Page 9 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

—O— ARTHUR

By the River Thames, 1853–4

I f, as the poets say, the journey of life resembles the march of rivers to the sea, at times meandering aimlessly, at others purposeful and unswerving, the bend in the flow is where the story takes a sudden turn, winding away from its predicted course into a fresh and unexpected direction. Becoming an apprentice at one of England’s leading printing and publishing houses is the twist that changes Arthur’s destiny forever.

In the beginning they give him random tasks of trivial importance – mopping floors, dusting shelves, removing cobwebs, blocking mouse-holes, scrubbing off the muck that clings to the windowsills … The air outside is so dirty that by the time he finishes cleaning the soot off the windowpanes, they are once again coated in a film of grime. His employers watch his every move, noting how he rises to each demand and challenge. Little by little, they allow him to approach the machines. Printing is a dangerous profession, Arthur discovers. The ten-cylinder rotary steam printing press – well-built and sturdy but also clunky – is not easy to operate. If you are not careful, you could lose a limb.

Dangerous, yes, but fascinating! The boy is spellbound as he observes how a single machine can not only transfer letters and images on to blank paper but also make thousands of identical copies. The company produces a variety of books, gazettes and periodicals – including Punch magazine, which sells more than forty thousand copies each week by poking fun at the pompous and the powerful – and a steady din reverberates throughout the shop all day long, like dozens of blunt stones grinding against one another.

This place is nothing like school. There are no canings, no beatings, no dunce’s caps and no punishment baskets where students are forced to sit suspended from the ceiling. Although some of the workers give the boy a hard time for no reason – once tying his bootlaces together as a prank while he is watching the pages spool out and causing him to fall – there is no one as cruel as his old headmaster was. The job is onerous and the routine exacting, but Arthur does not mind. Determined not to disappoint his bosses, he works tirelessly. The mechanical clatter, though constant and loud enough to rattle the brain, does not trouble him either. Nor does the scent of damp ink, which is so pervasive that when he lies down in bed at night he can still smell it in his hair. His fingers may be permanently stained, his ears full of the thrumming of engines, but he is charged with a strange sense of purpose. For the first time in his life, he feels part of something important.

Bradbury those who recognize it only when it is made apparent to them; and those rare souls who find beauty everywhere they turn, even in the most unexpected places.

The day he receives his first wages, King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums leaves the office with a quiet sense of achievement. As it is a Saturday, most of the shops have stayed open late – the gin halls, the oyster saloons, the tobacconists, the confectioners, the tripe-sellers … This being the day working men and women receive their pay, more money changes hands on this one evening than in the whole of the rest of the week.

He walks fast, checking over his shoulder every few steps to see if there is anyone following him. The city, canopied under a fog like smoke from a thousand fires, hides pickpockets and cutpurses. But that is nothing new. The only thing that has changed is that he has something to lose now. How strange that having money makes one feel less safe.

Rounding a corner, he sees a dustman collecting ashes and cinders. He knows that ash can be sold to brickmakers. As for cinders, they are good for fuel. The streets are full of refuse that can be collected and traded for a few pennies, even dead cats, which are soon snapped up by furriers. White cats are especially sought after, earning as much as sixpence each. But Arthur has never been able to bring himself to deal in dead felines.

He notices a hansom cab with a liveried driver, pulled up in front of cordwainer’s shop. As he edges past it, he glances inside the open carriage door. A young woman, not that much older than he is, sits with her skirts spread neatly around her, a silk fan resting on the velvet seat, waiting for the sales girls to bring her samples of finely crafted shoes. Their gazes meet briefly. In that moment Arthur sees himself through her eyes, taking in his shabby bowler hat and worn jacket, ill-fitting and mud-spattered. He feels acutely the difference between them, as the wealthy lady looks through and beyond him, as though he were invisible.

