The Infinite Library (55 page)

The door could only be opened using a console with a keypad lock. The strange console read
Input 216
, which I now knew to have something to do with the book I compiled in the first room of the labyrinth. I went about inputting the first letter from every page of the book. Once the last letter was inputted, the sound of a heavy latch mechanism signaled the door was now open.

What I saw were endless shelves of books stretching off into forever. From what I knew of this vast and interminable Library was that it would provide me with what I wanted so long as I thought of it. It would have proven so easy to spend the rest of my days in this Library, discovering all I ever wanted to know and more. I didn't know how someone like Castellemare managed it, how he could tear himself away from a place where one would never need the outside world anymore. It was all in here, a totality.

Castellemare had insinuated something awry about the Library, and Angelo had been more forceful in his opinion that the Library was in peril. It was hard to think of it in those terms when the whole area as peaceful, tomblike, constant. It seemed as though nothing could imperil this Library, tucked away from reality as it was.

“May I help you?” a kindly voice with an accent said, startling me.

I turned to see an old man with his grey hair combed back, his eyes stunned with blindness. He was attired in a frumpy suit, but his face spoke generousity, imperturbably patient wisdom, and honesty.

“I am... looking for answers,” was my reply.

“The questions are far more interesting, I find,” he said with a smile, eyes untrained. “Paradoxes, enigmas, labyrinths of thought... these are sustaining.”

“I had not thought anyone worked here save for Castellemare.”

“My title is one thing, but I am more a caretaker. This is the true task of the Librarian.”

“Are you the Librarian?”

“As I said, it is just a title, and little stock do I place by it. I am a humble caretaker of the books.”

“Castellemare says he is the Librarian. I do not understand.”

He smiled indulgently. “There are as many self-appointed librarians as there are books in this vast expanse of a library. He may choose to believe anything he wishes – it does not concern me. Only the books concern me, not so many wizards behind curtains.”

His face was starkly familiar, as if I had met him before. He continued: “It's a lovely library, isn't it. One can very easily find oneself lost within it, and joyously so.”

“I don't mean to be impolite, but does not your affliction compromise your duties as a librarian?”

“My affliction for thinking? Oh, you must mean my blindness. Gone are all the colours, even the most faithful ones – but I do think back on them with fondness. But in a place of total knowledge, what need I of eyes? It is everywhere. One learns, in time, how to read without reliance on such things as eyes. A colossal memory, perhaps, taken in through the skin, through the spirit. I am happy. Sometimes it occurs to me that my eyesight was the source of much more blindness than what I experience now.”

“Librarian, do you have a name?”

“I do, but what matter names? I am multiple. There is a version of me who writes me, another that unwrites me, one that collects accolades, and another who is my Judas. It is the same with every one of us. You as well. We cannot so fixedly insist on names.”

“How did you come to be the Librarian?”

“I am not so comfortable with the title, despite the honour you give me by uttering it. As I say, I'm merely the caretaker, the conduit through which books pass. As we all are. It is folly to think that by reading books we come to own them. They pass, like water, and the structure that is identity is ephemeral. We arrest knowledge for but a moment, and then it passes again to someone other, and the process repeats. This place is the place of dreams, and dreams possess us.”

“I must admit that you seem to be the kindliest person I have met in my journey.”

“Fraught with peril is the quest for knowledge. But so beautiful, too. In the end, the riddles are what matter, guaranteeing the permanence of the endless journey. I have written on libraries in my time, and even occupied the role of librarian. And here I am now, gifted by forces unknown to continue occupying the role I so cherished in life, out there, in that place of the warm and the quick.”

“In my world?”

“All worlds are one, in their way, a collection of possibilities, an aleph. This was my flash of intuition then, and it proved correct.”

It dawned on me who my conversant was. “Argentina?”

He flashed another kindly smile. “Yes, in one incarnation. But in this incarnation, I am entrusted to be the guardian of the books, although I find 'caretaker' more appropriate. You've guessed the name of one of my identities, and even that one identity is multiple.”

“Jorge Luis Borges.”

“At the service of the Library,” he said, his blind eyes tracking nothing in particular.

It had occurred to me that I had not encountered Setzer's library in my travels in the labyrinth. “What do you know of Anton Setzer?”

“If I wave my hand over these books, that would be a fair answer. I am sure you would find all you wanted to know and more by performing a search. Shall I be of assistance?”

“I was actually hoping that you might have some information on Anton Setzer's library. Castellemare denies that the merger went through.”

“A merger? Oh... that, yes. The library of Anton Setzer is safely housed in this Library. I had the pleasure of cataloguing and shelving the books myself. They are intercalated in the collection. Some very interesting titles, I might add, titles for which it is not necessary to have eyes with which to scan them.”

“Why would Castellemare deny the merger went through? When last I saw him, he and his agents were busying themselves destroying what Setzer's machine was producing.”

“Was he? Well, that is an act of bad faith. I have never been fond of those who destroy books. It is a vain act on his part since he fails to understand the real nature of the Library: all of Setzer's productions already exist, after a fashion, here. I personally delight in what Setzer does, for his is the true spirit of the fabulist, the novelist, the creator of impossible worlds, the fictionalist. The line between what we consider reality and fiction is a blurry one. I have always thought so.”

“Setzer was murdered.”

