The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  Until anon, ta ta!

  I was Paris-bound. Castellemare had sent a driver to pick me up at Charles de Gaulle airport and I was whisked to a small but presumably expensive apartment in the shadow of a cathedral. It was dusk, and the lights had just turned on, blotting out much of the Paris scenery with a wash of sodium light. I was brought up two flights of stairs to the temporary abode of my employer who was attired in a rather ridiculous looking petticoat and surrounded by a clashing mass of antiques and furniture. It was much in the same style of tasteless opulence I had seen at his Bidaccio location.

  He flashed that broad grin at me, “Ah, Gimaldi! Welcome to the City of Love! Thank you, Alain, your services are no longer required for the now.”

  With that, my driver – who had remained silent throughout the trip and seemed quite frowsy – left us alone.

  “So, down to brass tacks, eh, Gimaldi? If I recall correctly, and I generally do, you don’t smoke. That is good because smoking is not permitted in the library. Absolutely prohibited. Fire hazard and all. Also, no eating, so I suggest we nip out and get something to eat before we start. No sense gumming up the books with our dirty hands, eh? I have also taken the liberty of getting you some gloves for the handling of the books. They are silken, and just right for the job. We can look like mimes – won't that be a scream, putting on the dog and all that? Of course, someone like yourself knows all too well how to handle rare and valuable books, and each one of them is priceless and unique. Call me finicky, but I will still ask you to sterilize your hands in the wash basin prior to even donning the gloves. Precautions are important. We are all impure.”

  “I am unbearably eager to see this library,” I said, not bothering to correct his assumption that I was indeed a smoker of the worst kind: the sort whose attempts to quit designate an endless Sisyphean struggle.

  “Silly boy! You’ve already seen it in a way… Are not all libraries and even the most modest collections not extensions of the One Library?”

  I was overcome by a strange sense of guilt, and was working hard not to betray the fact that I had secretly consulted with Setzer. Castellemare had the features of one who always knew more than he told, as if he could read my every thought. I pocketed my feeling, justifying it by believing that I had every right as a curious individual to follow the trajectory of my inquisitiveness. Being under employ did not mean being under ownership, and I was certainly free to roam the field to procure answers for my own satisfaction. My feelings of guilt were temporarily suppressed, my conscience appeased.

  While I applied the alcohol sanitizer as directed by my employer, I asked, “if the Library is infinite, how will I travel to remote locations to reshelve books?”

  “We do not move; the Library does. It orients itself in the proper position relative to our coordinates. You won’t feel it. Blink, and you are looking upon an entirely new and different shelf. This is essential since I have about 200 pallets of books to replace in their proper locations.”

  “How many books does each pallet hold?”

  “Roughly a thousand or so.”

  I was shocked. “That will take an unbelievably long time.”

  “That is why I require your assistance. We’ll do the first pallet together until you get the hang of it, and then we’ll work on our own pallets.”

  “Another question: if you are able to pull any book from the library you ask for just by dipping your hand into any shelf, why can they not be replaced in the same way?”

  “It just doesn’t work that way, Gimaldi. Oh, it would be ideal if it did, but there are mysteries to the Library that even I cannot fathom. The universe is rarely convenient, and when it is, it is by happy accident rather than design.”

  “Okay, I'll grant you that, but why did I have to come to Paris if I could have just entered the Library from any book collection, such as my own?”

  “Because, Gimaldi,” he stressed, “I like Paris.”

  I was still eager to continue pressing Castellemare further, since for every answer he gave, three more question marks emerged.

  “Castellemare, what causes these rifts, these compromising situations where books go missing?”

  “Ah, my dear Gimaldi… accidents in physics – no matter how fabulous and absurd those physical laws may be – happen. Of course, there are times when the hand of physics can be nudged at the elbow by saboteurs, jesters, fools, and villains. So many more books have gone missing as of late that I may have to hire a larger team of reacquisitionists… Sigh, and that means training and having to contend with occasional flubs. Poor Angelo…”

  “So, what you are saying is that someone else’s efforts may be making your job a bit more harrowing?” - I felt flushed; I was giving myself away so stupidly and openly.

  Castellemare pulled me in closer, and with a kind of unreadable grin said, “Gimaldi, you know very well who is causing problems; you visited him not too long ago.”

  I was stunned. “How did you know?”

  “He telephoned me,” he said, beaming.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “That is more than evident. We are in a competitive gambit, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have the occasional bout of civil discourse. Besides, he expressed some concern about you, and so do I.”

  “But he betrayed you. You’ll have to pardon my confusion and disbelief. This is not typical behaviour.”

  “We are atypical men, locked in a struggle that concerns peculiar types. One day you will come to understand that the roles and positions we occupy in this world are but the masks that wear the actors, and that ego is a different thing entirely. The ego is just fed into a type, a type that precedes ego. We don’t hate each other as people, but our roles are in diametric opposition. I am order, and on the antipodes, he is chaos. But, ugh, how awful these overly simplistic reductions to binary arrangements – it has the awful ring of tepid metaphysics for mass consumption. Besides, I've always admired Setzer's taste in wines, and he plays a mean game of piquet.”

