The Infinite Library (81 page)

“
Um... Okay... How much do I owe?”

“
Let's see... forty-three cents.”

I fished through my pockets and found no money. However, for some reason, the thirty facsimile shillings that I had taken from Angelo's body were there.

“
I'm sorry, but I don't have any money on me. I could go back and get my wallet if you like.”

“
Oh, please, don't bother,” he said kindly. “Whatever you have will be good enough, and we'll call it even.”

I hesitatingly placed the thirty shillings in his patiently waiting hand. The Librarian smiled pleasantly.

“
Yes, this will do. I know that life can get very busy, and we forget what we have borrowed, but do try to return your books on time so as to be fair to others who may want to borrow them,” he politely reprimanded. After a time: “Will there be anything else I can help you with today?”

“
I have a few questions.”

The Librarian did his best to direct his lazy, blind eyes in my direction. “You have my attention and I am at your service.”

“
There was another book I... borrowed... some time ago, and it has gone missing.”

“
I am aware of the book of which you speak. A good samaritan found it and returned it on your behalf.”

“
Who was that?”

“
The good samaritan? I don't actually remember. An honest man, I would think, and good-natured to return a book rather than keep it at your expense.”

“
And where is Castellemare?”

“
That I do not know either. We custodians do not run into each other so often given the vastness of the Library. It can sometimes be years without seeing another living soul.”

“
But you are not technically alive... “

“
I am as alive as the Library. The definition of life need not be narrowed to those that have tissue. Anything else?”

“
Is there anything you could possibly tell me about Setzer, or maybe even the synthesis?”

“
Setzer... Setzer... I cannot say I recollect that name, but I could conduct a search in the Library.”

“
He was a living being, the kind out there,” I said, thumbing in the direction of the door before remembering that he was blind. “Out in the world.”

“
All that is out there is in here, and all that is in here may not be out there. You, of course, already know that.”

“
And the synthesis, my role in it, the -”

The Librarian cut me off: “I am very sorry, but you are asking me questions better put to the books than to this forgetful old man. I do not know of this synthesis, and I certainly have no knowledge of any role you may have played in it. If anything knows the answer to your question, it is the Library.”

Again, he smiled. Nothing could perturb him as if he were beyond any concern that did not deal specifically with the Library.

“
May I conduct a small search now?”

“
Oh, my, I must be quite a disappointment for you today. The Library is closing for a small while. We are catching up on inventory of our holdings. Many books have transferred in and out of the Library this past while, and we have a great deal of work to do. So, no, I'm afraid we are closing fairly soon.”

“
When will you be open again?”

“
That I cannot say for certain. This work will take some time, but do check back with us at your leisure.”

“
When is this book due back?” I asked, indicating the
Ars
.

“
Given your patronage, you are free to keep it for as long as you like on what we call a perpetual renewal basis. The Library has given me the instructions to allow you to take your time with it. Do keep it safe.”

“
So, I can keep this book forever?”

“
No, that is impossible. We only rent and borrow our books. We never own them. The Library owns them all. But we, we die, and the books change hands, and when there are no more hands, they return here. But I must regretfully ask you to leave as we are now officially closed.”

And so out I went, back through the tunnel and mysteriously re-emerging in my apartment,
Ars
in hand. There was a handwritten note placed conspicuously on my bathroom mirror:

Betrayed twice by the same coin. May you suffer my eternal returns.

I reasoned that the author of the note was none other than Castellemare. I also came to the conclusion – albeit without solid evidence – that if all events were predetermined, that there were two scripts. The script Castellemare had me follow, and a higher one that he did not have access to: the meta-script of the Library. My obtaining of the
Ars
may have not been in Castellemare's script. The cryptic threat at the end of the note gave me worrisome pause. Did Castellemare mean to do me harm, or was this merely a petulant swipe, an empty threat designed to induce anxiety? Or, was this just another twist in the plot and him playing a role that would lead me where the narrative was to lead me? Given that Castellemare was out of my communicative reach, there was no hope of me rubbing it in to satisfy my need for revenge in having been strung along. I could take some solace in the fact that my goings-on were somehow communicated to him. However, the need to get some measure of revenge was still burning within me. There was no need to involve any of these enigmatic persons any further, for it would serve no real purpose. In fact, I would have most likely given them the reason and means to sabotage me.

There would probably be no real harm in me possessing the
Ars atrocitatis
given that the events written therein were a foregone conclusion. As the Library has shown me, there is really no such thing as plagiarism, for every work written has been written by every possible hand. In the last two years, I have witnessed – or at least read, amounting to very much the same in the Library's view – books changing authors, so that something like the Red Lion had a roving authorship. What harm in me making claim that this book was mine, that I authored it? That I was the author of this book was an odd touch, perhaps suggesting that the Library had an ironic sense of humour. But, in the end, and given my involvement, I felt entitled to being the author, for had I not authored these events in my own way, bringing about the synthesis? I could have spent the last two years living or writing this mystery, and I found that there really was no difference. How very much the recycling of modernist aesthetics. I end with one more story, the continuation and conclusion of a dream of a stairwell many of us descend:

The Stairwell of Mequitzli II

The severity and frequency of the dreams have since subsided. In their place are hallucinations of mirrored prisons, the travels of a coin, the paradoxes of grammar, and all manner of things that seem arcane, unsolicited by even my own imagination.

