9
The Waking and Boarding Call (A Small Exodus)
Beset by a shadow carousel of terrible and interminable nightmares. Castellemare and Angelo had accosted me in some vast and empty concert hall of sorts. Castellemare with his trademark grin said to me, “It is a sad thing indeed when someone is so incapable of reading two books at once. Focus is a sin.” The dream broke and dispersed as the sound of Leopold Castor's heavy boots clomped down the bowed wooden steps, followed by the crash and click of the apartment bloc's front door. I had barely a few moments' peace as my telephone rang. I waited it out for three rings, and retreated into the bathroom, trying to suggest to whoever was calling that I was not available.
The phone rang again, and it seemed as though its ring was more insistent, its cachinnating trill sending up ever more sharp slivers of noise. I sat this ringing onslaught out as well until it charged up yet again. Whoever it may have been, they were not going to take my silence for an answer.
“Hello?”
“Hullo. Busy?”
The voice was not entirely recognizable to me. There was a silent gap I hastened to close. I could hear breathing, and could also picture the face of the unseen caller, perched there with a serious intent, face cast in chiaroscuro, holding the receiver with a determined patience. Perhaps as it is seen in the movies: a close-up of just a mouth moving, the rest matted in shadow to conceal the identity in a darkness the audience would have to fill in piece by piece.
“I'm sorry,” I stammered. “I had just stepped out of the shower.”
“Read anything interesting lately?” The voice was flatly interrogative, suggesting that the caller knew much more than was letting on.
“Who is this?”
“A caller. Read anything interesting lately?”
“I'm sorry. You must have the wrong number.”
“Gimaldi, have you been reading anything interesting lately?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know your name. I've read your name. Have you?”
“I-I must confess that I'm getting a bit nervous about having this conversation,” I said, quavering. Not exactly a take control statement or in any way eloquent.
The caller repeated his request with what sounded as though spoken through clenched teeth: “Have you... read anything... interesting... lately?”
Just then, a shadow swept beneath the crack of my apartment door, a few motes of dust disturbed by motion.
“I have to go,” I said, distracted and trying to sound unafraid. I hung up the phone and I padded quietly to the coat rack beside the door and cupped my ear to pick up any sound. A sharp thump was delivered on the other side of the door, just where my ear was directed.
The phone rang again, obliterating any chance for me to hear who or what was outside my door. I had managed to hear a bit of shuffling. Fear was beginning to well up in me, but I decided to quash it with irritation. I leapt to the phone and, without waiting for a voice, said, “What!?”
“Someone is at the door. Have you read anything interesting lately?”
I hung up immediately. It would have been considered rather comedic had I not been so shaken, but I fished through the kitchen drawer for a knife. I approached the door quietly and then with a sharp jerk I opened it, knife trembling in my hand with the handle close to my body.
Nothing. The phone rang again. I closed the door and unplugged the phone. There was a very slow and determined knock on the door followed by footsteps that were walking downstairs to the front entrance. Despite my fear, I went in pursuit, flying down the steps and out the front door. I looked the fool in my pajamas, and a bit maniacal since I had forgotten that the kitchen knife was still in my hands. I quickly tried to conceal it as I scanned up and down the street from the front entrance. Nobody. I had also forgotten my keys, but was fortunate when a neighbour from downstairs was coming out. Seeing my knife and my attire, I quickly explained that I had been preparing some vegetables for a stew and, and... the explanation trailed off alongside my neighbour's interest or concern that I was mad.
I went back up to my apartment and saw that I had left the door open. The two books were now sitting on the bed where I distinctly did not place them. Fear took me, and I searched every room and closet with the knife clutched in hand. I then hastened to close and lock the door, checked under the bed, and drew the curtains closed. As if on cue, my computer fired up into life, breaking the sleep spell of the screensaver to notify me of an awaiting email. In bold was an unread message by someone I did not recognize: Edward Albrecht. The message was titled “a few things you should know about finis logos”.
The message was not to me, but rather... from me, forwarded to the attention of Edward Albrecht, cc'd to a few other names I could not recognize because they were masked by obscenely long and confusing email addresses. The email said something about a “chiffre”, some confusing and seemingly hallucinogenic descriptions of a seven-way synthesis, and mentioned some obscure texts that were most likely in that impossible catalogue of the infinite Library. I flagged the message and closed the window.
I had to regain the normal bearings of the day over and against the panicked mystery it began with. I had to sink myself into regular things, routine activities, or otherwise populate my day with events that would restore a sense of order. With unhurried but mechanical pace, I showered, dressed, and decided to take a stroll down “antique alley” and hunt for rare book gems deposited there by dealers who had no idea of the value of the texts they purchased in estate sales. Despite myself and my need for normalcy after having been so terribly ruffled by the morning's events, I did carry along with me the Backstory and the 7th Meditation in my shoulder bag – perhaps subconsciously fearing that an attempt would be made by persons unknown to steal them from my apartment. So, out I went into the safe warmth of the late morning, feeling the need to be quiet and anonymous. I would take to the day with a sombre and reflective attitude, letting my fingers run over the spines of books in antique stores and waiting to have my attention captured by something surprising.