  The thought of the two of them sipping wine and playing medieval card games was almost too comical an image for me to hold on to for very long.

  “If it means anything, I was seeking answers that you were not providing, not committing a betrayal of my own,” I defended, stepping cautiously so that I wouldn't be fired on the spot and lose money I was beginning to depend on.

  “No, it means little to nothing. You don’t need to defend your motives to me, but you will have to make a choice. You can’t serve us both – it is unthinkable.”

  “I haven't sought him for employment.”

  “There's more than one way to serve,” he tossed off, busying himself with the gloves. Let's leave all this nasty talk of gossiping and betrayals to the melodramas, and get ourselves square to deal with the Library duties. It is my hope that by bringing you into the Library today that you may see what is at stake in a concrete sense. For every book Setzer displaces is another book that needs to be reshelved. He’s a bit of a heavy-handed and selfish boor that way, not thinking that it is harder to restore order than to cause a ruckus.”

  “It almost seems to me that you are punishing me as a lesson, putting me to task in a way, rubbing my nose in the mess that Setzer makes.”

  “You catch on almost as quickly as I would like you to! Yes and no. Don’t consider this as punishment, but as a necessary task. It’s like supporting an oil company and then being forced to clean ducks by the shore when a tanker spills. You may as well see both sides of the game. Come.”

  “Should we eat first?”

  “I'm not particularly peckish at the moment. You may be, but let yourself earn a healthy appetite through honest labour.”

  I can barely describe how it happened. I was invited to come behind a shelf, and suddenly I was walking out into an unspeakably large library, shelves stretched out toward a theoretical vanishing point. To my left was a mountainous collection of pallets, each stacked high with books, and to my right was Castellemare, wavi
ng his palm over the whole expanse as if he were the caretaker of a thriving plantation.

  “This is incredible,” I said, unable to locate the words to express my awe. It was indeed beyond incredible – an ineffable glimpse of the infinite.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. Now let’s not dawdle. Our job will take twice as long if you satisfy the urge to scan the shelves and, heaven forbid, read anything here. It can absorb you for countless lifetimes. You must cultivate a kind of detached indifference to the books here, no matter how compelling the titles on their spines. You are a functionary: just shelve. Let me show you how it is done.”

  Castellemare lifted a book from the nearest pallet, read the spine, and suddenly I felt a kind of vertiginous feeling. The Library seemed to blur before me for a few moments before settling in another spot that seemed indistinguishable from where we left.

  “You see, given the vast number of books, we can’t use something so limited like the Dewey Decimal System. We require an infinite number set with a more sensible array for variations. The usual code system actually becomes the Library’s coordinate system, but that coordinate system is always different in relation to where you start, the book that was shelved previously, etc.”

  “Then how can you assure that the book is properly shelved? If I started with a different book, and based my coordinates on the second or third one down instead, then wouldn’t the book be improperly shelved?”

  “The Library works it out somehow, according to its logic of the infinite.”

  “Then how can Setzer present such a threat? His means operate by a logic of the finite, and it would appear that the finite cannot affect the infinite.”

  “What silly thinking! Yes, it can indeed have an effect, but it is a contained or framed effect upon an expanse that has no framed limitations. You show your patent Christian thinking by conceiving finite and infinite as metaphysical polarities. It reeks of Plato and Hegel, too. The finite and infinite as some kind of wager to be brokered as a zero-sum game! Well, no, it doesn’t work this way – that is the work of Christian mythology, and has its source in the fiction of Christ. How? Well, consider that Adam, a finite creature, committed an infinite sin against the infinite that was the creator… How does the debt of sin become repaid on the balance sheet? God renders himself finite in the body of a man to pay off an infinite sinful debt that Man could never hope to pay. In a sense, according to that logic, the infinite pays itself off at the level of the finite by becoming temporarily finite. If only your bank could show such kindness and mercy!”

  Admittedly, I didn’t entirely follow his reasoning, although the Christ reference gave me pause for consideration.

  “Where are the... um... decimals so I know where to shelve it?” I asked, turning a book over in my hands in pointless search.

  “The organization of the Library is exceedingly complex. Just hold the book in your hand and the Library will orient itself toward it like some form of magnet. You will feel a tingling sensation, and you will just know where to put it. Usually there's a space on the shelf, and the tingling stops once the book is replaced in its proper location.”