I am still upon this endless downward descent, but its purpose - nested in its very nebulous purposelessness - gives me strange comfort. I hear murmurs emanating from these stone walls with their crude bas reliefs, a singing report of what happens outside in a place I have long ago since been barred rejoining. To believe these melodies, I am told that the outside has less and less need of books. I am told that the people participate in a kind of illusory cloud, connected to everyone and to no one. I can feel a waft of lonely cold whenever I touch the wall, and I now know that it is this enclosure, this infinite stairwell, which protects me.

This is not a prison after all. The walls that encircle me actually should be understood in their inversion; the walls encircle the world, and I am walking in the only free space left.

The walls continue to morph and tell me stories of the outside, filtered and translated into a lasting mythology. True, the symbols and icons have become cruder, but they are
a direct reflection of what occurs in the prisonhouse of the world outside
, which is actually an inside, a tragic shell. These symbols, roughly hewn, their sneers twisting, the agony and lament of a world that can no longer express its feelings because it has lost all intimate contact with a language it once knew. And me? I am disconnected from this lost tribe as well, and can hardly remember a time when I participated falsely among them. Since I started this descent, it did not take me long to realize that I'd wind on down further - forever, perhaps. Another tribe will rise from that world with its principles fresh, its language an exploratory limb curiously encountering what is around it. New words and symbols will form. The same problems that have afflicted the tribes of before will come to afflict them, too, in time...And, in time, they will realize the boundaries of their space and not be able to escape them. By then, the symbols will become cruder once more, the opulence and daring innovation of their myth-making will atrophy until their entire history becomes a flattened mush of uncertainty and despair. They will have created new gods that will eventually leave them, or will become ghostly and mute. Wars will mark one part of their decline; hostility toward creation and difference will finalize their denouement. I will be a witness from outside, this outside that appears like an inside, a winding core that has no other name but time itself.

There is a solemn kind of joy that marks a journey of this kind. I am consigned to this state of reading the history and myths of a people through the impressions upon the walls that emerge and stretch their shapes. It is the impression of their phenomena that I scan in this perpetual twilight descent. Will the imprisoned tribe ever learn something? I cannot say. Their cruelties will continue to amass, and eventually go unrecorded. I cannot bear the responsibility of being the universal memory of so many tribes coming and going, of times, of grand epochs and declining eras of madness and violence. So, I refuse to remember beyond what I choose to. I continue to scan these walls as if they, and not me, were moving before my eyes.

I gaze deep into that pit, that chasm, and yet feel no fear. It is all that is unknown and free. Yet I do not elect to toss myself into it. There is something holding me to my slow descent upon these stone stairs. I cannot let go of the desire to know and to see and to understand whatever will come next, even if what comes next is just a variation of what happened long before. Perhaps this is my hope - that something new, truly new, will come to pass. I may be disappointed, but both hope and future are inexhaustible.

If the architecture of this mysterious place is an indication, then the future may not be as inexhaustible as I had imagined. I do not know if it is my imagination from far too long traveling in this place, but it seems that the stairs are narrowing. This is the only pattern I know, so I cannot say with certainty if it will continue. But perhaps one day the stairs will be so narrow, the walls so close, that I will have no choice but to make that misstep that sends me hurtling down into that abyss. Perhaps, again, the pattern will change and the steps will widen once more. Peering over the edge does not furnish me with an answer since the steps may have been narrowing gradually for so long and far, and one can only see so far in this place.

Time here seems to be measured by space. Distance is what records time, but not indelibly. I begin to wonder if when I pause to rest, or in those long stretches of dreamless sleep, if time stops. If this were the case, I also wonder if time is contingent upon my progressive descent, and what would happen if I chose to turn around and ascend - would time inside that vast prison go in reverse? Although I toy with these thoughts, I will not put them into action since I understand so little that I would not impose my arrogant experiment upon something that is perhaps its own perfect design. I must view the steps I have passed to be no longer existent.

I have yet to encounter any other travelers upon these stairs. Either they are immortal - as I may be - and so would not expire for me to find their bodies, or I am alone. Or, perhaps, I have yet to cross the distance required to encounter their corpses. If someone has passed before me, was that person the author of these carvings that have become cruder with each passing step, or am I right in my speculation that these carvings are the symbolic impression of the immense prison on the other side? I have become weary of my own company, the torment of circuitous thinking that companions my endless descent. However, I have become accustomed and resigned to my own company for so long that I cannot imagine what horror another being would be.

I have come to the following conclusions:

If there is a meaning to the carvings upon the wall, they cannot be known simply by examining them

The context of these carvings is forever denied me.

The meaning of the wall carvings is precisely its own.