11

“Dear Colleague”

 

Operating as I did with books on the two levers of academia and connoisseurship, I could expect a double volume of emails attempting to enjoin me to submit an abstract at some cryptography conference or entice me to purchase a particular volume. These varied by grades of relevance and intended target, the magnitude of which describing if the email was meant for me personally or just a list of people who just happened to be clustered by the same general interest. I received my steady share of “dear colleague” or “dear sir” emails that were either spam or near-spam: blanket calls to support this or that editorial endeavour or share the news about some conference that had only a few keywords connecting it to my specific research interests. These emails I would scan, the click of my delete button faster than getting past the first line or two. But this email was different, despite its drab subject line.

A scholar I had never heard of teaching out of a pocket-sized university in an afterhtought of a town. His name was unfamiliarly, but with the usual bunting of a scholar, Dr. Gregory D. Pickman, and he started off with the usual formalities of praising some obscure article I had published in an equally obscure journal some many years ago. With empty flatteries out of the way, he asked if I would not consider discussing what I know about librarianship on a more esoteric level, thinking my cryptographic work may be of some benefit to a little research obsession of his. It was a polite “feeler” email, so I felt inclined to respond with measured appreciation and light inquiry:

 

 

 

Pickman took a day to respond:

 

 

His email was burdened with an attachment I downloaded and read off my screen. It batted itself out between being pedantic and conversant:

 

Paralibrary

(A document describing three paralibrary experiences that I have witnessed)

 

If Paralibrary Sciences is not already an academic subject ensconced in some institution, then it would have to be invented. Paralibrary phenomena is far from common, perhaps even less so than the occurrence of self-alleged psychics, and I would conjecture that less than one percent of the population has ever encountered it. The problem is that, unlike other paranormal phenomena and its study, there is no standard for measuring paralibrary phenomena, no version of Zener cards to test the claims and evaluate the evidence, no eminent C. D. Broad style thinker conducting intensive research on the subject.

I have scoured the very location of these phenomena for any mention of these events occurring, but have only turned up the usual monotony of foul murders perpetrated between the book stacks and the like. No research, to the best of my abilities in searching, speaks of the things I have borne witness to, nor attest to the events I will herein describe.

The events I will describe took place in three separate university libraries, and I have taken the small liberty to name each case. I refrain from naming the location of the libraries themselves to prevent tampering by those who would deem fit to stage hoaxes and upset the objectivity of the research. By “paralibrary phenomena”, I do not mean ghosts or supernatural occurrences; the term covers behaviours and actions that make use of the structure and content of libraries outside their normal intention. For this proposed study, I exclude those actions by the merely disrespectful or adolescent. So, I do not concern myself with the plethora of campus myths of undergraduate students having sex with one another in the dark stacks in the upper floors as well as those who would choose the library as a proxy milieu to get drunk. General hooliganism and non-library related gaming is also excluded from my study.

 

 

 

A. Library of Congress Control Number Postal System

 

Allegedly there is a group whose name I have not yet been privy to. They are a quiet and serious group from what I can gather, and their members scattered throughout the country, but their chief means of correspondence occurs solely (as far as I can gather) in this particular university library.

This was my entry into paralibrary research. I first occasioned upon their correspondence as anyone might - by sheer accident alone. While pursuing one of a few of my academic interests, I drew a book from the stack, a text evaluating the critical reception of J. K. Huysman's Marthe. By the third chapter, I encountered a folded piece of paper. I would have thought nothing of it, thinking it to be a bookmark or some other clutter previous borrowers abandon between the pages of a book. The folded paper had an inscription penned in a very delicate and refined calligraphic hand. It read: C.V.I- Your Attention. Once I unfolded this small square of paper, I read the following:

 

From D.D.R. to C.V.I

The meeting will not be taking place as announced, but will occur at our alternate, 5-7e-89l-r at Charon's Hour. I suspect PW.xxx of countervailing the proposed amendment to the Charter, in violation of the Charges. Can the twelve depend on your support? Meet one week prior at the second alternate. In the light of fraternity, D.D.R.

