The Infinite Library (78 page)
Read The Infinite Library Online
Authors: Kane X Faucher
Tags: #Mystery, #Retail, #Fiction, #21st Century, #Amazon.com
40
Excerpts from
7
th
Meditation
17
Knives for the nocturne. Tyranny is the knowledge that love and fear are one, indivisible, two sides of the same coin. As he himself was a unity of parts, the most pronounced aspects of various types selected by the Library itself, he knew syntheses tended toward their higher reasoning and more perfected product.
He himself had existed prior to the synthetic act. He had been a practicing psychoanalyst for several years before the proper elements were rendered unto him. That turpitude had always lodged within him was not enough, but that it needed to emerge full-grown, all of a sudden, in this incarnation of horror.
He gazed upon himself gazing back from the mirror, pleased with himself, readying himself for what needed to be done. Not many have such spirited vision, so full and complete, he thought to himself. For some, like him, such vision came late but was the result of a long maturation. His life began on this day, at the age of 46. He ran his fingers through the sparse and black-dyed hair, slicking it back to reveal the stark widow's peak he had always found one of his more winsome of features. He knew his voice had both the stentorian force and the priestly quality to arrest an audience or have them confess despite themselves. Some were doled out a robust measure of charisma, and he knew that he had frittered much of it away on paltry affairs.
His methods were highly unorthodox, and his views much more so. There was always friction with the psychoanalytical establishment over his writings, his methods, launched at him from what he considered their envy and lack of intellectual courage. His membership to the association was most likely going to be revoked after a pro forma and largely token review of his record, but contrary to the expected, he would take this as proof of his brilliance. To him, it was an emancipation from tepid thinking and tired ideas that achieved little but create a klatch of self-righteous, indignant, and unworthy practitioners. Today would be his first day of true freedom, and no professional association would act as a tether upon his will. This did not fail to provoke a satisfied grin upon his face.
Kneading an obstinate wrinkle in his suit and gingerly taking his briefcase in hand, he made his way into the world – to change it for good.
On this day, the daring and experimentally unchained psychoanalyst, Dr Edward Albrecht, resolved to become a master.
41
The Malin Genie
A
n “a-ha!” moment. I now had the name of the synthesized man for certain, and he turned out to be rather easy to locate. I knew him to be a masterpiece of the Library's narrative, the distillation of every evil that history had the temerity to record, a culmination not only of this world's recorded evils, but those of each world that the Library's collection extended to. This was the Library's most elaborate creation, forced out of it. And, if what I read in those books, and what others like Setzer and Castellemare alluded to, and all the other clues reticent in detail – in short texts, brief meetings, omens ignored – were all brought together, then this creation had been tried many times before. But someone or something learned from all those botched efforts, the careless errors, and Dr Albrecht was the new and improved version. But why would the Library allow for this? No, the Library – I was convinced – was neutral, impassive. It just
was
. It was figures like Castellemare that bent the Library to his will. Dr Albrecht was most likely Castellemare's life's work, and with access to the infinite Library, he had all the history, lore, and methods he required. What would possess Castellemare to engineer such a thing? But this was a question I needed to return to later – I had to see the creation for myself.
This one Dr Edward Albrecht was a practicing psychoanalyst who had authored no mean number of dangerous articles as well as spearheading a variety of male-bonding groups mostly patterned on strengthening the masculinity of the ego in the face of its mass social enervation. In fact, a frustrated and hopeless member of the male gender would find in Dr Albrecht a new reason to rejoice and a reclamation of the male self in the face of a wide-spread push for complete gender equity. Dr Albrecht had written voluminously on the subject of the need for a renaissance of maleness, and he alleged to have the antidote to the crippling forces that sought to annihilate what made men intrinsically and meaningfully different. In some very vitriolic musings, he called “over-feminization” a form of “gender pogrom as well as a socially polite means of reprogramming the male ego according to the image of the politically correct contingent that is reactively over-sensitive and compliant with the demands of extreme feminism.” In his view, extreme feminism had succeeded in playing upon mass subconscious guilt in order to get its way, not to mention pushed for its reforms with “utter irresponsibility, never concerned with the psychological health of all involved. Are we – the mental health professionals - to pick up the pieces?” His assessments of social psychology were not as shocking as the fact that his movement was gaining in considerable momentum and influence, accruing to its cause a vast number of followers. He heaped vitriol on what he perceived a flagrant disregard for the preservation of innate and healthy gender differences.
Perhaps of more importance was Dr Albrecht's barely concealed hatred of women. He gave this hatred the veneer of academic discourse which better insulated him from being accused of being merely another misogynist zealot. As I read more of his available works, the more certain themes gained in intensity and recurrence as time went on. Male violence and cruelty were, for him, something not only to be preserved as natural aspects of the male psyche, but to be encouraged. It was during this reading that I encountered an article of his that was far more disturbing. It was the makings of an austere sociopolitical program:
It will be the work of a Great Master to give license to that long repressed desire in each of us for atrocity. Only one who can bring together the elements of political action, artistic expression, and psychological engineering will prosper in emancipating the masses from so many decades of enforced repression. This need for violence on a large scale, for committing cruelties, is an innate feature of humanity, and this energy is bottled up, under high pressure, forced into the dark spaces of the subconscious where it festers. What is required is a release, a free squandering of that energy. It will not be enough to contrive pathetic spectacles of popular sports to satisfy this need, nor is it enough for people to go on retreats where they can engage their violent desires on inanimate objects. These hardly go far enough in giving expression to our need to become atrocious in every way. What is needed is an atrocity on the order of the Grand Project, a Grand Politics, such as was in vogue during every historical episode of genocide.
