“Oh, I'm... sorry?” was his awkward reply instead.
“No, no, it's ok,” she said, regaining herself and mopping her eyes with her sleeve. “Not many people knew him. He was a bit of a loner. He and I were a thing, y'know, and I had no idea... but... I'm really out of people to ask. I ask around a lot, and nobody knew him. I just try to track down faces... We had broken up not too long ago... and, I dunno. Shit...”
“Well, sorry, I didn't know the guy. Did people owe him money or something, because I can be sure I didn't borrow anything from him – didn't even know him, whoever he was.”
“It isn't like that,” she defended, mopping her tears and snot with a damp, floppy sleeve. “He was my man, and I haven't got squat to remember him by. His fucking parents took all his stuff, probably threw it all away. They never understood him, never loved him like I did. They were fucking bourgeois pigs. Pillerstines.”
The word she was really looking for was “philistines.”
“Well, anyway,” she continued, still standing, “there was one thing I really wanted to remember him by, and I knew it was the most precious thing in the world to him. I was just wondering if it fell into someone else's hands somehow, for safekeeping or something.”
“What kind of thing?” he asked, somewhat regretting that he was prolonging this more than regretting that he really didn't give a damn.
“A sketchbook. If he was going to do himself in like that, he would have had it on him. He was never without it. It was his constant companion... He even slept with it in the bed.”
“Maybe he lost it, or if he was going to kill himself, he might have burnt it, thrown it in the river, gave it to some bum, buried it in the sand... I don't know what to tell you,” Leopold said flatly, immediately embarrassed with his tactless tone.
“No, people saw him that day carrying it around like he always does... Did... I'm sorry to have bothered you. I have to go. But if you see it, could you please let me know? It's all I really want of him. Here's my number.”
She scrawled down her number on the table napkin with black lipstick. Class.
“What does it look like?” he asked, this time with more concern.
“It's black with an etching of a red lion on the cover.”
After Leopold had made his promise to notify her immediately if he came across it, she left, and he was left to ponder over the strange coincidence of the red lion. Perhaps just a coincidence, but still... What possessed him to be so uncontrollably inspired and fixated by this image, to paint an entire series of them? “Maybe some sort of spirit transfusion or something,” he jingled in his mind before dropping it.
Dr Aymer had finally noticed Leopold, and was making quizzical facial gestures to establish a sense of mutual recognition through meaningful staring. Thinking it merely a figment of his overly taxed mind, he let the thoughts slide.
It just so happened that both Leopold and Dr Aymer were leaving the establishment at the same time. Cindy had been called away in mid-meal by some small crisis Dr Aymer did not register. Leopold and Dr Aymer were coming to the front door at the same time, but neither summoned the courage to speak to the other until some time elapsed. They were both heading in the same direction, Leopold a few yards behind, and Dr Aymer turned to face Leopold with the intention of speaking.
“Don't I know you?” Leopold was the first to ask.
“I was about to ask the same thing. But where?”
“My memory of our meeting is a bit hazy, but so are a lot of things in my life.”
“Hm,” Dr Aymer grunted. “Yes, I do believe we have met. I remember a white room with blue chairs and a large white table. There was nothing remarkable about the room, but the picture on a book was of a red lion, and that sticks with me.”
Suddenly, Leopold could place the image in his image, why it had been consuming him as of late.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Dr Aymer asked, noticing the look of recognition in Leopold's eyes.
“Yes, it does, but I can't make any sense of it.”
“Very peculiar.”
“Then it wasn't a dream.”
“I do believe it was a dream, but a dream we both had. I cannot understand how it is possible, but allowing for coincidence, perhaps? This is now my second puzzle.”
“Not that I'm the chummy type, but what is the first?”
“It appears that all fruit flies are quickly becoming extinct due to some genetic freak mutation, perhaps a micro-virus, or perhaps something that we haven't been able to put our finger on. It is rather perplexing.”
“Maybe nature is reacting to all this genetic modification; y'know, growing hard skin over itself to protect from scientists who tinker too much with making super-fruit and cloned sheep.”
“Genetics does not work that way,” explained Dr Aymer, baffled that still so many members of the general public held these naïve science fiction beliefs about genetics.
“Oh, well, sorry. With all the mucking about genetics can do, just out of curiousity, what do you suppose the genetic recipe for a red lion would be?”
If then struck Dr Aymer that perhaps this red lion motif could have something to do with this anomaly. He was very tired, and this was very unscientific thinking. Perhaps it would be a desperate grasping at straws, but Dr Aymer would see if he could draw up a speculative genetic table of characteristics a red lion would possess. Of course, the changing of pigment in any organism, especially one as complex as a lion, would take a great deal of time and much sequencing. However, Dr Aymer was without any further leads to resolve the current problem with the fruit fly extinction, and thought that maybe he could combine one anomalous situation with another. Perhaps the dream and the flies had some connection. It wasn't much to go on, but it was all he had. Perhaps the genetic structure of Drosophila melanogaster was trying to pattern itself to that of a red lion, and in the process of failing to achieve the impossible was succumbing to a genetic dissolution. It wasn't plausibly scientific at all.