There was a safe and contained excitement in hunting for books, just as a game of chess is far more relaxing than waging real war. I was expert at being able to scan a long row of books on a shelf and separate within moments the good from the piffle. Some people have this gift in other ways – like the way a referee can spot a rule infraction in the seething chaos of quick-moving bodies, or a soldier can pick out friend from foe in a heavy firefight. My gift was much more modest and hardly applicable to other aspects of existence, but it gave me a sense or comfort and order to cast my gaze upon a finite number of objects and let that limited dimension determine the rules of engagement. Libraries and book collections are finite in this world, and eventually one comes to the end of a series. Perhaps 250 books on a shelf, and that number will be the absolute measure for that collection. Within those 250 books may or may not be what one is looking for. But each library and each collection cannot be divorced by their context: I had always known better than to expect great works of literature in a large book franchise store, or to set my hope too high when scanning a table of paperbacks at a garage sale. One had to adjust expectations to the milieu in which the collection was situated.
After a few hours, I had exhausted the antique stores, finding little of interest. I had already visited the used book stores recently and knew that their stock would not have changed significantly since last I visited. Now that the morning had been spent, and my need for caffeine had spiked, I decided on a small bistro. Feeling the safety of normalcy, I tucked myself into a corner of the bistro, removed the Backstory from its place in my shoulder bag, and consumed – or rather choked down - another chapter. It felt much more imperative now, more urgent that I throw a bold shoulder into reading in search of information that others evidently did not want me to have for reasons I could not glean. I dug back into it:
Excerpt 4 and 5 from Backstory
I spied Gimaldi from my modest flat's window on a Wednesday. He was curiously inspecting a sidewalk display of inexpensive handicrafts. After some careful deliberation, and some indecisive hesitation, he chose to purchase a miniature of a red clay lion. The grey day became dark after that. There would be nothing left but to lie back on my bed, read a chapter or two of some dry book, get listless and pace on the faded green carpet. While I became incumbently bored, Gimaldi was still lurking outside, now sitting on a wire-wrought bench next to dead geraniums wilting in a wooden box. Why didn't he go away? His very presence made me feel anxious, like I expected him to expect me to do something useful with my time.
The dry book in question was entitled Codex Infinitum. From what I could gather so far, the story centered around another character whose name was also Gimaldi, but a younger and different model of the man I knew. Some kind of chintzy book collector who bought and sold rare editions for small commissions, and came under the employ of a bizarre librarian named Castellemare. Gimaldi's narrative was dry and plodding. The idea of the infinite library where all possible books were housed was buried under too much of Gimaldi's weak philosophical reflections. I put down the book shortly after he stole two books from this library that would reference himself. I wasn't going to bother picking the book back up anytime soon.
Obsalte – I was still turning back to this name. Research required the skillful hand of someone who could release the precious clues from the pulpy prison of a book. I was never adept at the practice; I only pretended to be. My mode of research was haphazard, disorganized, and lazy. It was never about finding the answer to the question, but creating a rhetorical masterpiece with a hypnotic effect. That was one of the many reasons I did not survive and prosper in academia. My research techniques wouldn't be faithful in deciphering the enigma of Obsalte, even if I was driven by his connection with Saccas. Less faithful would be Sigurd, who would take any piecemeal information he found and bring it into the realms of his fictive fantasies. Like me, his mind operated too fast for the plodding task of research, and preferred the flights of error and fiction.
She had French hands, like a violinist's. Gimaldi's wife was something of an enigma, not unlike the man himself. She had a way of turning away from a conversation when it settled into an agreement of the topic. Agreement bored her.
“Would you like to drink any more of my wine?” Gimaldi asked sharply, as if I was being greedy. Dinner had consisted of a roast, dumplings, crackers and spread, epistemological breaks, and furtive glances. Gimaldi and his wife tended to stare at me expectantly, as if I was to explain myself. An outsider might have thought them rude - they did invite me to dinner - but this was the natural way Gimaldi and his wife comported themselves with company – or at least with me.
“I've been researching Obsalte,” I said.
“You are a liar and a thief,” Gimaldi replied dismissively.
“I have,” I protested, but to no avail.
“If you had, then you wouldn't be in my house right now. No, you only think you've done research. A man who seeks is a man consumed. I see no hunger in your eyes; only pale curiousity.”
Just then, Gimaldi's wife broke out in tears.
“What?” Gimaldi asked aggressively.
“What?” she replied, the crying jag finished as quickly as it had come on.
“What?” Gimaldi snapped at me.
“What?” I questioned back.
“What, indeed,” Gimaldi said tiredly. The chorus of the evening had been established. I felt terribly awkward, but was resolute on bringing the conversation back to focus, that focus being my own hunger for information.
“At least throw me a bone. I don't even know where to begin looking,” I said.
“All books lead back to that which you seek,” was his cryptic response. “The very fact that you are asking me for guidance on where to begin means that you haven't started at all. Have you just been diddling with the names, maybe leaving them on the night table? If you're not going to be serious, get out of my house.”
“I'm not your research whore,” I said, after which I left my seat, paused, turned the doorknob, and made my exit.
By the time I had stumbled through the narrator's cheap stunts of forcibly implanting mystery mixed with inaccessible references, I had guzzled two espressos and was feeling jittery, listless, and anxious. I did take note of the two colour-references underlined in the text (red clay lion and grey day). I had been distracted by one of those neighbouring conversations where it was not loud, but the timbre of the voices had a way of ensnaring one's attention despite oneself. My reading broke off just before I would have encountered something rather spectacular. No, it was not the narrator's jumbled prose that was suddenly going to right itself under the banner of modesty and good story-telling, but an invocation of sorts. The book was dangerous, but perhaps it would prepare me for the next in the series, that seventh meditation. I struggled to free myself from the din around me, the flow of strangers' conversations that were far too easy to sink one's ears into. I pondered the meaning of the title, and the more I thought about it, the more feverish my lateral thinking had become until my memory surprised me.