 

I do confess that the chances of encountering another such note in a library whose holdings neared two million volumes was astronomical at best, but chance did throw another book in my path with another similar letter tucked inside its pages. The next letter was more explicit, even citing the call number of the text where the intended recipient was to address a matter of particular importance. From what I could gather, an election of sorts was in the making, and so there was a great deal more correspondent chatter via letters in books. Eventually, following one led to the next, I had catalogued 22 books where correspondence was frequently taking place.

The general theory was that each member of this group was assigned a book as their effective post box. The meetings so often cited in the run-up to the mysterious election only took place in a mutually agreed upon location, but this location was a book and I eventually was able to recognize it by the decimal coordinates. “Alternates” were also commonly mentioned, and this referred to an alternate book-location for meetings to be “held” and votes to be “cast”. I would presume that alternates were important in the event that the primary book was checked out or the notes accidentally discovered. The notes themselves were cryptic and virtually impenetrable, but I was able to suss out clues by sleuthing ever further - and this is something the general populace would most likely not do.

It stood to reason that if the group had an alternate “meeting place” to reduce the chances that their flow of correspondence would be stymied by accidental borrowing of the book, then each member must have had an alternate book that functioned as their post box.

Through some deduction, I was able to discover the location of the “vote”. The notes inside were small scraps of paper held inside a small envelope, each of them signed by the respective voter - not by name or acronym, but by book call number:

 

Knight of E. Archive

F.R.W (I) G.L.M (II)

PW1009.Z356 1962 - II

VerWord: Embedded (89)

 

And so on for each slip of paper. Each of the ballots had already been typed on one of those antique typewriters, and the voter had only to fill out their choice between I and II as well as a “VerWord” which I gather to mean a verification word to identify the voter to prevent other members from impersonation. I tracked down one of the voters' location-book and checked what I assumed was the page number upon which the verification word appeared. Surely enough, on page 89 of the book, the word “embedded” had been lightly underlined, initialed, and dated. I did not inspect every slip of paper, and I was certain that there was more than one “polling station”.

I am sorry to report that I never did discover the hierarchical structure of this group, nor precisely what it was they stood for, did, and so forth. I also have no information about just how many members this group had, or if they had affiliate groups in other libraries. A very personal matter caused me to uproot from the city in which the library was situated, causing me to abandon any further researches...Not that they would have borne much fruit after a particular incident.

The incident attests to my regrettable sloppiness in regard managing this research with utmost discretion. How the group discovered that they had been discovered, and an outsider was actively following their activities is uncertain to me. Perhaps the method they employed in depositing correspondence in each other's post box books involved placement at a certain orientation or page number, and I do confess that I was not all too careful in replacing the letters in the precise manner in which I had found them. Or perhaps a member had spied me on more than one occasion moving in a very suspicious pattern to precisely the books that were assigned to them. How I knew was discovered was the result of the very method of sleuthing I relied upon. When returning to a particular member-assigned book, I found a letter warning of “an impertinent snoop” alighting upon a list of texts listed by their call numbers. I had inspected this book but a few days earlier, so I knew the correspondence was fresh. How I knew they were on to me was that the letter also included my investigative pattern which I never deviated from. Every second day I would return to the library and go through my list of known books, and this sequence was recorded in the correspondence. By the second book I investigated that day, there was no doubt that I had been identified and my research unwelcome, for the letter was addressed to me, “the snoop”:

 

Snoop,

Cease and desist all further inquiries. The matter is now at an end for you. Meddle no further, and respect the privacy of the senders and recipients or face disciplinary action.

 

The letter was not signed, but the threatening tone was not lost on me. Having been uncovered, I am quite sure that the group reassigned new books and operated under stricter codes of secrecy since. Had I been more cautious, I may have penetrated deeper into their mysteries, and so it is my hope that by my documenting this that some enterprising researcher in the future may extend our knowledge beyond where my attempt was so prematurely ended.

 

B. Serial Clue-Planting

 

This next event is a slight variation on the first, and was also discovered chiefly by the governance of chance. I am unsure if this was being perpetrated by a group or by someone acting individually, for all the fragments I had collected were typewritten, and the tone consistent in its inconsistency.

