“Is she all right?” Voleta felt her throat constrict.
“Actually, in some ways, she’s much better, in other ways, worse. She had a bit of a shock.” The stag poured the tea with perfect grace, the stream steady and true. Voleta started after the first mate’s door, but Byron called her back. “No, no, no, she really must sleep. She’s had the procedure.”
Voleta stopped. The stag opened the sugar bowl with his lithe, polished hands, and using the set of delicate, silver tongs, extracted a cube.
“One lump or two?”
“Four,” she said, returning to the tableside. She slid into her chair without taking her eyes off of Byron. “What do you mean the procedure?”
“Perhaps it would save time if I just poured a little tea into the sugar bowl,” Byron said archly.
“Tell us what happened.” Iren laid her hands on the table and leaned at him.
Byron dutifully deposited four cubes into Voleta’s cup. “The Sphinx has replaced her arm.”
“That’s wonderful news!” Voleta said, petting Iren toward a chair in an effort to get her to sit. “But why call that a procedure? It only took a minute to remove. How long could it take to put it back?”
“The Sphinx had to amend some of the internal supports in her shoulder.”
“Internal supports?”
“Some of her bone had chipped away.”
“Oh, that’s so awful,” Voleta said in a hush. “Is she in pain?”
“Not at the moment; the Sphinx has seen to that. Though when she wakes up, she will be sore for a time.” He took a sip of tea, a practiced routine that was silent and kept his muzzle dry. He might stumble on occasion, but he was very confident in his tea-sipping skills. “It’s not the same arm as before.”
“He changed her arm? Just like that? Does she like it?” Voleta asked.
“You’ll have to ask her when she wakes up.” His expression straightened again and he set down his teacup. “Though that’s not why I’m here. I want to tell you something that she won’t, though you need to hear it. This is not coming from the master. This is coming from me.”
“I won’t keep any secrets,” Iren said. “I don’t like lying to my friends.” She gave Voleta a pointed look. The girl squirmed in her seat.
“Well, flog it if you have to: I’m still going to speak my mind. Do you know who the Red Hand is?”
“Of course,” Voleta said. “He’s the lunatic that tried to kill the Captain. He turned on the Commissioner like a rabid dog. I’d never seen such mad violence. Three cheers for Mister Winters for tossing that monster off the Tower.”
“Don’t say that to the Sphinx. He considers the Red Hand one of his greatest feats: he is the man with lightning in his veins.”
“Is? Was, surely.” Voleta said.
“He’s very much alive.”
“How is that possible?”
“As I said: he is the Sphinx’s greatest feat. Although, at present he is an invalid. The Sphinx has him shut inside a tank where he does nothing but sleep and mend. He’s been in there for months. Every time I see him, he looks stronger.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Iren asked, not bothering to conceal her distrust.
“Because it isn’t clear whether the Red Hand will hold a grudge. I’m saying that if you like Mister Winters and you don’t want to see ‘mad violence’ done to her, you should be… watchful.”
“Why would the Sphinx want to revive him?” Voleta was horrified to think her friend could be so callous. It was one thing to create him— the Sphinx couldn’t know how he would turn out— but now that she knew very well he was a monster, why bring him back from the dead?
Byron made another production of sipping his tea, and after reseating the cup on the saucer without ringing the porcelain, he said, “Because the Sphinx is preparing for war, and he needs all the help he can get.”
Senlin
& the Librarian
Chapter Eighteen
“All glory goes to the man who is willing to hurl himself, hat and boot, over the brink just to hear in his dramatic exit a smattering of applause.”
- A Beginner’s Guide to the Game of Oops
Day 2
It doesn’t matter what I write, only that I write something. I must keep my head down, must keep my thoughts in line.
What I need are a few of the old morning drills. They were always good for shouting the mind straight. Six times seven is forty-two! Six times eight is forty-eight! Six times nine is fifty-four! Class, what is our mnemonic for remembering the taxonomy of animals? Dan Kicked Penny’s Cactus. Ouch! For Goodness Sake. And what does that stand for? Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Ha!