The people adjacent to my table had triggered a memory, a gift of the accidental and unexpected. I had just needed one name: Descartes. A general introductory course in philosophy I had taken long ago. Descartes' Meditations. Were there not six in number? Why only six? Cabalistic significance? Ran out of steam? Argument and proof established? Mathematical significance? Demand for succinctness? Pure accident?
The idea of the infinite Library began its vicious orbit around my dim yet gradually recovering memories of Descartes. But why? Would the infinite Library, as an idea, be rejected as an impossibility by Descartes? Certainly. What would be this seventh meditation, this completion of the possible and real by the impossible? What is impossible to think according to Descartes, and yet others may disagree?
I owned a copy of the Meditations. It was a venerably old volume in “bon etat” and would have fetched a few hundred dollars, but I had not yet secured a buyer willing to pay list price. I resolved to return home and reread the Cartesian argument, skipping the palaver on evil geniuses and the reality or non-reality of wax as he went about sniffing, prodding and nibbling it. I was looking for something in particular, something my memory was hiding from me, a seemingly innocuous phrase that although it had been recorded in my mind, had little value at the time. But now it was essential, a vitally wounded figure at the end of the long hallway of memory.
I suppose shock and horror made their felicitous arrangements when I returned home. There was no sign of forced entry, but someone had indeed been in my apartment. There were books strewn everywhere, and all my drawers had been turned out unto the floor. It was obvious that someone was not performing a random act of vandalism, but was actively searching for something quite desperately... Perhaps systematically at first until frustration mounted and time was running short. Or else, this was just another act of terror, and the intruder wanted me to know that he had been there. Alarmed and violated as I felt, I do not know why I did not think to notify the police. I wasn't in the mood to pick up the place just as yet since I had returned for a single purpose. I hunted around for my copy of Descartes, but to no avail. Had I been thwarted yet again? But then I did find it in an unlikely location. There my rather dearly priced copy of the Meditations sat – or, rather, semi-floated – in my kitchen sink in a pool of inky black-grey water. I removed it carefully so as not to tear the soggy pages. I would try to dry it, but I quickly came to realize that it would be pointless: the home invader took no chances, and had spent some considerable time in blacking out much of the text with a thick permanent marker, some kind of pointless act of extreme redaction. To my mind, it was most likely a symbolic gesture, a warning, for it would not prove difficult for me to acquire another copy of a text reprinted countless times. I was only smarting from the inconvenience and the loss of a few hundred dollars. My invader was trying to send me some kind of message, but I did not know which one it was: that I was to desist my search into Descartes to confirm a nascent suspicion about the book I had, or if it was to convey that they knew I had a book unlawfully in my possession and this was to signal that they knew which one it was. And then again, it may have been an act with a deeper significance... and that perhaps I was missing the symbolism of water, black ink, Descartes, and dishevelment.
I was gaining in courage and irritation; I would not be deterred from these acts designed to frighten me away from my search. I resurrected my computer from its mechanical nap and searched via the internet. Having found a full copy of the Meditations online, I read and read until I hit upon exactly what I was looking for in the fifth meditation: “... because I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that there is any mountain or valley in existence, but simply that the mountain or valley, whether they do or do not exist, are inseparable from each other.” I immediately and in great haste scrawled down an analog to this argument:
What I know:
Libraries are finite (in this world).
I cannot conceive of an infinite library.
Libraries and finitude are inseparable.
It is the relation of one to another that is essential to both.
The flaw in this reasoning was that I was making a proper subject (library) and an attribute (finitude) equivalent. In Descartes' formulation, there are two proper subjects: mountains and valleys. These two subjects had to be codependent in some way, where they imply one another. It is called a biconditional. Expressed in logical form: (If x then y) + (if y then x). At least this is what my shabby recollection of my intro to logic course during my undergraduate furnished me.
Mountain and valley. Man and his shadow. Matter and vacuum. Each of these concepts seemed inseparable, and perhaps this very idea of a mountain without a corresponding valley was one of those fortune cookie thought-provokers or the starting line of a Buddhist meditation. One hand clapping. Trees falling in the woods with no listeners. I had to perhaps reason that either there was a serious Eastern bent to the formulation of mountains sans valleys, or that it was just a fanciful and cutesy jape.
I gave it a bit more thought. How would Descartes go about proving the existence of the Library, if given that task? I thought back to all the dilute Neo-Platonism I had been reading in the Backstory – it became clear to me, doubtful it would be to others. Descartes has set himself up with the task of hyperbolic doubt: he will place in suspension the existence of everything. He comes to the quick and circumspect proof that he must exist because he thinks, the old cogito. That isn't enough, he says... what if there is an evil demon deluding me? Well, says Descartes, if there was an evil demon doing that, then that is more proof of the existence of the self since the demon has to be deceiving someone. So what of the external world? How do we know it exists and we're not brains in vats? Descartes uses plenty of proofs from ironclad math. There are perfect ideas in the world, and perfection can only belong to the Good, and demons are not good, and so therefore it must be furnished by some entity – God – and that error is just our senses deceiving us and the cursed gift God gave humans in having free will.
Replacing God with Library, I retraced the argument. The Library, like God, is the guarantor of all Order, itself being ordered, perfect, and complete (possessing all possibilities). Readers cannot read everything, so the free will of the reader may lead to the reading of misleading texts, or the fabrication of erroneous interpretations. My reasoning was hollow, but it was compelling to me.