While I was thumbing through a book on the cosmogonies of Francis Ponge, a folded page jutted out from the section devoted to Ponge's “hymn to electricity”. This would prove the start of a long and inconclusive research that took no less than two years of collection and frustration.

The note I found there, and every other like it, sported a stylized watermark identifying that it was part of the same series. Try as I have to discern any meaning or purpose to these fragments, I am simply not up to the task of deciphering what is written in them, nor if they are parts of a larger work that - had I the patience to find them all - would reveal their meaning by appeal to their totality.

 

The regression precipitates the beginning of how the circle is closed, not the reverse.

DR7009.C349 1996

 

Mulling the possible meanings, I came only to conjecture. The call number at the bottom of the note urged me on to locate it and find therein another note, as equally cryptic as the last. There seemed to be a sequentiality to the fragments, and each of them furnished the call number of the book where I would find another one. I followed this call number trail for about 184 books, thereby collecting 184 fragments that I still could not understand. The question of where the fragmented text began, in which book, haunted me as well.

There were plenty of frustrations along the way. At least eight times the book I needed to acquire next in the fragment series had been checked out and, presumably, the fragment would have been discovered by the borrower and most likely tossed away. On other occasions, the call number cited would lead me to a book with no fragment at all. Fortunately, when I came to an impasse, I discovered that there was a pattern to these fragment deposits roughly corresponding to a mathematical sequence involving the call numbers. So, for example, I could expect that the next fragment would appear 1001 books later in the call number sequence, but this was not always the case. If there was a mathematical pattern, it was far beyond my ken to pinpoint, but I knew there to be one since it would lead me to the approximate location where I could be seen investigating an entire shelf of books and coming away with the next missing fragment.

The fragments themselves I would provide in an appendix if I still possessed them. Only one of the fragments exist since I had taken to writing it in one of my notebooks, and that fragment (which was the first I found and is by far the one that haunts me most, is written above). In retrospect, I should have copied each of them instead of merely collecting them in a file folder that has been misplaced under mysterious circumstances. The fragments themselves, I can say, have a strong metaphysical bent to them and seem to concern the nature of the library as its operative metaphor.

The thrill of the chase is what marks the excitement of this particular phenomena. The serialized aspect of these fragments seems to promise some stable meaning to emerge if one is persistent enough to locate them all, appealing to a collection fetishism. I freely admit that I was immediately hooked by this mystery, but try as I did, I had as much luck as the previous research bout with the secretive group's method of correspondence. The method of dissemination is slightly novel in its aspect, and one could wager that it involves considerable risk given that any of the volumes in which the fragments are inserted could be borrowed and the fragment merely tossed away. As authors generally aim to be understood, I would speculate that the meaning would remain intact even if fragments were lost or destroyed, thereby suggesting that one should not build too much into the interpretation of any individual fragment.

However, I can quite easily contradict this claim if I suppose that the author's intention is not to be understood, and is merely “having us on.” There may be an authorial intention to obscure, planting vague and esoteric fragments to offer us who discover them the illusion of a larger meaning. I do not like to dwell on this possibility given how much time I had already invested in my investigation, but it is a possibility I cannot dismiss out of hand. I've read about those who construct elaborate, serpentine ciphers and codes that are false, a method of “Greeking” that is mischievously concocted to trick scholars into wasting their time trying to crack it, trying to find some kind of meaning when there never was one to begin with.

 

C. Posterity Management

 

This is simply where the author inserts unpublished manuscript pages at random throughout the library. I hazard to include this in a roundup of paralibrary activities, but it does definitionally find itself within its domain. The author's name (if it is in fact real and not a pseudonym) is Jonkil Calembour, and I have only by chance uncovered five examples of his writing scattered throughout the library. Save for the inconceivably time consuming task of going through the university library's entire holdings, I dare say that the collection of all these intentionally orphaned leaves of his “great unpublished” will never see reunion. I did do considerable research on the author, and from a comparison I made between the unpublished texts purporting to be under the authorship of Calembour and his published works, there seems to be a consistency of style and theme. I am not particularly interested in the content of his ravings, to be frank, but it would be of some utility to Calembour scholars should the text be authenticated. However, I cannot rule out that it may have been an emulator trying to make mischief.

