14

Excerpts 10-12 of the Backstory

 

Gimaldi had given me vague warnings about going to Castellemare, telling me that there were dark truths no man should have to endure. He asked me again to write the book, and again I denied him... and again. “Go to him, and be prepared to stare into the heart of where the occult meets history,” Gimaldi said, daring me, playing the self-pitying martyr, the petulant. He also said that curiosity was another element of tragic undoing. And he knew that I was curious. But the more warnings I received about Castellemare, the more I was drawn to him. The warnings seemed designed to drive me to the one I was being warned against.

Where would I find him? When I asked Gimaldi where Castellemare lived, he flashed a defeated grin and said, “Nowhere, but... in time itself.” So no help there – only nonsense. What I didn't count on was for Castellemare to find me, as if I had conjured him.

I was at a pub, watching the inside of my own gaze. My mind lost in a fog. Blankness. That was when Castellemare, dressed in black came by, sweeping that blackness over blankness.

Castellemare sat across from me with hands folded in front of him. He was wearing a smirk that suggested there was something enormously funny at the end of his gaze, perhaps me. After a few minutes of his smirking and staring, he began wiggling his thin eyebrows repeatedly.

“Why are you staring at me?” I asked.

He widened his eyes and exaggerated his impish smirk.

“What's going on?” I insisted, but he only continued his mime antics.

I turned away to escape his disquieting stare. He got up and sat at a table in my field of vision. He then slowly turned his head toward me and continued his strange smirking. What he did next was even more curious. He lit a cigarette and let it burn away in the ashtray, not smoking it. I watched as the cigarette burned to the filter, discharged itself from the ashtray, and rolled to the ground. He then scouted the passing people, waved his hand twice, and a stranger walked towards me with a glazed look in his eyes. The man opened his mouth to speak: “Ammonius Saccas was a porter in Alexandria. He and Plotinus first met in a mirror. All of Greece, Rome, and Egypt had begun to worship the god, Serapis, drawn from the insistence and influence of Apuleius, Plutarch, and Lucian. Ammonius said that skepticism was death.”

The man snapped out of whatever trance he was in and resumed walking.

An eerie hum followed. Castellemare produced another cigarette. No one seemed to notice that smoking was banned from indoor spaces years ago. No one seemed to notice the incongruous placement of an ashtray.

“What do you know about Obsalte?” Castellemare finally spoke.

“Little to nothing.”

“Good. Keep it that way. It has been my experience not to be tempted by Gimaldi's busywork. What you just heard about Ammonius is all you really need to know.”

“I want to know more,” I said, almost in defiance. “What I just heard was a bunch of mystic gibberish. I could ask any old Sigurd to go out and find me that bullshit conspiratorial mumbo jumbo.”

“If you insist. Barbaric warriors, if allowed to live long enough, usually turn to religion. Did you know that? It's a kind of sickness when the glory of combat is over, and the desire for deification or piety takes over. But it takes a catastrophe, a great crisis, for them to make this leap from the sword to the cross.”

“I don't follow.”

“I didn't suppose you did. You seem to be a dim boy.”

“Gimaldi warned me off of you.”

“I trust that you've read his counter-book?” he asked probingly.

“I did,” I replied. “A bit sketchy in places, though.”

“Ha! Gimaldi as a man is sketchy in places! Take it from someone who has read him before: he likes the textual leaps. It's his way, a throwback to his origins. He's afraid to produce worthy works. A textual leap is his way of veiling an omission. Him, a researcher? Pfah! A detective? Oh, laughs! I told you last time we all met: it is just a metaphysical joke book, nothing more. Come with me: I have some things to show you.”

I followed him out of the pub and into a taxi. What had I to lose? I was being pulled in the direction of yet another mystery, and my ability to resist was absent. When we arrived, we were in one of those quietly set upscale parts of town where old houses crumble behind large trees. Castellemare's house was an enormous and old testament of what wonders could be produced with stone. We entered, went up a winding flight of stairs and reached an oak paneled door. As he opened it, I could see a marvelous yet disturbing thing. The room was all mirrors, stacked reflections emanating from the walls, ceiling, and floor.

“This is what I believe to be called a Tain, a large array of scrying glass, or what have you,” he explained. “Want to know more about yourself?”

“Myself?”

“Certainly. Most people do. Some people will go as far as to STEAL BOOKS AND LOOK FOR ANY TRACES OF THEIR OWN NAME. SUCH PEOPLE ARE INCURABLE NARCISSISTS WITH AN EXAGGERATED SENSE OF PERSONAL ENTITLEMENT. Anyway, just gaze into one of these looking glasses and let the mind go its own way.”

 

[The obvious insertion and capitalization of the phrasing was making it seem rather clear to me that this book was meant to be read by me. Why would someone go to the trouble of upbraiding me in print?]

 

Hesitatingly, I positioned myself in front of a mirror, my reflection cast in all directions at once, stretching outward on all sides towards infinity. I began to muse over the form I saw so ubiquitously present: myself - and this was not a pleasant image or feeling. But this vain introspection soon gave way to a kind of aleph-effect... I was able to stretch my thought to the outside, bring all those seemingly disparate and brief experiences into view. I could not only see Gimaldi's house in my mind, but I could sense it, and the road construction nearby... a cement pipe... stenciled letters... An inspiration enough to title a book... Stenciled letters not intended for that inspiration, an expiry date, a cement pipe consciously or unconsciously engaging an old man's attempt to write a book... Finally, the sense impressions must have overwhelmed him... This world, so intriguing, yet so false... The man named his book after the most absurd presence: a cement pipe's stenciled letters that read “Best Before 2099”. It announced a subtitle: De Imitatio Calembouri. The book said it was volume three. The book was about what happened after the synthesis, the atrocity, and the cataclysm. Did I know what any of these things meant? I saw an inscription within the infinitely mirrored space that may have been the full inversion of mind: as fish grow in proportion to the size of their container, knowledge too grows in a like fashion. What of knowledge in an infinite space, in an infinite library?

A hand touched my shoulder, coaxing me away from the reflections; it was Castellemare sporting another smirk. He led me down to his den. His decor was partially Baroque, but mostly eclectic, the ooze and overflow of an antique dealer's warehouse. A painting hung on the wall that bore his likeness. I asked about it. It read, Aetatis Suae 33.

“Oh, that? A portrait and nothing more. You wouldn't know the painter. He never came to be recognized - just faded away, died. Artists are rarely important until the second act. Say, that Tain was a hoot, wasn't it? There was a fine story about such a room, one that inspired me to install it in the first place. It was about a prisoner who wakes up in a room very much like that one, but the space of his confinement keeps expanding every day although the appearance is exactly the same. I believe that story can be found and read in a very particular labyrinth. It is of no matter – just one of my little interests. That, and the Library, of course.”

“Library?”

“A very special one, young man. Gimaldi did not tell you of this? Tsk-tsk. I thought he would have had the decency to give you a reason to avoid the likes of me.”

“Where is this library?”

“Anywhere. To speak of space is so dull. Remember that short story I was telling you about, the one with the mirrored room? Well, in my Library, I have plenty of copies of it.”

“You're quite the collector,” I said, veering on sarcasm but stopping short since I was in a home I could easily be ejected from.

“No, I never collect things. I despise the fetishism of sets. I prefer organizing what is collected. I am the Librarian, and the copies of this story I have possess different authors, different endings, written in different styles. I am sure there is one in there written by you, one by Gimaldi, and one by me. But that is not why you are here. You are here because you are on a quest for knowledge, knowledge on Obsalte.”

Without giving more than a cursory glance at one of his shelves, he pulled out a leather-bound text with ribbing on the spine. I was actually not looking for information on Obsalte; I had forgotten that quest and was now more consumed with finding more about Gimaldi and Castellemare.

“This is what you may need. In there,” he said, “You will not find answers, but more questions. It isn't about Obsalte directly, but more about us – Castellemare and Gimaldi. Consider this a temporary loan; I will require this book soon, perhaps on short notice. You may wish to start reading it tonight.”