If poverty were a place, a hostile landscape into which you were deliberately pushed or accidentally stumbled, it would be an accursed forest – a damp and gloomy wildwood suspended in time. The branches clutch at you, the boles block your way, the brambles draw you in, determined not to let you out. Even when you manage to cut down one obstacle, instantly it is replaced by another. You tear the skin off your hands as you work doggedly to clear a path elsewhere, but the moment you turn your back the trees close in on you again. Poverty saps your will, little by little. But, just now, with coins jingling in his pocket, Arthur feels hopeful. One day, he will get out of this city and travel far, to the ends of the earth if need be, where the margins of water and land seamlessly merge, and people will never know from what abject penury he came.

From a vendor nearby he purchases two meat-filled pies, coffins – one for him and his mother to share, the other for his twin brothers. He holds the package close to his chest, the smell tickling his nose like a feather.

In a haberdasher’s window on Broad Street, he sees a pair of white kid gloves, lined in deep blue satin and trimmed with lace. He stares at them for a long moment, admiring the exquisite patterns and the delicate leatherwork.

Arthur has heard there is a glove-language spoken on the streets of London. Smoothing them out gently means ‘I wish to be with you’, while dropping the pair signifies ‘I love you.’ Turning them inside out is another way of saying, ‘I hate you, stay away from me.’ As interested as he is in the particulars of this language, what he really wants is to touch the soft hide, feel the subtle texture between his fingers. He wonders what his mother would do if he bought them for her as a present. He can almost see the smile blooming on her face – incredulous, pure. He promises himself he will one day get those gloves for her.

When he arrives home, it is his father who opens the door. ‘Did you get paid today, boy?’

Arthur gives a slight nod, wary of what might follow.

‘Hand it over, then.’

‘I bought a couple of meat pies on the way home.’

‘Begging your pardon? Why would you do such a foolish thing?’

Arthur looks away. ‘A treat for the little ones.’

‘You bloody cretin! What gives you the right to do that?’

The boy shrinks back but his voice doesn’t. ‘It’s my money.’

‘Your money, did you say? Bilge! It’s me who found you the job. Show some gratitude, you bonehead!’

Arthur flinches at the undisguised malice in his father’s voice. How can a man hold so much loathing in his heart for his own flesh and blood? He wonders, and not for the first time, what his father sees when he looks at him. Does he despise him because they are very different? Or is it just the opposite – is it because he cannot bear to recognize himself in his son?

‘Speak, boy! Answer me.’

A flush stains Arthur’s cheeks. He does not like confrontation. If only he could live without hurting anyone and without ever getting hurt. He turns his face away, but he is too proud to concede defeat.

‘I work hard,’ he says. ‘I slog my guts out every day while you’re at some godforsaken den drinking yourself senseless. I owe you nothing. Nothing.’

Swift as an arrow winged from a bow, his father punches him in the stomach. The boy doubles over, but, yanked up by the hair, he is forced to stand, and that is when he receives the second blow, this time to the face.

That evening Arthur lies supine on a mattress that his mother rolls out for him in a corner of the room. He speaks to no one, his head throbbing. To take his mind off the pain, he tries to think of the books in the office. Steadily, he recites the titles, the names of the authors and the dates of publication, in the precise sequence in which they are arranged on the shelves. And, although sleep does not come easily for quite some time, putting things in order soothes him, as it always does. Curling into himself, he manages to get some rest before dawn, finding a crevice of comfort between the dark of the night and the promise of a new day.

On Monday morning, he is the first to arrive at the printer’s place. He sits on his haunches at the edge of the pavement as he waits for someone to come to open up the building. Around and above him London wakes up – the scullery maids, the crossing-sweepers, the fish-curers, the dog-killers, the caddy-butchers, the costermongers, the coffin-makers, the rat-catchers, the long-song-sellers … Noise escalates, movements multiply; the city gushes forth, like a fountain that never runs dry. People pass him by without a glance, even though they can see he is weeping. He is just another sad, penurious boy, one of many in this great capital.