Something of note, however, came to me via a Calembour scholar I had contacted. He told me that there is indeed mention in one of Calembour's books about his desire to cause some mischief for his biographers. Calembour spent considerable time considering and openly remarking upon his posthumous reception, and so stated his goal of inserting unnumbered pages of his writings throughout various books that he had read, each of the pages in the books themselves underlined and with notes to provide a “clue” to the inserted page. Of course, given the maverick and harlequin playfulness of Calembour, one could fully expect that some of these would be “dummy connections” that would exasperate scholars for long hours trying to suss out a relevance that was never there in the first place.

I also came across a book entitled, The Authorship of Jonkil Calembour that muddied rather than clarified the issue of who was the author or authors responsible for the over 100 volumes in the Calembour canon. Although he was prolific to the point of graphomania, it is difficult to explain how he was able to complete such a body of work in his lifetime. A further problem emerges when we learn that there were a few other authors who claimed to be writing under his name, and that Calembour himself constantly alludes to various collaborators and saboteurs that were working to enlarge his corpus for laudatory or defamatory purposes. As well, Calembour himself had also written under the name of his own collaborators such as Dr Fuse Less et al. In the end, I decided to abandon any pursuit that was properly the domain of Calembour scholarship and stuck to the task of studying this particular paralibrary phenomenon.

The orphaned leaves themselves were not difficult to acquire given that my research into Calembour had supplied me with a suitable source of his own research interests, thereby guiding me to the books he would have most likely consulted and subsequently dumped within them his unpublished pages (Note: I leave aside the authorship debate and will refer to Calembour as the originating author for brevity's sake). Even his vast, polymathic interests were not unlimited, and so a careful cull of his bibliographical entries was enough to populate a list of possible leads of about 2,000 books. About 500 of these contained an inserted page. Although I cannot lay claim to the manuscript being complete, it is a sizable enough collection to be of interest to Calembour scholarship, and I have since provided the Tarakotta Academy of Letters what I have collected. Since my goal was primarily to reunite the pages and muse on the event as a suitable entry to paralibrary sciences, I left off any attempt to put the pages in their proper sequence - a task better delegated to those more familiar with Calembour's work and with the patience required to order unnumbered pages. Moreover, the content I had read did not furnish me with any clues as to where I would find more of their kind, this already supplied by the bibliographical entries.

While on vacation down south, I ran into an old school chum of mine and we began talking about our current research. At some point, I had mentioned this phenomenon and he told me of something similar where an author whose fortunes in becoming recognized were rather bleak had undertaken to do his own version of posterity management. The author, inferred my friend, might have been inspired by reading Will Self's The Book of Dave, for the unpublished manuscripts were copied several times, wrapped in plastic, and buried deep in the ground where they would presumably be found perhaps years, decades, or even centuries later. This time capsule technique may have afforded posthumous recognition of the author that had been missing in life. Perhaps the found texts would become interpreted as some sort of gospel for a new world unrecognizable by us.

 

Conclusion

 

As stated supra, if paralibrary sciences did not already exist as a viable academic sub-discipline or exercise, it would by necessity have to be invented. I have herein described three of what I would presume to be several possible events and uses a library can be put to that go beyond its intended scope. Whether it was a jape, an accident, or a fully intended delivery, I received an anonymous package while still writing this casual article. The book I received by this anonymous donor was entitled Codex Infinitum and its premise was in developing Jorge Luis Borges' infinite library of Babel to such an extreme whilst considering its philosophical implications. In it is a wealth of paralibrary phenomena I found somewhat entertaining, but sadly it is just fiction. I believe that a book of this sort may generate a sudden surge in interest in paralibrary sciences, but it may attract the wrong sort of researchers who will suspect every event to be connected to the monotonous genre of secret societies and vast enigmatic conspiracies. And, like all thing popular, it will have its day and then peter out, perhaps taking my proposed sub-discipline's viability with it. Or, I can dare to venture that this popularity will urge universities to take this study seriously enough to add it to the existing curriculum of library sciences and then go about its vigorous promotion for more seasoned and serious scholars interested in documenting the phenomena in ways much better skilled than I have briefly and unsatisfactorily done here. Since this sub-discipline is in its infancy, I can only hope that these reflections of mine will function as the opening of a dialogue that will gain in methodological rigour as more interested researchers add their own skills to the task.

