Serpents and Stairways

Chapter IX - Part 3

The sounds of a park beyond the window disappeared, the dream of the rabbit hole was over, the sense of falling ceased. She was in a bed, snug under a sweet, hazy feeling of not being fully awake and a handwoven blanket.

"And... there's something missing here," Dinah thought, sitting up from sleepiness. The bed unpleasantly creaked.

The house must have looked incredible in its better days: tall relieved plafonds, marble vases on a cold mantlepiece and on consoles, carved doors. A fresco on the wall behind the bed depicted a legendary hunt—man in a red coat who looks like Stephen Daedalus's uncle (who?) chasing a unicorn along other horsemen, their hounds leaping through the forest weightless. New things appeared way less stately. A rough-job of a table, a book shelf stuffed mostly with study books and materials, a black rocking horse, inappropropriately childish (if books were to be trusted, and in Dinah's opinion, they always were) with paint peeling off around its pearl inlays... All estranged. Neglected.

A half-opened wardrobe stood in front of her.

And suddenly, as if torn with a pair of scissors, the darkness in it shimmered. There was someone in the wardrobe.

But the moment she thought so, the door of the childroom opened, and Tatiana stepped in—wearing an unfamiliar, somewhat tawdry, tea gown, with incongruently-formal diamond earrings, with a lantern in her hand...

"Mom?" Dinah asked in a foreign, child's voice.

A voice from the wardrobe.

The woman looked at her, as if not recognizing. Remaining indifferent, without saying a word, she sat on a chair that stood alienated by the wall, with lining tearing off its back. Sat, and opened a book: just like in childhood.

"Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality," Dinah read the title, "I've never heard of it."

The mother shifted, as if trying to move away.

"That's because people like you don't read fanfics," she said.

Fanfics.

Dinah felt no resistance to this word: like an index card into a cardboard box of definitions, it slipped right in, next to Apocrypha, already quite understandable and seemingly appropriate—what else was there to say? What (wounded) surprised her more, was that Tatiana appeared in no rush to read aloud for her. Mother's face was irritated, hot—the way it got when Dinah distracted her from an interesting book.

"Like me—who do you mean?" she said instead of acting surprised, "Philologists?"

"Nerds. People who split literature into high and low. Like, there's belles-lettres and pulp, and then there's MASTERPIECES! Yet, say, the Great Flood is just a Gilgamesh fanfic."

Nerd. That can be placed between Enthusiast and Obsession cards.

"And every single so-called masterpiece is so bloody dull, like Ulysses: a winding cryptic crossword in the shape of a novel."

"No, I agree—"

"Literature exists to please, my darling. Some read the Twilight and Heaven's many blessings, and feel in love, while others read the Infinite Jest, getting off on smuggly guessing what the author meant. And what, tell me, is so different about these joys?"

"No, I'm not arguing..." Dinah smiled conciliatorilly, although she never had this meak habit, "Look, I'm studying fairytales myself. Not high literature by any means."

"You're making excuses?"

"Me? Why would I?"

"You're making excuses. Why? Because it's important to get mommy's approval at least in a dream?"