The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  “I don't want to be your protege,” I said.

  “You're missing the point. I'm not asking you to do that. If I may be so bold in suggesting this, in asking you plainly, I want you to write the book that will precede my counter-book.”

  “You want me to do what?” I said, already suspecting that he would ask this; it seemed an imminent conclusion. Was I to look surprised?

  “Come, now. A man keen and driven enough to write a critique must be predisposed to write a foundation. You'd do well to keep firmly in mind the importance of primitives, to build the refined from the rudimentary.”

  He lit another cigarette, stroked his beard, and I watched as he retreated back into the recesses of what could be called his reminiscence. I knew I couldn't do what he asked, but it seemed like I was his last hope. I had the sense that the man desperately wanted to have his work given a predecessor, an anterior credibility upon which his own work would flourish. We remained in silence for awhile, for to have spoken further would have caused us to drawl interminably about nothing.

  “Why did you say earlier that you were especially concerned with Sigurd?” I asked.

  The directness of the question seemed to be a glancing blow that almost toppled him into the snow. I should have pushed him hard. I just wanted to. I wanted to see him fall hard on his ass into the freezing snow.

  “My concern for your friend has everything to do with the fact that he is sick and essential. Before you ask for clarification, I mean that he is sick for reasons we already know. He is essential because he is going to be drawn toward a tattoo and a father. That’s all I care to say or know about your friend.”

  Where my rapport with Gimaldi became discontinuous from time to time, I would find Castellemare more accommodating. Castellemare was more alive than Gimaldi, less inclined towards the sadly melodramatic. But perhaps I was initially wrong about this, or there was something more to Castellemare that hid behind the mask of enigma... How I was able to locate him is another story entirely...

  [at the end of this unlikely chapter was an inserted plug of a reference to read two short texts entitled “Ghostwriter” and “The Biblioclasts” which, so the plug stated, would lead off from Gimaldi's somewhat orphaned story about the translated monk and the fate of his work. I had had enough of reading about these ponderous duo and went in search of the only other named character I had not yet met: Sigurd]

  13

  Frontmatter

  “How quickly can you scan spines?” I asked.

  “Really, I can go on with all the door-crashing and beard-kicking, thoroughly unabated in my zeal to champion just causes, so I think I can manage a little spine-reading. It'll be like divination, biblomancy, a metaphorical transport from reading the body, as reading bodies – you know, like the whole discourse on corporeality and the marginalization of the body as empirically filthy, messy, to be subjugated, bio-politics. So, yeah,” he said, thankfully running out of steam. That “he” was Sigurd, and he was as ridiculous in real life as he was portrayed in the book.

  You see, I had been thrust by necessity back into that inky realm of mystery. The more of the Backstory I was able to consume, now that Setzer's message to me had brought me back to it (against my better judgement), a sort of tangled and knotted arabesque had formed between myself and the text which referred to me. I was beginning to become swayed by the lulling notion that there was a conspiracy afoot, and that I had only a small window of opportunity to make a choice. Whatever was transpiring I had no real clue as of yet, and so my decision to either prevent, promote, or alter what was written had not yet been made. Whichever way it would have turned out, I needed to get more firmly in touch with some of the actors that appeared in these texts – and, hence, I became acquainted with the rather pretentious and prolix Sigurd. A self-styled academic revolutionary, he was easy to bring on board with flattery alone – and not even much since even a little bit was akin to throwing a drowning man a floatation device. Sigurd was trapped like some kind of panicked moth between two registers, two modes of existence that clashed violently. On one side he came from a rather all-too-obvious moneyed family with their expectations worn baldly upon his sleeve. On the other, he was attempting to reject and outpace this origin story by vigourously embracing the revolutionary facade like his contemporaries. Sadly, it was a bit too much, and if he fell on hard times it was no secret to any observer that he would default to the trust fund way of life. At a distance, it was comedic in its way, but to spend any length of time with him was exhausting. He just never stopped making endless references, like some kind of exploded encyclopedia of philosophy and literature and cinema and pop culture, stringing them together all pell-mell. Doubtless, for Sigurd, it was most likely a schizophrenic exercise, a way of dampening the clamour in his head. How would he take it, I wondered, if someone actually challenged but one of his references for substance? He had all the vices of the failed academic: inability to focus, to be patient, to sustain a single golden thread of reasoning. Doubtless again, if challenged, he would reply in the only way he knew how: with another tirade with an even longer chain of references devoid of substance. Or, perhaps, his emotional volatility would result in a drunken violent episode, the kind that would see a great deal of destruction, wailing, overindulgence, and eventual hospitalization. In sum, he was a child in many ways, and so I thought it best not to displease him.

