They were in a language, whose import was totally unknown to him.“I’ll show you,” his chief said. He got up and unlocked a cupboard behind his desk, taking something out and re-locking the cupboard before turning back and tossing whatever-it-was across the desk. It was a book. As his chief sat again he picked it up, conscious that the other’s eyes were watching him closely. It was octodecimo, with black covers, no title, no words of any kind. He opened it and immediately sniffed, then sneezed involuntarily. His chief grunted.Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1794).
“I was waiting for that. Everyone does it. We haven’t identified the spice. Some kind of preservative, perhaps. Read it, man.”
His eyes had watered momentarily as the spice rose from the open book; now, as they cleared, he looked down on what seemed to be a short poem in an unfamiliar alphabet: half-a-page of roughly regular lines ending, yes, in what seemed to be rhymes. The opposite leaf was more or less the same. He turned over, found another poem, then suddenly stopped. His neck had suddenly tingled, the hairs standing up there as though he had read something beautiful or melancholy. But he hadn’t: he didn’t know the alphabet, so couldn’t read what was written in it. His chief grunted again.
“Try page 213,” he said. There was a note of challenge in his voice and the reader looked up.
“Page 213,” his chief repeated. He looked back at the book. The numbers at the bottom of each page were unfamiliar too, but yes, he could work them out. That was 1 and that was 2 and that... He leafed through the book until he found the three digits of what must be 213. He looked up at his chief again.
“Read the poem, man.”
He ran his eyes along the first line, the second, the third, and found his neck suddenly tingling again, his throat tightening with emotion.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
He looked up, not able to trust himself for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, huskily.
“Or so they tell me. It has no effect on me. I’m a philistine. But you’re not and you find it beautiful.”
He nodded.
“But what does the damn thing say? We haven’t a clue. Here, give the damn thing back.”
He felt reluctant for a moment. The book was suddenly as precious to him as it was incomprehensible. Not looking at the poem on page 213 again, he closed it and slid it across the desk to his chief, who snorted again.
“Treating it with care, I see.”
He picked it up, stood and turned to unlock the cupboard again, dropping the book back inside. But this time, rather than close it, he swung it fully open, revealing three towers of books of about the same size, some bound in black, some in red.
“Take a look. We’ve got dozens of ’em. Not all the same book, mind, but all of the others appear to be poetry, too. Lyrical poetry, epic, sonnets, the works. Some varieties no-one can properly identify. And perhaps there’s more out there we haven’t picked up. But poetry, all of it.”
He snorted, closing the cupboard hard and locking it again, then sat at his desk, glaring across it at his subordinate.
“Poetry,” he repeated. “Blasted poetry. Written in some damn language no-one can make head or tail, but that some of us nevertheless understand. It has an effect. And we need to find what’s going on. It’s being smuggled in, but who’s doing it? Who are the ring-leaders? And why, for God’s sake?”
But when he got outside, into an autumn evening that reminded him of a painting in a gallery back home, the only thought that occupied him was that of finding the book again and buying a copy for himself.