In the office, Mr Bradbury is the only person who pays attention to him. ‘What happened to your face, son?’

Arthur averts his eyes. ‘I had an accident, sir.’

Mr Bradbury’s brow crumples. ‘Tell that Accident if he goes near you again, we will not be able to pay you. If we see so much as a scratch on you, the money will swiftly drain away. Mr Accident wouldn’t want that, would he?’

Arthur stares at his employer, his mouth hanging open. Is it that obvious that it was his father who did this? Swallowing his surprise, he says, ‘I cannot tell him that, sir.’

‘No, of course you cannot,’ concedes Mr Bradbury. ‘I am sorry, didn’t mean to upset you further. Perhaps I should have a word with your father.’

‘I appreciate your consideration, sir, but I would rather you did not.’

‘Why do you say that, my boy?’

‘Because I like working here. I don’t want trouble.’

The man’s expression remains grave, though his eyes soften. Whatever he makes of the situation, he does not raise the subject again.

Everything they print, King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums eagerly reads. Each time he is allowed to take a break, he sits on a stool in a corner by himself, nibbling on a crust of bread smeared with lard as he pores over some publication. This is how he finds out from a newspaper article that a second hippopotamus was sent to England by the same Ottoman pasha who gave Obaysch in exchange for English greyhounds. A female this time, named Adhela. She makes the same exhausting journey on board a steamer up the River Nile and arrives in London. The two animals have already met, but they do not seem keen on each other. Everyone is hoping they will grow closer and that there will soon be a calf on the way.

From the Englishwoman ’ s Domestic Magazine to the Boy ’ s Own Magazine to gentlemen’s weeklies and socialist pamphlets, Arthur absorbs each text with unwavering attention. He hungers, almost with an excruciating desire, for knowledge – the only treasure in this life that, though not exactly free, has no price tag attached.

Mr Bradbury, for his part, never fails to observe how willing the boy is to expand his learning in all directions and how far-reaching the tentacles of his curiosity.

‘Would you like to take a book with you home every now and then, young Smyth?’

‘May I, sir?’

‘Well, it is not something we usually allow our workers, but in your case we might make an exception – provided you return them unharmed the very next day. What do you say?’

‘Thank you, sir!’

The boy cannot bring himself to tell his employer that reading at home will be nearly impossible, not only because he has chores to do every evening but also because his family can afford neither a candle nor a gas lamp. Instead he tries to make things work.

On nights when the moon is bright and the stars are shining, Arthur sits cross-legged by the windowpane, a blanket wrapped around his thin shoulders, absorbed in infinite worlds beyond his own. As he reads he can taste the words, the tip of his tongue tingling with flavours – buttery, oaky, zingy, spicy, herbaceous … Reading is a feast he can never have enough of, and he tucks into each page with relish. But when the sky is cloaked in layers of smog and there is insufficient light, as there often is, he has to imagine the rest of the book inside his head.

Once again, Mr Bradbury understands more than he says aloud. One morning, he hands the boy two large tallow candles to take home. Arthur is speechless. No one has ever given him a present before.

And thus he starts reading in earnest – not only everything they print but also the volumes stacked in Mr Bradbury’s personal library. He devours novels by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront?; fairy tales and bedtime stories by Hans Christian Andersen; cookbooks extolling the finest ingredients and exotic recipes; philosophical treatises by John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and an ingenious Dutchman called Baruch Spinoza; geological accounts by Charles Darwin from his Voyage of the Beagle; The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; poetry by Lord Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred de Musset, Friedrich von Schiller and Omar Khayyám, that Persian polymath, equally adept at both mathematics and verse. He discovers an exiled French writer by the name of Victor Hugo, a debut novelist from Russia called Tolstoy and a giant white sperm whale known as Moby-Dick, and he is enthralled by the memoirs of Frederick Douglass, an escaped American slave and abolitionist.

