HOOKAH FESTIVAL, BRAZIL
W e walk among the festive Brazilian crowd as the Pillar tries to explain things to me.
“You remember when I told you Lewis Carroll’s real name?” he asks me.
“Of course I do. This is the second time you’ve asked me this. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.”
“Charles was looking for a pen name to use for his book, Alice in Wonderland,” the Pillar begins. “Let’s skip why he needed a pen name for the book for now. What matters is that he spent weeks looking for a special name. One of his ideas was to try to translate his real name to Latin. Charles in Latin is Carolus.”
“I’ve never heard this before.”
“Because people are usually obsessed with books, not their authors.” The Pillar walks next to me in the haze.
“And Lutwidge is Ludovicus?”
“Now you get it,” the Pillar says. Fireworks play all around us. “But then you realize how villainous the name sounds. Interesting but villainous. So he decided to play with it a little. First move was to try Ludovicus Carolus.
“And then?”
“With a little wordplay, it became Louis Carol, and finally Lewis Carroll.”
“I understand. But it doesn’t explain him becoming a Wonderland Monster, or is he?”
“Let’s put it this way. Lewis took drugs like any other Victorian author in a time when it was a common and legal practice. And like most artists, they’re usually stimulated by pain or euphoric substances. Don’t make me count the endless names in history who’d prove my theory.”
“I don’t agree with you, but continue anyway.”
“Lewis’ headaches were the main reason for his addiction. A drug, or rather a cure, called Lullaby, a Wonderlastic invention,” the Pillar says. “The drug helped with his migraines, which he had explained as splitting his head in two. There is a famous scribbled drawing of him with a split brain found in his diaries.”
“An image he drew himself?”
“Yes. Lewis used to beat the migraines with art, poetry, and masterpieces until he desperately needed Lullaby.”
“Which I assume the Executioner and his people provided back in Wonderland.”
“Exactly, and the tricky part is that Lewis still lived in Oxford at the time. He had found a way to move between the two worlds and get his fix.”
“Still, this doesn’t explain...”
“Just bear with me. So the drug worked for a while until the Queen of Hearts found out about Carroll’s need. Since this was at the peak of conflicts in Wonderland, the Queen ruling with an iron fist and Carroll trying to create the Inklings to oppose her, she made sure the drug disappeared from the face of Wonderland.”
“And then Lewis had continuous headaches without a cure.”
“The headaches intensified so much he began to draw many of those split images of himself,” the Pillar says. “Sir John Tenniel, Carroll’s painter, and good friend noticed this and warned him of the consequences. But Carroll just loved his art and wouldn’t stop, even with his killer migraines. Tens of times, they found find him lying comatose on the floor in his studio. And when he woke up, he didn’t remember where he was and what he had done.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“I know. Sadly, it’s the truth. Carroll was turning into Carolus Ludovicus when he passed out.”
“What? Like a case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde? Lewis had some kind of a split personality? This explains why the man in London is the real Lewis Carroll,” I say. “Poor Lewis. He just needs help. Someone to wake him up from this dark alter ego.”
The Pillar stops to face me. I’ve known him long enough to know this is the moment when he drops a bomb on me.
“It would have been easier if all that happened to him was discovering he just had a monster inside him,” the Pillar says. “One day, Lewis woke up from his episode and saw someone sitting opposite him at the table.”
“Someone?”
“Someone who looked like him.”
I don’t say anything. I only tilt my head in disbelief.
“Lewis Carroll was staring at Carolus Ludovicus in the flesh,” the Pillar says as the fireworks light the sky in red above us. “His other and darker self manifested as a separate and real being. A Wonderland Monster.”