Excerpt 6 of the Backstory
And just when the conversations became interesting, my eyes would throw a whimsical look to the sky as I walked away into the cerise glow of sunset.
My efforts to find Sigurd came to naught. Perhaps in my absence, which he might have taken as abandonment, he left to pursue other ghosts.
Gimaldi's counter-book was a dangerous fabrication that predicted the worst and most ominous events for the future, a thing of prognostic weight. But it wasn't just the counter-book that would prove the most profoundly disturbing, but the enigmatic origin of the man who wrote it. In the preface, there was a nagging peculiarity, a sentence that might have gone unnoticed as an impertinent dedicatory note rather than a mysterious and coded insinuation: “This I write in response to my pupil, Plotinus; and my friend, Leibniz, who had not the courage to come forth with his brilliant masterpiece now left unseen by the eyes of the scholarly community.” What was he suggesting? Was Gimaldi more than how he seemed, a contemporary of the fore-fathers of philosophic thought? I chalked this up to madness and little more, that yearning some scholars possess in wishing they were contemporary with the dead thinkers they hold concourse with.
“Final boarding call for Flight 173 to Madrid,” crackled a mechanical feminine voice muffled by the reverberations of echo in the spacious tiled desert. I jammed the book back into my carry-on and hustled to the gate to wait. Once I was admitted and found my seat, I kept the book in the bag until we taxied and the stomach wobbling lift of the aircraft pointed us all at a 45 degree angle. I waited until the plane leveled back to horizontal, the seat belt sign blinkered off, and returned to the book, which was about to give forth on the narrator's first meeting of the named Gimaldi.
Strange thoughts came tumbling through my mind. With Gimaldi, there was a new intrigue. My memories flashed back to when Sigurd and I met the legendary, elegiac man, who was sitting by himself with a cognac and wearing a shriveled expression of distaste for what he was reading. The strange man's apparent character was compelling to us, and there was a hint of wild mystery in his disposition. Sigurd and I raised the volume of our conversation, broadcasting our supposed genius in an effort to gain his attention. He was a sly man, and he knew our game, so he pretended not to take notice. But in the progression of the conversation, the strangest topic touched a nerve that compelled him to speak.
“My rationalists class is a dry bore,” I had said.
Pivoting on his seat, yet only offering us a sidelong glance, so distant, as if lost in some untold reverie, he said, “rationalism is intended to be dry. That is why a student of good fortune should learn about Descartes in autumn when the world is drained and becoming tinder. Call it an interesting juxtaposition: the violent colour of the season, the death of nature, conjoined with the large, grey monolith of Cartesian Reason and the advent of the Machinic, the industrial. Machines do not function ideally in damp conditions.” And then he fell back into silence, a Cartesian silence.
Later on, he'd tell us that there were no languages, but only recurrent symbols: “language is a lie we tell small children and those whose minds are very dim.” There was no logical sequence to his topics of conversation, but we came to understand that he had no obligation to maintain any sequential order. No, he talked for only two reasons: to unsettle others, and to make the air vibrate with the sound of his thoughts given voice.
“What's that you're reading?” the passenger beside me – a portly man whose breath was foul and his suit slack as his flesh – interrupted, poking his face to glance at my page. “Oh, a novel, huh?”
“Yes,” I said without commitment in the hopes that he would mind himself again.
“Say, have you read...” at which point he mentioned a few titles I did not know, but sounded pulpy.
“No, sorry. Probably not my fare,” I said, instantly regretting it since it not only signaled me out as a snob, but could very easily be construed as an invitation to continue into the dull world of conversation.
“Well, strictly and confidentially speakin', entre nous, there is one sure fire bow-nee-fied way of tellin' a literary poser from the gen'win article.”
“Not to be rude, but I'm somewhat really involved with this book right now, and...” I trailed off, not thinking the sentence required completion to get its message across.
