The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  Best,

  G

  With startling speed, Castellemare responded:

  “G”,

  There are some topics we don’t bring up at table, and Setzer is one of them. Do not suffer yourself to inquire further. A good employee does not ask greedy questions, but merely takes what is offered. It is best not to question when Lady Fortune smirks.

  -C

  “O Geoffrey, what have I done? I’ve conquered the moon, yet there is nothing left to do!” - Dominic Perstia, The Purloined Galaxy.

  ------

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  5

  The Book of Chimerae

  Compared to ducking around on mysterious reacquisition assignments to pluck books of intrigue from unlikely places, my lecturing duties failed to keep anything but the slightest interest. A terrible feeling of monotony took residence within me, as unshakeable as a pernicious flu. The dullness of my everyday operations left me gazing blankly at my office walls or losing interest in the middle of a lecture where I was at least to show some feigned good faith in being interested. My boredom finally reached the level of my students. I fell into moments of distracted dithering and rambling in my lectures, which was fine since half of my class had their faces fixed on their laptops while their fingers worked overtime to engage in online chats of no scholastic, but vitally social, consequence.

  Perhaps more defeating was the ennui of knowing that to write anything, to research anything, was a pointless endeavour. If what Castellemare said was true, then all was already written, every possibility sewn up and expounded upon, exegeses of these that would run on infinitely. So, thinking of my own ambitions in research felt small and paltry since all the work had already been done by every possible me writing on every possible subject in every possible voice. I would have to content myself with producing the most infinitesimal sliver of relevance that would only be a repetition of what already existed in potentia in that infinite library. Perhaps there would reside the end product of my labours, identical in one edition, or written much better in another. The determinate fatalism of such a library emptied me of any resolve, and instead left me feeling deflated and listless. What, in fact, was the point of writing anything at all? The inexhaustible possibilities of my work already existed beyond that rift between the real and the infinite.

  I batted back and forth the possibility of quitting my university lecture post, and it was only the guilt of all the time I had spent to acquire it through a seemingly endless trial of papers, exams, and defenses to possess the requisite degrees that stayed myself from making any rash decisions. When faced with the existence of infinite possibility actualized, it is difficult to summon the meaning of this rather slim reflection of it.

  There also resided a troubling philosophical problem: if the books were infinite in their variation, this suggested that there were infinite worlds where in each resided another me. Perhaps not in all, but in enough of them to be infinite in number. I dimly hoped that there was a possible world with a possible me that was far more handsome, determined, successful, and less of a bland sot. The library would be a crossroads between all these infinite possible worlds, the repository of its infinite works. And if the library was already complete and determined, then all those worlds were just playing out their possibilities like a simulation… to what purpose? For whose amusement? Was Castellemare, the self-professed librarian, able to travel between worlds? Was he a necessary being that resided outside of all of these, only to dip into them to assign an infinite number of employees to reacquire lost texts? And what of this flaw of the library to have its books slip from its holdings? An imperfect multiverse? All of this sounded hokey and sci-fi fantasy to me, and I certainly was no reliable hand in speculative physics to summon up any feasible explanation.

  It was hard to pursue this line of reasoning at the moment when I considered that these thoughts were already prefigured in some tract I may have written in another possible world, sitting on a shelf mocking me…or perhaps a series of millions of these where I disputed in favour or against various hypotheses. It would mean, at bottom, that any one book in the library was not itself in possession of the truth, but that the library as a whole was the total truth…And if that were the case, truth would be impossible to know. I corrected myself again: perhaps there was one book in the library that stated this proposition, and so therefore was the truth. But then again, would that not just be a truth relative to a possible world and not to all of them? I was finding myself lost in the desert of the infinite.

  I made the weak and reliable retreat to Aristotle and his famous four causes for all things that exist. It didn't demonstrate any grand gift of thinking. The material cause of the Library: what is it made of? The efficient cause of the Library: how was it made? The formal cause of the Library: what is the essence of it? The final cause of the Library: what is its purpose? Well, I could fairly enough speculate that the Library was composed of books and shelves, perhaps a container to keep it enclosed (but if it were infinite, the container would be moot). It was made of books written by everyone in every possible world. The essence of the Library was Libraryness itself, a place that archives all written material. The purpose of it? That was where I was stuck, and without answering the final cause of the Library, my musings were empty and meaningless. There would be no way of saying if it were deficient, in error, or simply conceptual and therefore unreal. The Library was, in my tepid final answer, the sum total of all possible books.

  I hated possible books for one reason: I had known enough people in my life who jumped into the glare of my attention to announce that they were writing a book, or would one day write one. Never making good on their promise or threat for reasons of time, a slackening of inclination, inability, or just forgetfulness, they could repose in the knowledge that their glowing idea to write a book was a fait accompli. This, I mused sourly, would also mean that the Library – just like the Internet if not worse – was also filled with a lot of garbage. A depressing thought, but one that had to be gobbled along with the thrilling mystery of the Library itself.