The book was entitled Codex Infinitum. I had read a few chapters from it before, a book I had chanced upon at a used bookstore that had attracted me with its heavy Latinate title, the gravity of some secret trusted only to me. The book itself was a desperate disappointment, and I had cast it aside despite mention of Gimaldi and Castellemare. Why did I toss it away so quickly?

“I have this book already,” I said, handing it back.

“Oh, really? Look again.”

“No, I'm serious. I have it already. I bought it a few months ago at a used bookstore. From what I read, it's about an infinite library tended by someone with your name, and an employee named Gimaldi. I think one of you rushed out and self-published it... maybe as some twisted combat of who can libel whom the best.”

“You must have the rough draft, then.”

“No, I don't think so,” I countered. “My copy is dated 1977, a paperback – but I have a feeling it was published a few years ago. This book is... “ I looked in the front matter before declaring, “Published in 1889. That would make my edition more recent.”

“Sigh. Your sense of temporal succession is so... linear,” he said as if the word were distasteful. “I don't expect you to understand, but this book that you have in your hands is the edited and complete draft, whereas what you have at home is a very early, and very bad copy. Besides, better books were published in 1977... An impressive scholarly text on a book I leant someone, actually. No matter.”

“No, I don't understand. Did the publisher of my edition decide to print the earlier draft?”

“No, the publisher of your edition published what was available. This book you have – the revised edition – was never released... at least not in this world. This book has several histories, but let us stick to the one that is most common among them all. There were two early drafts of the Codex Infinitum. In the first, it was incomplete, and only two or three chapters had been written before the author abandoned it to focus on other projects. These chapters were published in some literary periodicals, but the rest of the story remained blank. In the second draft, the author attempted to bulk up his page count and alleviate the guilt of not being productive, and so sloppily attempted to intercalate two earlier unpublished novels into the text: one entitled Best Before 2099 and the other 7^th Meditation: Mountains Without Valleys. These two very early works were part of the author's juvenilia, and it showed: bloated and pretentious writing, wooden dialogue, hasty attempts to create atmosphere, frequent invocations of medieval thinkers, unbelievable events. The problem with the awful second draft was that there was no seamless integration of the texts, and obviously no attempt to commit a serious rewrite of them. The stylistic differences were plain to see, and the author's laziness let that stand for a time. Thankfully, upon the advice of a close personal reader, he undertook that wretched and exasperating task of rewriting those texts. It proved difficult because he was forced to confront his horrible writing, and to delete entire swathes of text where there were salvageable ideas and phrases. As a historical text, it is a complete hash! Of course, the Library isn't fussy about possible and speculative histories sitting on its shelves.”

“So I have the second draft?”

“We can look that up in the catalogue, but you evidently do not have the final revised edition – until now. What is curious is that in the revised edition, Gimaldi is reading Gimaldi. In fact, he is reading our story right now, trying as you are to develop his disparate set of clues to come to a conclusion to the mystery.

 

[This added contrivance to the tale was making me feel ill. I was beginning to think that Castellemare had written this himself, knowing I would take this book, and seeming to find great amusement in tormenting me.]

 

“I don't get it. Gimaldi is reading us right now? This is happening in this book?”

“Right down to the very dialogue,” Castellemare smiled. “Awful as it is – I can almost hear Gimaldi groaning. We are not very convincing or interesting for Gimaldi’s tastes, I’m afraid.”

“How can that be? This is happening in real time.”

“Is it? Also, don't confuse one Gimaldi with another. The Gimaldi you know here is not the same Gimaldi of the main story of Codex Infinitum. There are very significant differences. Don't be fooled by facile similarities just because the names are identical.”

“There are two Gimaldis?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, losing his patience. “Two of them, if not more. There are, at last count in this book, three of me. There is only one of you, although you are referenced insofar as the other Gimaldi is reading about you trying to wrap your mind around the fact that there are two Gimaldis! And, in at least one implied mention, you are actually Gimaldi, which is another hilarious little hoot!”

This gave him some bizarre pleasure.

“And,” he continued. “Gimaldi – the other one, the one you don't know except through this book I am lending you – is as equally confused as you are. He will likely not take this seriously.”

“Why?”

“I'd suggest you – and the Gimaldi reading this – keep a pen handy and underline the names and dates in this book to refer to later... it may get a bit confusing. Anyway, Gimaldi believes that I am a trickster deceiving him with books designed to drive him mad. Of course, he stole the book in which he is reading us now. However, his trust and understanding of the Library is very small, and part of him doubtless either believes I have written this to fool him and let the book fall into his possession when he thinks he stole it, or that the world itself is founded on irrationality.”

“This is making me a bit dizzy. I'll ask anyway: what is real, then? If we are merely characters in a book, and yet I can read the other Gimaldi as a character in a book where he is reading me, which narrative is real?”

“They both are; they all are. There is even another book based on these two entitled The Infinite Library which is simply another version of this story. All are equally real.”

“But this is circuitous! I am reading him, he is reading me reading him, and I am reading him reading me reading him... It is infinite!”

“Yes! An ouroubouros, the snake that eats its own tail, eh? I do get my jollies with paradoxes.”

“But there has to be a starting point; there has to be a true narrative that started all the others.”

“Your tenacity to the artifice known as Reason is adorable. Again, you insist on being so damn linear. If you don't like questions, don't bother asking them. Seek all you want for answers, but the universe pays out in the coin you give it, so for every question, get one in return, quid pro quo. Now, if you'll excuse me... I trust that you can show yourself out,” he said, now departing into the enormous labyrinth of his home. I was left with an alleged revised copy of a book I had jilted, bafflingly published before my own copy.

 

[This endless recursion could be said to have an end. If Castellemare wrote this, it could all be bogus. Just another attempt to trick me. The scene itself was contrived, the whole purpose for what? Invite someone to see your mirror, lend him a book, start chattering about paradoxes, and then abruptly ask him to leave. No, this was not believable – it was written for my benefit.]

 

11

 

Editor's Note: This section of the manuscript was withdrawn very late in the press process at the insistence of the author. The author requested that this notice be put in place of the chapter, and that it once possessed a long discourse on avatars and their relationship to the endings of eras. The author wrestled with keeping such turns of phrase as “drooping crepuscular light” and various connections made between Plotinus and theurgy, and an even looser connection between Plotinus being induced by Ammonius Saccas to become an avatar. In the end, it was the author's request to excise this chapter to avoid any narrative confusion or burthen his story with the complicity of too much assumed knowledge in the history of philosophy. If Gimaldi had written it, as he would write the [title redacted], he would no doubt tart it up as he fancies to tart himself up with bloated language and pretentious references to philosophers he has not the mind to understand properly and patiently. Pity, that.

 

12

“Now you know,” Gimaldi said with tender resignation. “Blood has been spilt, and so we must take time and reflect on our given positions in this matter. Castellemare plays this game like a chess master, and he thinks like one, too.”

“I don't fully understand the danger in this situation,” I said, no longer disturbed by his usual melodrama. We were at his house.

“He brought you to see his mirrors, didn't he? That scoundrel of sensibilia! I should have cut him down a long time ago.”

“That doesn't seem so generous of you. I've always had this picture of you as being a man of patient reserve and cryptic wordplay rather than swordplay.”

“As you might have noticed, I do not live in generous or enlightened times,” he said, leaving me with his wife in the parlour while he fetched another drink.

Some time had passed and I felt the awkward ambiguity of either leaving or staying. A house like this, with its eclectic decor of antiques and old conte prints of lithe nude women, had with it a strange gravity that rooted me where I stood. With all the clutter in that humid parlour, the walls seemed to close and expand, like a moist lung. Gimaldi's wife was smoking from a hookah with her feet dangling like heavy fruit, legs hung over the arms of the cushioned armchair. She would not pass a word to me for some time, absorbed in her little act of exoticism.

“Don't mind,” she said, issuing a dragon's breath of billowing shisha smoke from her thin lips. “He gets over-emotional about Castellemare. He is upset with having this reminder of the man who defied him, who keeps turning up at the most inopportune times. It is like a teacher who carries an eternal fault for not having corrected an unruly student who keeps haunting him. That's what Castellemare does.”

