Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
This is an excerpt from the novel I'm writing. Most of the novel doesn't have nearly as much about Tolkien in it as this bit, though the main characters are Tolkien fans in the 1970s. Nathan in the story is dead, but Dorothy can imagine his words as he speaks to her:
September 15 was a Thursday. All day long I tried to keep my mind on my teaching, but I was sure the kids could tell how fidgety I was. As soon as the last bell rang, I gathered up my papers and drove to the nearest bookstore.
I saw the books on a display stand through the front window. They had a white jacket, with a painting of jagged mountains and crackling lighting. Tolkien’s name ran in big black letters across the top, and “The Silmarillion” in big white letters across the bottom of the painting.
I expected a line at the counter, but the place didn’t seem any more crowded than usual. Was I the only Tolkien fan in Loveland? I went in and picked up a copy. I slipped off the dust jacket to see how yummy the book itself was. Pretty yummy. It was bound in green linen, stamped in gold with a strange wavy star design that matched the one on my beloved red-leather volume of Lord of the Rings.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of the paper. Nathan! I wish you could be here, buying your own copy. But I’ll read it to you, I promise.
Thank you.
I can’t bear the idea that you died without getting to read it. What if no one ever read it to you? Can you read it, there in Heaven?
In my mind I saw his eyes twinkling. I’ve heard the Professor himself tell the story in Hall of Fire.
The Professor? You mean Tolkien? I closed my eyes, trying to imagine it. But do you have books there in Heaven? You must, or it couldn’t possibly be Heaven.
We do, but they’re like books in a dream. You open them and see the beautiful calligraphy. But after you read a while, you move through the lines of letters and into the story itself. Have you ever had dreams like that?
Yes. I know exactly what you mean.
I opened my eyes and took the book to the counter. The woman there smiled when she saw me fitting the cover back on. “Been waiting a while for this to come out?”
“All my life, it seems like.”
“Well, enjoy it.”
I took the book home and left my school bag by the door. The grading would have to wait. I took the book-jacket back off and set it aside carefully. I wanted to savor the yummy green linen cover. I dished a bowl of vegetable soup from the crockpot and opened the book on the table in front of me.
There was a fold-out map in the back. Beleriand? What was that? It was a beautiful map, but none of the place names or geography looked familiar. “I thought this was supposed to take place in Middle Earth,” I said out loud.
Nathan studied the map through my eyes. I think the land changed, in all those thousands of years.
“It would have to change a lot to look like this.”
I folded the map and began reading the book. The first part seemed to be some sort of creation myth, God and the angels singing the world into being. It was beautiful, but after the first few pages it started to feel a little dull. This was nothing like the opening of Lord of the Rings, with the hilarious preparations for a hobbit birthday party. It was more like the appendices, which I’d only plowed through twice in all my twenty readings. “Where’s the story? Where are the characters?”
Keep reading. Beren and Lúthien have to be in there somewhere. And Eärendil.
I flipped through the pages. Yes, there they were in the chapter headings. And there at the back of the book was the entire story of Frodo and the Ring, told in fifteen pages. In between were a lot of huge, long paragraphs beginning with “Thus” and “Now” and “In those days” and “It has been told”. And for long pages, not a quotation mark to be seen. “I’m starting to feel like Alice in Wonderland, looking at her sister’s book.”
I felt Nathan’s chuckle. You mean, ‘what is the point of a book without pictures or conversations?’
“Nathan, this is a 300-page synopsis!”
It looks like it.
“You said you heard Tolkien himself tell the story in the Hall of Fire. Was it like this?”
Storytelling in Heaven is different. It’s more than just words, and time doesn’t matter. This is a big story, thousands of pages of history. He did Frodo’s story in fifteen pages here, and it took him a hundred times that many to tell it in Lord of the Rings. He’d need a hundred books like this to tell this story in full.
I sighed. “I suppose that’s why he could never finish it. He spent sixty years writing it, and it still wasn’t enough time. His son must have tried to sift out the stories, and he ended up with just an outline.”
I guess we’ll have to read for the plot, and supply the rest ourselves. It’s like reading the Bible.
That’s just what it was like. I read through supper and through the long evening, curled up in bed with Nathan reading through my eyes, trying to make pictures out of the pages of exposition. There were generations of Elves behaving badly, and grim Men who made Oedipus seem light-hearted.
There were moments of joy too, light shining out in the darkness like a star: Lúthien dancing in the forest, Eärendil setting sail in the heavens as the world bent beneath him, and woven through the long, long tale, the Silmarils shining. But when I finally closed the book and my aching eyes after midnight, I felt a sense of vague disappointment.
I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Dorothy.
“Are you?”
It’s different for me.
“I wish I could hear it like you did, in the Hall of Fire.”
Well, I have an idea. You’ve read the synopsis. Now take your favorite parts and read them slowly, a hundred times more slowly. Stop every few sentences and close your eyes and listen for the Story, the way you do for my words. What part did you like best?
“Mmm,” I said drowsily, “Beren and Lúthien, I think.”
Without opening my eyes, I closed the book and added it to the book pile beside my bed. I turned out the light and started dreaming.
I dreamed I met Nathan in a bookstore in the City. It was a dark place, crowded with piles and piles of dusty old books. I breathed in the smell of old leather and yellowed pages, and dust motes danced in the air with my breath.
Nathan held out a book to me. Its cover was green linen, inlaid with gold. We opened it together and saw ornate calligraphy, illuminated capitals, and exquisite miniature paintings. As I read the letters blurred, and we stepped through them, hand in hand, into a green wood.
We turned to face each other. Together, between us, we held the gleaming Silmaril we had taken from Morgoth’s iron crown.
