“Have you found them?”
“Yes and no. Without Gimaldi's help, our Order has spent generations accumulating histories in an attempt to construct the best one from the nearly infnite variations. We have, in the course of so many years, met other members of our Order from different histories.”
“Your task seems pointless, in a way. The Library is infinite, and as such, the printed histories of your Order will equally be so.”
There was some grimacing among the group. The claim that I was making was contentious and unsatisfactory to them. One of the silent members felt compelled to reply, his faculty of speech difficult and hoarse from years of not being used.
“No... the Library is not... infinite. It is... like all things... bounded. Look, here, this shelf ends... And this one. How... can something infinite be composed... of finite parts?”
“He is right and this is our view,” my guide took over. “Men confuse multitude with infinity. That is lazy thinking. Even grains of sand have a finite number no matter how large that number is. There are perhaps as many histories and books in this Library as there are grains of sand on a beach, but it is still finite. Once we have all the histories, we will merge them into one universal history of the Devorants, selecting the best, most logical, and substantial parts of each, canceling out all inconsistencies. You have spent too much time listening to Castellemare's wrong-headed Order. If the Library were infinite, it would have infinite parts, and every book would be infinite unto itself.”
I couldn't help myself from replying, “Well, in one way a book is infinite: there can be infinite interpretations.”
“Sophistry,” he replied.
“Or postmodernism,” I said. The word seemed to resound with them as much as would an explanation from contemporary physics, which is to say nil. After a few moments, I resumed, “So why did you bring me here and have me read that book?”
“Reading is purity,” the hoarse one croaked.
“You are a Gimaldi. It is hoped that you will direct our research, honouring the oath taken by your ancestor.”
“I am not bound by any oath made by my predecessors,” I said, which was followed by a low grumbling chorus of dissent. “Furthermore, I cannot say that I have much interest in your Order, for I have my own concerns at the moment, my own mysteries to resolve. From what you have had me read, and what you have told me, I can see that the Devorants offer nothing to the mystery I am bound up with.”
“This is where you are wrong, Gimaldi. These chambers are where we sleep and where we safeguard precious texts in the Library from those whose eyes are too dim and unworthy to comprehend, too barbaric or filled with solecisms to appreciate. Help us to define our history and it will invariably define your own.”
“You would recruit me in this task of which I have no interest, and then promise me something in return that I have no desire to learn.”
“Do you not care about the histoyr of your lineage?”
“Not really. I am not narcissistic enough to delve into my own genealogy. From what I read, heredity and heraldry are sacred and eternal items in your world view, but it is not something I share.”
“The history of a book reveals the history of the people who held it, and vice versa. Histories are intertwined and interdependent.”
“Are you alluding to the Ars atrocitatis?”
“Books of many names. Perhaps what we know of its authorship and those who possessed it would be of valuable interest to you.”
“At what price?”
“Quid pro quo. Help us locate what we seek.”
“That could take an eternity in this vast place. No.”
“So be it, Gimaldi. You've a special talent for making powerful enemies fast. We have heard in the rustling of pages talk of Castellemare wishing to severely redress certain perceived injustices. And, then, there are Angelo's employers who were told of your involvement in his death. Castellemare informed them, of course. And given your blind persistence in acquiring forbidden knowledge to which you are not entitled, despite so many warnings that have come in a variety of ways, you've made enemies of darker forces still whom you have never encountered. We are, perhaps, one of the last who have no stake in your demise. Your position is precarious, and you would be safe with us for none dare disturb us or molest any of our charges.”
I was reeling from the very idea that Castellemare would be so fervent in his malice and revenge to turn his own enemies against me. However, I was wary of what may have been a ploy, a pressure tactic by these hooded Devorants. They were offering me safe refuge and access to the books they concealed from the regular circulation, but in exchange for a very monastic service.
“What guarantees my safety, especially if my enemies are so treacherous?”
