The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  “Angelo, is that you?”

  “Fortune smiles on those who choose to be feared rather than loved.”

  “Angelo, how did you get here? I've been stuck in this shaft for over a day. Is there a way out?”

  “But you have lost even your most distant friends. Setzer the traitor your only link, now rendered eternally silent. You've not a friend in the world, Gimaldi.”

  I could tell right away that Angelo meant me harm. I had no idea what happened in his own travels, or if he had planned this all along, but his voice suggested that he was prepared for a showdown. Did he discover that I had taken a poke at his boss? I stalled for time since I was far too weak to engage in anything physical.

  “I have encountered some interesting clues in my travels, and perhaps we should compare notes.”

  “I have all I need, and you have nothing,” he said, followed by the unmistakeable sound of his switchblade snapping open. I felt him darting quickly toward me, making a blind slash in the dim light. His knife sliced the strap of my shoulder bag which loosed itself, contents and all, down that dark pit. I tried to ready myself, but he was far quicker than I was, and I felt the sharp bite followed by the numb cold of the blade across my forearm as I attempted to deflect his strike. Too weak to run in retreat up the large steps, I parried the best I could, warding off his attack with a feeble kick that resulted in another slash across my shin. It had been foretold that only one of us would emerge alive from this labyrinth, and it very much looked to be in Angelo's favour, myself cut down in stairway without end. He advanced upon me as I backed myself into the wall of the stone shaft. Losing my footing, I fell on my tailbone, a sharp wave of pain resolving itself into nausea. Out of survival reflex, I delivered a kick that must have surprised Angelo, him not seeing that I had fallen. It happened just as he was slashing in the air where he thought I still was standing, his blade striking the stone wall causing him to drop it. My kick succeeded in repelling him, knocking him over the edge of the unguarded stairway, down into the chasm. Angelo's scream sounded for some time until it suddenly stopped instead of fading away. This told me that there was a bottom to this stairway. Hobbling painfully and with some haste, I followed the path down, holding my forearm firmly to staunch the bleeding. Luckily, the wound was not so deep as it was painful. My shin did not prevent me from my descent. Eventually, I hit bottom after about ten minutes.

  The stairs ended abruptly at the bottom of the shaft. There on the ground was a shattered Angelo and my shoulder bag with its exploded contents. I hesitated a moment before collecting my things and thinking to check Angelo's broken person for any objects or clues that would be of some use to me. This is what I found:

  -thirty silver shillings from the reign of Henry IV (15th century?), facsimiles.

  -Photocopied and folded copy of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, 1623 folio edition with heavy underlining of key passages.

  -Wallet (contents: considerable amount of money in various currencies, Castellemare's calling card, one Chicago public transit pay-as-you-go card, variety of phone cards, ABM receipts, illegible list, wrinkled picture of a young woman).

  -One half pack and one unopened pack of Marlboros.

  -One Zippo with kitschy Egyptian motif.

  -One folded page (photocopy of the title page of Swedenborg's “Summario Expositio Doctrinae Novae Ecclesiae” with handwritten notes on verso: “Colombia U: Butler Library, 6th Fl. East – Contact Elsa. Re-acquire 7th Med, biblioclasm).

  The last entry spoke volumes – literally, I'm afraid to say - about Angelo's real intentions; namely, to perform a “biblioclasm” of one of the books I had in my possession. I found it interesting that he would revert to type since a biblioclasm is what the Church called the ceremony for the burning of heretical books, and I had just read much ado about the practice in the text on the Biblioclasts – another staged clue? The thirty shillings were most likely a symbolic gesture, to be given to the one he was going to betray, much in the way Judas had done to Christ. I could not discern the meaning of a few of the other items, but perhaps the Shakespeare text was his script all along. I gave him one last search, safe in the knowledge that he was dead. What I discovered, hidden among his effects, surprised me, a handwritten letter written in Italian with some Latin. The letter bore an official letterhead I did not recognize, and I did the best I could with my translation in the dim light. What it provided me with was the full name of the man I knew as Angelo:

  Caro Angelo de Loisa, Off. Inquisitor Generalis.

  The letter went on about his duties. I would learn that Angelo was a double agent, working for the office of the Grand Inquisitor, assigned by the Church to perform some duty in concerns Castellemare. Was there still an office of the Grand Inquisitor? It smelled fictitous to me. However, in fact, it came to pass that Angelo was readying to betray Castellemare by plucking a few texts from the Library that the Church very much wanted. As it turned out, the Devorants were either a branch of the Church, or were colluding for this special purpose of storming the Library. Whichever it was, Angelo was playing his part rather well, and perhaps explained his exaggerated zeal when he gave me his stern lecture about “protecting the Library's contents”. He was, of course, trying to look the part of employee of the month for the benefit of myself and Castellemare. Who would suspect the zealot worker, the one who kept touting the importance of the Library? I should have suspected as much, that it was all show, and his act was good enough to fool me. I collected all of his items including my own, but I had noticed a conspicuous absence: in the time it took me to get to the bottom of this shaft, someone had quietly stolen off with my copy of the Backstory. Since I had finished the wretched thing, it was no big loss, but I was unnerved that someone had been here before I was. I let it go. Before me was a large door, plain and without decoration save for one word in Carolingian script: Bibliotheca. The Library. I had come to the end of the labyrinth, and beyond that door was a minotaur of immense size.