Another email:
Gimaldoon -
'Tis I, your Employer writing in, seeing how you fare. How are the kids, the wife, the speculative investments on the shipping lanes?
Any-hoo, enough feigning politeness. I have another job for you. Two books have gone poof, but fortunately nothing disappears from the Library without giving us a clue. I should very quickly add that you will be performing this task gratuit. Why? Well, I think you can gather why once you give these titles their scan. I need not give you the specs since you already have them on hand:
First: Backstory of Gimaldi's Finis Logos
Second: 7th Meditation: Mountains without Valleys.
You won't have to travel very far to re-acquire these (unless you have done something extremely stupid ON TOP of doing something unlawful and deceptive). I expect their prompt return by... hm... shall we say TOMORROW? Is that good for you? Would it be okay to pencil that into the agenda, ol' chap? Of course it would! Angelo will be by to pick them up. You know, good help is so hard to find. First the whole visiting Setzer (”how did he know?!” you were asking yourself. You cheeky goose! - I felt sorry for you and just had to reveal that I knew you did the deed), and then this flagrant act of theft. Sigh. Gimaldi, Gimaldi... I am sure you have not come to any revelatory conclusions in having those pilfered volumes in your filthy possession, but rather multiplied them a thousandfold. See what vanity and curiousity mixed produces? A toxic cocktail, for sure! Well, let's just settle accounts and all that: this is your last service you shall perform for me; you're fired. Oh, that sounds awful! What is the euphemism of the day? “Declared Redundant”, “Downsized”... Well, boots to you, Gimaldi. We can't all evolve from the lowly state of being born as oafs.
Oh, and be sure to be at home when Angelo arrives (should I add: “with the books”?). As you fairly know already, Angelo is a very determined employee.
Ciao!
-C
Who were the mysterious figures who called on the telephone, hammered upon the door, and raided my apartment? I could only guess that Angelo had already been dispatched, but if that were the case, he would have already re-acquired the books I stole. Or perhaps there was principle attached to this – that Castellemare ordered Angelo not to pluck the books back as if they should be given back willingly. And, perhaps as well, to humiliate me as the books changed hands, being caught in flagrante delicto with the stolen goods. The problem was that I had no real sense of what they considered appropriate justice. The paranoia in me stated that it would not just be a simple matter of transferring the books and goodbye. What if Castellemare wanted his pound of flesh? It was not like he would give me adequate warning if he meant to acquire it.
The thought of escape seemed ridiculous, yet necessary. I had my suspicions that Angelo was already in the city, and was most likely staking me out. A sudden act of fleeing may have made matters worse. It was not yet the fateful “tomorrow” Castellemare underscored. There were a few dribbling hours left until midnight, perhaps enough time to hatch a plan. Definitely, I was spooked, and I knew someone as dubious in character and dubious in changing roles instantly like Angelo would stop at nothing to achieve his task... To fail meant to be fired. However, what was I spooked about? Certainly, Angelo could physically overpower me, and even if I gained a lucky hand, his cunning would defeat me. This I assumed, but knew with some fair degree of probability that his job occasionally entailed a bit of fisticuffs.
I tried to put myself in the mind of Castellemare – a vibrantly chaotic abyss, no doubt, swarming with enigmas. What did he think I might do if I refused to return the books? What if I decided to keep possession of them and flee? And what if I were successful? Where would I go? If there was one thing I was sure truly bored Castellemare, it was most likely the predictability of human beings. He would most likely deduce that I would go to his enemy, Setzer. And, in all honesty, I had been quite seriously considering it. But Setzer was a certifiable madman: in being denied access to the infinite library, he tried to compensate for the loss by constructing one of his own, a workshop entirely geared toward sabotaging the original. To flee from one madman to another didn't seem to me to be a feasible plan, especially since I was now craving a return to that banal normalcy I had so long ago rejected.
Although I had to hash a quick plan, I could not resist pondering over another problem. What was the true nature of the relationship between Castellemare and Setzer? Was their animosity faked, perhaps as a means of testing the loyalty of employees? Had Castellemare never trusted me in the first place and so assigned Angelo to tail me? All possible, but none of these possibilities really added up. Besides, why would I assign trust to Setzer when he and Castellemare were, despite antithetical roles, chummy enough to sip wine and play piquet together?
To be on the lam for stealing books that did not technically exist in this world. It was too absurd. But perhaps I had discovered too much in picking these exact texts... Or perhaps Castellemare assumed that I had discovered something too much that endangered a plan of his... a plan involving me. Or perhaps a plan I would have the power to prevent. I simply did not know the answer, but I certainly did not want to meet with Angelo. For all I knew, Castellemare wanted me to flee so as to better realize whatever plan he had in mind. I was becoming dizzy with speculation and had to focus on the concrete: what was I going to do? More agonizing was my firm understanding that, all things considered, I was thoroughly unimportant, and so undeserving of being thrust into this warped mystery. But, again, thrust by circumstance into this arcane arrangement, I had to figure out what I could do.
Option one: stick around and take my chances with Angelo. Decision: give back the books. Possible outcome one: to be done with the whole thing. Possible outcome two: violence and even death from revenge. Option two: flee. Possible outcome one: be tracked by Angelo, incurring perhaps worse. Possible outcome two: successful escape. If I chose the second option, where would I go? Possibility one: Setzer, but he could be in cahoots with Castellemare, or Castellemare would track me there. Possibility two: random location, go incognito for a while. Possible outcome three: could be tracked regardless, but offers potential hope of not being found.