And what of psychoanalysis now? Our domain has been devalued as a feasible practical method for therapeutically assisting the populace because we have not gone far enough. In a way, I agree. The discipline is at fault for showing no innovation or courage, and so it deserves the lower esteem in which it is now perceived. We have feared for too long the possible outcomes of unleashing the subconscious desire for destruction. Surrealism came close, but it still held itself in check by keeping to picture-making and abortive revolutions. Wilhelm Reich also came close with his liberation of sexual drives, but this is still not enough. It is as if we have all internalized Freud's fear, believing that humans must be protected from themselves. How regressive! The human populace is so much easier to control if you direct these destructive drives and guide them under a single will that will satisfy their violent appetites. There is no point in forestalling what will inevitably come to pass, and so the time is nigh for one man with a Grand Politics to emerge, someone to whom the many may rally under. The world needs a man of Will and Vision.
Thus spake the mad psychoanalyst. Granted, despite my disgust, the man sounded intimidating to me. Against all better judgement, I contacted him under the auspices of seeking to be analyzed, although my real reason was to see what this synthesized man was like in the flesh. Dr Albrecht informed me that he was quite heavily booked, but he agreed to contact me in the event of a cancellation – which he did.
When I arrived at his office – a rather Spartan waiting room juxtaposed by an opulent and neoclassical interior with bold lines and strongly evocative colour scheme – I passed one of his patients who happened to be a woman. Her face was unreadable as she went by. The receptionist told me to go into the doctor's office.
“Hello, Dr Albrecht. I'm your three o'clock: Gimaldi.”
He turned to face me and it was admittedly a bit chilling. His hair was dyed black and swept back with gel, his pale face etched with a permanent and imposing scowl. But it was his eyes: sunken with dark rings and a snake's penetrating and non-breaking gaze that was as malicious as it conveyed a sense of power, majesty, and knowing. Those eyes would not let me loose for even a moment and I felt entirely unmasked. His was the kind of frightening aura that reeks of depravity and an unbendable will.
“Gimaldi,” he said, almost savouring the syllables of my name. “Do, please, sit down.”
“You treat women as well?”
“Why, of course,” he said as if the question were a bit ridiculous. “Even women seek to explore their masculinity. As you know, although the masculine psyche is my specialty, most of my patients are women.”
“I apologize if I seem a little unnerved; this is my first analysis.”
“Ah, a virgin. Splendid. Well, let us dispense with the cliché stereotypes of how psychoanalysis is performed, for I do not employ conventional methods.”
I decided to use this time to mask my queries about him behind a contrived difficulty of my own. His fingers formed a steeple and he leaned forward with those unsettling, hungry eyes. There was no way that I could sustain the ruse under that searching gaze that disrobed me for all my intentions to be laid bare.
“Admittedly, Dr Albrecht, I am interested in your practice. I have read a selection of your works and was curious as to your methods and future intentions.”
“Character study. I have been warned before that this would happen. You see,” he said, now lifting himself up and pacing the room. “I received a letter in the post a few days ago that I didn't understand until now. In it, your name was mentioned, and that I should expect you to come sniffing around for answers.”
I froze in my seat.
He continued: “The person or persons who sent the letter left it unsigned, but told me to be at ease that you were not a member of the press hired to write a libel piece. You see, Mr Gimaldi, having new ideas and the conviction to carry them forward is considered dangerous, and no inventor is without a phalanx of enemies ready to cut him down. So, you must also understand that I am generally very cautious and wary when people come to pry my points of view since they will invariably distort them for their own miscreant purposes. It is not that I fear being upbraided in the press, for I stand by my views, but I cannot bear being vilely misrepresented. I have been given assurances from this letter that you are not the sort who would do such a thing, and that you can be trusted.”
“Who would send a letter in advance of me?”
“You would probably know better than I would. Perhaps it was your publisher.”
“My publisher?”
“Are you not writing a book on me? Is this not why you are here, to study my bearing, my manner, the things I say, querying me on my past and plans for the future?”
There was little I could do. I was beginning to see the bigger picture, that I had been led along this far to perform exactly what Dr Albrecht expected: a character study. Was that what the publishing contract was for, the one I was forced to sign in my pained weakness?
I performed my “character study” with surprising thoroughness and duty. Those findings I cannot relate here, for this would be to tell my story out of turn. No, it is more vital that I complete my own story before I reveal what comes next, and the purpose of it all. There are no accidents, all is scripted, and every event – big or small, seemingly crucial or a mere segue – had been arranged so that I would play my part convincingly, honestly.
42
Sanscript II
“
The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