I am writing this account on a flyleaf that I tore from a book at random. I know a flyleaf is a sacred thing: it is where a lover expresses their affection and an author, their awkward gratitude. I am ashamed to admit that I have forgotten the title of the book I defaced. I believe it was something related to the maintenance of barns. This is what I have come to: rank vandalism. I suspect that a society might endure for ten thousand years, and still fall apart in the span of one day. How flimsy is the veil of civility!
But I needed the paper. I need to write. My mind feels like a key turning endlessly inside a broken lock.
This pen is a small marvel. I found it on one of the desks. It has a reservoir of ink built into it. No dipping required! It is heavy and a little ungainly, but the strain upon my fingers is a small price to pay for the ability to write uninterrupted. What a blessing.
The librarian is resting now. Sometimes he sits and licks his paws and looks at me with his great green eyes, and sometimes he slinks off with hardly a sound. I’m terrified he will leave. But then, I have his food— his ghastly fish. I can’t even share the same air when he eats because his dinner stinks so savagely. Why in the world would Byron think I’d be tempted by such a thing?
I should look to see if the librarian is still there.
I should not have looked.
The librarian is there. But I should not have looked at who is petting him. Eye contact seems only to embolden it. Oh, it’s huffing in my ear now. It’s turning my spine to ice.
I will attempt to record from memory the names of my last class roll. Hugh Brice, Nara Doughtry, Penelope Doughtry, Stuart Greenwood, Gerald Kaufman, who once distinguished himself by falling so heavily asleep in the school’s outhouse that Mr. Brice, upon discovering his friend, announced to the class that poor Gerry was dead.
No, this sort of rambling won’t do. Eventually, I’ll read this, and find either encouragement or discouragement, sanity or its opposite.
The question is: what would I like to say to myself?
An observation. This is not a library.
The tradition among libraries of boasting about the number of volumes in their collection is well established, but surely, it is not aggregation that makes a library; it is dissemination. Perhaps libraries should bang on about how many volumes are on loan, are presently off crowding nightstands, and circulating through piles on the mantle, and weighing down purses. Yes, it is somewhat vexing to thread through the stacks of a library, only to discover an absence rather than the sought-after volume, but once the ire subsides, doesn’t one feel a sense of community? The gaps in a library are like footprints in the sand; they show us where others have gone before; they assure us we are not alone.
But here, in the bottomless library, I have not seen a single break in the procession of spines. The books are so numerous they spill onto the floor. Volumes crowd the benches and overload the lecterns. Fat reference books stand together against the wall as snug as molars. They occupy the stairs that spiral between floors; they lie under the water fountains, those dribbling gargoyles that mark the water closets, which are themselves full of books.
The Sphinx’s athenaeum distinguishes itself from a proper library in another, more essential way. None of the books are numbered. There are no subject plaques, nor,
as far as I can tell, any order to the shelves, not even alphabetical. The catalog is a shuffled deck. Which means that if the librarian turns out to be just a housecat out on an aimless trot, I will never find the Sphinx’s book.
And if we keep making turns, I won’t be able to find my way back either.
The air is redolent of parchment, glue, leather, and must. It is a soothing perfume. I wonder why. What is the appeal of this pulp and board technology? Books are seldom more than an author elaborating upon their obsession with the grammar of self-doubt. How superior are books to authors! Nothing believes in itself so much as a book; nothing is less bothered by history or propriety. “Begin in my middle,” the book says. “Rifle straight to my end.” What difference does it make? The book comes out of white, empty flyleaves and goes into the same oblivion. And the book is never afraid.
Day 3
Well, I did go on yesterday. Hiding under desks, scribbling like a madman. Not my finest hour.