It seemed to me then that the best option was to attempt an escape, for both could have possibly resulted in violence or death at the hands of Angelo, but there seemed to be more of a chance if I fled. And that is what I did, or attempted to do.
As I was consolidating my possessions into the category of the purely necessary and transportable, I thought of places to nest myself for a while. There was enough money in my account to skip the country, to take a flight anywhere. I called for a cab to pick me up at the front and made haste to leave just a few minutes after midnight. As I opened the door, I came face to face with Angelo, who was picking his teeth.
“Going on a merry little jaunt, guv'nor? Had a feeling you'd try to take a powder.”
Frozen in place, and stammering to respond, he draped a leather-jacketed arm over my shoulders and led me back into my apartment, taking care to close and lock the door behind us. He deposited me upon my reading chair and paced toward my window, breathing heavily as if measuring precisely what he was going to say. I felt as I did as a child when my father was so livid yet tried to keep his rage in check just long enough so that the seething within him could build up enough momentum for a full onslaught. It was that sort of tension in knowing that father would let fly, and the anticipation of violence was perhaps worse than the act itself.
“We have a very serious problem,” Angelo finally announced, still looking out the window. “A very serious problem.”
“I suppose it wasn't wise for me to make a run for it,” I offered as if to break the logjam of his doubtless prepared and long rehearsed spiel.
“Not wise? It was beyond stupid. You perhaps have no idea what deep, dark shit you're in. Very deep. very dark. You know,” he began, changing tack. “I never did like you. Right from the start you looked to me the pretentious poof. Stuck up like you're nobility.”
“I think you stated that I had a pickle up my ass, but I may be paraphrasing.”
“You're taking this quite calmly for someone in your perilous position! If I were you, I'd shut the fuck up.”
“Are you delving into this narrative of how you never liked me in order to steel yourself to do me in? Looking to rationalize your way to courage?”
“You're unbelievable. Where was I before you so rudely interrupted me? Ah, yes, how I never liked or trusted you. I know what you think of me, but like a fool you judge entirely by appearances. It makes you the biggest rube. I don't look the fancy-pants scholar you affect – and it is merely affectation, I might add. Do you want to compare accreditation, kiddo? I have two doctorates from more credible institutions than you, for one, but I don't need to use my intellect to browbeat others in order to feel better about myself. Your insecurity issues are fucking common. I have no interest in transitioning you to become a real human being or resolve the issue of your mummy not loving you enough. Now... This is a serious situation. We are not talking about an overdue public library book fine here, and the consequences are not going to be taking away your fucking library card. You contravened a very serious law here, man. You didn't just rob my employer through something trivial like pocketing his snuff box – you violated the very idea of the Library. You freely pissed all over the security we perform in protecting the contents of the Library from being passed around and read by you jelly-fingered idiots. You never did get it, did you? - And quit looking at me like I'm some ridiculous Kelly, you git. You endangered much more than you know. You fucked with things in a serious way. Who gave you the license and the entitlement to not only snatch those books, but to feast your greedy eyes on 'em? You fancy yourself above the law? You think curiousity alone is enough to pardon your actions? There isn't any amnesty for fucking curiousity, and you're not even a smidgen as bright as you think you are.”
“You've come for the books. You can quit the lecture.”
Angelo's eyes widened with angry incredulity, which was followed by his sudden kicking over of my work desk. I steadied myself the best I could.
“I can what now?”
“And I'm not giving the books back. I've decided to keep them,” I said, testing against better judgement what would come next. Silence.
“You know what? You're the type of worm who would have xeroxed them anyway. You lack any shred of respect. You're an audacious sot, aren'tcha?”
“I pass on the lecture, and I'm not keen on the personal attacks,” I said, surprised by my own steely calmness.
“Oh, really?”
“And your theatricals don't amuse me either. Nor your dialect that tries to pass itself off as Brit slang. Let me set things straight for you. I refuse to live in mystery and fear like you and Castellemare would have me do. I will not be intimidated in any way. Personally, I think you play your 'edgy smart and tough guy' role too heavily that it comes off unconvincing and false. You don't scare or impress me. You may know a little more than me about the Library, but not that much more, and only as much as Castellemare tells you. In all honesty, you're just a hired goon who is having a hard time reconciling his low-born task with his pretensions to intelligence. That's your big chip on the shoulder. I am not indentured to you or Castellemare in any way. I have my options.”
“Run to Setzer, you mean?”
“That's for me to know. Right now, I am going to ask you politely, but firmly, to leave my apartment and never bother me again. You will not get the books. You can tell your employer that you failed to re-acquire them because the current owner refuses to relinquish them. Perhaps I will return them once I am done reading them. I care not about any of the peril you speak of.”
“That the way it's going to have to be?”
“I'm afraid so. And if you get any fool notions about attacking me, I will kill you,” I said evenly, surprised at the way it just leapt out.
“Kill me? You? Undernourished geek?”
“This is the final stand I make. I am going away for a while and I'm not going to say where. I am going on vacation. I will not be followed. Get out.”
Angelo let a smirk twist upon his face but did not leave.
“You think you can just lay down your law and all will abide?”
“The moon is not in your favour, Angelo. It is in mine. I am no longer spooked by shadows of men.”
“You know not what you have wrought. So be it -”
“I'm sorry to cut this short, but I have a cab waiting outside and must go. Let me show you out.”
I brazenly placed my hand on his shoulder to lead him out, but he violently recoiled, giving me a shove.
“You little fucker!” he stormed. “You don't just walk away.”