The passenger grimaced, not out of pain or derision – it was a bizarre mix of being amused and revulsed and being assailed by a facial cramp.
“Think ya better open your ears to this one, fella. Not trying to cut into yer reading time or none, but I reckon you should give what I have to say on this subject a fair hearin'. S'not like you have some place else to be.”
“Can we keep it short?”
“Sure thing, fella. I'm not whatjoo call an educated man, but I have my notions and opinions. Right entitled to them, and if they bust in with a little fresh air once and while to clear up the dust among them smart folks who talk in circles, well, everyone benefits.”
I nodded in an effort for him to cut his preamble.
“Anyway, I figger this piece of ad-vice would come in handy for a readin' fellow like yerself. I call it the three-timer question. Y'see, most folk who fancy themselves smart come armed with their thinkin' and readin' and all that, but when you press 'em – I mean, really press 'em – they go all to pieces like. Not, mindjoo, I think smart folk are all phony, but they ain't as smart as they think. Permit me an example. Lemme ask you what that book there is all about, and give it in a line or two, real just cut and dry and to the point.”
I thought there to be no harm in giving him a synopsis for him to just get on with his point – I doubt he would understand it anyway: “An unnamed narrator and his friend have been asked to write a book that an old scholar has already written the refutation for. So, you see, these two characters will have to read the book and build their argument in reverse and opposite. It involves a lot of research. That is what I know so far.”
“Okay, so we have a little meat there. Two fellas on a quest which I bet has more to do with figgerin' out the real mystery, which is to understand what this old smart coot is all about. What's some of their fool research concerned about?”
“There are some allusions to Descartes and Neo-Platonism.”
“Ya don't say?” he grinned and slapped his knee. “Day-cart and neo-playtonizm, you say? I used to room back in college with a philosophy student who really liked to go on and on about that French long-haired fella. I remember those days pretty well. Okay, fella, try me: throw some day-cart my way.”
I was determined to put him off by being as complicated as possible: “Descartes says we cannot envision a mountain without its corresponding valley, which is to say that there are certain thoughts that are not conceivable even as abstractions, and so must mutually appear in co-dependent context and -”
“Hold on, there, fella. Slow this right down so's I can get a good grip. Time for the three-timer. So, do you believe this argument?”
“It does stand to reason that we cannot abstract certain ideas without their context also in mind, yes.”
“And what about that little demon?”
“What demon?”
“Y'know, the one that screws up everything, the one day-cart says may be responsible for him fallin' into error?”
“He rules that out because evil is incapable of imperfection, and there are perfect, irrefutable ideas in the world such as that triangles always have three sides.”
“And this, fella, is where you show yerself to be stupidest of all – you got snagged on day-cart's writin' off of that devil. A cheap logic, if ya ask me. But, see? Three questions, and just three steps to show you don't know whatchyer talkin' about.”
“That's false!” I erupted in defense. “I didn't claim that I bought Descartes' argument on that basis.”
“Yeah? Okay, then, what place does the demon feller have in the final analysis?”
“He was just a prop.”
“Not
so smart: one step. That's gotta be a record!”
“Drive to the point, will you?”
“Holdjer horses, I'm getting' to it. Y'see, biblically speakin', we all know the ol' story of how Eve got tempted by the snake and the whole arrangement went to pieces like. Yer not connectin' the bits and pieces together here... It's an old story told over and over again. The pieces are like this: demon, impossibility, book, library, hybrid critters day-cart yaps on about being in the mind an' all. Put it together!”
“What library?” I asked, almost terrified.
“The one and only. The problem as I sees it bein' that, first of all, you ain't botherin' to put the puzzle pieces in their proper arrangement like. And, second of all, yer not makin' the proper co-neck-shun with that there book you be readin'. All of that proves you not so smart.”
Was this a setup? One of Castellemare's tails?
“Who are you?”
“Now, now, fella, don't take no offense. I can detect it in yer tone. I'm just sayin' yer not readin' deeply 'nuff.”