“This place and its immutable laws. All must observe the Law of Quiet Study or else the Library has one ejected. This is a place of study, reading, research, and contemplation. Violators are banished forever, a high price to pay for transgression. Your enemies can only harm you outside where the law does not extend.”
“I'll just have to take my chances, then. This place is far too vast that I would fear going mad to stay here for too long. I already have difficulty conceiving of this place as I can't square my logic with its reality.”
“Have you such an important life that you would risk its inevitable and premature end? If infinity is what you fear, let us put you at ease with our proofs. Our cartographers have been plotting the dimensions of the Library for much longer than you have been alive. They say that the Library, at certain points, ends. Any idea of a beyond is mere fancy and illusion, the chaos of mere repetitions, echoes, reflections. ..Mirrors that grant this illusion of infinite space. One of our explorers who traveled along the same shelf row for sixteen years came across the very same books that began his journey. This suggests that the Library itself is one enormous circle, bending in an imperceptible circumference. It may actually be a contained sphere.”
I let him continue: “Those like Castellemare are still trapped in scholastic thinking, blended with mystical hash. Yes, mystics with their infinites, pedants chained to their dogmatism. We, on the other hand, are humanists who believe in empirical investigation. Do not be fooled by their seductive mysteries, for these are merely vain novelties of speculation taken as truth. Castellemare's Order is peopled with failed and irrational metaphysicians who impose their hasty explanations upon the Library in lieu of testing for accuracy. All books end, and it is no different with the dimensions of the Library. If the Library were infinite, then our orders would not trouble with power struggles all these centuries. There are twelve orders who have been vying for total guardianship of the Library ever since the library of Alexandria was consumed. What you see around you is the Alexandrian library, but its collection has expanded, acting as the repository for all books that are destroyed.”
“What of the multiple worlds theory that the Library seems to exemplify?”
“We have every reason to believe, given our research, that even these worlds are not infinite, but like all things in the universe... regulated by numbers. The numerical law, bequeathed to us in the secret codes of Pythagorus, states that there are twelve times twelve times twelve worlds in total.”
“1,728 worlds in all,” I said. “And so, 1,728 libraries of Alexandria.”
“Yes, numerologically expressed as the magical number nine.”
“I have my doubts about the validity of numerology.”
“In numerology, validity is contingent upon where one puts the significance.”
As opposed to the other Order that called themselves Devorants, these members were hardly quaint or pretentious. The determined severity etched on their stone-like visages, and the serious devotion to a task they felt obliged to perform at the expense of any else, bespoke of fanatical zealotry. Still, their offer of protection appeared loaded to me, and it seemed as though all these competing orders had made me a battleground, some kind of prize of conquest
, vying for influence and my loyalty. I was caught in a manipulative courtship, but was there anything beyond the symbolic significance to be gained or was my capitulation merely the prize of winning a sick game? This line of reasoning made Castellemare's reactions seem more plausible, as he was acting like the jilted lover. How many of these Orders' representatives had been trying to curry myfavour, lure me over to their side, using sometimes cruel and brusque tactics, or other times feigning to take me into their most intimate confidence? Those like Castellemare and Setzer had done so by pretending to be aloof and indifferent to winning my loyalty, in some cases pushing me away, declaring me unwanted or dispensable, more of a nuisance than a high value commodity. That was indeed the trick: give meagre offerings so that I may desire their attention that much more, a passive-aggressive method of winning a game whose rules were still a mystery to me.
The Devorants were endlessly searching among the competing narratives, conflicting origin stories, the farrago of testimonies for a viable and unified history they could call their own. There was something sad and futile about their tragic attempt to reclaim something that was either lost forever, buried in plural confusion, or that did not exist at all. The Devorants had taken the insularity and monomaniacal obsessive tendencies of scholarship to an absurd extreme.