I can’t imagine what the librarian thinks of me. I hesitate to even continue this record. There is nothing quite like sleeping on a pile of books in a bottomless library to make one question the need for one more written account.
Be that as it may.
Since this errand will apparently take several days to complete, I think an inventory is in order.
Tins of cured fish (22)
Hardtack biscuits (53)
Dry sausage (2 links)
Chocolate (1 square)
The small, foil-wrapped square of chocolate was a particularly dastardly addition, and I can’t help but suspect Byron was behind it. The chocolate pops into my mind much more often than I would like during the daily march. I could eat it, of course, but then there would be no chocolate, and having it around makes me feel things are not so desperate.
Perhaps I should explain why I was so agitated yesterday.
The first twelve hours I spent shut in with this fantastic collection were cordial enough. The librarian kept a brisk but not unreasonable pace; the pack was heavy but not insufferable. Marya kept me company, and without an audience to horrify, I engaged her in some lighthearted banter: those winsome observations and silly jokes that only a spouse can tolerate and enjoy.
I am quite sure this indulgence only made my subsequent descent into terror more dreadful.
I do not mean to suggest that my physical environment is unattractive. The chambers are full of carved wood and the loveliest fixtures. Wonderful frescos span the ceilings, depicting scenes of robed philosophers gathering to debate, ecstatic battles between mounted armies, and glades overrun with sheep, grazing under the sleepy watch of barefoot shepherds. I gawked up so often and for so long that my neck developed a crick.
Oh, the profusion of books: the encyclopedias and dissertations, the plays and poems! During those first hours whenever I entered a new chamber I would snatch up the first interesting title I encountered and begin reading like mad. I absorbed as much as I could during the cat’s lazy transit of the room, until his disappearance into the next wing of the library forced me to shelve the book and run after him.
I can hardly imagine a more exhausting way to travel. Or read.
But as the hours slipped by and the presence of the crumb dwindled in my blood, Marya, who had been an amiable companion before, began to change. She knocked books off shelves. When I asked her not to, she hurled them at me. Her appearance changed, too. No more the red helmet; no more the white blouse. Her skin turned to paint as it had in the Golden Zoo, showing a hundred hues of flesh, all shining and wet.
She left prints and streaks everywhere she went, walking with her hand out, drawing it over the shelves like a brush. It made me very anxious. I pleaded with her to stop.
I was having this argument with myself, of course, and yet somehow I still managed to lose.
Soon, the colors ran from her like muddy water, and beneath that fatuous skin, stood a machine.
The machine was nothing like the crude steam shovel I’d once stood in the mud to see. This machine was, elegant and voluptuous; it was beautiful as all of the Sphinx’s machines are. But its eyes were empty of that spark of life one expects to see. The last vestiges of my wife were gone, and I was left in the company of a dead-eyed doll.
It followed me everywhere I went, lashing out at the rooms like a snared animal. Oh, the wonders it tore! Miracles of thought, which perhaps survived here and nowhere else in the world, ripped up like wrapping paper.
The faster I marched, chasing the librarian ahead of me, him hissing in protest, the more violent the doll became. It reduced a room to splinters around me. It could not speak— its mouth was like the drain of a sink— but it could scream. And did as I ran.
I would’ve preferred a tiger. There is little more dreadful than resemblance.
The only thing that tamed it, I discovered out of pure exhaustion, was stillness. If I sat still, it calmed and waited. If I stirred, it stirred. If I ran, it screamed.
So, I began to write in self-defense.
When I woke this morning, all evidence of the mechanical doll was gone.
My bones ache, and I’m sure I have a fever, but I am so relieved to be free of the shrieking drudge I will suffer these symptoms without complaint.
(It occurs to me that I have felt this way before. When I fainted in the Golden Zoo, I hadn’t caught a chill during our unanticipated bath, I was suffering the effects of withdraw. It had been too many hours since I’d handled Marya’s portrait.)