“Castellemare haunts him?” I asked, absorbed by a stark, high-contrast charcoal drawing of a tall, nude woman with what seemed to be a swastika tattooed on her breast.

“Oh, incessantly. It's all part of their meta-fiction, and a fabulation at that. Gimaldi is happiest when surrounded by the past. You know the elation one feels when rediscovering a childhood teddy-bear? Multiply that tenfold when my husband encounters books and prints from times gone past. Now reverse this elation, and then you'll understand how he feels about Castellemare. Castellemare is the one that kills any hope for history.”

The east wall was made up of one enormous shelf of books. I pointed to it and asked, “May I?” She nodded.

I will not list the texts Gimaldi had in his possession. I had been delving into my borrowed copy of Codex Infinitum, and the other Gimaldi (in that other world) only kept as many volumes as would not sell. By contrast, this Gimaldi that I knew hoarded his books, and perhaps the very thought of selling even one of them would have been agony. The Gimaldi of the book I was reading seemed younger in many ways, but with some of the same closeted habits. I began to wonder what the other Gimaldi would have thought of this one, or me for that matter... But the answer that would dispel my wonder was tucked somewhere within the book I had in my possession. Were we doing the same thing, I wonder? Was that other Gimaldi reading my story just as much as I was reading him in order to discover the answer? In my reading, I had just finished the chapter where Gimaldi met Setzer and was introduced to Setzer's own version of the Library.

 

[If this was my invitation to editorialize what I thought of the narrator or this depiction of myself, it would not be kind.]

 

Gimaldi returned, and I spared no time in haranguing him with questions.

“Castellemare gave me a book to read and -”

“I don't want to hear it,” Gimaldi said, waving his hands as if frantically trying to erase my utterance from the air. “Next thing you'll say is that it is about me. His entire collection of books is filled with maddening lies, fabrications, things that should and cannot possibly exist. He makes a mockery of Reason, and you would do well to refuse his so-called gifts. You will only end up like many of the others he has enticed into his labyrinth of error. He is trying to turn you against me. He is trying to win you over as his disciple, but do not be fooled: he is not doing this because he desires disciples or thinks you of any merit; he is doing this only to ensure that I have no one on my side. That I remain alone!”

It was a pathetic outburst despite the dramatic intention.

“Did you write the Codex Infinitum?” I asked.

“Did I... did I – what, now?”

“As a means of libeling Castellemare. Or did he write it. The edition I bought gives a publication date of 1977, but there are some pretty sure signs that it was a self-published job, maybe a few years ago.”

“I have no idea what you are blithering about. You see?! This is the sort of mad nonsense Castellemare puts in your head. I told you to avoid him. And now he has your head twisted!”

Gimaldi feigned exhaustion in order to cut my visit short. I took the cue to leave, feeling that I had somehow hurt the man. If I were Gimaldi, I would have felt that there was no way to compete against a Sphinx full of fascinating new surprises.

 

I phoned Sigurd and we made our apologies. We agreed to meet, and I desperately wanted a reprieve from this braided mystery of two enigmatic men who spoke only in tormenting riddles. Gimaldi wanted my trust, my belief, my efforts to write him into the world with one hand, and to erase him with the other; I was scared. For all I knew, Castellemare wanted my bones. This was why I called Sigurd. I needed a break from being batted around between two old lunatics. It was never clear to me what my motive ought to have been in continuing associating with them at all. Is it clear to you? Who am I anyway?

It was a time to be firm, for I did not want Gimaldi's wheedling me to write that book. No, I would refuse to write the book. There was nothing special about me. I was not the ideal candidate to do as Gimaldi required unless, in his view, the only criteria was that someone was indulgent enough to listen. Selected by someone else's desperation.

I spilled into the day, darkness tumbling awkwardly out of a tomb. My knees ached with each hurried step I took, but my purpose was clear. By a tree overladen with icicles, a tree seemingly driven as an afterthought in the middle of the public park, I waited. Sigurd's goofily gaunt form came shambling down the path, his shadows a vacillating braid across the blue-tinted snow. I had the Codex Infinitum in my hand, the pages held under such pressure that I thought they would stick together. I had brought it as both a prop to tell a story of what had been happening lately as well as a peace offering. It would make Sigurd feel special, which was his only need in friendship, the appeasement of his narcissistic pathology.

Truth was, he was perhaps the only one I could trust. I would launch immediately into the problem – or the host of problems that whirled madly about in a halo of biting flies. The colophon to the Codex Infinitum sported some unusual phrases to end a rather long-winded and sentimentalist few pages on the wonder and mystery of libraries. These phrases I showed to Sigurd, and they worried him as much as me.

The colophon spoke of the book having two printers working collaboratively: a German and a Venetian. I thought it a bit antiquated to have a last page colophon, and perhaps just a bit too pretentious. The rhyming colophon read as follows:

 

By the fruits of the invention does A. Setzer punch the words of the author

and under his charge, his talented protege, C. Anderson.

In copies numbering hundreds two, first edition's bother,

and in copies numbering hundreds three, by that famed printer's son

Runneth to a second edition courtesy of Jakob Sigurdsson.

 

What comes first, the doctor or his education?

A synthesis imminent, but causing much consternation!

 

The colophon's ending verse was rather bad and jingling, but the curious resemblance of the second printer's name to Sigurd's was far too glaring to ignore.

“What do you think it means?” he asked me.

“It could just be a coincidence, really, but this book has quickly become a bit troubling.”

“What's it about?”

At this bald question I could only fall mute. That this was the completed work published well before the incomplete one was difficult enough to understand, but its contents concerning Gimaldi and Castellemare was too hard for me to explain by way of summary. I had not heeded Castellemare's advice to underline important dates, names, places, and so I was lost. As well, the name of A. Setzer was repeated; in the story, Gimaldi visits the mad artificer for answers, and yet here is this same Setzer attributed with having printed the first edition of the book. Was this some elaborate fictional hoax perpetrated by Castellemare, or – and I had not ruled it out yet – Gimaldi? I had to know. Sigurd could tell that I was at a loss to explain what the book was 'about.'

“Where did you get this book?” he asked.

“Guess.”

“Castellemare?”

“Yes.”

“Let's find Castellemare,” he said plainly. “Maybe if we both press, he'll give us some answers.”

 

He wouldn't prove that difficult to find; in fact, he found us. We went to the nearby cafe to figure out how to find him, and there he was, decorated in his usual smirking fashion, a sartorial court jester.

“Gentlemen! What a surprise,” he said, his affectation slightly foppish.

“We were just about to launch an expedition to find you,” I said.

“Well, you can call it off; here I am. What can I do for you?”

“We want you to pony up some answers on this book you lent,” Sigurd said.

“You again? Get back into your cups and stay there until your own confounded thoughts untwine you.”

“Leave him be,” I warned.

“I see you have come together in force. Hoping that a little intimidation, some tag-team coercion might loosen my tongue? You have the book – why not try reading it before you start pestering me with the ultimate meaning of its plot? And don't tell me you have read it, for I know you haven't, and what you read was not all that careful now, was it?”

“There's something spooky in this book, frequently mentioned,” I began.

“And you hate suspense? Are you coming to me to lodge a complaint? Did I choose unsuitable reading material for your delicate sensibilities?”

“Why don't you just tell us what the real deal is about this damn book?” Sigurd charged.

“Why don't you ponder the relevance of your appearance in this scene. You haven't even read the book, so why are you making belligerent demands at all?”

I knew Sigurd; being outed for not reading something soiled his desired image that he be perceived that he had read everything.

“Let's not get testy, boys. Come back to my house for a light chat,” Castellemare offered to me alone.

“Only if Sigurd can come along.”

“For comedic relief? For insurance? Do you think you'll come to harm on account of these bird-like bones of mine? Fine. If you insist, you can bring your buffoon along. My friend, you read bad books and keep bad company, and that is just an observation – take it or leave it. I still can't believe you read Gimaldi's awful little opus.”

“Hey, lay off Gimaldi's book,” Sigurd said.