“Who are you?”
“Don't matter who or what I am, fella, but I can sure tell that you are something agitated. Let's just drop all this and be neighbourly like... You go on an' read yer book there, and I'll mind myself.”
And that was all I would get out of him.
If Gimaldi was unsettling then, he was much more now. According to his preface, he was Ammonius Saccas, teacher of Plotinus, friend of Leibniz, claiming an absurd immortality.
What I was reading had nothing to do with ancient stromatolites or any tidal pool hogwash whatsoever, and the book he was refuting was clearly the one we were currently dramatizing through acts of life. The book was a gigantic leap forward in the plot, a complete skip of volumes. I would ask him to close this gap and speak of some of the items he referenced: the synthesis, the Library, the atrocity that came, the Cataclysm, the emergence of the Grey. What did these mean?
It was a warm night. The pale orange sun was casting a sheen of last light upon the unusually placid face of Gimaldi. He was in good, affable spirits that night, seemingly giving me permission to pose my questions without fear that he would snarl me off or speak in mystic mashups.
How was I to approach the issue? Would I be forthright and ask him with a dual tone of innocence and humility? Perhaps he had been waiting for someone to pose these questions for some time, the desperately quiet and contained author hoping someone would take a deeper interest in the layers he had arranged. I was being dared to ask these questions, the largest of them all being what book, precisely, is this counter-book refuting? It was a stupid question because it had been assumed all along that the book was refuting another. No, Gimaldi’s book was no counter-book at all: it was a dare, and a response to something that ought to be dared.
“You look pensive,” he said. “How many times did you read my book?”
“Twice,” I lied. I had read it five times, each time sinking further into the enigmas of the text.
“What is so puzzling?”
“The whole thing is written in nesting metaphors. It has nothing to do with ancient creatures bracketed away from the rest of nature, nor am I to read the convoluted metaphysics based on this scenario as anything more than a kind of distraction.”
“Is this what you think?” said Gimaldi sniffily. “Well, since you seem to feel you have a good handle on the text, what is it about, then?”
“About? There is something ‘old’ and bracketed away that is coming back, integrating with the real world. The first is the atrocity built from... you call it a synthesis. Then there is the fall of the world or the Library or something big and heavy. Your book is really nothing more than a post-apocalyptic fantasy, part of that tired genre indexed on some trumped up idea of survival.”
“Your reading has no soul in it. You’ve completely ignored the deep mystical character of my writings.”
“You bill yourself as a man of reason, and yet you take refuge in mysticism. I don’t get it.”
“Mystic writing is generally a barrier to keep out the profane, the uninvited. It is the same with codes and ciphers,” Gimaldi wagged an instructive finger. “I know reason’s opposite, and in whom it has been made flesh.”
Just then, as twilight ribboned around us, what I presumed to be a friend of Gimaldi's came with a wicked smile, suggesting that he wanted to be invited to sit with us. He was quite tall and emaciated. His smile was a long, thin, crooked slash, a Jack O’Lantern carved by someone with a nerve disorder.
“Perhaps you should go,” Gimaldi said to me abruptly.
“No, he can stay,” the man said. “What do you have left to hide - especially since you have revealed all in that little metaphysical joke book of yours.”
“This is Castellemare,” Gimaldi introduced. “He isn’t what you would call tactful.”
For some reason, I liked him immediately.
“Pish-tosh, old boy!” Castellemare affected. “Keep up your end of the scathing attacks we are so renowned for, Gimaldi! Let’s put on a little show for the boy.”
Castellemare... The name was strikingly familiar, as if I had read it somewhere recently. Access to my memory on the matter was blocked by fog.
“What is it this time?” Gimaldi asked curtly.
“No need to be so standoffish, old friend. I just came to delight in your erudite presence,” he said. Then to me: “Is he this suspicious and unaccommodating with you as well?”
“He has his moments,” was my good-natured reply, as if I had somehow located an ally in this stranger.