  Castellemare, for his own reasons undisclosed to me, was not predisposed to resolve my difficulties with this problem. I knew better than to ask him for his manner was to speak in cryptic riddles or upbraid me for concerning myself with that which was not to be my concern. In the weeks-long silence, it seemed as though Castellemare had forgotten me, and I wondered if I was still employed. I was warned that the jobs were feast or famine, but I was getting a bit edgy, not least of all because of the insoluble riddle the Library's existence itself had lodged in my thinking, a tormenting sore. I made contact with Castellemare with the weak pretense of just catching up, checking to see if there were any other rogue books, and then to pose a few light-handed questions about the Library. His response was terse: I am well. Nothing has turned up yet. The Library is its own order and reason, so don't twist yourself up over it. So, on every count, my questions were frustrated and I felt put off, not least of which because the tone of his response made me feel guilty as though I were pestering him.

  Another two week silence. I decided to sleuth out the answers from the only other person I knew could possibly grant them. I felt in my rights to know since to seek knowledge and propitiate curiousity is not in itself a betrayal. I began searching for any information I could about Setzer.

  My research was not too long drawn or dramatic. I was able to locate Setzer with but a few carefully worded internet searches. It seemed that Setzer was neither too public nor too private, and there was probably nothing safer in this world than to have a website bobbing about in a sea of anonymity. Setzer ran what looked to be an on-the-side rare book collection business very modestly attired with some slightly flashy editions, but nothing that would call too much attention from a serious collector. There was even a contact link, and I followed it. It took me much longer to deliberate on what I was to say to him as the email field remained blank for nearly an hou
r before I took the decisive plunge. Even then I didn’t click on the ‘send’ button, but instead saved the email as a draft to further consider if this was the right tack to take.

  Anton Setzer ran a four-storey bookstore in Detroit, mostly common and cheap used books bought and sold by dizzy undergraduates taking introductory literature or philosophy courses. I decided it would be better to pay the store a visit and hope to encounter Setzer in person. I packed a travel bag and boarded a bus. I didn’t know what to expect, and my questions were still premature and poorly formed, but I felt the urgency to follow through.

  Outside the bus terminal, the Detroit sky was a glaring white-grey. The bookstore was only a block off from the terminal, all of it bracketed in a kind of nothingness in skewed view of the city core, the casino, and a government building guarded by a fleet of parked security vehicles in a closed-off street. I approached the boxy building that served as the bookstore, an edifice that failed to completely mask its prior function as a modestly sized factory. The unmistakable smell of used books and dust met me as I embarked the stairs to the first floor and front desk. Boxes of old magazines of no interest sat filed on the landings. Notices for readings and art events were pinned to the vestibule corkboards that flanked the entrance, some of these notices hopelessly out of date. Everything here seemed too typically like a middling used bookstore and bore none of the marks of intrigue and mystery I came to expect.

  A middle-aged man with long grey, wavy hair and an aquiline nose was fiddling with an old ledger and a stack of unspectacular books by his right hand, a box filled with more of the same on the floor. Old Penguins and Everyman editions with their acid-burnt dun edges having been thumbed, their spines ridged with hairline fractures. He had antique spectacles on the middle of his bridge, and seemed more resignedly bored than engrossed with his labour. He heard me enter, looked up, and asked me if I needed any help.

  “I…I’m just browsing,” I stammered, unsure and feeling a bit too foolish to ask outright if I may see a man named Setzer. “Where do you keep your philosophy books?”

  He answered in a pleasant, yet dry and lazy way, “They are somewhat scattered around, but you’ll find a concentration of them at the very far end of the fourth floor, and some around the middle toward the north end of the second. Are you looking for Eastern or Western philosophy?”

  “Oh, just Western.”

  “Fourth floor. You may also have some luck along the south end wall of the second floor where we keep the paperback overflow. Our cataloguing system is rather eclectic.”

  With that he gave a small shopkeeper's grin and went back to his ledger, totting up sums. He was right: the cataloguing system was indeed eclectic, but thoroughly detailed. I wandered for about an hour among shelves marked “speculative zoology”, “ornithological studies and dictionaries”, “Mid-East Mysteries”, “Early Michigan history and atlases”, and “Post Civil War congressional minutes”. I decided to return to the front desk after feebly summoning up some attention and interest to select something.

  “Would you happen to know where I may find a Mr Anton Setzer?”

  He took off his spectacles and levelled his eyes at me, but not with any meanness or suspicion. “Present. What can I do for you?”

  I was taken aback. Was this harmless looking fellow who looked as though he were some aged poet wandering out of the romanticist period, huddled over a banal ledger the infamous traitor?

  “I am sorry to disturb you, but I have come some way to ask a few questions if you would be kind enough to oblige.”

  “Certainly. I trust that you work for Castellemare, a new recruit?”

  He said this with none of the conspiratorial tone I would have expected. He said it so matter-of-factly that I may have instead asked him where he kept his French literature.

  “Yes, I am new. How... How did you guess that -”

  “You work for Castellemare? Oh, no one meets Castellemare and remains unchanged. Besides, you asked for me by name – how many booksellers get cornered by people who do that? You don't look like you have any books to sell or trade me, unless you have a few boxes out in the car. What can I do for you?”