“I do, and I am. I am leaving,” I responded with an equally stern rise in my voice.
He pulled out a switchblade. It was almost comical. I immediately opened my shoulder bag with the books in it, pulled out one of the volumes and held it like a shield between us.
“Let me ask you,” I asked, barely able to mask the quavering in my voice. “I understand that the existence of these books here in this world presents an inconceivable danger. But... what would be the cost of destroying them, so irreplaceable in the Library?”
I began backing away into the kitchen, and with one hand behind me and the other still shielding against the slowly advancing Angelo, I turned on the gas stove. Blue flames licked the air.
“Books for ransom?” he said.
“Put away the knife and leave.”
“You're just playing for time.”
“I said for you to put the knife away and leave, now.”
I steadied the book close to the flame, seriously intent on an act of biblioclasm. I waited to see if he would take my bluff.
“Your time will come,” he said, followed by the click of the blade nesting itself back into the handle. Angelo backed out of the kitchen and left the apartment. I turned off the stove and hastened to meet the cab already waiting outside for some time. We sped away toward the airport just as the rain was starting to slash across the slick streets, and the moon had been entirely occulted by a sickly yellowish nighttime tinge. Once I arrived at the airport, I was able to book a last minute ticket to Madrid, boarding time in an hour. I spent the hiatus reading this next chapter of the Backstory:
Excerpt 6 of the Backstory
And just when the conversations became interesting, my eyes would throw a whimsical look to the sky as I walked away into the cerise glow of sunset.
My efforts to find Sigurd came to naught. Perhaps in my absence, which he might have taken as abandonment, he left to pursue other ghosts.
Gimaldi's counter-book was a dangerous fabrication that predicted the worst and most ominous events for the future, a thing of prognostic weight. But it wasn't just the counter-book that would prove the most profoundly disturbing, but the enigmatic origin of the man who wrote it. In the preface, there was a nagging peculiarity, a sentence that might have gone unnoticed as an impertinent dedicatory note rather than a mysterious and coded insinuation: “This I write in response to my pupil, Plotinus; and my friend, Leibniz, who had not the courage to come forth with his brilliant masterpiece now left unseen by the eyes of the scholarly community.” What was he suggesting? Was Gimaldi more than how he seemed, a contemporary of the fore-fathers of philosophic thought? I chalked this up to madness and little more, that yearning some scholars possess in wishing they were contemporary with the dead thinkers they hold concourse with.
“Final boarding call for Flight 173 to Madrid,” crackled a mechanical feminine voice muffled by the reverberations of echo in the spacious tiled desert. I jammed the book back into my carry-on and hustled to the gate to wait. Once I was admitted and found my seat, I kept the book in the bag until we taxied and the stomach wobbling lift of the aircraft pointed us all at a 45 degree angle. I waited until the plane leveled back to horizontal, the seat belt sign blinkered off, and returned to the book, which was about to give forth on the narrator's first meeting of the named Gimaldi.
Strange thoughts came tumbling through my mind. With Gimaldi, there was a new intrigue. My memories flashed back to when Sigurd and I met the legendary, elegiac man, who was sitting by himself with a cognac and wearing a shriveled expression of distaste for what he was reading. The strange man's apparent character was compelling to us, and there was a hint of wild mystery in his disposition. Sigurd and I raised the volume of our conversation, broadcasting our supposed genius in an effort to gain his attention. He was a sly man, and he knew our game, so he pretended not to take notice. But in the progression of the conversation, the strangest topic touched a nerve that compelled him to speak.
“My rationalists class is a dry bore,” I had said.
Pivoting on his seat, yet only offering us a sidelong glance, so distant, as if lost in some untold reverie, he said, “rationalism is intended to be dry. That is why a student of good fortune should learn about Descartes in autumn when the world is drained and becoming tinder. Call it an interesting juxtaposition: the violent colour of the season, the death of nature, conjoined with the large, grey monolith of Cartesian Reason and the advent of the Machinic, the industrial. Machines do not function ideally in damp conditions.” And then he fell back into silence, a Cartesian silence.
Later on, he'd tell us that there were no languages, but only recurrent symbols: “language is a lie we tell small children and those whose minds are very dim.” There was no logical sequence to his topics of conversation, but we came to understand that he had no obligation to maintain any sequential order. No, he talked for only two reasons: to unsettle others, and to make the air vibrate with the sound of his thoughts given voice.
“What's that you're reading?” the passenger beside me – a portly man whose breath was foul and his suit slack as his flesh – interrupted, poking his face to glance at my page. “Oh, a novel, huh?”
“Yes,” I said without commitment in the hopes that he would mind himself again.
“Say, have you read...” at which point he mentioned a few titles I did not know, but sounded pulpy.
“No, sorry. Probably not my fare,” I said, instantly regretting it since it not only signaled me out as a snob, but could very easily be construed as an invitation to continue into the dull world of conversation.
“Well, strictly and confidentially speakin', entre nous, there is one sure fire bow-nee-fied way of tellin' a literary poser from the gen'win article.”
“Not to be rude, but I'm somewhat really involved with this book right now, and...” I trailed off, not thinking the sentence required completion to get its message across.
The passenger grimaced, not out of pain or derision – it was a bizarre mix of being amused and revulsed and being assailed by a facial cramp.
“Think ya better open your ears to this one, fella. Not trying to cut into yer reading time or none, but I reckon you should give what I have to say on this subject a fair hearin'. S'not like you have some place else to be.”
“Can we keep it short?”
