Going Postal

playing cards, checks, letters of accreditation, bank drafts, and deeds.
    “Oh, another one,” said Groat. “Well, there’s not a lot to do. We can shove up and make room for you in here, no problem.”
    “But I am supposed to make it work again like it used to, Mr. Groat.”
    “Yeah, right,” said the old man. “You just come along with me, then, Mr. Lipwig. I reckon there’s one or two thing you ain’t bin tole!”
    He led the way out, back into the dingy main hall, a little trail of yellow powder leaking from his boots.
    “My dad used to bring me here when I were a lad,” he said. “A lot of families were Post Office families in those days. They had them big glass drippy tinkling things up in the ceiling, right? For lights?”
    “Chandeliers?” Moist suggested.
    “Yep, prob’ly,” said Groat. “Two of ’em. And there was brass an’ copper everywhere, polished up like gold. There was balconies, sir, all round the big hall on every floor, made of iron, like lace! And all the counters was of rare wood, my dad said. And people? This place was packed! The doors never stopped swinging! Even at night…oh, at night , sir, out in the big backyard, you should’ve been there! The lights! The coaches, coming and going, the horses steamin’…oh, sir, you should’ve seen it, sir! The men running the teams out…they had this thing, sir, this device, you could get a coach in and out of the yard in one minute, sir, one minute ! The bustle, sir, the bustle and fuss! They said you could come here from Dolly Sisters or even down in the Shambles, and post a letter to yourself, and you’d have to run like the blazes, sir, the very blazes , sir, to beat the postman to your door! And the uniforms, sir, royal blue with brass buttons! You should’ve seen them! And—”
    Moist looked over the babbling man’s shoulders to the nearest mountain of pigeon guano, where Mr. Pump had paused in his digging. The golem had been prodding at the fetid, horrible mess and, as Moist watched him, he straightened up and headed toward them with something in his hand.
    “—and when the big coaches came in, sir, all the way from the mountains, you could hear the horns miles away! You should’ve heard them, sir! And if any bandits tried anything, there was men we had, who’d go out and—”
    “Yes, Mr. Pump?” said Moist, halting Groat in midhistory.
    “A Surprising Discovery, Postmaster. The Mounds Are Not, As I Surmised, Made Of Pigeon Dung. No Pigeons Could Achieve That Amount In Thousands of Years, Sir.”
    “Well, what are they made of, then?”
    “Letters, Sir,” said the golem.
    Moist looked down at Groat, who shifted uneasily.
    “Ah, yes,” said the old man. “I was coming to that.”

    L ETTERS …
    …there was no end to them. They filled every room of the building and spilled out into the corridors. It was technically true that the postmaster’s office was unusable because of the state of the floor; it was twelve feet deep in letters. Whole corridors were blocked off with them. Cupboards had been stuffed full of them; to open a door incautiously was to be buried in an avalanche of yellowing envelopes. Floorboards bulged suspiciously upwards. Through cracks in the sagging ceiling plaster, paper protruded.
    The sorting room, almost as big as the main hall, had drifts reaching to twenty feet in places. Here and there, filing cabinets rose out of the paper sea like icebergs.
    After half an hour of exploration Moist wanted a bath. It was like walking through desert tombs. He felt he was choking on the smell of old paper, he felt as though his throat was filled with yellow dust.
    “I was told I had an apartment here,” he croaked.
    “Yes, sir,” said Groat. “Me and the lad had a look for it the other day. I heard that it was the other side of your office. So the lad went in on the end of a rope, sir. He said he felt a door, sir, but he’d sunk six feet under the mail by then and he was suffering, sir, suffering… so I pulled him out.”
    “The whole place is full of undelivered mail?”
    They were back in the locker room. Groat had topped up the black kettle from a pan of water, and it was steaming. At the far end of the room, sitting at a neat little table by the stove, Stanley was counting his pins.
    “Pretty much, sir, except in the basements and the stables,” said the old man, washing a couple of tin mugs in a bowl of not very clean water.
    “You mean even the postm— my office is full of old