The Liar's Dictionary

The colleague occupying the desk next to Winceworth was not a tsker. Whenever Bielefeld encountered an error or disruption on a page, a kind of whinnying, sniffing gag tore from his throat. It was quite distressing and often made Winceworth start. Bielefeld’s eyes would widen, his hands would draw up on either side of his neatly whiskered cheeks and a small, high, vocalised peal would ring through the air. The noise was animal in nature but also not unlike the sound of a finger being pulled across a wine glass. It made cats and lexicographers turn their heads. The moment would then pass and calm returned to his face as Bielefeld scored a line through the error or retraced his steps on the page, carrying on as if nothing had happened.

The peace in Swansby’s Press was rent by these squawks quite regularly and nobody other than Winceworth seemed to mind.

Shoutsnorting colleague Bielefeld was already scribbling away at the desk on Winceworth’s left. Bielefeld was shaped like a carafe. On Winceworth’s right sat Appleton, shaped like a cafetière. All three exchanged the normal noises of pleasantry.

Winceworth’s desk was littered with yesterday’s blue index cards and scrunched pieces of paper, ready for work even if he was not. He wished he had thought to clear his desk. Clear desk, clear mind. There must be a word for that, too – when your environment is arranged so as to inspire calm and rational industry. It would be indulgent to come up with such a word. But – if he did – perhaps a sprinkling of classical Latin, the cool of its marble statuary in its vowels and cadences. Yes, maybe bring in something of quiescent, quiescens, present participle of quiescere, ‘to come to rest, to be quiet’. As he ordered his space, he considered the composition of a new word as if he was concocting a recipe. Could borrow from quiescens-stock, then, but add to it the steadying influence of ‘elbow room’ or ‘ease’ implied by something like Old French eise, aise cognate with Provençal ais, Italian agio, ‘relieve from burdened or laborious duties’ then stir in, what? – something foraged from an Alpine stroll along to the cooling tributaries of fresh through fersh, ‘unsalted; pure; sweet; eager’ via Old English fersc, ‘of water’, itself transposed from Proto-Germanic friskaz. A neat enlivening spritz of etymology to this new word. So: his desk might be freasquiscent and ready for work?

A hand patted Winceworth’s shoulder and he fully jumped in his chair.

‘Quite the party last night, hah!’

Winceworth looked from the hand to the face peering at him. While working at Swansby’s, he had made a conscious effort not to make a taxonomy of his fellow workers. Even a private cataloguing (Bielefeld: carafe; Appleton: cafetière) seemed unfair, dehumanising even, but so many figures just slipped into set types. Without wanting to stereotype or acknowledge cliché, therefore, Winceworth knew that the person blinking breezily down at him was an Anglo-Saxon scholar. This specific species within the Swansby’s stable of lexicographers all seemed to be half-composed of clouds. White clouds on top of their heads and white clouds on their chins – their eyes were cloudy and their breath was somehow warmer and heavier than anyone else’s when they leaned in too close to speak. They always did lean in too close as if nudged forward by an unseen crosswind, and seemed to take up a lot of room whenever they moved, always choosing to walk in the centre of a corridor or channel between desks rather than stepping to one side. It was a gentle filling of space, not an aggressive one. The Anglo-Saxon scholars wafted rather than surged or marched.

They spoke softly with lumpy, lilting vowels. This one was no exception.

‘The party,’ Winceworth repeated. ‘Last night? Yes, quite a party, that party.’

The cloud nodded, smiled, puffed away.

The content and extent of Winceworth’s conversations within the domed hall generally fell into certain patterns. For example, the puff-bearded genius behind Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, Prof. Gerolf Swansby, always said, ‘Good morning, Winceworth!’ when he passed Winceworth’s desk before lunch. Always the same intonation and word order. There was a boy, Edmund, employed to distribute packets of letters and documents. Whenever he came by, his wicker barrow wheedling a note beneath the breath of its wheel, Edmund’s cry of ‘There’s your lot!’ always prompted a ‘Let’s see what we have here then!’ The same inflection each time, the same pitch and register and volume.

On the rare occasion that a colleague approached Winceworth’s desk to comment on the weather or the cricket score or some minor matter of politics, they never seemed to come to him with queries. No one ever spoke to him expecting to receive a certain, specific answer.