My resolve in declining their offers, contingent upon devoting my life to their pointless and inconsequential sleuthing, was firm. They knew I was resistant to their machinations, their persuasion, and that the threat of future harm by groups unseen was not enough in itself to convince me. This sombre, staid affair in the chamber was coming to an end. Their understanding of the Library only extended as far as its specific utility in furnishing them with the myopic research goal of their origins.
My guide led me out of the chamber in disappointed silence. Would the Devorants, upon my rejecting their overtures, deliver me into the hands of those they claimed had malicious designs upon me? Were these cloaked searchers above acts of spite, or were they as treacherous as Castellemare? Their courtship of me failed and I was being shown the way out. Doubt was cast upon the reality of this meeting when I blacked out and came to, roused by the clammy hands of the bookstore owner and gawked by a few sets of concerned eyes. The smell of dust was what linked the store to that stifling chamber.
Making my unnecessary apologies and weak excuses, declining the semi-sincere and obligatory offers to be brought to hospital, I left the store and tracked my way back in the direction of home. I was once again waylaid by fatigue and so sat on a cafe patio, urging myself away from another fainting spell with the aid of a much-needed cigarette. A young and eager university student two tables away was fully absorbed in what I recognized to be the authoritative book on that most perplexing of manuscripts, the Voynich. A middle-aged and overweight woman taking a break from shopping was generously inhabiting her own seat, slowly thumbing one of those cheap paperback bilges where the author's embossed name grossly and monumentally overshadowed the title. The patron who had occupied my seat prior had abandoned today's newspaper on the wrought-iron table, its thin leaves licking the wind. Half expecting another impossible coincidence and half merely biding my time, I perused the newspaper. No such hints or placement of dangerous clues were present in the paper, its normalcy of the usual inconsequential political contests and ongoing wars taking place in far too distant places to stoke genuine concern was both dull and reassuring. The book review section lacked substance, reviews more enamoured with their maneuvering of flattering or clever adjectives. I idled past these and scanned the classifieds for estate sales, taking semi-professional note of those that listed book collections – which were few and unpalatable in their descriptions.
The large woman, surrounded by her retinue of boutique bags, farted and tried to cover this up with a forced cough. The university student was seemingly experiencing a flagging of interest or ability to maintain attention to what he was reading. All eyes fixed upon my direction when a sudden surge of wind took my newspaper up in a clamour of angry freedom. I dutifully chased down the printed tumbleweed mess, hastily folded it in a poor approximation of its original shape, and tucked it under the ashtray.
A poster on a nearby light pole redirected my thoughts, an advertisement for a local community theatre's adaptation of Don Quixote. I felt the sickening, terrible shuddering effect of a neglected moral lesson, lodged in place and impossible to avert. Specifically, the sad end of Don Quixote, how he repented of his madness on his deathbed, that rather well-stocked library of his composed of chivalry books. Those books collected and read with obsessive zeal was what bewitched him, spurring him to embark on an absurd journey of illusions. Were we not the same as the poor Don Quixote who had spent countless sleepless nights and long days steeping himself in that fantastic world of books only to lose his wits entirely? Was I so different, or the university student who sat nearby pouring indiscriminate amounts of high scholarship into a febrile mind, or the woman who devoured pulp romances that only set in starker relief the lovelessness of the world? Filled with ever more fantasies of origin, obsessively seeking unified history through books, the Devorants were indeed afflicted... severely touched in their heads, but their extreme and obvious example could not efface the fact that each of us was also afflicted in our own way, in our own degree. To each their fanaticism, all courtesy of books themselves. And, perhaps, praise ought be given not to what one reads, but what one refrains from reading.
40
Excerpts from 7th Meditation
17
Knives for the nocturne. Tyranny is the knowledge that love and fear are one, indivisible, two sides of the same coin. As he himself was a unity of parts, the most pronounced aspects of various types selected by the Library itself, he knew syntheses tended toward their higher reasoning and more perfected product.