“Oh, was he?” he said, as if I had told him it was raining outside. “Well, that's unfortunate, but he lives on – as we all do – in the books.”

“What is the history of the Library?” I chanced to ask, to which his face visibly lit up.

“That is one my primary concerns... Or, rather, it is one of the perks of my tenure here. You see, there are as many histories of the Library as there are sand grains along a beach, each one a gleaming and sparkling one. I cannot say that I have read them all, for such a task would require countless lifetimes. In one version, the Library's contents were deposited by ancient and knowledgeable gods. In another, the books spontaneously created themselves. In another, the books are tied to the dreams of men in a co-creative transference.”

“Castellemare claims that it is the central hub of all possible worlds following the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.”

“Such a vile destruction makes me wince, I apologize. Yes, that is one of many theories, one of many histories. It is not that Castellemare is wrong, but that it is just one view, one facet of an infinitely faceted crystal. I admit that at one point, long ago, I sought for some way for a Library as this one to be justified until I came to the realization that it requires no such justification – it is its own justification.”

“You also seem untroubled by the fact that I am here, in forbidden territory. I am not an initiate of the Order to which Castellemare – and perhaps you – belong.”

“No, I am not troubled in the least. I can tell you have a deep and solemn respect for books. The rules for patronizing the Library are rather commonsense: don't be disruptive, keep the books in order, no smoking or eating, and no defacement. As for an Order, I know of only one order, and it is the order of the books in the Library. I belong to nothing other than this Library, and perhaps to myself, multiple though I may be. This is not a
bibliotheca prohibitorum
... All are welcome here, and perchance we visit this place in dreams, pull from the stories in these books when sleep has us in its embrace. The books belong to everyone and no one. We have so few visitors of the conscious variety, but dreamers we have plenty. Great and undiscovered artists and inventors make up the majority of visitors, for what you call inspiration has its source right here. In my life, out there, I had a glimmering of a notion that such a place as this existed, and that my stories were not entirely my own... We all borrow our stories from some place, and then we make it our own. But, in truth, this is a place of infinite possibility, and every possible story, every possible invention, every insight and notion, resides here quietly between the covers of some book. All ideas are, in some ways,
ex libris.”

“I am very sorry to ask this since I do not want to leave, but I have been traveling for a long while now and feel very weak and hungry. I need to find my way out. I must say that you have been the most gracious and kind person I've met so far in concerns this Library.”

“Oh, must you leave so soon? No matter: I am sure you will grace us with a visit again soon. The Library is eternal and so will always be here waiting for your return.”

The Librarian walked slowly from behind his desk and, with a gentle hand, herded me towards an exit I had not seen.

“Was this here when I came in?” I asked.

He turned to me and said with that warm smile, “There are many exits and entrances to the Library, friendly traveler. One has only to think of it.”

I bade him farewell and stepped through the door, only to find that I was back in my apartment, the door to the Library closing gently behind me and fading away. I felt somewhat emboldened by the idea that the Library was not exactly as Castellemare had said it was. The Library did not restrict access to the few, and if it did, it was not done according to belonging to mystical Orders. The Library was not a place of vicious intrigue and peril, but benevolently neutral.

Upon my return, I noticed a few alarming changes. My shelf, which had been dispensing endless books, was now entirely bereft of books. My computer was also gone, as were all my papers with notes upon them. The work of the Devorants, I assumed. The only book I had left in my apartment was the thoroughly damaged copy of Descartes'
Meditations
. I was too weak to summon up consternation at this act of theft, and so made myself something to eat. Shortly after, I lay down in my bed and slept for a long time, restfully.

26

Excerpts from
7
^th
Meditation

where the philosopher and the madman intersect

I
t was an intractable place, a place where theories always appeared flitting without unity, theories that derived more complex creations and resisted resolution; a place where theories were merely stapled together in haste, in paper assignments, or bound together in books and dissertations, chronically unread, underdeveloped, incomplete glaciers in textual eternity.

The university buildings appeared warm to the touch despite the sharp cold in the air. A man in disheveled clothing was mumbling to himself while groups of students almost instinctively made a wide berth of him. He was jabbering with loose horse lips about energy and electricity, his eyes wild in contemplative stupor. His fingers uncurled and his hands gestured like pinwheels. One student, who travelled across the commotion of the others that moved in shoals to or from classes, came to a halt in front of the shambling man. The young student was robust in stature, yet his shoulders drooped as though the gravity of his academic involvement was playing a cruel trick on his body. At the sight of the student, the disheveled man stopped silent and glanced at him furtively over his bifocals, and perhaps with the look of investigative patience that seemed to pool in the eyes of one accustomed to making visual contact with text. In his life, the disheveled man had perhaps saw more of books than people; the young student had just begun on this path. The disheveled man looked first to his own gnarled hands, looking like fossilized worm trails in Cambrian limestone, and then at the smoothness and warm quickness of the student's hands. The first to show age were the face and hands, he thought, incidentally the primary two surfaces to ever come in contact with books. Perhaps it is our repeated contact with books that make us age so, he thought, a passing thought of illicit significance. The student, upon realizing that his hands were being visually examined, and that he had not said anything to the disheveled man, stiffened and spoke: “Professor Wyman, I had a few questions from class.” And Wally Wyman would only be so happy to answer them, albeit with more questions in the eternal bloodless sport of academic nature.