The Infinite Library (51 page)

Dr Aymer was just one among a very large chorus of scientists very concerned with the new data pouring in from flabbergasted labs all over the world. In his process journal, he wrote:

Dr Aymer received a call from his friend, Cindy, and she persuaded him to come out from his investigative creche for an evening of cocktails and dinner, despite the magnitude of the genetic situation that was consuming his every attention. It would be then that he would meet a man he had met before, but in a different place... perhaps in dream.

Leopold was manic at his canvas by the time a deep purple eased into evening sky, bleeding with the first seeping plumes of the night. An inspiration out of nowhere, a concept that had been mysteriously consuming him, Leopold painted one after another in a series of red lions without any rational explanation - not that he questioned the motives of his muse, a muse that seldom paid such sustained visits. Red lion on textured grey, red lion in Warhol multiples, red lion with an aureole of fruit flies, red lion frolicking in library stacks. Once this spurt of creativity was spent, he went out to a quiet, cheap restaurant, never going beyond the last few seats near the door, as if ready to pounce on any opportunity to escape back home, just in case the urge to create would visit him again. The tables were square, their tops stable upon steel stems. Around him was a modest array of patrons, most of them chatting in intimate pairs.

He could hear the voices again, and despite the fact that no recognizable words were being formed, the tone was as though jeering him. He did his best to ignore the cacophony in his head and tried to fix upon something else, eavesdropping on conversations for distraction. It was then that he heard a distinct voice two tables away.

“Oh, c'mon!” a woman playfully insisted. “It isn't
that
bad. They fry up a good halibut here. Think of it as slumming.”

“The tabelclothes are stained,” a male voice returned. “This will have to do. Anyway, as I was saying -”

“Can't you just leave your troubles at the lab and just enjoy yourself?” the woman pleaded with a slight chirrup of friendly irritation.

“But it's just so perplexing,” Dr Aymer defended. “This anomaly is consuming me, but I just know that there has to be a solution, a simple one, one without any hocus pocus. Why, just yesterday I read an article by Thomas Peel – you know Peel, right? He's the most imperturbable, staunchly skeptical researcher in the field. If he had been around centuries ago and told the earth was round, he would demand more empirical research be done to confirm it. Anyway, he is not given to wild-eyed speculations, but...”

It was then that Leopold and Dr Aymer locked eyes; however, the latter seemed too absorbed in thought to focus on what his eyes were seeing. The voices that had encroached upon Leopold had died clean away as he tried to remember where he had seen this man before. He hit upon it quickly: the scientist in his dream. What was his name? Kramer? Daimler? Perhaps it had all been a dream, for the events in the white room progressed in such a fashion, in the typical dream speed of stutters and unconnected moments.

Leopold was interrupted by a young woman with several facial piercings, dressed in plaid tights and an oversized leather jacket with punk band patches: “sorry to disturb you, but I recognize you from somewhere. The 'Re-envisioning Chiaroscuro Exhibit,' Kludge Gallery, right? You had a few works for sale.”

She appeared nervous, not in the mood to talk about art, and this contrived introduction hid something more pressing.

“Yeah.”

“Well, um...” she stammered in an obvious attempt to keep solid composure against emotion, “this is probably pretty stupid, but did you know an Ian Plenkowitz?”

“No, should I? Does he hang around the gallery? If he does, then I wouldn't know. I don't know anybody here.”

“Oh,” she said, deflated. “Well, maybe you knew him by his artist name. He called himself Abraxis sometimes, his signature on some of his work. He had some works at the same exhibit.”

“Nope. Can't say that I know him,” Leopold said, now more impatient that the woman should leave so that he could retrace the steps of his dream where he had met the scientist, try to make the right connections in his mind. “Besides, that was months ago. June or July, maybe. I'm not what you'd call a people person; I'm not into the art hobnobbing scene.”

“Well, he shot himself at a bar a while ago... “

When she said these words, she broke down. This made Leopold feel very uncomfortable, as he always felt in the presence of genuine human emotion – especially issuing from a stranger. He felt callous since his first thought was to reply with, “Why should I care? I'm not a subscriber to local art news.”

“Oh, I'm... sorry?” was his awkward reply instead.

“No, no, it's ok,” she said, regaining herself and mopping her eyes with her sleeve. “Not many people knew him. He was a bit of a loner. He and I were a thing, y'know, and I had no idea... but... I'm really out of people to ask. I ask around a lot, and nobody knew him. I just try to track down faces... We had broken up not too long ago... and, I dunno. Shit...”

“Well, sorry, I didn't know the guy. Did people owe him money or something, because I can be sure I didn't borrow anything from him – didn't even know him, whoever he was.”

“It isn't like that,” she defended, mopping her tears and snot with a damp, floppy sleeve. “He was my man, and I haven't got squat to remember him by. His fucking parents took all his stuff, probably threw it all away. They never understood him, never loved him like I did. They were fucking bourgeois pigs. Pillerstines.”

