The Book of Lost Things (2006) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and that’s part of my job. You know how sometimes a story seems to be about one thing, but in fact it’s about another thing entirely? There’s a meaning hidden in it, and that meaning has to be teased out?”
    “Like Bible stories,” said David. On Sundays, the priest would often explain the Bible story that had just been read out loud. David didn’t always listen because the priest was very dull indeed, but it was surprising what the priest could see in stories that seemed quite simple to David. In fact, the priest appeared to like making them more complicated than they were, probably because it meant that he could talk for longer. David didn’t care much for church. He was still angry at God for what had happened to his mother, and for bringing Rose and Georgie into his life.
    “But some stories aren’t meant to have their meaning understood by just anyone,” David’s father continued. “They’re meant for only a handful of people, and so the meaning is very carefully hidden. It can be done using words, or numbers, or sometimes both together, but the purpose is the same. It’s to prevent anyone else who sees it from interpreting it. Unless you know the code, it has no meaning.
    “Well, the Germans use codes to send messages. So do we. Some of them are very complicated, and some of them appear very simple, although often those are the most complicated of all. Someone has to try to figure them out, and that’s what I do. I try to understand the secret meanings of stories written by people who don’t want me to understand them.”
    He turned to David and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m trusting you with this,” he said. “You must never tell anyone else what it is that I do.”
    He raised a finger to his lips. “Top secret, old chap.”
    David imitated the gesture.
    “Top secret,” he echoed.
    And they drove on.
     
     
    David’s bedroom was at the very top of the house, in a little, low room that Rose had chosen for him because it was filled with books and bookshelves. David’s own books found themselves sharing the shelves with other books that were older or stranger than they were. He made space for his books as best he could, eventually settling on ordering the books on the shelves according to size and color, because they looked better that way. It meant his books kept getting mixed up with those that were already there, so one book of fairy tales ended up squeezed between a history of communism and an examination of the last battles of the First World War. David had tried to read a little of the book on communism, mainly because he wasn’t entirely sure what communism was (apart from the fact that his father seemed to think it was something very bad indeed). He managed to get about three pages into it before he lost interest, its talk of “workers’ ownership of the means of production” and “the predation of capitalists” almost putting him to sleep. The history of the First World War was a little better, if only for the many drawings of old tanks that had been cut out of an illustrated magazine and stuck between various pages. There was also a dull textbook of French vocabulary, and a book about the Roman Empire that had some very interesting drawings in it and seemed to take a lot of pleasure in describing the cruel things that the Romans did to people and that other people did to the Romans in return.
    David’s book of Greek myths, meanwhile, was the same size and color as a collection of poetry nearby, and he would sometimes pull out the poems instead of the myths. Some of the poems weren’t too bad, once he gave them a chance. One was about a kind of knight—except in the poem he was called a “Childe”—and his search for a dark tower and whatever secret it contained. The poem didn’t really seem to end properly, though. The knight reached the tower and, well, that was it. David wanted to know what was in the tower, and what happened to the knight now that he’d