  It should also be said that “Sigurd” was his “street name”. His real full name was Jakob Sigurdsson. At the time that I had met him, he was a young and confused man who dabbled a bit too often with a wide variety of drugs and writing bad poetry. Any attempt to locate the narrator of the Backstory came to naught if only because the narrator went resolutely unnamed throughout the text; despite all the theatrical self-referentiality, never was his name mentioned.

  Finding Jakob Sigurdsson was not very difficult, and was the product of a very short internet search. He lived in the city and had pretensions to being a poet. I was somewhat surprised with the lack of congruity, however, between the book's representation and the real item: Jakob was not the son of an oil tycoon, and in no way an aspiring filmmaker. Certainly, the ostentation of his character was roughly similar to the way it was conveyed in the book. He was, instead, much different in several ways. Whereas I was presented as a paradoxically long-lived Jew that survived the extermination camps, it was Jakob who was the Jew, but of a Jewishness that goes guiltily concealed beneath a compensatory desire to be the opposite; in Jakob's case, it was the desperate embrace of the Teutonic myth, his love of Wagner, his misreading of Nietzsche, his corrupted attempts at inserting Germanic phrases in place of where English would better suffice. His overwhelming hubris and self-appraisal gave everything he said the weight of absurd, false genius. He was the sort who felt an unjustified kinship to great geniuses past, that he somehow inherited their legacy. These foolish, romantic-idealist notions only further aggrandized his ego.

  I was throwing a proverbial monkey wrench into the narrative by taking Jakob on as a research assistant. Not that I felt he had much qualifications for the task, but it was a safe way to keep an eye on him and gain his confidence. But did not the Gimaldi of the Backstory also solicit the help of Jakob?

  “So, what will be my task exactly?” he asked, showing unnatural eagerness.

  “I am going to give you a list of names, and I want you to get me as much information as possible on them, and by any means. This means scouring libraries, the internet, everything. I will be doing something similar, but more hands make light work... and I need answers quickly.”

  “When do I start?” he asked, no doubt happy with the generous advance I had given him.

  “Immediately.”

  I gave Jakob a list of names as they appeared in the Backstory, as well as the names of those in the real, a collection of search terms that would keep him busy for a while:

  Primary Search Terms: Ammonius Saccas, Obsalte, Anton Setzer, Castellemare, “Finis Logos”, “Best Befo
re 2099”, “The Red Lion Sketchbook”, Ludic Order.

  Associated Background Terms: secret societies involving books and libraries, “Master of the Document”, undisturbed tidal pools, the seventh meditation (and all things pertaining to the number seven in mythology, Cabala, etc.), Edward Albrecht.

  I left Jakob to his research while I tended my own. Since we were both researching the same items, I factored for some overlap and redundancy in the findings, but I was hoping that he would uncover information that I could not. We agreed to meet in two weeks' time when he would give me a detailed report. For my part, I began with “Obsalte”.

