The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  “We parted when the labyrinth forked. He is through a door marked timor.”

  “What was written on your path?”

  “Amor.”

  “Ha! For the love of production, for the love of destruction! More fitting than Setzer could have realized. How we all play our parts in a narrative whose ultimate meaning we only gain small snatches of. Excellent. You have no idea how this tickles me.”

  I was certain that tucked behind his smirk was much more than he was willing to give. He retreated further behind a pall of cigarette smoke. Whatever he had to tell me – my dollop of the script – had come to an end, and once more he would go silent like some daunting monolith carved by a civilization long gone. Despite this, his eyes were searching me, reticently observing if I would give some information in kind. I met his gaze steadily with what I hoped was a look of obstinateness rather than confused petulance.

  “Will that be all?” I asked, fishing out a cigarette of my own.

  “No, that's never all. You are holding out on me, Gimaldi. Give me something to chew on. I've been so gracious that I would expect such a gesture in return. I find no joy in engaging in the lecture mode as I have done here, strictly for your benefit. We are not enemies, whatever you may think. I have no enemies – only amusements.”

  “Everything seems to amuse you, especially the most serious matters. The rest of us do not have the secret knowledge or the luxury to laugh as you do.”

  “You'd do well to embrace life's innate humour, Gimaldi, instead of twisting into silly knots. You'll give yourself an ulcer, old boy. You've seen fit to consider me a kind of tyrant, which is almost hurtfully untrue... I am no tyrant of the Library– I only simplify its regulation. So, what's it going to be?”

  “I'm going to push past and get to the end of this labyrinth. I have questions you cannot or are not willing to answer, and so I must take matters strictly in hand.”

  “Ah, self-reliance! How relieving, actually. I hate to spoon-feed. Independence... I'm so happy to see you take such bold initiative,” he said with a wink. “Although, I sincerely doubt you will relish what lies beyond that door.”

  “I'll take my chances.”

  “As you were, soldier.”

  Castellemare didn't budge from where he stood, obstructing me.

  “Let me pass,” I said.

  He blew smoke in my face and laughed. “Let you pass, let you fail. We have just one little nasty bit of business to clear up, dearest Gimaldi. According to my accounts, you still owe me something.”

  “What can I possibly owe you? You've given me only mysteries on top of mysteries, crypticisms over direct answers, peril instead of safety. Is that what you wish me to repay you for?”

  Castellemare's face clouded over in a sudden anger. “Ungrateful little whelp! I've given you far more than you deserve. Give me my due, and give it immediately.”

  “I am not in the habit of taking orders from those who are not my employers. Get out of my way,” I said, nudging past him. He collared me just as I passed, getting hold of my jacket. I struggled free, but he was quick and so nabbed me once more, this time with surprising strength knocking me off balance.

  He stood over me, leering, that devilish grin creeping back. “This is no way to repay a debt, Gimaldi.”

  “What could I possibly owe you? You told Angelo that I could keep the books!”

  “I've changed my mind.”

  I attempted to scramble back onto my feet, but Castellemare pushed me down gruffly with his shoe. I found it strange that none of his workers were taking notice of any of this. I knew if it came to blows, I'd be outnumbered. Perhaps they knew that their boss could manage fairly well without assistance; despite his scrawny appearance, he was indeed quite strong. I feigned that peace was my desire with two raised palms. He backed away slightly to allow me to stand. He thought that I was going to give him as he demanded, but was shocked to receive a hard cuff to the mouth, right in the centre of his ridiculous grin. I watched him stumble back a few steps, waving off any offer of assistance from the workers that were certainly not paying any mind to anything outside their task anyway. His eyes widened as a toothy and bloody grin spread across his face. I was certain that this insubordinate act amused him as well. A lazy trickle of blood pooled around his bottom lip, beading there. He looked at me as if I had become incongruous, a surprise falling out of my own character.

  “For you, death by back catalogue, and your fortunes falling stillborn from the press,” he hissed, but I was through with being strung along, with being obstructed at every turn, with being bullied by the designer mysteries of others. Sick of it all. “Go on, then,” he called after me as I was about to open the next door. “Meet the prototypes! Greet the future! This won't be the first drawing of blood!”

  His demonic laughter followed after me as I hurried into the next room. I was greeted by a gravelly 'hello' from someone whose face was partially under shadow.

  “What is your name?” asked the voice with no hint of malice or even an abundance of curiousity.

  “Are you one of Castellemare's agents?” I replied.

  “I don't know this name. I am of my own agency.”

  “A tall, thin man passed through here. He is on the other side of that door. You must have seen him.”

  “So many men pass. I know only myself.”

  “How did you come to be in Setzer's labyrinth?”

  “I don't know this name either. You speak of passing men I do not know. But then, my time is not just as yet... Soon, however. I am only waiting for my host.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Dr Edward Albrecht, or I will be. I am waiting for my host. Will I come to know you, or of you, when my time of occupancy is come?”

