Once Upon a Wardrobe(33)

“Yes?”

“He had a heart condition. He spent a lot of time in bed.” George’s voice rises and falls with the absolute wonder of the one thing I hadn’t registered.

We sit in the silence of that truth, the connection that reaches through time.

“Do you think . . . ,” George asks. “Do you think it’s why he’s being so nice to us?”

“No,” I say. “I think it’s because he’s a nice man who . . . Oh, I don’t know.”

And I don’t. I realize that for all I do know, for all I want to pretend I know about life and death and the universe, I don’t know what matters most to George right now.

“Is he still alive? His best friend with the weak heart . . . is he still . . .”

“Yes!” I tell George. That much I do know. “Yes he is, and he’s in Belfast, and Mr. Lewis visits him every summer.”

I set my notebook on the floor.

“I bet,” George says, “I bet Mr. Kirkpatrick is the professor in the book.” George grins as if he’s discovered treasure in my telling.

I stand and toss another log on the fire. A spray of sparks flies upward, and I turn to George. “I asked him the same thing and all he said was, ‘The professor is the professor.’”

George shakes his head. “Mr. Kirkpatrick is the professor. He is. I know he is.” George grins the great smile of a child whose confidence far outweighs his knowledge.

“I don’t know, George. It’s possible, but Mr. Kirkpatrick was married, lived in a town, and wasn’t much for flights of fancy. To me, the professor in the book reminds me more of Mr. Lewis than anyone else.”

George perks up. “Maybe.” He stares off and then back at me. “Sometimes you leave things out of your story,” he says. “What else did Mr. Lewis say about his tutor?”

“He told me he wrote a poem about him. He told me that he was indebted to him and would be for all of his life because that man taught him about logic.”

“Is that why his tutor was an atheist—because of logic?”

“He never really said. I think maybe that’s part of it.”

“But Mr. Lewis isn’t an atheist. Not one bit.”

“He was once. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the part of the story where he isn’t.”

“And all those books he reads . . .”

“He’s read so many books, George. There’s certainly no way I can list all of them. But he told me that Phantastes is the one that baptized his imagination.”

“If I grew to be old,” George said, “I would read as many books as Mr. Lewis. I know I would.”

Despite the roaring fire, I almost shiver. It isn’t that I always think about how George will not grow old, but at a time like this, I have no decent reply but a hug.





Thirteen

Surprised by Enchantment




After returning to Oxford, I walk through the trodden snow, thinking of how many stories Mr. Lewis has read and how few novels I’ve actually read. Even the ones I have read are because I’ve been told to read them or because they helped me understand mathematics. What if I read a book that made me fall in love so hard and so fast that I would search for more of its kind?

It seems implausible.

Honestly, those kinds of books, the fairy tales and Mr. Lewis’s book about the lion, stir me up inside and make me feel things that bring tears. And I do not want to cry. I want to be strong and good for George. The last thing I need is to get sentimental and squishy. Something—I’m not sure what—in Mr. Lewis’s Narnia story makes me weepy.

In many ways, Mr. Lewis and I are opposites. He abhors algebra. I adore it. To me, the world makes much more sense as a sum or a string of numbers. I can feel them. I understand their language.

George feels the same as Mr. Lewis. The truly heartbreaking thing is that he won’t live nearly long enough to read all the books Mr. Lewis has read. Life is unfair; it’s not the story I would write for myself or for my family or the world.

I mope along High Street, then head toward my rooms at Somerville when I stop mid-step. A chill of something other than the weather runs along my arms and heart as I pause in front of the Bodleian Library. It radiates. Warm light spills from its windows onto the icy sidewalks. Christmas lights have been strung unevenly along the pathways and seem to lead me toward the door. Bicycles are parked on bike racks and a few have tumbled into each other. The Bodleian’s dome glows. I think this majestic building must hold more books than even Mr. Lewis could ever read.

People come from around the world to visit this library, and here it is on my walking path every single day, a reliably quiet place to study when the residence halls are too loud. It holds manuscripts as old as can be found and a copy of every book that matters, or so they say. I’ve heard that within are secret tunnels and leather-bound treasures.

This whole town emerged unscathed from the war because the evil man Adolf Hitler wanted to preserve it for himself. What if a bomb had hit this beautiful library?

I stand outside, gazing up at the Bodleian, taking note of its charms in a way I haven’t before so I can catalog a full description for George; I want to tell him about this place he can’t visit.

The midafternoon sun sits like an egg yolk in a sea of clear blue, faded in winter hues. Students rush into and out of the building, little clouds coming from their mouths or cigarettes or both. They climb onto bikes and rush past me as if I don’t stand there at all.