The word she was really looking for was “philistines.”

“Well, anyway,” she continued, still standing, “there was one thing I really wanted to remember him by, and I knew it was the most precious thing in the world to him. I was just wondering if it fell into someone else's hands somehow, for safekeeping or something.”

“What kind of thing?” he asked, somewhat regretting that he was prolonging this more than regretting that he really didn't give a damn.

“A sketchbook. If he was going to do himself in like that, he would have had it on him. He was never without it. It was his constant companion... He even slept with it in the bed.”

“Maybe he lost it, or if he was going to kill himself, he might have burnt it, thrown it in the river, gave it to some bum, buried it in the sand... I don't know what to tell you,” Leopold said flatly, immediately embarrassed with his tactless tone.

“No, people saw him that day carrying it around like he always does... Did... I'm sorry to have bothered you. I have to go. But if you see it, could you please let me know? It's all I really want of him. Here's my number.”

She scrawled down her number on the table napkin with black lipstick. Class.

“What does it look like?” he asked, this time with more concern.

“It's black with an etching of a red lion on the cover.”

After Leopold had made his promise to notify her immediately if he came across it, she left, and he was left to ponder over the strange coincidence of the red lion. Perhaps just a coincidence, but still... What possessed him to be so uncontrollably inspired and fixated by this image, to paint an entire series of them? “Maybe some sort of spirit transfusion or something,” he jingled in his mind before dropping it.

Dr Aymer had finally noticed Leopold, and was making quizzical
facial gestures to establish a sense of mutual recognition
through meaningful staring. Thinking it merely a figment of his overly taxed mind, he let the thoughts slide.

It just so happened that both Leopold and Dr Aymer were leaving the establishment at the same time. Cindy had been called away in mid-meal by some small crisis Dr Aymer did not register. Leopold and Dr Aymer were coming to the front door at the same time, but neither summoned the courage to speak to the other until some time elapsed. They were both heading in the same direction, Leopold a few yards behind, and Dr Aymer turned to face Leopold with the intention of speaking.

“Don't I know you?” Leopold was the first to ask.

“I was about to ask the same thing. But where?”

“My memory of our meeting is a bit hazy, but so are a lot of things in my life.”

“Hm,” Dr Aymer grunted. “Yes, I do believe we have met. I
remember a white room with blue chairs and a large white table. There was nothing remarkable about the room, but the picture on a book was of a red lion, and that sticks with me.”

Suddenly, Leopold could place the image in his image, why it had been consuming him as of late.

“Does this mean anything to you?” Dr Aymer asked, noticing the look of recognition in Leopold's eyes.

“Yes, it does, but I can't make any sense of it.”

“Very peculiar.”

“Then it wasn't a dream.”

“I do believe it was a dream, but a dream we both had. I cannot understand how it is possible, but allowing for coincidence, perhaps? This is now my second puzzle.”

“Not that I'm the chummy type, but what is the first?”

“It appears that all fruit flies are quickly becoming extinct due to some genetic freak mutation, perhaps a micro-virus, or perhaps something that we haven't been able to put our finger on. It is rather perplexing.”

“Maybe nature is reacting to all this genetic modification; y'know, growing hard skin over itself to protect from scientists who tinker too much with making super-fruit and cloned sheep.”

“Genetics does not work that way,” explained Dr Aymer, baffled that still so many members of the general public held these naïve science fiction beliefs about genetics.

“Oh, well, sorry. With all the mucking about genetics can do, just out of curiousity, what do you suppose the genetic recipe for a red lion would be?”

If then struck Dr Aymer that perhaps this red lion motif could have something to do with this anomaly. He was very tired, and this was very unscientific thinking. Perhaps it would be a desperate grasping at straws, but Dr Aymer would see if he could draw up a speculative genetic table of characteristics a red lion would possess. Of course, the changing of pigment in any organism, especially one as complex as a lion, would take a great deal of time and much sequencing. However, Dr Aymer was without any further leads to resolve the current problem with the fruit fly
extinction, and thought that maybe he could combine one anomalous situation with another. Perhaps the dream and the flies had some connection. It wasn't much to go on, but it was all he had. Perhaps the genetic structure of
Drosophila melanogaster
was trying to pattern itself to that of a red lion, and in the process of failing to achieve the impossible was succumbing to a genetic dissolution. It wasn't plausibly scientific at all.

“You have given me an idea,” said Dr Aymer.

“Great. I charge by the hour.”

“We must explore this shared dream of ours, get to the bottom of it. I suggest that we work together on this.”

“Um, ok, it was really just a bizarre dream.”

“Perhaps, but I have an intuition that the dream and the flies are somehow related. Don't ask me to explain because I could not conjure how. You are the artist, I remember.”

“Leopold.”

“Yes, Leopold... My name is Dr Aymer.”

“The gene guy.”

“Er, yes.”

“You remember that philosophy guy? Whazzisname? Rumpel? What a bag of wind.”