“That self-indulgent, overwrought, frivolous bilge? It is nothing but his attempt to cash in on the meteoric rise of marginalia that is so in vogue these days, a little haughty and high-handed mystic slush,” Castellemare readily dismissed. “I fail to understand your loyalty to the man, but I suppose it takes all kinds. Gimaldi cannot even emulate the trashiest and pulpiest of what is written these days.”

And so we were led back to Castellemare's home, that palatial villa that had awed me before, this time with someone whom could act as second witness to the strange wonder that was Castellemare's mysterious abode. I could tell that the magnificence of the home was not lost on Sigurd. The entrance was like a small cathedral, with stone banisters topped with immaculate spheres, opening outward to the walkway like a goliath's inviting hand. The doorway was both broad and tall. The doors were of thick and solid oak, rounded at the top to conform to the archway, and sporting a pair of unpolished brass rings as thick as a man's wrist. We could have spent an inconceivable amount of time wandering the immense edifice, losing ourselves in obscure paintings and seemingly unending adjacent rooms - always a room adjacent to another, each with a specific purpose, a nuance of utility just slightly different from the last. But it was not here that we'd marvel, but in the room I had visited before. I found it odd that I did not register all of this when I had been invited before.

A running carpet of red plush and gold trim tracing an interlocking fretwork of red lions weaved its way up a flight of stairs, centered perfectly down the middle of the hallways, all the way to the room in question. Once again I was staring at that oak door, still in the initial wonder of what was beyond it. And then the door was opened, and the eery magnificence of this mirrored room had remained as captivating as it had been before. It looked as though the room had no bottom or top, or any limit to its dimension. And when the three of us stood inside, our reflections went off in all directions at once, down to an infinite abyss and up to an infinite summit. Each reflection became smaller, and one could not help but to perceive a great distance that was only an illusion. But it was the same for Castellemare and Gimaldi: two men whose perilous learning, profound mystery, and alleged mutual antipathy was much like this room: an illusion of depths and distances, a mere compounding of reflections ad infinitum.

Castellemare was the first to speak: “a room like this is perceived differently by many people. For some, it is the joy of humility that comes through the immensity of reflections that reduce the voyeur to the infinitesimal. For others, this same perception brings fright to the insecure. And still, for others, there is a childish simplicity to the great wonder of possibilities stretching out into eternity for them. If you want the representative metaphor of history, it is here. If I needed a crude analogy for the Library, this would be it, along with winding stairwells.”

Castellemare didn't need to explain, for I understood, albeit in a differently way than he intended. I looked up and saw infinite causes. Looking down, I could see infinite effects. I was just an intermediate and accidental link in the causal chain, a static point in history. And no matter where one was in the chain, the view would remain the same because the causal chain extended into past and future endlessly. On the horizontal axis of reflections was the many variables, possibilities each affected by another series of causal events.

Castellemare requested that we sit in one of his many parlours.

“Let us sit in the Champagne Room and talk,” he said.

“Where's that?” Sigurd asked, still dumbfounded by the effect of the Tain.

“Adjacent to the Bourbon Room, of course. Everybody knows that.”

We followed him and his laughter.

“Do you have a room in this place for every type of drink? Bring on the Tequila Room!” Sigurd said with inappropriate cheer.

“We needn't be silly,” Castellemare slightly admonished. “They are simply theme rooms containing the artifacts of certain geographic areas I had frequented, or representative of the flavour of a particular historical epoch.”

And so we sat, in plush chairs, around that enigma of a man, but the awe, immensity, and eerie quality of our surroundings seemed to compel us to keep quiet.

“Gimaldi's counter-book is... a naive epistle written in the spirit of one enfeebled by dogmatic mysticism,” Castellemare began with no preamble. “He comes from an ever-weakening tradition that believes that metaphysics is possible. Gimaldi will give up the ghost before any rise in the general sentiment could give way to the acceptance of his clumsy philosophic views. Recurrence entails time - time for the unfolding of transitions,” Castellemare said.

“You seem pretty sure that Gimaldi will give up,” I remarked.

“Yes, I do. I draw this conclusion from experience with people, and with the likes of Gimaldi. I have also read it somewhere.”

“This may seem silly, but I get the distinct impression that you and Gimaldi are struggling to see which one of you will win me,” I said.

“You make it sound like a courtship. I do not want your allegiance. I have no real need of such a thing. “ Castellemare was quick to dismiss, “just your patience.”

“Patience for what?” Sigurd asked.

“Patience to let the plot develop and maybe even enjoy it,” Castellemare replied with a smile.

 

[The remainder of this dialogue was missing. In its place, as if stitched there as an afterthought or a moral lesson was a brief and puzzling excursus that seemed to be a partial digression].

---

In this Order, our sacred symbols: the book, the mirror, the deciphering wheel...

The book.

The mirror [John Lerida]

Phantom relation:

a) Elemental conjuration (the sacred orthographers)

b) Destruction as preservation (the sacred biblioclasts)

One single columnar spine that keeps these two covers together, but itself hollow – a winding staircase. In one version, it is literal: a traveler's descent. In another, an opposition: the “sanscript” of reading what cannot be seen, what is between what is written.

 

The book as mirror, a phantom relation between two “things” not here now, but deferred, sliding off the infinitesimal moment of the now, of the present—yet ever-present even if it is just connected by phantom cables. I hold a crayon in my hand and transcribe myself—a virtual compendium—across the surface of the mirror, a mirror that I will fold up into a book once it has come to pass and I no longer create the reflection. I let the reflection cast itself, like a net, over me. And others come to this mirror-book, too, and see for themselves different things, varying reflections that I have no access to.

The others come to this book and remark it, bring their own transcription implements to its surface. Their faces are chalk white, like mine, but the reflections indicate different gods than what I am. They are other. But I am also other—to myself, fully and refreshingly self-alienated…and yet self-revealed in that moment of the mirror where I speak words to it and all it can do is mime the movement of my mouth.

I am a compendium, a bestiary, an encyclopedia, and it matters not if all the bundled data is correct, True, Good, Pure, even indigent of another time… it does not matter if the compilation of entries do not follow some recognizable alphabetical order, or a numerical order; I know the logic of my own book intimately, even if it is reams of iniquity, of self-deceit, playful illusion, a ghastly mirage, a complete laceration of self into splinters. All of this will be reflected in my mirror book, as I am sure it will yours. You will always find yourself - not anyone else - in the book. You are alone and the book only reflects your own image back at you. Never think you sought anything in a book other than yourself; that would be folly, delusion.

And the mirror book will be a surface of reflections, and these reflections will have no material volume—which is to say that they will have the absolute volume across an infinite(simal) space. These reflections will bring the gift of my compendium back to me in a split moment, conveyed in its own furrowed brow, its own haggard eyes, its own strained lines of a weary face, its own minuscule text from left to right. And I cannot close this book, even though I suspect it has covers and a spine. I would like to address all these anatomical features, to trace their contours and know them in a tactile sense as I close my eyes. Yet I do not wish to eroticize these features, as if learning her body in the night under the consistent laying on of hands. You may come to this book and a passage I find innocuous, superfluous, of mere verbiage and filler, might arrest you, seize upon you like a marauder…or captivate your eye with a secret desire to break the serpent gaze, to look away. The book not only receives, but freely gives, but it is itself a translation into another language, a kind of transcendental image, a carnival of minds.

The spine, the covers, the numbers, the corners, the margins, the flaps, the fold down the middle that suggests both closure and opening. This is a book. This is the book in its barest, coldest, anatomical reality. If it does not actualize (or conceal, dissimulate, reveal, fulgurate) in any other manner than this empty ontological proposition wherein we enumerate its constituent properties, then the book may not be essentially differentiated from the chair, the caboose, the walls of a house, the hinges on a door. A book—as mirror—must both say and play; or rather that you say, it plays. You play, it plays more. It will always exceed your capacity for play by its nature of excess. Deceptive, it is always more than the sum of its parts. It is even more than its constituent whole, more than anything. It is still bifurcating, being transcribed upon, giving off another surface. Always another angle. The spine or its covers—that thick hide, that skin that encloses textual innards—does not inhibit its growth like it would a body. The pages, like Borges’ book of sand, are always multiplying, in a kind of cell division. This being the definition of the infinite book nested within the infinite library.