  He was about to begin the task when another thought occurred to him: “There is something to be said about the information architecture of this place, how the books are organized. You see, the need to organize our knowledge has taken many forms. The librarian at Alexandria, Callimachus, was one of the first to conceive of the idea of ordering the books according to subject. By the 1700s, alphabetization was in vogue, which irked many in the way encyclopedias were arranged. Besides, once the letters A to M have been bound in a book, whither new entries? It wasn't until the 20th century that propedias arranged by subject were briefly popularized, all of it now moot with the internet and the way it can shuffle information in an infinite number of ways according to a virtually infinite number of search criteria. But let's not jump too far ahead! In the late 19th century, Dewey – or 'Dui,' as he briefly styled himself – came up with a master plan for libraries – his decimal system. But even that plan was flawed since it assumed the higher priority of some subjects over others as eternal. Under religion, there are eight or so designated entries, while Islam has only one which is shared with Babaism. Buddhism has no solid designation in the Dewey system, and is considered a subset of Indo-origin religions. But the core of his idea was a good one for the average library: instead of organizing books according to their precise location in space on a shelf, rooting them there, he made the books relative to one another, thereby giving the organization the right flexibility to admit of new volumes.”

  “Is this a similar organization here, then?”

  “Oh, definitely not! Average libraries are terminally and irremediably incomplete – there are always new books being written that will have to be shelved according to pre-defined categories. The Library of Congress hires over 300 people to perform that task to handle the 7,000 books it gets every day. Such libraries are geared toward user access, but this Library is not. It is simply a repository of books that choose the reader, not the other way around. The Library is complete in having all possibilities, and so can afford to fix their place on shelves eternally. No new books are possible.”

  Castellemare bid me to pick up a book from one of the palettes, which I did. I heeded his advice not to get tempted by the title to begin exploring the book. I could already feel the Library shifting around me until I was in the right section. I found the right shelf with little difficulty, and placed the book between two others. Castellemare was right: there was that feeling of proper placement, just as one experiences when two puzzle pieces fit together unqestionably perfectly.

  Abruptly, Castellemare turned to me and said, “Gimaldi, you bear the aspect of a man who fancies himself one day becoming like one of those seriously pious scholars of the Talmud, poring over interpretations, linking together disparate threads of a historical fabric that twines with eternity… but you are no such creature. We are all the sons of our respective eras, and it is sad to state, but this era still has the claw marks of positivism. It makes your understanding perhaps too linear, a logical pointillist. You want to see proof of how the effect comes to be through a witch hunt for the cause – and, if you cannot locate it, you will consider it a problem of method or that the cause is obscured in its possible multiplicity. But multiplicities scare the modern scholar – gone are the days where dazzling and daring faith in revelations reigned, that unerring mark of the will to know. Instead, today’s scholars are bunged up with the duties of the accountant which they mistake for brilliance and clear reasoning. They can call it all sorts of things, but what such scholars call ‘responsibility’ seems to barely mask an implicit moralism…And morality is in itself antithetical to the positivist ideal.”

  “Do you really consider me in this light?” I had to ask, slightly offended but amused all the same. “This seems out of thin air.”

  “I think you clamber for that long lost image of the mystic, bearded and alone in his cloister, performing Pythagorean tricks as if this will solve the enigma of the universe. Maybe a mountain-dweller like Zarathustra. I find it mildly refreshing, if not a bit cliché, but it is still just an image, and it is an image fostered by an era that carves its own version of opposites. Have you read – please pardon the wretched Latin syntax – Corpus Vacuum? Or perhaps you have heard the whispers of a one Finis Logos? I don’t presume you have.”

  “No, I can’t say that I have… but I have skirmished with Theatrum Chemicum –”

  “I heave a heavy sigh at this. Who hasn’t? If I had that proverbial nickel for every self-styled dabbler and quack that has raided that text for a draught of mysteries… my… Well, it is of no matter. Let’s leave my previous references aside so that I can speak of the catalogue of all catalogues. A book like a nested doll that contains within it a vastly expansive, comprehensive list of all the catalogues that in turn list the entire contents of the Library.”

  “But how is that possible? If the Library
is infinite, then –”

  “Then such a book is impossible, right? As impossible as this Library, and yet here we are, shelving books within it. You are here, you see it, and so it is undeniably existent. Your incredulity is only surpassed by your dimness on this score. Don’t you understand? The Great Catalogue is, unlike any other book, a living book. It continues to expand and contract, preserving in itself the very relevance of the Library’s temporal order. Of course, the infinite number of total books never changes, just what it may deem relevant for each user. Every user would be fitted with a different catalogue with its many omissions. The Great Catalogue varies from visitor to visitor, on the basis of specific need.”

  “Could I conjecture that the Library exists, like an anagogical or ecstasy experience, outside of space and time?”

  “You could conjecture it, it would be correct, but of course there would be nearly an infinite number of books to dispute as well as support that claim. But this is my understanding, which is not limited by positivism. You're repeating lines Setzer fed you, I see.”

  “But it may be limited by something else, your ‘era’, I would suppose.”

  “Who said I exist in any time?” Castellemare said with a broad, playful grin.

  “Well, I guess right now I don’t technically exist in any time if I am in this place, this Library, outside of space and time. But yet I have memory, and I can recall moments in my life outside the Library.” – I thought I had him cornered.