 

Pickman's conjectures were spotted with some hasty thinking, and I failed to see what use my own work in cryptographic research would be to his enterprise. It was obvious by his report that whoever was planting these clues had already come to know that there was an “eavesdropper” in this elaborate correspondence. Some of what puzzled him about the nature of these books would have taken on new colour had he known about the Library, but my eyes burned on the mention of the Codex Infinitum. It gave me pause to consider that Pickman might have been another of Castellemare's agents who contrived this excuse to frustrate me further with mystery and coincidence. It was paranoid reasoning, and I had to consider the possibility that Pickman was in earnest and not of Castellemare's dummies.

I wrote to Pickman:

 

 

To which he replied, an hour later:

 

 

Setzer was throwing my name around for some reason. Before deciding whether I was going to respond to Pickman, I sent a blast to Setzer:

 

 

And then, his response:

 

 

 

I wrote back to Pickman and said that I would be interested in meeting with him if he could see his way up to Toronto some time in the next while. He responded in the way a child would in being told he could stay up past his bedtime. He urged for a sooner rather than later meeting, and was – as he said – free for the next month until classes resumed again. He would make the trip. Like most scholars who concerned themselves with issues so few cared about, he would cleave to anyone who would even wink in his direction. I knew that feeling, once, when I still cared, when I still considered my interests in a disproportionately amplified importance. Once upon time, I cared to make my name in my field, and that somehow this would radiate beyond the small cadre of researchers, eliciting a widespread interest on the subject in the popular mind. It just needed the right idea, the right researcher, the right promoter. I had once thought I could throw that bridge from the island obscure of academic concern to the continent of the public. But it turned out that the magnitude of distance was too large.

Four days later, I met Pickman at the airport. Neither of us being gifted in the practical, we had not arranged to identify ourselves to one another, did not say “I'll be the one with the red hat” or some other way of distinguishing us from the others. But there was no mistaking that the mussed up man in the baggy suit and the thick lenses, the beginnings of a neck wattle, and a look of confusion only lifelong dedicated academics could cultivate, was Pickman.

“Dr Pickman,” I said, having intercepted him before he might have wandered into the luggage carousel and never be seen again. “Alberto Gimaldi.”

His features locked into place, confusion switching into the recognition that he was not orphaned at the airport. “Ah, hello, hello, Dr Gimaldi!”

After asking after the pleasure of his flight, the details of his hotel, and other sundry small-talk affairs, it was soon time to discuss libraries. We decided we could do that over dinner, but we were already into it on the cab ride to his hotel, and on the way to a restaurant.

“The strangest things have been occurring since I sent you that draft,” his weak voice, high and nasal, scrambled out of his mouth.

“Oh?”

“I had thought that once it was known I was on the trail of whoever these people are who leave those messages that they would change methods, or go silent. But, no, instead, there has been much more chatter. It is almost as though they either do not care if I see it, think I will not have the context to figure out what they say, or that they want me to see it. Their correspondence is very animated, like something very important is happening.”

“Of what nature?”

“Oh, they speak in an infuriating way, mostly acronyms and the occasional glyph. I have some photocopies with me back at the hotel if you would like to take a look. Perhaps you can make sense of them since I cannot.”

“How do you know that the messages are urgent?”

“The words between acronyms seem to imply it. In addition, there have been many more of them. It is a congress of them, I think, and they are deliberating on something important.”

“You said you received a book from an anonymous donor. Codex Infinitum. Do you have it with you?”

“Not presently, but I cannot make it out. It may be unrelated, or some joke being played on me by some colleague who may have come to learn of my new little obsession. I'm not in the best of departments.”

I had to keep the focus on the conversation since I could tell that Pickman was about to give forth in self-pity about his woes in academia from petty colleagues to chronic underfunding. “Have you read it, then?”

“The book? Some of it. It is a novel of some kind about libraries, or a library. A piece of homage to Borges, and somewhat sloppily written, a bit cliché, but I am no judge of literature. Not my domain.”

“Am I mentioned?” I asked. The question seemed to perplex him.