 

[At this point, the manuscript breaks off once more and attempts to satisfy explanation for the first reference, the leitmotif of the mirror (”The mirror [John Lerida]”). Again, I am named, a story within a story, and the mirror splits or twins here given that the mirror I was being prompted to see was initially between “myself” and Castellemare. This may pass as sophomoric pop-psych thesis of saying Castellemare and me are one and the same. The style shift here with the John of Lerida story is, again, very abrupt.]

 

John of Lerida and the Mirror of Fire

 

But of sublimer powers is that device by which rays of light are led into any place that we wish and are brought together by refractions and reflections in such fashion that anything is burned which is placed there.

-Roger Bacon, Epistola fratris Rogerii Baconis de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magicae (1252)

 

While entertaining a friend and colleague one evening from the University of Reggio Calabra, I was treated to a copy of his article that was currently in press on Peter of Maricourt, a 13th century French scholar who worked diligently on magnetism, including a text entitled Epistola de Magnete (1269). As I came to understand from my learned friend, Peter of Maricourt's interests extended beyond magnetism and he was attributed to having fashioned a mirror that produced combustion at a distance. Given my fascination with mirrors, this anecdotal point intrigued me, and that was when my friend dropped the name of John of Lerida. Of course, the specialist nature of my friend's research made study of this figure outside the scope of his pursuit, but I was currently aimless in my hungry desire to grant myself some kind of intriguing glass bead game to occupy my time. This story is more a capsule summary of my findings, a rather unskilled attempt at providing my readers with a few clues to disperse the mists that surround the name of this obscure thinker. As is the case with most of my researches, I seem to multiply rather than resolve mystery, but this is what I have learned:

 

John of Lerida's birthdate is not precisely known, but it is assume that he died in 1456, and was born on or around the leap year of 1404, when Pope Innocent VII came to papal reign. From the scant historical offerings, John of Lerida created a doctrine that was reprobated by the Church and eventually silenced altogether. He belonged to the Franciscan Order. The source of this doctrine has been lost to time, but some rumoured accounts as to its contents remain.

In the year 1444, the anti-Pope Felix V and his notorious desire for potable gold came to learn of John of Lerida, and asked him to write a text on how to transmute base metals into gold, expressed in Aristotelian terms. From a source of dubious authority, John of Lerida is said to have assented to this request. However, according to this same account, John of Lerida had a secret enemy in the Franciscan ranks, a bishop named only Xinevius (I have not found, in any of my research, any further mention as to validate this person's actual existence). John of Lerida spent two years compiling the text which he entrusted to his servant for delivery to Felix V. En route, the servant was detained and the text confiscated for review. Xinevius' agents had intercepted the servant and, on his order, hired a few copyists to alter the original document by the insertion of various heretical statements. The document was then rerouted to the current Pope, Nicholas V (a Dominican) who issued the order of reprobation. Given that the anti-Pope in Avignon did not receive the document he had requested of John of Lerida, the latter fell from favour. The text itself, originally entitled Secretum de auro potabili was changed to the more forceful Testamentum, filled with heretical invective not of John of Lerida's authorship. However, it is not as though John of Lerida had not already been suspect in his true opinions and writings, and so it was not so farfetched that he would be held in contempt.

John of Lerida cleaved to the unorthodox - if not heretical - view that God was composed of four substances, each corresponding to the four winds. This view he deduced from an obscure commentary (author unknown) of Al-Ghazali and a creative interpretation of the Almagest (the latter having already been listed in the Index for its profane novelties). His view of a four-winds deity had its oriental inflection, but this view was very meticulously couched with fidelity to the current doctrinal acceptance of Aristotle.

Due to a metaphysical storm that arose among the clergy at the time that John of Lerida distanced himself from, his being suspected heresy was seemingly forgotten until after his death when the case of John of Lerida was reopened by a zealous Cardinal who had the Pope's ear.

Like Amaury of Bena two centuries prior, he was disinterred from his consecrated resting place, and his followers sentenced to the stake, thus bringing an end to the Leridans.

Of the fifty or so Leridan followers (accounts vary), most were brought to ecclesiastical justice, and if any survived, history has been silent. The Leridan sect did not enjoy the obsessive historical attention the Cathars, Albigensians, or other heretical sects have since been subject to. Even a corresponding connection to a follower of Raimundi Lulli is based on conjecture unsupported by any reliable documentation. However, legend (which has the ability to flourish without the fetters of textual proof) has it that John of Lerida had been inspired by Lulli's idea for devising the cipher wheel, and that the two men shared a close intellectual bond that went willingly unrecorded for reasons of secrecy and protection.

Like Peter of Maricourt, John of Lerida is attributed with having perfected upon the former's work for a mirror capable of creating fire. The value of such a potential weapon in the late medieval world is beyond dispute. The alchemical method required to bring this fantastic mirror to term would have made obfuscation from Church concern challenging.

If the Lerdians, or what remained of them, had survived the purge and took with them the works of their Master, it is most likely they remained in hiding and delved deeper into the secrets of the Mirror of Fire. If this is the case, it is yet again an instance of operation in the blind spot of recorded history.

There have been a few loose mentions in the modern day, although these may be a jape or a product of hasty and nostalgic connection. A self-proclaimed “Leridan” was declined a position at Lockheed Martin for a proposal involving a space-based mirror that could amplify the sun's rays and be directed at any target on earth via computer - effectively functioning as an enormous and devastating magnifying lens.

However, these airy speculations and scant clues cannot be adequately corroborated by any authoritative source, so we must well leave them for more patient hands. It is best to return to the inventor himself, and the mysterious properties of his mirror.

It is said that he applied a tain of his own alloy on the back of a mirror, a recipe he refused to divulge. Some say it was of specific parts mercury and obsidian, while others go as far as to say that John of Lerida discovered the substance that unites the terrestrial and celestial realms, harmonizing matter and form in ways far more conclusive and concrete than any of Aristotle's abstract syllogistic proofs. Others have declared (without due authority) that he was a student of optics, and this his use of light and reflection was a matter of clever trickery. However, none of these reports record ever having witnessed the product of John of Lerida's feverish pursuit, and there has been no physical evidence of any such mirror bequeathed to the ages.

In actual fact, John of Lerida was not in any serious danger of being placed under the Church's severe scrutiny given its preoccupation with more pressing political matters, and so it is unlikely that he would have felt any need to destroy a mirror of this nature in order to spare himself or his secrets. It is probably speculation (confessedly my own) that the mirror never advanced beyond the design phase, and so its manufacture would have been entrusted to his followers.

We come now to the dubious and contradictory information concerning his followers – the only trace clue that may bring us back to the man himself. One account lists them to be as many as fifty in all, whereas other accounts differ by a more modest twelve to thirty-six. Church records are equally as inconsistent since in two separate documents of relatively high authority, the number of Leridans burnt in 1459 were seventeen and thirty-six in the two respective records. A difference of nineteen followers is a considerable gap, especially given the refined and meticulous nature of Church record.

It would be tempting to believe that John of Lerida had at least one secretly sympathetic figure of high authority willing to sign off on a death order for thirty-six Leridans on paper while giving nineteen pardons in secret. The authority charged with executing the sentence would not have known the initial number, and would have recorded only those who appeared at the stake on the appointed day. It is tempting to believe this because I want to believe it; otherwise, I would have to admit that time has removed any trace of the Leridans and any hope of retrieving the truth.

Unlike other purges, the immolation of the Leridans was not made a matter of public record. The burnings were executed privately, and inquiries were silenced or lost in a maze of bureaucratic shuffling. Future popes had no knowledge of the Leridans – since the matter was of no memorable account – and so it is as though the history of the Leridans was written in invisible ink.