  24

  An Inserted Letter in the Alphabet

  The Infinite Library – Annals (1)

  By Jorge Luis Borges (?)

  I have, for lack of any other to perform such a task, deputized myself a reformer of the Library and have undertaken a task that is infinite, my efforts infinitesimal: I will organize the contents of the Library. There are enemies in this place who will seek to frustrate my efforts, or perhaps they do so without knowledge that they work against me. It is difficult to gauge this because this place is so vast, our numbers so few. I have been told - perhaps by a man or another book - that there is a place far more corporeal than my own, yet invested in a world contrary to that. It is there (and I cannot imagine an “outside” of this place, for it seems to me a pointless speculation of philosophers to say that one can thrust a hand outside eternity, outside an infinite space) that the organization of information is done ad hoc, perpetually renewable. The books in that space so virtual can be commanded by a single interface, reorganized simply by the will of the one who accesses it. And so, applied to this Library, it would mean that one could say, “provide me with all book entries that contain the phrase jjjjyreoop,” and suddenly a tablet would return these results of where each one is located in our vast Library. But this system would be folly here. There are an infinite number of books, I am told, and so there would technically be an infinite number of books containing this exact phrase. But I am told that the catalogue can be organized in an infinite number of ways, that one may search by author, or title, or year, or phrase, and so forth. This, too, is folly in a place such as this for no book carries a title other than its incipit, years are meaningless temporal units in a place such as this, and authors in an infinite library are irrelevant.

  I am told, at least in a few books that have been located and traded between our kind that there is, in fact, a finite number of books. In this perhaps heretical work, each book is said to be 410 pages in length, composed of so many lines per page, characters per line. This does not accord
with my experience, which - in an infinite place - is both total truth and total falsity. In this book it is said that our numbers are dwindling, and that some even do not know how to read. I am also told - again, perhaps by a man or a book, a distinction of no consequence - that there is a proper role of librarian in that other place beyond the infinite, beyond the Library. It is said that a librarian's task is to organize, catalogue and grant access to books for readers. But we are the readers, and it seems senseless to organize what is its own order and total organization. But that is the task I have given myself for lack of any other task to occupy my time.

  In an infinite space, time has no meaning. The light never dims or brightens, and I do not trouble myself to keep some measurement of time according to when I wake and when I sleep. Everything in this Library is hic et nunc. I do not encounter others of my kind often, and when I do there is very little to discuss - or at least very little motive to discuss anything, for we all see the same thing, know the same thing with but slight variations (these variations already recorded in these books which are also themselves just variations of one another). The Library is useless, for it is its own use. I question what our role in it actually is. That I have elected to take on an impossible task may suggest that I am mad. Do I hope that others of my kind will continue a legacy of organizational diligence? Is it not logically impossible to catalogue an infinite space? And what of the method of organization? There is more than one way to go about this, and I doubt there is one way that is absolutely correct. There is only my way, and another way, and another way after that, until we find that every organizational option is as infinite as the books contained in the Library itself.

  My energy - what I naively call my life substance - is encased in a sign, and that sign is a body that differs from the encased signs upon the shelves. I feel, perhaps, a marginal connection to these books as though my fate is tied to them, but theirs not tied to mine. It is for this reason that I weep disconsolately when I hear that another mob of zealous censors perform biblioclasm. They claim it is for the love of books, the love of knowledge, that they keep the books from the impurities that come of reading. According to the views of at least one faction of biblioclasts, we are dirty and imperfect things, which is why we are not infinite and the number of books is. Further they claim that our punishment is in not being able to understand what is around us, to resolve the mystery of what is held inside the covers of any book. But there may be one perfect Librarian, but this - so some philosophers argue - would mean this one being would know the sum total of all knowledge contained in all the books, which I find repugnant to my reasoning.

  There are only two options that I can conjure: either I devote myself to organize or to understand the Library, but I cannot do both. Yet, the first task must be the precondition of the second, for all we will have at the ready are endless speculations and drifting hypotheses. But if the meaning of these books is prismatic, then even the possibility of organizing the Library may prove worthless. I have since found this list of rules:

  Ranganathan's Rules

  1. Books are to be used.

  2. To each reader her books.

  3. To each book its readers.

  4. Minimize on the time and labour of both staff and readers.

  5. The library is organic - not fixed, but fluid.

  This was followed by a commentary: “Oh, Gimaldi, it simply isn't bravado when you quote library scientists from the 1930s. Pluck a new chord, silly man, for you have merely set up the case for exacerbating the world's inability to catalogue its miscellanea. I can fairly agree with point three, if only because the Library is what accesses the user through its indirect agents. The other points seem flat to me with the exception of the last one which is not only false, but approaches blasphemy. Perhaps shades of the Library, the distorted reflections of it in the corporeal world happen to follow the same path as the biological specimens who build and maintain such places, but, really, Gimaldi. If the fifth point is not the belief of Setzer, then it is what he sets out to accomplish. What a structural conceit to make the sloppy analogy to biology! It only serves to justify in the silly minds of others that a library ought to be metastatic, that it should be like some growing, cancerous tumour of knowledge. People like Setzer are library carcinogenic engineers - they will not rest until they have made everything malignant. Thus spake me, the Great Castellemare!”