Yesterday, when I was running from that terror, I felt like such a victim. After all, I didn’t ask for the crumb; I did not seek out this habit. How could I deserve such a punishment as this? But now I wonder if I am so innocent. I wonder if I knew, if only on a subconscious level, what I was doing. I clung to that painting. And between the comfort it brought and the vivid visions of Marya, I felt less alone and, if I am honest, less responsible.
I am still having trouble deciphering my thoughts. They perform like an orchestra of soloists, each musician playing a different composition. How easy it is to hide from the truth amid such a constant din.
Nevertheless, there are realities I must begin to face.
The librarian was very cross when I gave him his breakfast. I can hardly blame him. He couldn’t see what I believed was pursuing me. As far as he is concerned, I spent yesterday chasing him in a wild-eyed state. What would I have done if he had decided to leave me? This place is a maze; there are wings upon wings, rows on rows. I am lost.
I apologized profusely. I even offered him some of my sausage, but he has spent the past half hour with his nose in the corner. I suppose this is my punishment.
Oh, now he’s yawning. Now he’s stretching his back. Now it’s time to go.
Chapter Nineteen
“A bad painter only worries about how his barn looks. He doesn’t work his brush into the nooks and shadows. His barn is handsome enough from the road. But when a wet spring comes, the eaves fall off. Do not neglect inconvenient corners.”
-The Art of Painting a Barn by Mr. B. Ritter
Day 4
I have eaten the chocolate. To the future me that reads this: I am sorry. It was delicious.
And entirely deserved.
When Byron said there were traps, I didn’t believe him. This place is so attractive and congenial. I thought the stag was trying to provoke me the way he does Edith. Unfortunately for me, he was in earnest. The Sphinx is a trapper of men.
The absurdity of this is not lost on me. Snares in a library? What next? Bears in the schools? Vipers in the hospitals?
The librarian knows where the traps are, I am convinced, and so the going is absolutely safe so long as I never stray from his shadow.
Again. So long as I never do it again.
We’d had such an agreeable walk, and though I felt a little achy and ill, I was in good spirits. How could I not be? My hallucinations had ceased. For the first time in months, I was free of ghosts, and my head was beginning to clear.
&n
bsp; The librarian was just tucking into his dinner, and I was sitting upwind at the opposite end of an atrium that seemed a sort of crossroads. Aisle after aisle broke off from the central courtyard. Some aisles sloped downward into shadow; others canted up toward light. Some turned sharply in a new direction and so seemed to dead end. One aisle ran straight toward a point that was so distant all the shelves appeared to merge into one.
What an architectural onion this library is! I cannot imagine how it was built or filled.
I had just cleared a stack of brittle newspapers from a warm leather chair and was preparing to tuck into a particularly interesting book I’d found about a Pelphian pastime, called “A Game of Oops,” when my ears pricked to the distant sound of someone crying.
No, not crying: it was a low, consternated weeping.
I had heard this sort of sob before. In that old life of mine, a student would occasionally wander from the schoolyard during recess. I’d chase after them to turn them around and lecture them of the dangers of truancy. Unless I found them crying. Then I would walk with them in a wide circuit around the yard, careful to keep the school and the other children at a comfortable distance. I’d wait until their frustration began to wane, and then I would undertake the most egregious small talk. I’d say things like, “Oh, aren’t the roses pretty this year!” Or, “Did you hear that Mister Hardy caught a four foot flounder?” Or that most miserable saw of polite conversation: “Do you think it will rain?” And so on, until the student, now dry-eyed and desperate to get away, would ask to be excused.
Oh, those were the little rescues of which I was so proud!
I followed the voice into a dim, narrow aisle. The space was so tight I had to turn to the side to enter it. More than once, I was forced to duck under or step over a volume that protruded into the lane. I felt like a leaf pressed in a book. I wanted to reverse course, to escape that strangled feeling, but the sobbing grew more distinct. I was sure it was a child.
Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2) Page 35