“Sure thing, fella. I'm not whatjoo call an educated man, but I have my notions and opinions. Right entitled to them, and if they bust in with a little fresh air once and while to clear up the dust among them smart folks who talk in circles, well, everyone benefits.”
I nodded in an effort for him to cut his preamble.
“Anyway, I figger this piece of ad-vice would come in handy for a readin' fellow like yerself. I call it the three-timer question. Y'see, most folk who fancy themselves smart come armed with their thinkin' and readin' and all that, but when you press 'em – I mean, really press 'em – they go all to pieces like. Not, mindjoo, I think smart folk are all phony, but they ain't as smart as they think. Permit me an example. Lemme ask you what that book there is all about, and give it in a line or two, real just cut and dry and to the point.”
I thought there to be no harm in giving him a synopsis for him to just get on with his point – I doubt he would understand it anyway: “An unnamed narrator and his friend have been asked to write a book that an old scholar has already written the refutation for. So, you see, these two characters will have to read the book and build their argument in reverse and opposite. It involves a lot of research. That is what I know so far.”
“Okay, so we have a little meat there. Two fellas on a quest which I bet has more to do with figgerin' out the real mystery, which is to understand what this old smart coot is all about. What's some of their fool research concerned about?”
“There are some allusions to Descartes and Neo-Platonism.”
“Ya don't say?” he grinned and slapped his knee. “Day-cart and neo-playtonizm, you say? I used to room back in college with a philosophy student who really liked to go on and on about that French long-haired fella. I remember those days pretty well. Okay, fella, try me: throw some day-cart my way.”
I was determined to put him off by being as complicated as possible: “Descartes says we cannot envision a mountain without its corresponding valley, which is to say that there are certain thoughts that are not conceivable even as abstractions, and so must mutually appear in co-dependent context and -”
“Hold on, there, fella. Slow this right down so's I can get a good grip. Time for the three-timer. So, do you believe this argument?”
“It does stand to reason that we cannot abstract certain ideas without their context also in mind, yes.”
“And what about that little demon?”
“What demon?”
“Y'know, the one that screws up everything, the one day-cart says may be responsible for him fallin' into error?”
“He rules that out because evil is incapable of imperfection, and there are perfect, irrefutable ideas in the world such as that triangles always have three sides.”
“And this, fella, is where you show yerself to be stupidest of all – you got snagged on day-cart's writin' off of that devil. A cheap logic, if ya ask me. But, see? Three questions, and just three steps to show you don't know whatchyer talkin' about.”
“That's false!” I erupted in defense. “I didn't claim that I bought Descartes' argument on that basis.”
“Yeah? Okay, then, what place does the demon feller have in the final analysis?”
“He was just a prop.”
“Not so smart: one step. That's gotta be a record!”
“Drive to the point, will you?”
“Holdjer horses, I'm getting' to it. Y'see, biblically speakin', we all know the ol' story of how Eve got tempted by the snake and the whole arrangement went to pieces like. Yer not connectin' the bits and pieces together here... It's an old story told over and over again. The pieces are like this: demon, impossibility, book, library, hybrid critters day-cart yaps on about being in the mind an' all. Put it together!”
“What library?” I asked, almost terrified.
“The one and only. The problem as I sees it bein' that, first of all, you ain't botherin' to put the puzzle pieces in their proper arrangement like. And, second of all, yer not makin' the proper co-neck-shun with that there book you be readin'. All of that proves you not so smart.”
Was this a setup? One of Castellemare's tails?
“Who are you?”
“Now, now, fella, don't take no offense. I can detect it in yer tone. I'm just sayin' yer not readin' deeply 'nuff.”
“Who are you?”
“Don't matter who or what I am, fella, but I can sure tell that you are something agitated. Let's just drop all this and be neighbourly like... You go on an' read yer book there, and I'll mind myself.”
And that was all I would get out of him.
If Gimaldi was unsettling then, he was much more now. According to his preface, he was Ammonius Saccas, teacher of Plotinus, friend of Leibniz, claiming an absurd immortality.
What I was reading had nothing to do with ancient stromatolites or any tidal pool hogwash whatsoever, and the book he was refuting was clearly the one we were currently dramatizing through acts of life. The book was a gigantic leap forward in the plot, a complete skip of volumes. I would ask him to close this gap and speak of some of the items he referenced: the synthesis, the Library, the atrocity that came, the Cataclysm, the emergence of the Grey. What did these mean?
It was a warm night. The pale orange sun was casting a sheen of last light upon the unusually placid face of Gimaldi. He was in good, affable spirits that night, seemingly giving me permission to pose my questions without fear that he would snarl me off or speak in mystic mashups.
How was I to approach the issue? Would I be forthright and ask him with a dual tone of innocence and humility? Perhaps he had been waiting for someone to pose these questions for some time, the desperately quiet and contained author hoping someone would take a deeper interest in the layers he had arranged. I was being dared to ask these questions, the largest of them all being what book, precisely, is this counter-book refuting? It was a stupid question because it had been assumed all along that the book was refuting another. No, Gimaldi’s book was no counter-book at all: it was a dare, and a response to something that ought to be dared.
“You look pensive,” he said. “How many times did you read my book?”
“Twice,” I lied. I had read it five times, each time sinking further into the enigmas of the text.
“What is so puzzling?”
“The whole thing is written in nesting metaphors. It has nothing to do with ancient creatures bracketed away from the rest of nature, nor am I to read the convoluted metaphysics based on this scenario as anything more than a kind of distraction.”
