Rabbit Run

A British book gets a fast start

Last week the London office of Jonathan Cape, publishers, received an urgent cable: PLEASE CONFIRM HARE OFF THE LIZARD IN CORNWALL, ENGLAND, AT LATITUDE 50 DEGREES NORTH, LONGITUDE 5 DEGREES WEST.

It was not the customary fan mail for a children's book, but then, Masquerade is not the ordinary children's book. Since publication last September, the 32-page volume has sold more than 260,000 copies, a huge sale for Britain. French and Japanese editions are under way, an American edition is currently being negotiated and there has even been talk of an operatic version. Last week hi Britain, Masquerade was first on the children's bestseller list and sixth on the adult. In four months, Author Kit Williams has risen from unsung painter to celebrity, and his book has replaced Scrabble as a family preoccupation.

This sudden popularity is partly due to the Britons' traditional interest in Lagomorpha, from the March Hare in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to the whole cast of Watership Down. It may also be attributed to the book's Botti-celliesque illustrations in which natural laws are suspended and the floating vistas of childhood are suffused with magic realism. But in the main, Masquerade's phenomenal rise can be credited to that basic human characteristic: greed.

Within his text and pictures, Williams, 33, has secreted the location of a glittering jeweled pendant in the shape of Jack Hare, the book's central character. In Masquerade, the leaping hero takes a message from the moon to her beloved, the sun. For readers, the rabbit's message is a bit earthier: Williams fashioned the pendant of 18-karat gold. When he hid it last year, the hare was worth $10,000. Today it has doubled in value. "When I used to read stories about pirates, the pieces of eight became real gold buried in the ground," recalls Williams. "It was the child I once was that now demanded the pendant of my story be made of real gold and buried in the real ground."

But where is it buried? Clues are distributed throughout, locked in paintings and hidden in riddles.

Some are easy to solve:

What is nothing on its outside, And nothing on its inside, Is lighter than a feather, But ten men cannot pick it up?

Answer: A bubble. But what about:

Fifty is my first, Nothing is my second, Five just makes my third, My fourth a vowel is reckoned,

Now to find my name, Fit my parts together, I die if I get cold, But never fear cold weather.

In pursuit of their quarry, British code breakers have trespassed in rose gardens, climbed the cliffs of Cornwall and tried to ransack public buildings in search of the treasure. All have failed. So far, the only one to receive a reward is Kit Williams. His royalties may reach $500,000 by year's end, and his paintings are ever more eagerly sought: at the most recent show all 21 of Williams' paintings were sold for over $8,000 each; the 16 illustrations for Masquerade went at about $9,000 each. Now at work on a new children's book ("It's about bees --with no buried gold"), Williams still paints and writes in a tiny Gloucestershire cottage and ponders the day when the treasure is finally run to ground: "In 20 years, I hope." By then, if the royalties continue unabated, the author should be wealthy beyond avarice. If the morning price fixings on gold continue their jackrabbit jumps, so should the finder.

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