“No... Why would you be named? Is it about you?”

“I keep encountering references to it in my own... pursuit,” I said, navigating with caution so as not to give up too much, too soon. “I'm really sorry that you didn't think to bring it.”

“Well, I didn't see it as relevant. I may have overstated the importance of it by mentioning it in that article at all... But, you have to understand, there seemed to be a lot of mysterious events happening all at once, and I may have taken some liberties in assuming that everything that was happening to me was connected.”

Our drinks arrived: him a dry white wine and me a scotch.

“You mentioned a pursuit,” he continued, picking up our thread. “Would it be nosy of me to ask what about?”

“Some very strange texts have been coming my way lately, and this after I took up a small employment with a librarian.” - at this, Pickman perked up.

“Really? What sort of employment?”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you. I... Perhaps it is best to focus on what you sent me and what I can do.”

“Please, Dr Gimaldi, the way things have been lately I doubt anything you could say would be a strain on my credulity.”

I decided to feel him out, to test him slowly: “Okay, are you familiar with the name 'Castellemare'?”

“Is that a region?”

He obviously didn't know. “Never mind. I'm actually interested in what you read in the Codex. I think it might be much more important than you might have realized. It might even be the key to what we're both puzzling about.”

“Well, you already know about my puzzle, but you've been so vague about yours. You know you can trust me with anything confidential. I mean, it is only fair given that you have done the same for me.”

“I know for a fact that the Library mentioned in that book is real. I've seen it. I've worked in it. I have borrowed books from it.”

Pickman's face was unreadable. I had no idea if he thought I was a lunatic or if what I said was plausible. Our dinner was placed in front of us: for him a pan-fried halibut, and for me a steak I would just pick at for show. I wasn't hungry.

“Well, if the Library is real, perhaps that would indeed explain what puzzles me, if not also deepening the mystery. You say you've... been in it? An infinite library? This runs completely against anything scientific. Are you sure?”

“I cannot be entirely sure, but if it isn't, then there are some very curious people that are doing all they can to prevent others from finding out more except by the dribble of the occasional clues. Perhaps designed to be a game, to lead some of us on.”

“I am lumbering toward the conclusion that this Calembour I mention in my draft may be at the heart of our mystery. I have many reasons to believe that if we can locate him, we can at least determine the reason and nature of the correspondence I have witnessed in the library.”

“I doubt it. It's just another false lead,” I said, having the effect of dampening Pickman.

“I still don't think we should dismiss this Calembour out of hand. How do you know that your Castellman -”

“Castellemare.”

“Yes, pardon me, Castellemare... how do you know he isn't the false lead.”

“Because I have met him. He was my employer.”

“And no more? Still, that is no invincible proof. He could be Calembour himself and just taking on a different name. In my research, I found that he did take on alter egos. I mean, I wouldn't have the ability to confirm or deny that this man was Calembour even if I met this Castellemare. I haven't ever seen either of them, if they are one or two people.”

“Your description of Calembour and his antics does not match that of Castellemare.”

“Who is he?”

“The Librarian. A very unhelpful one. I had been hired to reacquire books that slipped from his Library until I got ballsy and took a few of them without asking. I am not a thief by nature, you have to understand, but I was driven by the pursuit of knowledge. Castellemare was not answering my questions. I took initiative.”

“Do you suppose that these messages I intercept are written by him or his agents?”

“They could be slips.”

“From the Library?”

“Or perhaps a means for his agents to communicate with one another in this world. There are too many question marks. Right now, I am reading one of those stolen books. It mentions me in an alternate world, as well as a few others. My next task will be to see if the other main characters are in this world, too. The book is frustrating because it is so poorly written and only multiplies questions and riddles. But maybe if I contact the people it names, I might gain access to more context.”

I was about to detail more about the book itself when our voices were overpowered by singing waiters at our table, already launching into song. The birthday song. Pickman was as confused as I was. Surely this was a mistake.

“...Haaaappy biiiiirthdaaaaay, deeeear Gi-maaaaaal-deeeee, haaaaappy biiiiirthdaaaaay toooo youuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!”