  Another exasperating riddle. From what I could see of the man's occulted face, there was a self-satisfied smile. He spoke as if half in a dream, and his presence in that darkened room was unsettling. There was something potent and foreboding about him, but it was an intuition most likely brought about by all my previous experiences in this maze. Castellemare said something about prototypes, whatever this meant. I only knew that I didn't want to know this man whatsoever.

  “By atrocity some come to reign,” he said aloud, although it didn't seem to be directed to me. “Out there... I long to touch out there. I hope to be developed in full, in full colour... Tell me, man who passes, what is the appetite of men out there? What do they hide? What names do they give their shadows these days? So many questions, so much anticipation, so much to do. I will have a body... soon... I am told.”

  Flashes of thought assailed me: books are alive... the seventh book will emerge from the synthesis of a prior six... he would be born from a book, a book made flesh...

  “I cannot understand what you are referring to, but I have to go,” I said.

  He merely nodded absently, seemingly consumed by his own thoughts. As I was about to depart, the light struck just so to reveal upon a wall the word “amor” written several times, each holograph under vicious cancellation by red 'X', crudely slashed. The man who called himself Dr Edward Albrecht muttered to himself what sounded like “atrocitatis” - atrocity. I let myself out into yet another room.

  A professor once told me that the world is German, but the land is Greek. This was my first impression upon entering this spacious and opulent room with its white marble flooring and a few accent fountains tinkling water from the pails held by carved cherubs unhitched from the skirts of marbled Augustus. The only languid characteristic of the rather chiseled and statuesque woman was the way she reposed upon the divan, an affectation of femme fatale about her. One look at her long, slender limbs told one she was quite tall, and her sharp Germanic features made her appear both demure and dangerous. She was loosely attired, and I could see by her diving neckline what looked to be the top part of a swastika tattoo that would cover her left breast. Her hair was blonde and short-cropped, accentuating a long neck. She cast me a glance and then turned her g
aze to another person I had not noticed in the expanse of the room, a person I did recognize: Jakob Sigurdsson. I had the sense that he was in service to this woman.

  “More ghosts in my house?” she spoke into the open air.

  “Yes, madame,” replied a strangely suppliant Jakob. I moved to him as one would move to something relatively known when everything else was shrouded in uncertainty.

  “Jakob, what are you doing here?” I asked him. His eyes were blank.

  “I serve the mistress.”

  “How did you get in here? I saw you just a while ago. There's no way you could have beat me here, unless... “

  Jakob merely looked up at me with no expression upon his face before reiterating, “I serve the mistress.”

  There was something awry in this arrangement, characteristically more so than anything I had hitherto encountered in this place, but I could see by Jakob's comportment that I would not get any answers to my questions. He seemed drugged. I decided to focus my inquiries to the hard-eyed matron.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am not quite myself yet, but he is even less so – if he'll ever be,” she replied with the aspect of someone very bored.

  “Who is the man in the other room?”

  “He is also not quite himself yet. His name is Edward Albrecht.”

  “This I already know, but why is he here, in this labyrinth?”

  “I see no labyrinth. We are in a room. We are waiting.”

  “For what?” I asked impatiently. I could tell she was becoming tired of my questions.

  “To be.”

  “And so who are you? What is your name?”

  “I am Alexa Richter. Over there is Jakob Sigurdsson. Our time is not yet. This is not our narrative, but it will be.”

  “Whose narrative is it, then?”

  She shrugged almost as if to say, “maybe yours?”

  “Cigarette,” she called out icily, to which Jakob came and provided her with a very long one, lighting it. She held it between very long, tapering fingers in a lazy fashion. First this Albrecht, and now these two: all of them waiting. I felt as though I had arrived backstage before the play was about to begin. I knew better than to ask either of them about Castellemare or Setzer's labyrinth since it was becoming apparent that they knew as much about this place as the furniture.

  Jakob was quite elegantly attired, if not ridiculously anachronistic, in baroque fashion. Alexa looked more the part of a Grecian deity, complete with high-corked sandalia – not that her impressive stature required heightening. It was obvious that he was in servitude to this woman, but I could not glean why. Theirs was a narrative that they would not grant me access to. I wondered then how Angelo was faring in his own wending, if he was encountering the same ciphers.

  “Will that be all?” she asked somewhat hostilely.

  I did not respond, but rather took this as my cue to continue my journey through yet another door. I would learn nothing from these walls masquerading as people.

  As if to torment me through “death by reading”, there was another text of the same size and length as “Tain” doubtless planted there to underscore Castellemare's current act of performing biblioclasm. It was one of those academic conversant pieces on an obscure sect devoted to the destruction of books as a means of preserving them. I was being asked to make the link. As was now becoming a common feature in this labyrinth, the author and narrator are both unnamed.