  “I am troubled.”

  “Hm,” he said with an understanding yet none too interested nod. “I suppose the Library does present some difficulties. What’s your tally now?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The number of books you have reacquired for your employer.”

  “Well, with the aid of my tutor, four so far.”

  “You are new,” he said, barely concealing a grin. “My tally topped 1,250, a lot of them through unspeakable peril. Those days are far behind me now, thank goodness. I rather like the calm life, running the store, that sort of thing. Working for your current employer was very…complicated.”

  “Pardon me for saying, but I was told that you betrayed him which is why you were dismissed from further duties.”

  “Betrayal is such a heavy word, but I don’t doubt your employer’s love for the dramatic. Or was it Angelo who told you this?”

  “Castellemare alluded to it, but, yes, it was Angelo who told me.”

  “Ah, Angelo. Despite what happened, I still like him even if I was not altogether fond of his methods. He won’t steer you wrong. You are lucky to have such a good tutor – the job is not an easy one. You’d do well to heed his advice carefully. He was, after all, my protege.”

  “Should we be speaking so openly like this? I mean...”

  “It's a bookstore,” he said as if the location were soundproofed to eavesdropping. “I see maybe five or six customers a day. Be at liberty.”

  “Okay, but is it true that you betrayed Castellemare?”

  “People shift career trajectories for all sorts of reasons. And there are many versions of the same story. An employer will say that he fired an employee, and that employee will claim that he quit. In the end it means the same thing: the working relationship is dissolved. These things get shelved as just another uninteresting history. If you have come seeking advice, I am afraid I have nothing to spare since you should have all you need with your tutor and your employer to be successful at your new job. I presume you know what is at stake and you know the risks. The rest is unnecessary to know. You learn the ropes, you take care not to imperil the task to be completed, and you get paid. It’s really rather simple.”

  “Yes, I gathered that, but I am having some philosophical difficulties with the very existence of this library and its books.”

  “I am afraid I cannot help you there, friend. I am no philosopher. I just run this store, buying, selling, and cataloguing books. Questioning the Library will only amount to frustration and will impede your ability to perform your tasks.”

  I waited there as though he had more to say, but he only continued with: “Will there be anything else?”

  “Do you have any access to the Library anymore, or have you created one of your own?” I asked, unsure of why I had for some reason assumed he might have made a library of his own.

  “How odd that you would ask that particular question. Well... Those days are far behind me. The only library I have created is all around you, nothing mysterious. All of these books were written and published in this world, and those are the only books I have in stock. When I parted ways with your current employer, I also took leave of that fantastic and improbable Library. I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but I sincerely wish you all the best at your job and finding the answers you crave.”

  Setzer was mild, soft-spoken and affable enough, but I suspected that it was a clever ruse to throw me off. I decided to check into a hotel and investigate further. Perhaps it was my desire to uncover a mystery where one did not exist that prompted me, but there was something that was not adding up in Setzer’s demeanour, and I felt that he was hiding something from me. There was something far too convenient about Setzer’s newly chosen life. I waited until he closed the store and followed him from a safe distance.

  I found myself ou
tside a rather nondescript studio apartment complex. I found Setzer’s name on the buzzer board. I buzzed another tenant and said I was a pizza delivery person. I was let in and followed the stairs up to Setzer’s studio. When I got there I was shocked to find him standing in the doorway expecting me.

  “I figured you would be more persistent and not so easily deterred. I suppose I should reward your efforts. Please, do come in.”

  Along the lintel read, “Lux Ephemeris – Ars Reminiscendi” ironically under the seemingly permanent tenebrous fish-lens canopy of a dimly lit hallway. He led me into the studio proper and asked if I would like to share some of the wine he had just opened to allow breathe before dinner.

  With rented glass in hand, I wandered from canvas to canvas that hung on his high walls while he excused himself for a few moments. There were no impressively monolithic shelves of books here as I would have expected. He returned with a bowl of fresh dates. He motioned me to the divan and he sat adjacent me on a scuffed and comfortably broken in wingback chair despite its size seemed dwarfed in the mostly empty space.

  “So, you have a name, mysterious traveller, guest, and inquirer?”

  “Gimaldi,” I stated, offering my hand and he politely declining to shake it as if it were an unnecessary formality.

  “Gimaldi… Gimaldi,” he repeated, rolling it around in his mouth and looking up in some kind of reflection as if searching for where he might have heard that name before. He snapped back to meet my gaze. “Well… Gimaldi… welcome. You’re part of a very curious brotherhood of the book. Those without courage don’t last very long in that line of work. Funny, that… a touch ironic… That vision of the weak-bodied and meek scholar poring over his books being in possession of a higher courage than that of air force paratroopers. Hm. So courageously guided by our curiousity that we will uproot at just the scantest mention of a rare book on the other side of the world, or dissolve our sleeping hours in insomniac research rages with more tireless effort than your average bricklayer. We are precious in our way.”