate. Like Albanian or Basque. But dead like Latin. But unknown so not Latin. I reckon it’s from an island nation somewhere. One that was cut off.’
The woman smiles some more. The light of the nearby lamp post is making her hair shine orange. ‘Yes, it could be,’ she says. ‘In which case, we might be screwed.’
You shuffle awkwardly on your feet. ‘Ah, OK.’
‘I don’t think it’s a natural language.’
You blush. ‘OK.’
‘I think it’s a code.’ The woman takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. You frown at her. Not that long ago, she was banging on about the risks of going with strangers. But now she is consuming a carcinogenic substance.
‘Can’t someone just get a computer to translate it?’ Bobby asks.
The woman raises her eyebrows. ‘That’s what Martin is trying to do. Weren’t you listening?’
You and the woman exchange a look. She checks her watch.
‘Or I thought it was…’ you say.
‘What?’
‘Like maybe an item from another planet or something.’
The woman doesn’t smile when you say this. In fact, she doesn’t even react. She just exhales a plume of smoke. Long, silver, and curling into the cold night air.
You add, ‘Like maybe it was written by aliens and it just like – fell to Earth accidentally on the back of a meteorite or something.’
The woman continues to say nothing.
‘What do you think?’ you ask, somewhat squeakily, now keen for the woman to speak – to say something, anything.
The woman looks at you steadily. ‘I think your cab is here.’
Your cab is indeed here. It is a white car with the words ‘taxi cab’ on it. You wonder what the difference is between the word ‘taxi’ and the word ‘cab’. Then the driver climbs out and opens the doors and Bobby hops in, and you think of this no more. Instead, you linger – again struck by another wave of not wanting to go home.
‘Who are you?’ you ask, clumsily. ‘Like, what’s your job?
‘I am a linguist,’ the woman says, reaching into her pocket. ‘What did you think I was?’
You purse your lips thoughtfully. ‘A librarian maybe.’
She shakes her head. ‘Ah, an admirable profession. But no, I’m not a librarian.’
You nod and wonder if you can make a dash for the park and its squirrels. Maybe it’s time to start a new life after all. But when the linguist offers you a small business card, you are distracted from this idea.
‘Why don’t you have my card? That way you can get in touch if you want to.’
You inspect the card. ‘To talk about the Voynich Manuscript?’
The linguist shrugs. ‘Sure.’
In the taxi to the station, Bobby is quiet and so are you. You watch the city whoosh by. Tall buses. Crowds of people wrapped up in winter coats. At some red lights, you pause next to a Sainsbury’s housed in an excessively handsome building. Two minutes later, you are traversing the Thames.
Bobby taps you on the shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says, leaning in and speaking quietly, as if he doesn’t want the driver to hear. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t tell people what we did here.’
‘What do you mean?’ you ask.
Bobby pulls a face. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t tell people we came here to see the Manuscript.’
You don’t understand why Bobby is saying this. You wanted to tell everyone everywhere about the Manuscript. ‘But why not?’
‘I don’t think it’s a normal thing to have done,’ Bobby says. ‘Let’s just say we came here to see the sights, OK?’
He offers you his little finger to do what is commonly known as a pinky promise. You don’t know about pinky promises, though, so you just look at his little finger, then his face, then his little finger again. After a while, Bobby retracts his offer of a pinky promise, and offers you his hand to shake. This, you understand, and so shake it you do.
Further reading:
Deciphering Cyphers
The History of Zodiac Signs
Who Was Roger Bacon?
Footnote
i Disappointment.