  The Biblioclasts

  This fragment appeared in the account of renowned archivist and middling poet, Everard Glamis. I would have liked to take a certain compliment that my coming across it was by no mean feat of research, but in actual fact it was an act of random bibliomancy. It fell open upon the floor as I was trying to remove a few tightly packed books adjacent to this volume. The word “hun” is what caught my attention, and it was this passage in total that shifted my interest. I am no apologist, nor am I complicit with the acts I have read, but rather I have tried to remain as objective as possible in my account. The passage follows:

  They ranged like frenzied huns, arriving at the gates of the library spurred by a merciless hatred of all printed matter. They would lay torch to it all, the charring centre a tangled mess of curling embers and so many words freed from their ink and paper chains. Freedom by fire and the merciless annihilation of blasphemies in dangerous print. Would these ravenous biblioclasts heed what Joachim Becher said, that enemies shall be choked by the smoke that wafts from his words set to flame?

  The Biblioclasts were not always what they were in name and function. In their earliest incarnation, as a more or less loosely banded cadre of like-minded book enthusiasts (all of the founders, save for two members – a mysterious and dark tale all on its own – have maintained their nominal role, even as the name and function of the group developed itself in the way that it appears now). The closest description that fits the pre-Biblioclasts would be literary snobbery. This snobbery did not exclude their own efforts: every new issue they produced of their pretentious Nova Literarium was followed by a vicious refutation and denouncement in the subsequent issue. Their excessive braggadocio was so legendary that others, in the spirit of disdain and maliciously spiteful sarcasm, used to remark, “Each member already believes they have transmuted themselves into bronze statues, their names engraved, only to turn back and trash their honours to prepare for something much more monumentalist.” Although it would not prove such an outlandish exaggeration given the stiff and elitist airs they put on.

  When they fell to ceaseless bickering over some minor point – to choose opt or apt in an unleavened sentence – such disputes gained to such amplified rancor that an observer might expect knives to have been drawn and interlocutors cut down as a natural conclusion to the raging argument. Despite these fractious polemics, these circuitous and heated jeremiads lobbed like incendiary devices, the bond of the group never broke under their repeated – and wholly ridiculous – conflicts.

  It would be difficult to resist the thoughtful and most reasonable explanation that the vitriolic discord among the group is what functioned as the crucible of the Biblioclastic genesis – but this would be incorrect. I have consulted numerous sources – albeit with some incredible difficulty – and nowhere have I found a truly reliable account not already plagued with ambiguity, hopelessly overwrought contradiction, or obviously flagrant prejudice. Of the latter type, there are reams of fiery moralizing that denounces the Biblioclasts as barbaric. No doubt, these were written by passionate bibliophiles who weigh the death of a cherished relative on balance with the pointless annihilation of a book.

  But it is there that such prejudices emerge, horribly unqualified, for there is a degenerate fixity on the part of these anti-Biblioclasts to diminish the raison d'être of the Biblioclasts as pointless when, in fact, their reasoning is quite solid, well-formed, and metaphysically grounded. Plenty are the great historical movements where barbaric methods are necessary to advance a just cause: the spread of Christianity by the sword, the growing pains of establishing democracy in the New World, and so forth. We may dispute the ethical quality of the method, but perhaps we may all agree on the outcome.

  What I was able to cobble together behind the windscreen of polemic, between the unavailing descriptions, misting atop the dry bouts of reportage, was that the pre-Biblioclast group underwent a fantastic turn – from atrocious vanity to feverish zealotry. Turning their focus to the destruction rather than endless multiplication of books, they embraced dark superstitions, conducted infernal mystical rites, and fabricated unspeakable aims. The turn was a stark and surprising one, especially given their former overindulgent reverence for the printed word, but it was on account of said reverence that biblioclasm became necessary.

  I would not here hazard that necessity always ennobles a deed any more than one can trust a crooked servant's fleering smile. Necessity can be as equally cruel as it can seem to repair to aims more appealing. The Biblioclasts assigned themselves the moral jurisdicti
on to perform their necessary function, even if destroying the printed word in order to save it seems much like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

  The very stubborn and singularly focused esprit of the Biblioclasts and their pedagogically based self righteousness makes even their most vicious and long-toothed detractors seem almost timid. The monomaniacal piety of their deeds renders them fervently ravenous in the pursuit of books – a holdover from their previous days when the character of their love was different and, in their estimation, confused and erroneous. Now they would say their love of text is full, an insurmountable passion that has finally succeeded to understand what true love entails.

  What rounds out their apparent fanaticism are a few noble principles – noble insofar as they betoken a deep love of books most cannot comprehend, less embrace. First, no man is worthy of the product of his pen. Second, no man is worthy of the product of other men's pens. Books, to the Biblioclasts, are sacred and ineffable (metaphysically). The Biblioclasts subscribe almost literally to an idea of a progressive perfection. Man is degenerate, for he is the predecessor of the work whereas the work contains within it a higher degree of perfection – this follows from the two principles I have paraphrased supra. It should be said that the Biblioclastic view is consistent insofar as they spurn respect for parents as much as they reject belief in an authorial God. To them, God is not some mere representation, but is a literally existing entity: the books themselves. The summation of all Books, or God, is the distillation of all Man's greatest virtues without the filthy fetters of animalistic corporeality and ephemerality, and so men – the filthy and imperfect progenitors of God – are not worthy of enjoying the result of their creation. It is this set of principles that call out bibliophiles of not truly understanding or having a deep sense of love for books.