There is no limit to the range of his inquisitive mind, and he even reads literature written for the fairer sex: Complete Etiquette for Ladies , teaching women how to comport themselves; The Mother ’ s Mistake , advising new mothers how not to raise children; The Letters of a Fallen Woman , on the ills and vices of prostitution; House and Home and Happiness , instructing housewives how to excel in domestic skills; Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of Their Children in Relation to Sex , providing exactly what it purports to offer.

Every evening, as the glow of Mr Bradbury’s candle throws flickering patterns on the walls and his twin brothers sigh in their sleep, or his mother, under the influence of laudanum, speaks to shadows that only she can see, or his father has his way with her under a thin blanket, the boy turns his back on his family and reads. Whenever he lifts his gaze, the face that looks back at him from the windowpane seems both familiar and somehow deeply changed.

‘I’ve been observing you,’ says Mr Bradbury. ‘You are diligent and capable, quick to learn, but what I particularly like is your attention to the smallest detail and how considerate you are towards others. Mr Evans and I had a talk; we both would like you to work with us permanently.’

Arthur stares at the man with astonishment and then breaks into a smile – the first in quite a while.

‘Tell me, do not be shy, to which area of the business do you think you would be best suited?’

‘I’d be equally happy embossing paper or making stamps, sir. But I’d be most obliged if you placed me in book publishing.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because with all the others – the stamps or the pretty, shiny paper – you can use them only once or twice, then they are gone, but books, it seems to me, do not end, even when we are finished reading them.’

‘That’s a brilliant answer, and timely, too. Do you know why?’

Arthur cannot say.

‘Well, the world is changing faster than minds can grasp. It’s picking up speed like a steam engine. All these smartly turned-out people with their polished boots and affected airs, you look at them and you think they must know everything, educated and cultured as they are, but I’ll let you in on a secret: when times are confusing, everybody is a little lost. No one is as inwardly confident as they present themselves to be. Hence the reason we must read, my boy. Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog. That is why this is the perfect time to be in the business of publishing!’

A week later Arthur leaves the office with a package tucked under his arm – a title the company has just that day finished printing: Nineveh and Its Remains .

What a book it turns out to be! Austen Henry Layard – traveller, collector, diplomat, archaeologist and discoverer of Nineveh – recounts his peregrinations, as numerous as they are adventurous, into Mesopotamia, where he meets Arabs, Chaldeans, Kurds, Turks, Persians, Jews, Palestinians, Armenians, Roma, Mandaeans … He writes extensively about a persecuted people called the Yazidis, frequently and erroneously labelled as ‘devil-worshippers’. Although wary of them at first, Layard seems to have grown increasingly fond of them over the course of his stay.

Arthur is captivated. Never before has he heard of anyone who has left England to venture into such remote lands. It excites him to think that in that vast region called Mesopotamia there are people so diverse in their customs and manners yet united in the secrets of the land. And deep under the ground somewhere is an ancient city – a legendary capital, once the envy of everyone, now mere dust and bones – with a royal library guarded by the majestic lamassus .

Such is the boy’s fascination with Nineveh that, inspired by his readings, he starts sketching fantastical figures with lion’s claws and bull’s hooves. He draws palaces of impossible grandeur, gardens with perfumed fountains and, above all, the Tigris. The river in his imagination is not foul and polluted like the Thames but a limpid paradise, shining bright and blue as its waters glide through canals and over aqueducts.

And all the way through Mr Bradbury encourages him to keep reading, keep imagining. Taking the adolescent under his wing, he becomes a mentor to him, and a good one at that, though the man has a melancholic disposition that can flare up from nowhere from time to time. Yet his support is genuine and continuous. He tells everyone that this unusual boy from a slum tenement who never had the chance of a proper education but undoubtedly possesses an outstanding mind is destined to become one of England’s greatest publishers.

These are the happiest days in the life of King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, although he will come to realize it only once they are gone.