He himself had existed prior to the synthetic act. He had been a practicing psychoanalyst for several years before the proper elements were rendered unto him. That turpitude had always lodged within him was not enough, but that it needed to emerge full-grown, all of a sudden, in this incarnation of horror.
He gazed upon himself gazing back from the mirror, pleased with himself, readying himself for what needed to be done. Not many have such spirited vision, so full and complete, he thought to himself. For some, like him, such vision came late but was the result of a long maturation. His life began on this day, at the age of 46. He ran his fingers through the sparse and black-dyed hair, slicking it back to reveal the stark widow's peak he had always found one of his more winsome of features. He knew his voice had both the stentorian force and the priestly quality to arrest an audience or have them confess despite themselves. Some were doled out a robust measure of charisma, and he knew that he had frittered much of it away on paltry affairs.
His methods were highly unorthodox, and his views much more so. There was always friction with the psychoanalytical establishment over his writings, his methods, launched at him from what he considered their envy and lack of intellectual courage. His membership to the association was most likely going to be revoked after a pro forma and largely token review of his record, but contrary to the expected, he would take this as proof of his brilliance. To him, it was an emancipation from tepid thinking and tired ideas that achieved little but create a klatch of self-righteous, indignant, and unworthy practitioners. Today would be his first day of true freedom, and no professional association would act as a tether upon his will. This did not fail to provoke a satisfied grin upon his face.
Kneading an obstinate wrinkle in his suit and gingerly taking his briefcase in hand, he made his way into the world – to change it for good.
On this day, the daring and experimentally unchained psychoanalyst, Dr Edward Albrecht, resolved to become a master.
41
The Malin Genie
An “a-ha!” moment. I now had the name of the synthesized man for certain, and he turned out to be rather easy to locate. I knew him to be a masterpiece of the
Library's narrative, the distillation of every evil that history had the temerity to record, a culmination not only of this world's recorded evils, but those of each world that the Library's collection extended to. This was the Library's most elaborate creation, forced out of it. And, if what I read in those books, and what others like Setzer and Castellemare alluded to, and all the other clues reticent in detail – in short texts, brief meetings, omens ignored – were all brought together, then this creation had been tried many times before. But someone or something learned from all those botched efforts, the careless errors, and Dr Albrecht was the new and improved version. But why would the Library allow for this? No, the Library – I was convinced – was neutral, impassive. It just was. It was figures like Castellemare that bent the Library to his will. Dr Albrecht was most likely Castellemare's life's work, and with access to the infinite Library, he had all the history, lore, and methods he required. What would possess Castellemare to engineer such a thing? But this was a question I needed to return to later – I had to see the creation for myself.
This one Dr Edward Albrecht was a practicing psychoanalyst who had authored no mean number of dangerous articles as well as spearheading a variety of male-bonding groups mostly patterned on strengthening the masculinity of the ego in the face of its mass social enervation. In fact, a frustrated and hopeless member of the male gender would find in Dr Albrecht a new reason to rejoice and a reclamation of the male self in the face of a wide-spread push for complete gender equity. Dr Albrecht had written voluminously on the subject of the need for a renaissance of maleness, and he alleged to have the antidote to the crippling forces that sought to annihilate what made men intrinsically and meaningfully different. In some very vitriolic musings, he called “over-feminization” a form of “gender pogrom as well as a socially polite means of reprogramming the male ego according to the image of the politically correct contingent that is reactively over-sensitive and compliant with the demands of extreme feminism.” In his view, extreme feminism had succeeded in playing upon mass subconscious guilt in order to get its way, not to mention pushed for its reforms with “utter irresponsibility, never concerned with the psychological health of all involved. Are we – the mental health professionals - to pick up the pieces?” His assessments of social psychology were not as shocking as the fact that his movement was gaining in considerable momentum and influence, accruing to its cause a vast number of followers. He heaped vitriol on what he perceived a flagrant disregard for the preservation of innate and healthy gender differences.
The Infinite Library Page 54