  In none of the historical annals did this name ever emerge. The undeniable frustration about any references I was researching would be the possibility that they were complete fictions that resided solely in Castellemare's Library, but I had to take a chance. It was not until, one late night out of frustration, that I copied out the name a few times that it came to me: it probably was not the name of a person at all. In breaking the word in two, I came up with Obs.Alte. The “obs.” was short-form for “obsolete” and “alte” was German for “old.” In a more logically rigorous state of mind I may have questioned my leap, but I was hardly dealing with rational subject matter. In fact, much of the codes that were likely associated with my mysterious ex-employer were cheeky jokes. The “obsolete-old” was not beyond the pale for someone like Castellemare. I filed this potential answer away and proceeded to the next raft of research terms; I chose Castellemare as my next likely subject, and I knew exactly who I would tap for information not found in books.

  It would be my second journey to Detroit in search of the grey-haired artificer, Anton Setzer. I discovered that I had yet again embraced the absurd somewhat unwittingly. How long had I been smoking? I stared at the glowing end and its curling smoke as if it were a complete mystery. I stubbed it and hailed a cab from the bus station.

  “Where to?”

  I arrived at Setzer's home, and he greeted me with that magnanimous way some people affect in order to make the other person's anger seem ridiculously inappropriate.

  “Gimaldi,” he said, but I just shot a fierce glance and pushed right by him.

  “You're going to provide me with answers, now, and I don't care if you and Castellemare are in cahoots.”

  “Gimaldi,” he repeated in a placatory tone. “Please, this is not the way we ought to begin. I warned you about hostility and suspicion, didn't I? Sit, please, and let's have a drink. There.”

  He pointed to the divan in that enormous space he called a living room with its monstrously oversized paintings. There was a Dürer, I noted, and a Bacon - or, rather, emulations thereof, amplified. I recognized the Dürer as Melancolia.

  I waved away his offer of a drink and got right down to it: “what is this about a synthesis, and why is my role necessary in it? You tell me that it has to come to pass, and then you send me some silly allegorical fiction about orthography.”

  Setzer heaved a theatrical sigh as if the matter was too heavy and complicated to bother explaining to one such as myself. “You... you aren't that important. Well, you do play a supporting role in all this, I do admit, a bit more than a lot of us, but you aren't the star attraction. You see, you are an invaluable facilitator, invaluable insofar as you have no knowledge that you are facilitating this synthesis... Until now, of course. You've gleaned much, but it was planned. As for the story, I am sad to hear you did not enjoy it, or even failed to see its relevance in what you are doing at the moment. I thought a little magic realism would lighten your heavy spirits.”

  “I don't want to talk about the story you sent. Let's get back to the synthesis business. I fail to understand. Angelo told me, or at least alluded to something called the Red Lion sketchbook as the 'one that got away'. I am thinking that Leo is the key, him and his Red Lion sketchbook. My neighbour. I made this connection somewhat independently, although Angelo does like to be loose with his lips when he drinks.”

  And this was fairly accurate. Of all the things Angelo and I discussed, especially on the long flight back to Toronto after the job in Germany, he was a bit liberal with both his cups and his tale of regret. It was also the case that I had seen my neighbour, Leo, carrying around with him that faithful artist's companion of a book with a red lion insignia upon it.

  “Angelo knows only as much as his character's role in all this can speak. You did well to listen to him, though, since he played the part of the rootless jester quite well.”

  Setzer was smiling indulgently. I felt overheated, and my myriad questions were developing blisters.

  “So where does all this begin?” I asked with strained calm.

  He folded his long fingers, at first appearing pleased with either my keen question or my calm, and then fell into the storyteller's repose. “Our story must be traced backward. The Finis Logos is but a new incarnation, and a poor imitation, of another text the hapless narrator chanced upon. The original text was entitled, well, I can't tell you that. Sorry.”

  “I do know this book, as it has only very rarely shown up in historical catalogues, but the details are conspicuously sparse. Does it exist outside the Library?”

  “Only by design. It was placed deliberately. Its origin has a much more braided history between this world and that of the Library. It is one of those books that pops in and out of existence, changes hands, gets bought and sold, is sequestered and forgotten only to be rediscovered. Its story is much like the story of so many other books. Tell me what you think you know of it, book-trader.”