“You have given me an idea,” said Dr Aymer.
“Great. I charge by the hour.”
“We must explore this shared dream of ours, get to the bottom of it. I suggest that we work together on this.”
“Um, ok, it was really just a bizarre dream.”
“Perhaps, but I have an intuition that the dream and the flies are somehow related. Don't ask me to explain because I could not conjure how. You are the artist, I remember.”
“Leopold.”
“Yes, Leopold... My name is Dr Aymer.”
“The gene guy.”
“Er, yes.”
“You remember that philosophy guy? Whazzisname? Rumpel? What a bag of wind.”
Dr Aymer laughed. “Yes, he certainly was a character. Say, Leopold, I don't want to abandon a fresh clue, no matter how farfetched it might be. I think it might be in our mutual interest to stay in touch. Would you be amenable to this?”
“I guess so. Do you want my number?”
“That'd be helpful. Here is my card. Do pay my lab a visit sometime soon.”
The two men exchanged details and parted ways.
Leopold returned to his apartment building. Going up the stairs, he thought of knocking on Gimaldi's door but heard a rather heated conversation coming from within, and so decided not to disturb him – which was a pity, since an intellectual like Gimaldi would certainly get a small kick out of Leopold's adventures as of late. Instead, Leopold settled upon his futon and had a very strange dream which involved an infinite staircase going down, down, and further down.
23
Minotaura
Would that this labyrinth ever end. I had not noticed that the conveyor belt with its payload of machine-produced books was not present, but had been likely demolished by Castellemare's workers. But now there were no more doors; instead, I was confronted with an interminably long, descending stairway of roughly hewn stone. Although there was enough light to make out the giant steps to aid my descent, it was insufficient
to see what was marked there on the stone walls. From what I could feel and see in the dim light was that the stairway was set in a circular tower, the middle section an empty, dark pit. More disturbing still was that music from a place unseen was being piped in, casting an eerie echoing effect. The music had a distinctly Russian character about it, the traditional kind they would play in village dances.
I cannot say how long I descended that stairway, deeper into its black chasm, the light growing dimmer, but the music still at the same volume, repetitive, providing a beat that corresponded to my downward progress. I was very tired and had lost track of the hours, but perhaps I had been struggling my way through this labyrinth for over a day. I was hungry, thirsty, and sore. If there was no way out, then I would surely be dead in a few more days. The thought of being forever confined to this place hastened my steps, but carefully enough that I would not plummet and be dashed on these stone steps. After what felt like many hours, the need for sleep overtook me and I laid myself out on one of the broad steps, slipping into dream, but it was not my dream I was dreaming, but another's:
I awoke on a landing at the very top of a long, stone-carved stairway that wound down along the inner wall of what appeared to be the inside of a colossal cylindrical shaft. Behind me was a sealed black stone door that I could not budge despite all efforts, and judging by my attempt to rap upon it, it was solid and so gave off no report of an echo. The stairway itself jutted from the stone wall as though a natural continuation of the very wall from which it was attached. Attending this endless stairway was an iron rail, positioned on the outer part of the steps, a little less than hip height. Seeing as there was no way to budge the monolithic door, I decided to make the perilous descent down these mysterious steps.
I should say that it has been over a year since I embarked upon this treacherous descent. The shaft itself does not narrow or billow, but is a chasm about a concert hall from one end to the other. Neither have I encountered any others here, or sounds of any kind (save, perhaps, for what sometimes sounds to my overwrought ears to be a kind of distant phantom moaning). However, it is during those fleeting hours of sleep that the enigma of this stairwell reveals itself to me in taunting and staccato fragments…a cavalcade of symbols and images, accompanied on occasion by horrific music whose scale I cannot yet identify (it has some elements of an Indian use of rounded 5ths, but with some distinct Persian accents).
The steps themselves are about as wide as a man lying prone, but are very short (about six inches out and down per step). This makes descent a tricky affair as, one may reason, one misstep from haste or fatigue would inevitably mean a fatal and uncontrolled plummet since there are no effective handholds save the railing which would be difficult to grasp while tumbling ever downward. I immediately realized the challenge this posed and both cursed and admired whatever cruel engineer designed such a place. When the demands of sleep overtook my body, I transformed my tunic into a harness that I attached to the iron rail. The first few weeks of having to accustom myself to sleeping in this wretchedly suspended and confining manner were unbearable, but I adapted in time.
Along the walls is a cryptic yet garishly ornate frieze, very much in a style that fuses Aztec relief with Persian miniaturism. There is an ominous quality to this epic frieze which wraps around like a stone ribbon all the way down. A rolling inscription follows the very endless descending lengths of this infernal stairway, and the images themselves—nightmarish hybrid creatures of monsters and men—stare menacingly from this visual allegory. I could not place the creatures depicted, nor what sort of god or gods would let spawn such aberrations and abominations of flesh. One recurring image was that of a conch shell decorated to appear like a human skull, and it was this ghastly contrivance that I was certain held an arcane and perhaps ultimate significance in relation to this entire construct. I somehow began to reason that this motif was the very key to this carved, architectural narrative. This conch-skull was a regular, unwelcome visitor in my episodes of dreaming. What it signified was being revealed to me slowly, a surfacing of meaning as if being pulled from a deep lake of ichor.