Of John of Lerida, there is scantly more information, but there is no explicit mention of magical mirrors or the sect he authored (if he in fact did so, and it was not created posthumously). The record merely itemizes unrevealing information: his ordainment, degree in the Franciscan Order, a few attributed works, suspected for novelty, and death. The four substantial scriptural commentaries he penned are listed, but are curiously absent from the Vatican's library holdings. In terms of his dealings with the anti-Pope Felix V, anti-Pope historians have found no mention of John of Lerida in any of Felix V's correspondence or personal notes. The same holds for Xinevius, which is odd given that a fierce opponent would have written something about and against John of Lerida. This is where the more solid connections of the history end, and a temporal gap emerges until the heyday of the Jesuit Order.

A one Xavier of Lerida took some interest in the history of his region and came across mention of John of Lerida. In 1571, Xavier of Lerida appointed the task to a group of mendicants to locate John of Lerida's written works. Lacking critical apparatus, a group of careless copyists (that pledged faith to the master in name more than deed) forged a hopeless confusion. Corrections were attempted by more schooled and conscientious minds, but this only made matters worse, compounding error with more error. Interpolations, elliptical phrasing, glaring lacunae, overwrought guesswork, and wild speculation transformed the Leridan doctrine (as it began to be called) from an elegant treatise to a veritable dog's breakfast.

Another aspect occulted in the deliberation of the Leridan Mirror was the tendency of overeager thinkers beguiled by optical sciences to insert their own findings in place of the Master's. Perhaps feeling well-intentioned to clarify any metaphysical or alchemical muddiness they erroneously perceived, they took gross liberties in editing our every nuance of the Master's preparatory design for the Mirror by merely imputing to him their own scientific prejudice and optical treatments. Namely, the simplicity of natural science in stating that mirrors in a particular configuration can cause rays of light to converge on a single point did ill-service to John of Lerida's rarefied exposition. If we were to take the Jesuit copyists' view as being a faithful reiteration, then John of Lerida's work would not have been suspected of any heretical danger. The problem with this selective rereading of the Leridan Mirror is the risk of leading subsequent scholarship to reduce John of Lerida as being merely another amateur observer of optical phenomena. If said interpretation held, John of Lerida and his invention would be of only minor and inconsequential anecdotal significance.

Despite the botched and brief-lived John of Lerida revival inaugurated by the Jesuits, which only seemed to bring the matter to a premature and uninteresting conclusion, I cannot in fairness dismiss the Leridan Mirror as settled or anything less than an enigma. To assume that he was some amateur observer or a trickster does not accord with much of the intrigue surrounding his name, nor several of the dangling ends of this mystery. Since I had come to an impasse, I approached my friend – the Peter of Maricourt scholar – with my findings to see if he could be of any assistance in directing my inquiry. This is the letter he sent me:

 

Dearest Friend Gimaldi -

I'm glad to hear that you are keeping mentally active with these research aerobics. I've always considered you a serious mind since I first met you, and serious minds in an age of academic celebrity are a sad rarity. I am afraid that you have made an appeal to one of my intellectual blind spots since I doubt that I can provide you with any other information than you have already quite astonishingly uncovered. Peter of Maricourt is a much more accessible topic, but you prove yourself the high pedigree of scholar that takes the hardest road in choosing a topic where nearly all the leads have gone cold. Although I most likely lack the finesse of mind you possess or the sources you have acquired your information from, could I be so bold as to make a speculative gesture by declaring that John of Lerida's Mirror is not actually so crudely an object as it is a metaphor for a more sophisticated metaphysical view? It was not uncommon for the time that learned men with dangerous ideas would conceal their ideas metaphorically, or in code, or by other means. This, of course, is just my humble suggestion, most likely incorrect, and something you have already considered (and since dismissed). I will make my inquiries here. For the time being, bon chance!

 

Although my colleague could not furnish me with any useful links, his suggestion that John of Lerida's Mirror was purely symbolic had considerable merit. I devoted my research time toward metaphorical uses of the mirror in matters of philosophy and theology. It was then that I came across a small work simply entitled Speculum Mundi by Theodotian of Patmos, 1493. In it, he claims that God is the culmination of all converging light. Against the view of a round earth that faces outward, he states that the sky is a pure illusion, and that we are all residing on the inside of a sphere. The sun (or God) is at the centre of this sphere and casts the light of creation upon the world. The world, in turn, reflects this light back unto God. A diagrammed model appears in this text where light emerging from a central source inside a sphere is reflected back toward the centre. Theodotian makes frequent mention of Heraclitus who said all was created by fire and would return to it. The strong Pagan and anti-Church doctrine nature of this text was obviously heretical. God becomes the fire-source of all created matters, and all created matters reflect themselves unto him, perpetuating God as a fiery entity. This co-dependence between God and matter reduced God's divinity as partially reliant on the empirical world. Theodotian cites Aristotle as his authority in only one instance, making a hasty deduction: Aristotle states that when we think of the past, we look down; when we think of the future, we look up. What would otherwise be an innocuous anthropological observation becomes something other in Theodotian when he makes the connection here that God's fiery creation has already happened (past) and our future in returning to God-as-fire is yet to be (future). Humans, according to him, have an innate understanding of this temporal relationship, the kind that plants also possess in growing toward the sun. Furthermore, Theodotian states, it would be possible to make “smaller gods” by somehow suspending a source of light inside a perfect sphere that had a mirrored interior. The danger, he warns, of making either the mirror or the light source imperfect would be a disastrous conflagration.

Circumstances began drawing me away from my initial eagerness in recovering the truth behind John of Lerida. As a way of putting the matter to bed just as the Jesuits had done, I wrote an article that was subsequently published with my musings intact. The loose threads that suggested that the Leridans were possibly still active after all these centuries, using the Mirror of Fire as some representation of the true divine essence, factored a bit too strongly in my article. I say this because someone may have taken issue with my conclusions which may have brought to light something that wanted to stay hidden. The event took place three months ago at home. My curtains were open and it was a very sunny day. I was sitting beside the window and reading what would be my last book to be read in the usual manner. I saw two men in their 40s across the street. One made a bizarre gesture I have yet to recognize, while the other held some kind of oval object delicately curved on its edges, no bigger than a wallet. This object was turned just so and aimed directly at my eyes. The doctors did not believe me that this was the cause of my blindness, but rather I must have burned them by being too close to a flame. Suffice it so say, my condition was inoperable.

To be blinded by a mirror – any mirror, and not just the sort that is forged in the secrets of alchemy – is said to happen to many. We rarely see ourselves objectively and most often blinded by what it is that we see. In this case, I was blinded by my own folly, staring into a mirror and having reflected back at me a truth that was too much to bear – or was not mine to know. That I desired to reflect back at the world knowledge I had gathered on John of Lerida and his sect was a mistake, for some images are not meant to be reflected back into the world, but absorbed into that hidden, secret darkness.

 

[This section ended with what I would consider almost a direct taunt: Gimaldi, you little weaver of tales and fables, as blind as Milton and Borges with half of a half of their power! - This could have easily been written by Castellemare given the tone. Symbols for my benefit, perhaps, were heaping up, and the mirror only doubled them. The mirror divided the Library infinitely].

 

 

 

 

 

 

15

Cui Prodest?

 

Perhaps little more than the mere recollection of my face, as memory had presented it to me. The mirror was dirty, streaked, unclear, but my face was clearly unshaven. I gazed intently at the seemingly infinite eruptions of stubble that peppered my face, stubble that had taken on a new life as wiry spots on the pocked landscape. I steadied a slightly over-caffeinated hand gripping its implement to shear the sward of my neglect. Yet, I paused as if about to take stock in what I was, to repeat a mantra that was still fresh to me but felt prematurely stale: “My name is Gimaldi. I am 45 years old. I live in Toronto, Canada. My temples are grey. The bags under my eyes have developed their own baggage. I do not know if I am at the centre of a vast and incomprehensible mystery. I own no pets. I have no current love interests. I make my living with books. I am addicted to cigarettes, and perhaps addicted to my failure to quit them more so. I fancy myself as being of the rationalist mindset in making fair and meticulous deductions. I do not look good in the colour red or in profile.”