  There was a hint of sarcasm and disdain in the way he named my profession, out of place given that he was the same, even if it was just a front. I decided to ignore it and tell him what I knew: “If it is the text Castellemare mentioned, he only gave me a call number. The text itself has no cover, no title, and no known author. It is currently not for sale; it sits at the Yale Beinicke Rare Book Library, is listed in the Official Register of Incunabula, and once fetched a price of 1,410 dollars on the auction block back in 1927. What is odd is that there is usually an incipit listed when there is no title.”

  “Indeed, and incidentally, the dollar price matches the number of days Caligula ruled.”

  “Why is that of any significance? I'm not persuaded by numerology.”

  “So be it, and generally neither am I. Oddly enough, 1410 recurs in some interesting places. The vicious antipope John XXIII was elected - the same antipope during the Western Schism responsible for acts only Caligula could condone. Also, in taking the Julian calendar as our guide, both the years 1410 and 2099 begin on a Wednesday. By now, the significance of the 'best before 2099' business becomes more apparent? I trust you've already come to this reference in those books you have.”

  I fiddled with a loose thread on my trousers, effecting a look of being unconvinced.

  “Listen, Gimaldi, you hungrily inquire about the Library, you rack your brains about the meaning of the Finis Logos, you mix and match the pieces of the character puzzle with combinatoric patience, you ferret out what you can about me with frenzied persistence, and yet one conspicuous absence remains.”

  “What's that?” I perked, meaning to sound serious, yet my voice betraying me to sounding timid and childlike.

  “You've not once inquired about the Librarian himself in any meaningful way.”

  “I've done some background research, and I am here right now inquiring after him.”

  “Internet search engines are a blight, so bereft of much information. There are many histories associated with the man.”

  “He isn't exactly forthcoming with his past when questioned. In fact, he's hardly forthright about anything at all,” I opined. “If there is something you know, I would suggest that you bring me up to speed.”

  “I can't really lay claim to knowing his history - or histories - with any measure of definitive certitude. However, there are some golden threads in this labyrinth. I can name them off: a one 'Draco de Barbe, or Barber Drac, who was a
mercenary-for-hire in 1516. He earned his fortune through some shady dealings and even earned the title of Comte – although this hasn't been officially verified. He was shot in the throat in 1565 in a tavern dispute gone south. Another is Castel le Mare, a Librarian of the Andernach. Another is a book trader from the east named Azrael Amar. Another is Constantine 'Costas' Ammonius. And yet another is a reference to a small sea-side town near Palermo called Castellemare del Golfo. But all of these references that link to the man are but momentary flashes of resemblance, coincidence, and leave us with dead ends and dissatisfaction. Perhaps you would have a more steadier and more studious hand in this.”

  “How can I learn more, barring asking the man himself; he is rather cryptic and doesn't leave much of a trail.”

  “Ah, yes,” he agreed, now taking on a tone of expository patience. “He most definitely barricades us from his past, letting fly with the occasional personal anecdotes that never seem to add up. Treat him like you would a rare and mysterious book, I would advise.”

  He could tell in my eyes that I had a partial understanding of what he meant, but I desired confirmation of the method so that we were not merely talking in empty metaphors.

  “Books do not speak,” he said. “They do not respond to our usual methods of inquiry or interrogation, but there are ways in making a book offer up its most intimate details as it lays naked before us if we have the eyes to read that history. When confronted with, say, an incunable of unknown authorship or geographical origin, we try to match some of the scant clues to catalogues, purchase history lists, estate holdings, anywhere the book has been... for the history of any book is not dissociable from its many owners, each one adding to its narrative in some way. Why, for instance, was some particular book purchased by so-and-so? Of course, we can look inside the book, too... We can examine its colophon, the imprimatur, its typography, the paper, the binding style. Sometimes we can examine the library stamps.”