At first I did not understand the strange curling glyphs that rimed the horrific carved images, but after much time, I was able to decipher the script. Whether some force entered my dreams and whispered its lessons to me, I cannot be sure. But dreams, they speak in images and never in words. I began to possess the sense that there was a pedagogical linearity to the images and glyphs, as though a hapless traveler such as myself was meant to learn it by steady exposure, only able to understand the upper parable in retrospect by what came after. Whoever carved this epic into the walls had surely meant to educate the traveler slowly and steadily like a Platonic series or the classic German Bildung.
I have not encountered another living soul since I mysteriously awoke here a year ago, and I have only the rambling wall-epic with its startlingly menacing faces to keep me company. I was becoming adept at deciphering the looping glyphic script, a script with some Albigensian nuance intercalated by a kind of Arabic orthographical similarities. From my modest yet growing aptitude for this uncanny writing, I read something about this colossal shaft allowing only one person to enter per solar annum. If this is the case, then there is right now another victim such as myself just beginning his hopeless downward trek, just as there is probably someone very far below at a year’s pace ahead of me who has more of the mystery resolved. He would be to me what I am to the newcomer, and the distance being so vast, there is no way to communicate our findings to one another, for the advanced individual to relay all that he has learned to spare the agonizingly slow discovery of this shaft’s meaning. And, perhaps, as a speculation, there is someone who has reached the bottom—if such a thing exists—who is in possession of the ultimate secret of this baffling shaft as to its purpose, origin, and why we have been chosen to descend through it. If only the distance was not so vast, we could construct an upward chain of demystification. Each of us are like epochs in a long and scattered history, discontinuous steps of knowledge along time’s way, disconnected moments of development toward understanding. So, here I am, envious of the one below—and further along—and having pity for the one above me. Perhaps the one further down has the same pity for me and wishes that he could spare me the arduous task of deciphering ever further, or perhaps he has come to understand the wisdom that it is better that we earn rather than be given knowledge.
Added to my speculations—perhaps already thought by the one more advanced in his descent—is that I must trust the agility and care of the newcomer so far above me, beyond the reach of my voice (for the chasm absorbs rather than transmits noise, another crafty structural design by the one or many that were the architects of this place). He is one year behind me in all respects, but should he fall and tumble, at some point his battered corpse would emerge behind me without my ability to effectively dodge it, and so another corpse would be added. But then, given that the distance is so great, perhaps by the time the tumbling body reached me, it would have already been pulped beyond danger, or perhaps would, by a swerve, drop off into the abyss at the centre of this endless shaft.
I am troubled by such thoughts as to the justification for this shaft. Is it endless? Does it have a bottom? Will I live out the remainder of my days and expire while trying to accede to the end of this winding hell? If I, in a fit of despair, hurled myself over this railing only to be freed from the fetters of surface, would I plummet forever? What is the purpose of this place, and why were we chosen? Is this place a consigned allegory for us, the scholars engaged in an endless enterprise of expanding our knowledge for naught?
I am both desperate and resigned. I continue to learn more, but one mystery compounds upon the former, embroidering further still the enigma of this place and its makers. The questions multiply, the dreams increase in complexity and intensity, but every one of our questions remain tantalizingly and torturously unanswered. Rather, I feel as though with every step down I take, I am moving
ever further away from the Truth and toward that realm of complicated uncertainty. We move ever downward toward the ultimate illusion, ultimate anti-meaning, compelled by a foolish belief that we are moving towards its opposite. Perhaps only death can save us now from our misguided, idle descent into that which displaces us from all stable ground. What nature is the minotaur at the end of this long, wending labyrinth? I shudder to think that I know what nature of beast it be, and what it will mean when I encounter it...
I awoke with a start. This dream had been so foreign and elaborate that I knew it not to be of my own subconscious design. Many of the elements of my current predicament and that of the dream were similar, but also very different. There was no observable frieze upon the walls, and no iron railing. The dream and its hopelessness was inducing me to take a fatal plunge. By whose design this dream? I knew I had to persevere and not be lulled by the prospect that my travel would be in vain. I longed for the normalcy of the outside world. It took me some time to realize that the music had stopped sometime during my sleep. The walls still felt rough and jagged under my probing hands that I used to guide my steps. I longed for more light that I may sit and delve into the texts I had upon my person in search of clues.
Another solid day of descent. I was becoming dizzy with hunger, parched with thirst. Would I suffer the same fate as the narrator in my dream, I wondered? I began hearing voices that I was unsure were real or brought about from a hallucinatory state. I fought hard against the onset of madness, remaining as vigilant as my faculties would allow to maintain a sense of rationality. I plumbed the details of my exotic dream, the only thing I could appeal to. After a time, I encountered another person.
“You suffered from an overabundance of love, methinks,” said a voice that seemed to belong to Angelo, but it was peculiar. It had startled me and almost caused me to trip.
The Infinite Library Page 36