The mirror held every blast of projected image without itself being affected – a repository of endless recollections. And those fostered and provided by memory had their way of occulting the naked view. Perhaps I would see in the mirror a man twenty years his junior or senior, wasting my thoughts on what I would look like in the future or what I could have looked like had I adopted a healthier lifestyle. These thoughts would droop as the stems that were to transfer to them some kind of nutritive relevance were far too weak. Instead, I took to the repetitive act of scraping steel upon skin, leaving fallen black snow in the basin of the sink.

I stood and laboured – or, rather, fussed needlessly – with myself. I was a shut-in, feeling and being cosmopolitan but not actually being cosmopolitan except by the geography of the self upon which the distance between idea and its action is connected only by one road under heavy construction. I read books, or sold them, and was as leeched of life as they were. Just the idea of life, how it might look or feel or taste. I made pointless mental calculations I never broadcast to others... warming over swathes of memory alloyed with inherited social myths... what one ought to be or do by ages 30, 40, 50... I added to and subtracted from my own age comparing how many years past or until the next expected benchmark or age-ascribed standard. “Married by...” “Career by...” - just blanks and unsigned cheques. Physically older, no further, but too depressing to vocalize, a luxury of self-absorbed pity that timeless swaddling of the middle-aged man that summons as much feeble strength to combat it. Paralyzed by these self-directed sermons, rendered useless by a self-targeting grudge: I was at war with myself, against myself, through very slow and exacting punishment for I know not what. For being born? For crumpling rather than charging at opportunity?

Finding myself ambushed by my own self-created wringing, overwrought riddles within riddles, I pounced and gabbled at them, believing my squawks and barks of excuse or false courage would be flared and blared. But, bulldozed flat by mean, hard, little concerns... I could clutch at the very essence of myself, withdraw my hand with the root of it, and find it so small, so shrunken. And then I just let that part of me rest. My contribution to the story, overdue, underwhelming, but I was entitled to just a little self-reflection when I had been busy getting tangled in multiple mysteries.

The two weeks had past and I was expecting a research report from Jakob Sigurdsson sometime in the late afternoon. I had my doubts that he uncovered much, mostly believing that he most likely did not put as much effort into the task as he would let on. For me, the mystery was not deepening, but rather widening, increasing its dimensions topographically. Cynical as I could be, I had long since abandoned any hope in resolving it... and yet I held to the same fool practices of collecting the detritus of clues, recording all the tracks in shifting sand, trying to catch the scent of the answer as it reticently kept its distance like the horizon. That, and the reckless and coquettish tossing in my direction the handkerchiefs by figures like Castellemare who did so just to ensure that I would follow.

So far, no mention of the synthesis in what I had read. If this part of the plot was so integral, then it had to be introduced soon as the pages were beginning to run out. What was my purpose in reading the Backstory beyond mention of a few existing persons? The synthesis had not only failed to materialize as a plot item, but there was hardly enough space left in the book for it to be properly finessed. The Backstory had no plot motor, no engine: only an ugly chassis skinned with cheap material.

A knock at the door broke me from being entirely consumed with the problem. My continued wariness at receiving callers was still firmly with me. I looked through the peephole I convinced my rather miserly landlord to install and saw a familiar although unwelcome face.

“What?” I asked through the door.

“Let me in. No funny stuff. Just want to talk,” Angelo said in an exchange that could have equally found its context in being spoken between two lovers in a spat.

“I'm through with it, Angelo. Leave me alone.”

“I haven't come for the books. I just want to talk.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was not here to exact vengeance. He sounded more conciliatory than usual, and his generally brusque manner seemed to have receded deep within his leather jacket. I relented and opened the door, but barricaded him from entering by making of my body an obstruction. I had not given it any thought that Castellemare’s threat of sending Angelo to retrieve the books did not come to pass - until now. Why was I not visited earlier, and why were those two books still in my possession?

“May I come in?” he asked without a hint of truculence in his voice or composure. It was an endearing request, almost childlike.

I retreated back into my apartment without turning my back on him, sat on my office chair, letting my gaze trail him to a reading chair a good many safe yards away. I made the calculation of how quickly I could acquire the knife in the drawer if need be.

After an awkward silence, I asked him, “So, what is it?”

“Anton Setzer is dead.”

“Dead?” I echoed with incredulity.

“Very.”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday. At his bookstore, that shallow front of his,” Angelo said with some disdain, but immediately made a gesture of apology with his hands.

“Who did it?”

“That I don't know, but don't start making wild accusatory leaps here. My employer had nothing to do with it,” he petitioned, and I was inclined to believe him. For what little I knew about Castellemare, murder didn't seem to be in his character despite having all the motivations against Setzer to do so.

“Was it the Devorants, then?”

“The who?” Angelo said baffled as if struck with a foreign utterance. It was quite likely that Angelo was not high enough in the Order to have been told about the Devorants. I shook off the reference as he continued, “Anyway, there might be cause to believe that you had a hand in this.”

“Me? How so?”

“I know it would sound preposterous given how mild-mannered you are, but isn't it always the person you least suspect?”

“You read too many potboilers, Angelo.”

“Funny. He was found dead in the mystery section of the store.”

“Do you presume it may be the murderer's signature? Perhaps the person or persons involved are trying to send a message. And to this nonsense of me being somehow involved, get that thought out of your mind right now. Besides, if you truly thought I had a hand in it, why would you come here and bring me news of his murder? You seem a bit shaken, and, honestly, I don't think there was much love lost between the two of you.”

“He was a colleague, and a fellow of the book. Those are reasons enough to mourn the fallen.”

“How touching,” I said a bit too caustically. I redressed my tone. “It all sounds so unbelievable. How was he killed?”

“Force-fed. He choked to death on having pages of novels crammed into his mouth.”

“It sounds ghastly. There must have been more than one person involved to make that happen,” I added impotently. Truth was, I was already puzzling in different directions as to who the culprit was. From my final conversation with Setzer, I had reason to believe that the Devorants were involved.

“That hardly matters at this point. You're dead right: someone is trying to convey a serious message. My advice is if you are still poking your nose where it doesn't belong, you better quit it now. That means all your sleuthing and asking after things that are none of your business has to stop. I can spare you the trouble by telling you that there is no conspiracy to uncover, no secret or hidden knowledge to gain.”

“Setzer's murder, and the way it was done, suggests quite strongly to me that there is indeed a conspiracy of a kind. Booksellers are not traditional targets of assassins.”

Angelo was becoming agitated. “If this is a message, then you best heed it. Trifling with things you don't understand is a perilous offense.”

“Angelo, are you ever off the clock from this perpetual 'dark-robed ones' facade? Really, it's a bit much. And let me ask you this: why are you not here for the books? 'Perilous offense'... really, Angelo... According to what court? I'm expected to obey the savage rulings of a court I do not know, cannot see?”

Angelo stretched out one leg and rubbed it gingerly, turned his head and scratched his nose. “The boss has called it off.”

“What?”

“Keep 'em. The books. Fuck it.”

“Just like that?” I said, floored and suspecting some kind of trick.

“Listen, Gimaldi, this isn't personal. I do what the boss says, and if he says the whole thing's called off, it's called off, period. Don't ask me why because he has his reasons, and I don't ask why, either; I just do as he says.”

“If Setzer was done in this way, you may be in danger, too,” I offered with a slight dash of sympathy. If anything, despite how I was not fond of the man, he could prove a useful ally – or at least not an enemy. I had in my trust and so felt no reason to carry the standard of wariness around him. I related to him what Setzer had told me. I could tell that this was the first time Angelo had heard this news, for his eyes bulged in flashes of disbelief- or he was a good actor.

“Orders, merged libraries, syntheses, a real fine fucking mess all that,” he said, finally.

“You already know about the Orders,” I reminded him. “Should I refer to you by your proper title? Knight of Acquisitions?”

“I know only of the Order I belong to, none other. I knew Setzer had branched off to form some renegade order, but I couldn't have imagined it having all the refinement and traditional structure of what I belong to.”