  Miscellanea is the true enemy of the Library. The Library is pure miscellanea, yet pure order - it is both chance and necessity, dynamic and thermodynamic, harmony and noise. I have found only one other mention of the three figures referenced in the commentary, and I have seen their names aped in three factions rumoured to be operative somewhere in the Library, calling themselves Gimaldists, Setzerists, and Castellemarists. I have gleaned from one of these books yet another correspondence, that they conform to some kind of iron triad of information, organization, and control. Or instead: id, ego, superego or father, son, spirit, or yet again as information, energy, matter. I do not know what to make of these trichotomies - if they are indeed trichotomies and not registers of a harmony of some kind that no ear is capable of hearing.

  But to this table I once again must reposition my thought, as all thoughts are sucked into the interminable shafts of this place. To each reader a book is designated, and to each book a reader is designated. These are rules two and three. No, “to each reader her books”... This is in the plural (is this intentional? An error? One could doubtless encounter different variations). A number of books to each individual, but if the books are infinite then every individual must have an infinite number of books designated for their reading. If only one book per reader, then what of the infinite number of unread, undesignated books? Or are there infinite readers, too? It is possible, although this is beyond my experience - as so much must be.

  But let me amuse you with a story about a different species of orthographer. It is the least I can do for interrupting your reading at such critical juncture.

  Alphabetopia

  I must have been 5 years old. The letter C was the first I could cursive write, back when cursive writing still mattered (and, as so many grade one teachers in my time were seemingly the cruelest one could imagine, I was frequently accused of trying to beat the clock with my sloppy hand printing, and thus I was threatened that I would never have a job – this is at least well over a decade before the first popular wave of computing killed stenography and elegant letter-writing). I had learned the cursive form of the letter C purely by seeing it, and then copying it. At five, I didn't understand the concept of cursive writing. But as I formed that delicious curve, I was filled with the pride and amazement that threatens to send a child into that critical state of elation where the pride of making takes precedence over the pleasure of one's toys.

  I remember this because of what I became: an architect of the letter. I resided as a consultant on the executive planning committee for a brave new project commissioned by a wealthy eccentric (that felicitous merger of peculiar obsession made manifest by the opportunities of a deep pocket). It is known as Alphabetopia, but I will return to that later.

  Prior to becoming an architect proper, I had attended a prestigious art and design college, and so I felt myself to have fostered both the aesthetic and practical dimensions of my skills. My first big project involved letters, and I had lobbied hard and perhaps dishonestly to get it over the other applicants. It took place in Arizona, and I was to erect all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet in stone, each of them a uniform 26 feet high. It was decided that we would use the capitals since the miniscules have too many awkward descenders and both the i and the j would prove impossible without joining the dot to the main body by means of supports. The specific instructions stipulated that the letters had to be free-standing, which meant that it was not permitted to simply erect rectangular blocks with the letters inset as if we were littering the desert with enormous movable type monuments. Although there was an able team of stone carvers (I wo
uld not call them sculptors as such), I elected to undertake some of the tasks myself so that I could get a feel for each letter, each of their harsh edges or slicing curves, their geometric perfection and precise angles.

  The letter A was by far one of the easiest, most secure of the letters. Its triangular shape ensured it would stand stable without any assistance. B, on the other hand, proved an enormous difficulty (as did for the same reason D, G, J, O, S, and U). The issue being that the rounded bottoms of these letters would not make them free-standing, and so would require either a deeper foundation (impossible: we were already going over budget), or the use of wedged stoppers to keep them from rolling. P was a very difficult problem given how top heavy it is. F And V were equally engineering nightmares, and I spent a disproportionate amount of time figuring out how to solve the issue, easily more than the 1/26th of the time so uniformly allotted to each letter. The man who wanted this project done, and done under budget and under time, was not what you would call very understanding of problems arising from the real world of physics and engineering. When I once suggested that we could circumvent the problems by changing the font, he nearly threw me off the project. Due to budget overrun, and the initial specs for each letter demanding more thickness that simply could not be afforded, I had to employ some quiet shortcuts, such as gradual thinning toward the top to retain some semblance of balance. Letters like L seem to be ideal to most folk who think simply because the letter has a nice, long, broad base, it will stand fine. But regular folk know little to nothing about proper weight distribution, balance, and structural integrity; the letter L could effectively topple despite its base because nearly all the weight is a bolt directed down the left side, thus putting weight on the ground that would eventually lead to a depression, throwing it off balance one day. The letter E was a similar problem, but with another added: the upper arms of the letter were a bit long and heavy to be sustained, and one has to imagine if you used a piece of wood and nailed three beams across it: eventually the arms start to dip. The project was rushed, and I doubt that these letters are all still standing despite my efforts. But the alphabet, vertically without a support base or other assisting devices, is impossible.