The Infinite Library (36 page)

So far, no mention of the synthesis in what I had read. If this part of the plot was so integral, then it had to be introduced soon as the pages were beginning to run out. What was my purpose in reading the
Backstory
beyond mention of a few existing persons? The synthesis had not only failed to materialize as a plot item, but there was hardly enough space left in the book for it to be properly finessed. The
Backstory
had no plot motor, no engine: only an ugly chassis skinned with cheap material.

A knock at the door broke me from being entirely consumed with the problem. My continued wariness at receiving callers was still firmly with me. I looked through the peephole I convinced my rather miserly landlord to install and saw a familiar although unwelcome face.

“What?” I asked through the door.

“Let me in. No funny stuff. Just want to talk,” Angelo said in an exchange that could have equally found its context in being spoken between two lovers in a spat.

“I'm through with it, Angelo. Leave me alone.”

“I haven't come for the books. I just want to talk.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was not here to exact vengeance. He sounded more conciliatory than usual, and his generally brusque manner seemed to have receded deep within his leather jacket. I relented and opened the door, but barricaded him from entering by making of my body an obstruction. I had not given it any thought that Castellemare’s threat of sending Angelo to retrieve the books did not come to pass - until now. Why was I not visited earlier, and why were those two books still in my possession?

“May I come in?” he asked without a hint of truculence in his voice or composure. It was an endearing request, almost childlike.

I retreated back into my apartment without turning my back on him, sat on my office chair, letting my gaze trail him to a reading chair a good many safe yards away. I made the calculation of how quickly I could acquire the knife in the drawer if need be.

After an awkward silence, I asked him, “So, what is it?”

“Anton Setzer is dead.”

“Dead?” I echoed with incredulity.

“Very.”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday. At his bookstore, that shallow front of his,” Angelo said with some disdain, but immediately made a gesture of apology with his hands.

“Who did it?”

“That I don't know, but don't start making wild accusatory leaps here. My employer had nothing to do with it,” he petitioned, and I was inclined to believe him. For what little I knew about Castellemare, murder didn't seem to be in his character despite having all the motivations against Setzer to do so.

“Was it the Devorants, then?”

“The who?” Angelo said baffled as if struck with a foreign utterance. It was quite likely that Angelo was not high enough in the Order to have been told about the Devorants. I shook off the reference as he continued, “Anyway, there might be cause to believe that you had a hand in this.”

“Me? How so?”

“I know it would sound preposterous given how mild-mannered you are, but isn't it always the person you least suspect?”

“You read too many potboilers, Angelo.”

“Funny. He was found dead in the mystery section of the store.”

“Do you presume it may be the murderer's signature? Perhaps the person or persons involved are trying to send a message. And to this nonsense of me being somehow involved, get that thought out of your mind right now. Besides, if you truly thought I had a hand in it, why would you come here and bring me news of his murder? You seem a bit shaken, and, honestly, I don't think there was much love lost between the two of you.”

“He was a colleague, and a fellow of the book. Those are reasons enough to mourn the fallen.”

“How touching,” I said a bit too caustically. I redressed my tone. “It all sounds so unbelievable. How was he killed?”

“Force-fed. He choked to death on having pages of novels crammed into his mouth.”

“It sounds ghastly. There must have been more than one person involved to make that happen,” I added impotently. Truth was, I was already puzzling in different directions as to who the culprit was. From my final conversation with Setzer, I had reason to believe that the Devorants were involved.

“That hardly matters at this point. You're dead right: someone is trying to convey a serious message. My advice is if you are still poking your nose where it doesn't belong, you better quit it now. That means all your sleuthing and asking after things that are none of your business has to stop. I can spare you the trouble by telling you that there is no conspiracy to uncover, no secret or hidden knowledge to gain.”

“Setzer's murder, and the way it was done, suggests quite strongly to me that there is indeed a conspiracy of a kind. Booksellers are not traditional targets of assassins.”

Angelo was becoming agitated. “If this is a message, then you best heed it. Trifling with things you don't understand is a perilous offense.”

“Angelo, are you ever off the clock from this perpetual 'dark-robed ones' facade? Really, it's a bit much. And let me ask you this: why are you not here for the books? 'Perilous offense'... really, Angelo... According to what court? I'm expected to obey the savage rulings of a court I do not know, cannot see?”

Angelo stretched out one leg and rubbed it gingerly, turned his head and scratched his nose. “The boss has called it off.”

“What?”

“Keep 'em. The books. Fuck it.”

“Just like that?” I said, floored and suspecting some kind of trick.

“Listen, Gimaldi, this isn't personal. I do what the boss says, and if he says the whole thing's called off, it's called off, period. Don't ask me why because he has his reasons, and I don't ask why, either; I just do as he says.”

“If Setzer was done in this way, you may be in danger, too,” I offered with a slight dash of sympathy. If anything, despite how I was not fond of the man, he could prove a useful ally – or at least not an enemy. I had in my trust and so felt no reason to carry the standard of wariness around him. I related to him what Setzer had told me. I could tell that this was the first time Angelo had heard this news, for his eyes bulged in flashes of disbelief- or he was a good actor.

“Orders, merged libraries, syntheses, a real fine fucking mess all that,” he said, finally.

“You already know about the Orders,” I reminded him. “Should I refer to you by your proper title? Knight of Acquisitions?”

“I know only of the Order I belong to, none other. I knew Setzer had branched off to form some renegade order, but I couldn't have imagined it having all the refinement and traditional structure of what I belong to.”