“We have to piece this together, Angelo,” I offered again. For the first time, it seemed as though I was in possession of more information than he was, turning the positions around. “If this was not just some random murder, then it was a calculated hit. A big one at that since, given my understanding, Setzer was the patriarch of his Order, its founder. Someone had reason to kill him, and kill him the way that they did.”

“Stating the obvious. Who are these Devorants?”

“You may have to ask your employer,” I said flatly. “I've told you all I know.”

“The boss doesn't give any info for cheap. It would be against my station to make inquiries. It's part of the code.”

“Of the Order?”

“Rules, Gimaldi. We all have our rules, our duties, our obligations to the Craft.”

“Something has been bothering me, and I was hoping perhaps you could shed some light on it. We can both fairly agree that the 'boss' is a very savvy and calculating man with incredible foresight. There is no possible way that he would have simply let me have those books unless it was part of his plan, and neither would they still be in my possession if he truly wanted them back. The fact that you were told to drop the issue is also very telling. He intends for me to keep these books, despite the law of the Library.”

“I told you already, Gimaldi: his reasons are his alone. I take no part in the decision process, but merely do as I'm told.”

“Which brings me to why you have come here today. To merely relate news of Setzer's murder?”

“That had nothing to do with the boss' instructions. I just thought you might like to know, a small professional courtesy. The boss merely instructed me to tell you that the hunt was called off and that you can stop living in fear of him. That's all.”

Angelo appeared deflated. Everything I had reported to him was taking its toll, weighing him down. After a time, I asked him, “Have you ever read these books?”

“The ones you stole? No. I am not permitted to read anything from the Library unless my boss wills it.” And, after a time: “I should go. There has been a curiously sudden surge of slipped books, some of them appearing in strange places.”

“Such as where?” I couldn't resist from asking.

“Public places: subway terminals, park benches, another in a framing shop. There was even one duct-taped to Setzer's hand; that was how I found him.”

I decided not to press Angelo any further. I could see by the haggard look in his eyes and the slumped register of his voice that things had suddenly become quite complicated and confused for him.

“Angelo,” I said by way of parting, “Let's keep in touch from here on in. I think if something is afoot we'd do much better to keep each other apprised of what's going on, share some information from time to time.”

He was about to launch a retort, but thought better of it, nodding resignedly instead before leaving my apartment. I was left to ponder why so many books were beginning to slip, and in the places they ended up doing so. But this, like so many books, had to be shelved for a while since I needed to meet with my research assistant.

 

By the time I arrived at the pub – a location of his insistence – he was already there and was two pints in the lead, attempting to look mysterious but ending up looking more ridiculous than anything else.

“Hello,” I said tiredly, ignoring his affectation. I could tell he was trying to seem dramatic, and he kept tapping on a thin folder covered in silly arcane symbols – no doubt his flourishes. Someone of his stripe would be the last candidate any secret society would ever consider. He would thrust his ego forward with any such membership to a private fraternity, and would most likely give away all the secrets if it meant people would take notice of his importance. I was sure that he used his temporary role as my research assistant to pick up young girls with embarrassing teasers of “I'm doing research on dark secrets, but I've said too much already... “ - He just seemed the type.

“I have completed the first round of my appointed task,” he said with unnecessary gravity, bowing his head forward to meet me with a gaze that was supposed to convey same. “It is here.” With that, he slid the thin folder, with its clumsy insignias of recognizable secret societies and Egyptian symbols, toward me.

“Great. I'll just skim this now and take it with me,” I said.

“I went to considerable trouble in the process of my findings... some dangerous moments, as well... “

I sincerely doubted anything of the sort had happened, and so resolved to ignore his desperate clambering for my attention, so I scotched it with terseness. “Trouble and danger are pretty common. Thank you.”

Jakob seemed disappointed, and so with some petting I changed my tone to reflect that I was pleased with his diligence, and then parted company with him.

Upon skimming what he had, it was unsurprisingly subpar: mostly a series of jot-notes any high schooler could have obtained from an encyclopedia. Worse still were the personal speculations of Jakob Sigurdsson on the meaning of the information, unsusbtantiated links to Freemasonry, Egyptian rite, and whatever other tepidly overrated conspiratorial group he wanted to name. Mixed in with this were Jakob's theories about the pyramids and their link to godlike extraterrestrials and quotes from Aleister Crowley he tried to pass off as his own. It was a triteness heavily underscored with cliches, occultish bromides, and sloppy references to staid mysticism. However, Jakob's mediocre research did unintentionally put me back in touch with some of the basic information I needed in order to see how these references fit into this maddening puzzle.

I returned to my apartment and scanned what Jakob had given me. Skipping his macabre speculations, I focused on the verifiable details. Ammonius Saccas was indeed the founder of the Neoplatonic idea, Plotinus being the primogeniture of the movement as it has been bequeathed to history. In fine, Ammonius Saccas is generally associated with a plethora of Pagan mysteries of which I was not at all concerned since I believed that there was something of more merit in a less obvious place. Saccas had maintained a tripartite organization of the supreme essence, the emanation of that essence, and the divine soul of man to tame Nature. More interestingly, he had quite seriously advised against placing a too strict definitional division between Christians and Pagans, suggesting, it would seem, that such a line was a blurry one. Or, perhaps, that they were mirror surfaces of one another, inverted or distorted like the image in a carnival mirror. Brave words before punishment for heresy became such an institution where one could not deviate an eyelash from sciptural detail without the implications leading to all sorts of dread theological consequences.

I underlined mention of “emanation”, as it is a critical part of Neoplatonic cosmogony. That which flows from the original and supreme essence. Read in light of the Library, it was indeed the Library that held the position of the supreme essence that, like the Neoplatonic god, was unknowable and unreachable. The books were the emanations from this One-All essence of the Library, and Castellemare was the incarnation of the divine soul that used reason, order, and categorization as the necessary means of taming the wilds of Nature, or chaos. Granted, this was a series of thoughts going on ad libitum, but they were attractive.

Just as I had anticipated, Jakob turned up nothing on “Obsalte”, which, given a preternatural fear of a vacuum in his report, he subsequently filled with his conspiratorial drivel. My own research on this term was equally thin, coming up only with the sketchy proposition of Obs(olete) + old (German: alte).

“Anton Setzer” only turned up an entry on a Swedish mathematical logician of high renown, and Jakob had taken the confounded liberty of hastily connecting the logician to some half-baked conspiracy involving mathematics, the Templars, and Descartes. Given the ease by which I was able to locate Anton Setzer the book-seller via the internet spoke volumes about Jakob's incapacity for depth of research. The more I read the report, the more agonizing it became, the research task having been co-opted by Jakob's desperate need to transform it into a creative writing assignment. If that were not bad enough, he also elected to underline and highlight certain words and phrases with such daunting emphasis – words and phrases that truly required no such emphasis given their irrelevance to anyone but him and his feverish imagination.

The entry on Castellemare was inexplicably blank; perhaps Jakob had failed to find anything of any value, or could not bring himself to sustain his dark musings. His other entries were equally scant, or bloated with his gibberish, including a long polemic on ludic spaces in semiotics (incorrectly defining 'ludic' and not understanding one bit about semiotics). He had completely neglected any of the associated terms I had entrusted him to research.

Idly, I checked my email and found one by Castellemare. It took me a few solid minutes before I had the nerve to open it.

 

 

Upon reading this email, which I decided not to respond to, I had the unnerving image of Castellemare having composed it without his usual perma-grin. The meaning of his message – that my endless research would be in vain, that I would be blinded by the lack of clues – was also reinforced by something crudely literal in nature.

It began the very next day. Packages full of books and magazines I had not subscribed to started arriving in large quantities. Castellemare had the monetary means to do this, to inundate me with a barrage of unwanted books – most of them pure tripe, magazines for sport fishermen, catalogues for agricultural products, and so forth. More disturbing was one large box of books, 100 in number. A simple black cover on each of them, and half of them numbered from 1 to 50, the other half as well. The first 50 books simply had my name on the cover and nothing more, and the other half, Castellemare's. The books themselves were entirely blank inside. Perhaps this was his cheeky way of inviting, “if you think you will soon come to understand who I am, who you are, then go ahead and write our history.”