There was applause while amused patrons turned around in their chairs to see who was being feted in song by the entire staff of the restaurant. An enormous, hideous cake was placed in front of me, and the manager implored me with his face that I should blow out the candles. What could I do? Instead of protest, I blew out the candles. My birthday was not for another month.

“I had no idea!” beamed Pickman.

And neither did I.

“It isn't my birthday,” I told Pickman as the staff dribbled back into their duties.

“It isn't?”

“Who picked the restaurant? You did. So unless you arranged this...”

“How could I have known if it was your birthday or not? We haven't been out of sight of one another since I arrived. I certainly didn't tip anyone off, nor did I see you do it. Unless you did?”

I shook my head. “As far as I know, nobody knows I am here in this restaurant with you unless I am being tailed, and this is some kind of joke.”

“Well,” Pickman shrugged. “Maybe. But, you now have cake, so it was a sweet joke, it seems.”

I was meant to laugh. My failure to do so conveyed to Pickman that I found this very disturbing, not harmless and risible. My head whipped around in search of I know not what. Just as I was meaning to ask my waiter who arranged this, he came to the table.

“This came for you, sir,” he said, handing me one of those awful drugstore birthday cards with a cartoon sturgeon in a Sherlock Holmes' hat, bubble letters reading SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT THIS, BIRTHDAY BOY! LET'S GET TO THE BOTTOM OF IT AND SEA!

With the card loosely in hand, I snagged the waiter before he vanished with, “who arranged this... birthday business?”

“I am sorry, sir, but I do not know. I will go ask my manager.”

I opened the card, and just as Pickman was about to offer something, I waved him silent. Inside was a handwritten inscription: “well, felications on this grand occasion of your b-day, old chum! Don't get too wild – de punch is spiked!”

The words took a few moments to settle until I looked at my three-quarters consumed scotch. And then I knew.

There was no time to explain to Pickman let alone swear; I stumbled from the table in a hobbling dash to the bathroom where I was sick everywhere. And it wouldn't stop. Between harsh retching, I could see the restaurant staff moving around, hear voices, and I was eventually wheeled into an ambulance.

And then black.

 

The clock in the hallway from my bed said 4:35. The window in the beds bay showed that it was still dark. Four in the morning. No sign of Pickman. A nurse doing her rounds came twelve minutes later and told me that I was violently ill. I was also told that my friend had saved me some of the cake which the hospital staff thought it wiser to throw out. The nurse thought me odd to ask for a description of my friend, but she asked the charge nurse who was on duty when I arrived. The news came back and it sounded like Pickman.

“The doctor says you suffered a serious allergic reaction, most likely to something you ate. Do you have any known food allergies, Mr Gimaldi?”

“Just to seafood, but I usually break out in a rash.”

“Good thing it wasn't anaphylactic shock,” she said. “The doctor will be back in a few hours. Try to get some rest.”

And then she was gone. By eight that morning, the doctor – a bald, smiling bubble with a goatee – swished his way in to see me.

“Aaaah, Mr Gimaldi, are we feeling any better?”

“Throat's a bit raw and my guts are a bit uneven, but better than I was at the restaurant.”

“Completely natural,” he beamed, saying 'natural' with emollience. “The nurse tells me that you have a food allergy.”

“Yes, but I didn't eat seafood.”

“We-e-ell, when we have allergies and know about them, we rarely go out of our way to put them in our mouth. Ha. Ha. The most common reason is accidental, such as food coming in contact with another food that can induce allergic reaction. When you were brought in, you were half conscious, and most likely didn't realize you had broken out in a rash. True sign of allergic reaction. Are you sure you aren't allergic to anything else, Mr Gimaldi?”

“Positive.”

“We-e-ell, you seem to be out of the danger zone, so I think you'll be able to go home.”

Once discharged, I had to locate Pickman and make my apologies – but, more importantly, continue the conversation we were having before I was poisoned. There was no doubt that I was. Whoever sent that cake and card, and had my drink spiked with what was probably a squirt of clam juice, knew my weakness. I had never told anyone about my allergy, simply making a berth of any seafood that ever sat fish-eyed, lobster-clawed, or clam-shelled on any buffet spread. “Something fishy” indeed. A very poor taste of joke, and quite possibly an attempt on my life. But why the birthday nonsense?