“Is this what you think?” said Gimaldi sniffily. “Well, since you seem to feel you have a good handle on the text, what is it about, then?”
“About? There is something ‘old’ and bracketed away that is coming back, integrating with the real world. The first is the atrocity built from... you call it a synthesis. Then there is the fall of the world or the Library or something big and heavy. Your book is really nothing more than a post-apocalyptic fantasy, part of that tired genre indexed on some trumped up idea of survival.”
“Your reading has no soul in it. You’ve completely ignored the deep mystical character of my writings.”
“You bill yourself as a man of reason, and yet you take refuge in mysticism. I don’t get it.”
“Mystic writing is generally a barrier to keep out the profane, the uninvited. It is the same with codes and ciphers,” Gimaldi wagged an instructive finger. “I know reason’s opposite, and in whom it has been made flesh.”
Just then, as twilight ribboned around us, what I presumed to be a friend of Gimaldi's came with a wicked smile, suggesting that he wanted to be invited to sit with us. He was quite tall and emaciated. His smile was a long, thin, crooked slash, a Jack O’Lantern carved by someone with a nerve disorder.
“Perhaps you should go,” Gimaldi said to me abruptly.
“No, he can stay,” the man said. “What do you have left to hide - especially since you have revealed all in that little metaphysical joke book of yours.”
“This is Castellemare,” Gimaldi introduced. “He isn’t what you would call tactful.”
For some reason, I liked him immediately.
“Pish-tosh, old boy!” Castellemare affected. “Keep up your end of the scathing attacks we are so renowned for, Gimaldi! Let’s put on a little show for the boy.”
Castellemare... The name was strikingly familiar, as if I had read it somewhere recently. Access to my memory on the matter was blocked by fog.
“What is it this time?” Gimaldi asked curtly.
“No need to be so standoffish, old friend. I just came to delight in your erudite presence,” he said. Then to me: “Is he this suspicious and unaccommodating with you as well?”
“He has his moments,” was my good-natured reply, as if I had somehow located an ally in this stranger.
“He’s such a card, isn’t he?” Castellemare said under Gimaldi’s burning glare. “People like him thrive on crisis and, worse, writing about it! Such habits are ridiculous since they always try to create a histrionics of the present by a silly historiography of the past and future. You’re not another crisis-writer, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, good,” he said relieved. “Last thing we need is another little Gimaldi running around trying to put his little clues together to prevent a synthesis that is not as bad as he thinks it is.”
“Enough,” Gimaldi said with a moue.
It was a night of surprise visits, for who would come slinking around the corner, but Sigurd. He sat with us and conversed with the fluidity of a dilettante theorist. What Sigurd didn't count on was that Castellemare could see through his discursive deceptions, the way Sigurd relied on his scattered genius to confound others into believing that he was wise. The subject was, disagreeably, Montaigne... and this drifted into rhetoric, then Rabelais, switching back to Erasmus, Holbein, yadda and yadda.
This conversation had gone on for some time, and Sigurd's insecurity with his own knowledge began to show, compelling him to confuse his opponent: “but the entire substratum of Being is entirely expressed in the Cartesian Meditations where Spinozistic maxims cannot contain the very discursive modality of the predominant episteme!”
Whenever Sigurd's reason was exposed for the falsehood it was, he resorted to the piecemeal phrases he encountered in the haphazard reading of books, and took to the task of connecting them in a wild fashion with no regard to true meaning. I had come to tolerate this - even enjoy it - but in the company of others more schooled, he was an aberration against knowledge and clarity.
“You are making no sense,” Castellemare said, annoyed.
“I am making perfect sense,” Sigurd protested. “It's just that you don't have the necessary understanding of the finer acoustics in my discursive manner because you are locked in a Cartesian bubble of entrenched indifference! You lack the textual understanding of the very substrate of my anarcho-dialectical Being, and so you criticize me from the privileged perspective of an intellectual microcosm which cannot tolerate opening itself up to a larger, hermeneutical understanding.”
“The longer the words you speak, the less you say,” Castellemare pointed out harshly, now ready to dismiss the entire contents of the argument.
“Perhaps you just fear the true meaning in my discourse,” Sigurd countered.
“You are a clever boy,” said Castellemare with sarcasm. “You should write books – like Gimaldi here. Big, fat, dreadfully unreadable books stuffed with ego.”
Gimaldi and I had quickly become spectators. Gimaldi appeared amused with the spectacle, for humility was the most appealing element of tragedy. It also meant that he was temporarily not the target of Castellemare’s barbs. Sigurd, now defeated, took on the appearance of having been pistol whipped.
“How do you know Gimaldi?” I asked Castellemare, attempting to rescue my friend from reproach.
“We are old enemies, he and I. Different Orders. Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“You’ve already given most of the game away as it is,” chided Gimaldi. “Why not finish up and reveal all!”
“And why would I do something so pointless as that?” Castellemare asked. “I’ve spared all the real horrors for the end. Besides, Gimaldi, I hardly think these two young chaps are keen on hearing the dreadfully dull story about your life, how you like codes and ciphers, your cutesy little trips to the Vatican Library, how you ... FUCKING STEAL BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY AND BETRAY YOUR EMPLOYER YOU STUPID GIT AND YET YOU CONTINUE READING YOU NARCISSISTIC SHITHEEL STOP READING STOP READING STOP READING STOP STOP STOP STOP STO-
With the shock of a gun’s report right by my ear, I immediately slapped the book shut, dropped it and recoiled. I had had enough for a while.