“We have to piece this together, Angelo,” I offered again. For the first time, it seemed as though I was in possession of more information than he was, turning the positions around. “If this was not just some random murder, then it was a calculated hit. A big one at that since, given my understanding, Setzer was the patriarch of his Order, its founder. Someone had reason to kill him, and kill him the way that they did.”

“Stating the obvious. Who are these Devorants?”

“You may have to ask your employer,” I said flatly. “I've told you all I know.”

“The boss doesn't give any info for cheap. It would be against my station to make inquiries. It's part of the code.”

“Of the Order?”

“Rules, Gimaldi. We all have our rules, our duties, our obligations to the Craft.”

“Something has been bothering me, and I was hoping perhaps you could shed some light on it. We can both fairly agree that the 'boss' is a very savvy and calculating man with incredible foresight. There is no possible way that he would have simply let me have those books unless it was part of his plan, and neither would they still be in my possession if he truly wanted them back. The fact that you were told to drop the issue is also very telling. He intends for me to keep these books, despite the law of the Library.”

“I told you already, Gimaldi: his reasons are his alone. I take no part in the decision process, but merely do as I'm told.”

“Which brings me to why you have come here today. To merely relate news of Setzer's murder?”

“That had nothing to do with the boss' instructions. I just thought you might like to know, a small professional courtesy. The boss merely instructed me to tell you that the hunt was called off and that you can stop living in fear of him. That's all.”

Angelo appeared deflated. Everything I had reported to him was taking its toll, weighing him down. After a time, I asked him, “Have you ever read these books?”

“The ones you stole? No. I am not permitted to read anything from the Library unless my boss wills it.” And, after a time: “I should go. There has been a curiously sudden surge of slipped books, some of them appearing in strange places.”

“Such as where?” I couldn't resist from asking.

“Public places: subway terminals, park benches, another in a framing shop. There was even one duct-taped to Setzer's hand; that was how I found him.”

I decided not to press Angelo any further. I could see by the haggard look in his eyes and the slumped register of his voice that things had suddenly become quite complicated and confused for him.

“Angelo,” I said by way of parting, “Let's keep in touch from here on in. I think if something is afoot we'd do much better to keep each other apprised of what's going on, share some information from time to time.”

He was about to launch a retort, but thought better of it, nodding resignedly instead before leaving my apartment. I was left to ponder why so many books were beginning to slip, and in the places they ended up doing so. But this, like so many books, had to be shelved for a while since I needed to meet with my research assistant.

By the time I arrived at the pub – a location of his insistence – he was already there and was two pints in the lead, attempting to look mysterious but ending up looking more ridiculous than anything else.

“Hello,” I said tiredly, ignoring his affectation. I could tell he was trying to seem dramatic, and he kept tapping on a thin folder covered in silly arcane symbols – no doubt his flourishes. Someone of his stripe would be the last candidate any secret society would ever consider. He would thrust his ego forward with any such membership to a private fraternity, and would most likely give away all the secrets if it meant people would take notice of his importance. I was sure that he used his temporary role as my research assistant to pick up young girls with embarrassing teasers of “I'm doing research on dark secrets, but I've said too much already... “ - He just seemed the type.

“I have completed the first round of my appointed task,” he said with unnecessary gravity, bowing his head forward to meet me with a gaze that was supposed to convey same. “It is here.” With that, he slid the thin folder, with its clumsy insignias of recognizable secret societies and Egyptian symbols, toward me.

“Great. I'll just skim this now and take it with me,” I said.

“I went to considerable trouble in the process of my findings... some dangerous moments, as well... “

I sincerely doubted anything of the sort had happened, and so resolved to ignore his desperate clambering for my attention, so I scotched it with terseness. “Trouble and danger are pretty common. Thank you.”

Jakob seemed disappointed, and so with some petting I changed my tone to reflect that I was pleased with his diligence, and then parted company with him.

Upon skimming what he had, it was unsurprisingly subpar: mostly a series of jot-notes any high schooler could have obtained from an encyclopedia. Worse still were the personal speculations of Jakob Sigurdsson on the meaning of the information, unsusbtantiated links to Freemasonry, Egyptian rite, and whatever other tepidly overrated conspiratorial group he wanted to name. Mixed in with this were Jakob's theories about the pyramids and their link to godlike extraterrestrials and quotes from Aleister Crowley he tried to pass off as his own. It was a triteness heavily underscored with cliches, occultish bromides, and sloppy references to staid mysticism. However, Jakob's mediocre research did unintentionally put me back in touch with some of the basic information I needed in order to see how these references fit into this maddening puzzle.

I returned to my apartment and scanned what Jakob had given me. Skipping his macabre speculations, I focused on the verifiable details. Ammonius Saccas was indeed the founder of the Neoplatonic idea, Plotinus being the primogeniture of the movement as it has been bequeathed to history.
In fine
, Ammonius Saccas is generally associated with a plethora of Pagan mysteries of which I was not at all concerned since I believed that there was something of more merit in a less obvious place. Saccas had maintained a tripartite organization of the supreme essence, the emanation of that essence, and the divine soul of man to tame Nature. More interestingly, he had quite seriously advised against placing a too strict definitional division between Christians and Pagans, suggesting, it would seem, that such a line was a blurry one. Or, perhaps, that they were mirror surfaces of one another, inverted or distorted like the image in a carnival mirror. Brave words before punishment for heresy became such an institution where one could not deviate an eyelash from sciptural detail without the implications leading to all sorts of dread theological consequences.