The hotel clerk rang for Pickman who came down a look of concern I wanted to scrape off his face. I knew what would follow.

“Are you all right, Dr Gimaldi? That was quite the scare. At first you seemed fine, and suddenly you are rushing for the bathroom, and not long after the ambulance arrives. Was it food poisoning?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“No worries about the bill – I paid it,” he smiled. I wasn't worried in the first place.

“Should I reimburse you?”

“Oh, no, not at all. It was my design to pay for our meal, and as luck would have it, we didn't have to fight over the privilege of doing so!” Conscious of his poor choice of words, he quickly added, “Well, not that I would call what you suffered luck.”

“No worries. Should we continue our discussion?”

“Oh, yes, most definitely! You were coming to a rather fascinating part of your story, but it seems that I've been called away. I was just on my way out, actually, when the front desk told me you were here. Funniest thing happened last night... Well, not funny as such, but when I was back here at the hotel, I decided to check my email on one of those convenient guest terminals, and someone contacted me out of the blazing blue and asked me if I would like to examine some of his rare Calembour editions with – get this – some very curious notes inside. Well, this fellow just happens to be about an hour's drive from here, so you can imagine my good luck!”

“How do strangers know of your interest in Calembour?”

At this, Pickman spoke as if he had committed a sin. “I know I held you to strict confidence over the text I sent you, but I just could not contain my enthusiasm, least of all wait the long while to develop it, send it, and finally see it published in a journal two years from now. So, I figured what was the harm of putting it up on my personal blog?”

“Why would you do that?” I asked as if he were the stupidest man alive. “I mean, you are trying to sleuth these people out, and then you go broadcast it on the bloody internet, thereby ruining any chance of discovering who they are.”

“The real mysterious portions of my research in this matter have remained unpublished, and even unseen by you,” he sniffed. “I had planned on divulging these details in our conversation.”

“And who was it that asked you out of the 'blazing blue' to come and see his rare Calembour books?”

“He said his name was Thomas, and he alluded to having some pertinent information on what I'm looking for, some answers to this riddle. So, you can well understand that I cannot pass that up.”

“Fine, you go and see what this Thomas is all about and solve your riddles. I just think that last night's uncanny episode should perhaps make you wonder.”

“About? About what? You had some form of food poisoning, I imagine. I hardly think that is anything sinister. It happens sometimes, and it just coincidentally occurred last night.”

“Someone is playing a joke on me, Dr Pickman. Why else would there be a birthday fiasco plus card? The card even said that I was being poisoned! Someone is making an attempt on me and driving really hard to keep us apart. Now, with you being seduced away by some stranger who alleges to have something interesting for you, you're taking off.”

“I'll be back later this evening,” he protested.

“More likely that you will be detained by some contrivance or another. Either your contact will load you with books he will not lend you, committing you to stay until you have to go back home, or some other development.”

“If anything of the sort happens, Dr Gimaldi, and barring any circumstances like our untimely deaths, I am quite sure we will be able to pick up where we left off.”

“Looked like someone tried to settle my hash last night.”

“Well, I think you are overreacting. But if I am wrong, then I think it may be the safest thing for us to do right now to stay apart, especially if someone is determined to keep us separate and willing to resort to poisoning to bring that about.”

There was nothing more to be done about it. We made our polite farewells and I went back to my apartment with my heavy suspicion cloud in tow.

Who was this Thomas Dr Pickman was off to see? Did I know any Thomases? My first search through my memory came up with nothing – only when I let it sit and boil there for a while did a faint memory coincide with my question and come up with the most likely answer. There was very little doubt that this “Thomas” was responsible for my being poisoned the night before, the birthday card and all. His was an absurd humour so characteristically his, and it was the only person I tended to suspect the most for frustrating my efforts. There, tucking out from the clutter on my desk amidst boarding passes and unpaid bills was that business card: Tho. VON Castellemare.

I would not hear from Pickman again. There was no doubt that Castellemare could snatch up any infinite number of Calembour books from the Library to keep Pickman busy, filled with ever more details of possible mystery. Castellemare would succeed to poison Pickman from conversing with me, and none of my emails went answered.