For so many years Nathan and I had looked up at the Evening Star together, though separated first by miles and then by death. Now we held that Star together, cupped in our joined hands.
September 15 was a Thursday. All day long I tried to keep my mind on my teaching, but I was sure the kids could tell how fidgety I was. As soon as the last bell rang, I gathered up my papers and drove to the nearest bookstore.
I saw the books on a display stand through the front window. They had a white jacket, with a painting of jagged mountains and crackling lighting. Tolkien’s name ran in big black letters across the top, and “The Silmarillion” in big white letters across the bottom of the painting.
I expected a line at the counter, but the place didn’t seem any more crowded than usual. Was I the only Tolkien fan in Loveland? I went in and picked up a copy. I slipped off the dust jacket to see how yummy the book itself was. Pretty yummy. It was bound in green linen, stamped in gold with a strange wavy star design that matched the one on my beloved red-leather volume of Lord of the Rings.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of the paper. Nathan! I wish you could be here, buying your own copy. But I’ll read it to you, I promise.
Thank you.
I can’t bear the idea that you died without getting to read it. What if no one ever read it to you? Can you read it, there in Heaven?
In my mind I saw his eyes twinkling. I’ve heard the Professor himself tell the story in Hall of Fire.
The Professor? You mean Tolkien? I closed my eyes, trying to imagine it. But do you have books there in Heaven? You must, or it couldn’t possibly be Heaven.
We do, but they’re like books in a dream. You open them and see the beautiful calligraphy. But after you read a while, you move through the lines of letters and into the story itself. Have you ever had dreams like that?
Yes. I know exactly what you mean.
I opened my eyes and took the book to the counter. The woman there smiled when she saw me fitting the cover back on. “Been waiting a while for this to come out?”
“All my life, it seems like.”
“Well, enjoy it.”
I took the book home and left my school bag by the door. The grading would have to wait. I took the book-jacket back off and set it aside carefully. I wanted to savor the yummy green linen cover. I dished a bowl of vegetable soup from the crockpot and opened the book on the table in front of me.
There was a fold-out map in the back. Beleriand? What was that? It was a beautiful map, but none of the place names or geography looked familiar. “I thought this was supposed to take place in Middle Earth,” I said out loud.
Nathan studied the map through my eyes. I think the land changed, in all those thousands of years.
“It would have to change a lot to look like this.”
I folded the map and began reading the book. The first part seemed to be some sort of creation myth, God and the angels singing the world into being. It was beautiful, but after the first few pages it started to feel a little dull. This was nothing like the opening of Lord of the Rings, with the hilarious preparations for a hobbit birthday party. It was more like the appendices, which I’d only plowed through twice in all my twenty readings. “Where’s the story? Where are the characters?”
Keep reading. Beren and Lúthien have to be in there somewhere. And Eärendil.
I flipped through the pages. Yes, there they were in the chapter headings. And there at the back of the book was the entire story of Frodo and the Ring, told in fifteen pages. In between were a lot of huge, long paragraphs beginning with “Thus” and “Now” and “In those days” and “It has been told”. And for long pages, not a quotation mark to be seen. “I’m starting to feel like Alice in Wonderland, looking at her sister’s book.”
I felt Nathan’s chuckle. You mean, ‘what is the point of a book without pictures or conversations?’
“Nathan, this is a 300-page synopsis!”
It looks like it.
“You said you heard Tolkien himself tell the story in the Hall of Fire. Was it like this?”
Storytelling in Heaven is different. It’s more than just words, and time doesn’t matter. This is a big story, thousands of pages of history. He did Frodo’s story in fifteen pages here, and it took him a hundred times that many to tell it in Lord of the Rings. He’d need a hundred books like this to tell this story in full.
I sighed. “I suppose that’s why he could never finish it. He spent sixty years writing it, and it still wasn’t enough time. His son must have tried to sift out the stories, and he ended up with just an outline.”
I guess we’ll have to read for the plot, and supply the rest ourselves. It’s like reading the Bible.
That’s just what it was like. I read through supper and through the long evening, curled up in bed with Nathan reading through my eyes, trying to make pictures out of the pages of exposition. There were generations of Elves behaving badly, and grim Men who made Oedipus seem light-hearted.
There were moments of joy too, light shining out in the darkness like a star: Lúthien dancing in the forest, Eärendil setting sail in the heavens as the world bent beneath him, and woven through the long, long tale, the Silmarils shining. But when I finally closed the book and my aching eyes after midnight, I felt a sense of vague disappointment.
I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Dorothy.
“Are you?”
It’s different for me.
“I wish I could hear it like you did, in the Hall of Fire.”
Well, I have an idea. You’ve read the synopsis. Now take your favorite parts and read them slowly, a hundred times more slowly. Stop every few sentences and close your eyes and listen for the Story, the way you do for my words. What part did you like best?
“Mmm,” I said drowsily, “Beren and Lúthien, I think.”
Without opening my eyes, I closed the book and added it to the book pile beside my bed. I turned out the light and started dreaming.
I dreamed I met Nathan in a bookstore in the City. It was a dark place, crowded with piles and piles of dusty old books. I breathed in the smell of old leather and yellowed pages, and dust motes danced in the air with my breath.
Nathan held out a book to me. Its cover was green linen, inlaid with gold. We opened it together and saw ornate calligraphy, illuminated capitals, and exquisite miniature paintings. As I read the letters blurred, and we stepped through them, hand in hand, into a green wood.
We turned to face each other. Together, between us, we held the gleaming Silmaril we had taken from Morgoth’s iron crown.
For so many years Nathan and I had looked up at the Evening Star together, though separated first by miles and then by death. Now we held that Star together, cupped in our joined hands.
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