“He’s such a card, isn’t he?” Castellemare said under Gimaldi’s burning glare. “People like him thrive on crisis and, worse, writing about it! Such habits are ridiculous since they always try to create a histrionics of the present by a silly historiography of the past and future. You’re not another crisis-writer, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, good,” he said relieved. “Last thing we need is another little Gimaldi running around trying to put his little clues together to prevent a synthesis that is not as bad as he thinks it is.”
“Enough,” Gimaldi said with a moue.
It was a night of surprise visits, for who would come slinking around the corner, but Sigurd. He sat with us and conversed with the fluidity of a dilettante theorist. What Sigurd didn't count on was that Castellemare could see through his discursive deceptions, the way Sigurd relied on his scattered genius to confound others into believing that he was wise. The subject was, disagreeably, Montaigne... and this drifted into rhetoric, then Rabelais, switching back to Erasmus, Holbein, yadda and yadda.
This conversation had gone on for some time, and Sigurd's insecurity with his own knowledge began to show, compelling him to confuse his opponent: “but the entire substratum of Being is entirely expressed in the Cartesian Meditations where Spinozistic maxims cannot contain the very discursive modality of the predominant episteme!”
Whenever Sigurd's reason was exposed for the falsehood it was, he resorted to the piecemeal phrases he encountered in the haphazard reading of books, and took to the task of connecting them in a wild fashion with no regard to true meaning. I had come to tolerate this - even enjoy it - but in the company of others more schooled, he was an aberration against knowledge and clarity.
“You are making no sense,” Castellemare said, annoyed.
“I am making perfect sense,” Sigurd protested. “It's just that you don't have the necessary understanding of the finer acoustics in my discursive manner because you are locked in a Cartesian bubble of entrenched indifference! You lack the textual understanding of the very substrate of my anarcho-dialectical Being, and so you criticize me from the privileged perspective of an intellectual microcosm which cannot tolerate opening itself up to a larger, hermeneutical understanding.”
“The longer the words you speak, the less you say,” Castellemare pointed out harshly, now ready to dismiss the entire contents of the argument.
“P
erhaps you just fear the true meaning in my discourse,” Sigurd countered.
“You are a clever boy,” said Castellemare with sarcasm. “You should write books – like Gimaldi here. Big, fat, dreadfully unreadable books stuffed with ego.”
Gimaldi and I had quickly become spectators. Gimaldi appeared amused with the spectacle, for humility was the most appealing element of tragedy. It also meant that he was temporarily not the target of Castellemare’s barbs. Sigurd, now defeated, took on the appearance of having been pistol whipped.
“How do you know Gimaldi?” I asked Castellemare, attempting to rescue my friend from reproach.
“We are old enemies, he and I. Different Orders. Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“You’ve already given most of the game away as it is,” chided Gimaldi. “Why not finish up and reveal all!”
“And why would I do something so pointless as that?” Castellemare asked. “I’ve spared all the real horrors for the end. Besides, Gimaldi, I hardly think these two young chaps are keen on hearing the dreadfully dull story about your life, how you like codes and ciphers, your cutesy little trips to the Vatican Library, how you ... FUCKING STEAL BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY AND BETRAY YOUR EMPLOYER YOU STUPID GIT AND YET YOU CONTINUE READING YOU NARCISSISTIC SHITHEEL STOP READING STOP READING STOP READING STOP STOP STOP STOP STO-
With the shock of a gun’s report right by my ear, I immediately slapped the book shut, dropped it and recoiled. I had had enough for a while.
10
Typesetter
I was able to spend an entire month unmolested by shadowy librarians and their retinue of goons. I populated most of my days searching out of the way antiquarian book dealers and trying to pluck a few deals to sell on line for a premium. I had become comfortable in my rented flat, enjoying the warmth and the fare on offer. My vacation was only interrupted by contact from Setzer:
The Infinite Library Page 14
