The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt Read Free Book Online Page A

archivist and asked if any of the answers to these messages had been preserved. She wrote back, still amiably, saying no, and that there was a note saying Aloysius Holly always replied in his own hand, on carefully selected postcards. I could see the royalty statements if I liked.
    There was one more thing, she said. A packet that had been nagging her because it had been lying loose
under
the hanging folders in the cabinet. It did appear to contain a bundleof sheets (thirty-seven to be precise) typed on what she was convinced was the same typewriter, on foolscap sheets of blue carbon. The material appeared to be biographical. There was even a mention of the Maelstrøm. She would be quite glad, she said, if I were able to identify the fragments positively as belonging to the Destry-Scholes archive, since she had no idea where else to put them. It would, she said, give the archive a little more body, so to speak. Would I like photocopies? She was afraid she would have to charge 5p per page.
    I was excited by the idea of foolscap sheets of blue carbon, for I knew, as she did not, that the “Art of Biography” notes had been made in that form. I wrote back, saying I would like to have the thirty-seven pages, and enclosing a cheque.
    They arrived a few days later. The numbering, Betty Middleton wrote, was her own, the archivist’s numbering. The pages had been, so to speak, pushed in a crumpled way into the packet. She would confirm that they were all carbons, not top copies. As I would see, the typing stopped and started. Some pages were full and consecutive, others scrappy. Some were more worn than others. “He, or his typist, was not very good at page-endings or line-endings. He runs off, words are lost. I think you may be interested in the reference to the Maelstrøm. Odd,” wrote Betty Middleton. I did not know if she knew that Destry-Scholes had putatively disappeared in its maw. She added, “I am afraid these are very foul papers. My own opinion is that they form part of several works, not just one. I shall be interested to know what you think.”
    It was true that the foul papers were even shuffled as to order; pages 10–13 seemed to belong between pages 26 and 27. Thereference to the Maelstrøm followed, naturally it seemed, some references to fjords, but after some thought, and consultation of syntax and common sense, I became convinced that it too had become misplaced, and should have been attached to what appeared to be a quite different narrative. I decided that what I had before me was three sections of three different biographical accounts. It was possible, of course, that they were meant to form parts of one book. Ms. Middleton confirmed, what I knew, really, that there had been no label or title on the package. The heroes, or central figures, of the passages were referred to with initials only, CL, FG and HI. This may have been a device to assist a poor typist, but I read it, involuntarily, as part of a teasing reticence, not to say wilful concealment that I was beginning to ascribe to my fictive Destry-Scholes, with his thin buttocks, speckled tweed trousers and cramped, identity-less dwellings. So we piece things together. I shall transcribe the narratives as I found them. The subjects were reasonably easy to identify, and I do not propose to mystify anyone. Anyone? Who is going to read this? I give them baldly, out of their original crumpled chaos. There were no headings. The Roman numerals are mine, as Miss Middleton’s (not transcribed) were Arabic.

The Three Documents

I
    [The first document, to which I gave the provisional title “L …”]
    A S HE STRUCK OUT of the country of the Lapps, he noted a horse’s jawbone hanging by the roadside.
    â€œBy the road hung a
maxilla inferiori equi
, which had
6
incisores sat obtusos et detritos
2
caninos et distincto spatio
,
12
molares utrinque
. If I knew how many
dentes et quales
, and how many dugs each