The Infinite Library (32 page)

“I have this book already,” I said, handing it back.

“Oh, really? Look again.”

“No, I'm serious. I have it already. I bought it a few months ago at a used bookstore. From what I read, it's about an infinite library tended by someone with your name, and an employee named Gimaldi. I think one of you rushed out and self-published it... maybe as some twisted combat of who can libel whom the best.”

“You must have the rough draft, then.”

“No, I don't think so,” I countered. “My copy is dated 1977, a paperback – but I have a feeling it was published a few years ago. This book is... “ I looked in the front matter before declaring, “Published in 1889. That would make my edition more recent.”

“Sigh. Your sense of temporal succession is so... linear,” he said as if the word were distasteful. “I don't expect you to understand, but this book that you have in your hands is the edited and complete draft, whereas what you have at home is a very early, and very bad copy. Besides, better books were published in 1977... An impressive scholarly text on a book I leant someone, actually. No matter.”

“No, I don't understand. Did the publisher of my edition decide to print the earlier draft?”

“No, the publisher of your edition published what was available. This book you have – the revised edition – was never released... at least not in this world. This book has several histories, but let us stick to the one that is most common among them all. There were two early drafts of the
Codex Infinitum
. In the first, it was incomplete, and only two or three chapters had been written before the author abandoned it to focus on other projects. These chapters were published in some literary periodicals, but the rest of the story remained blank. In the second draft, the author attempted to bulk up his page count and alleviate the guilt of not being productive, and so sloppily attempted to intercalate two earlier unpublished novels into the text: one entitled
Best Before 2099
and the other
7
^th
Meditation: Mountains Without Valleys
. These two very early works were part of the author's juvenilia, and it showed: bloated and pretentious writing, wooden dialogue, hasty attempts to create atmosphere, frequent invocations of medieval thinkers, unbelievable events. The problem with the awful second draft was that there was no seamless integration of the texts, and obviously no attempt to commit a serious rewrite of them. The stylistic differences were plain to see, and the author's laziness let that stand for a time. Thankfully, upon the advice of a close personal reader, he undertook that wretched and exasperating task of rewriting those texts. It proved difficult because he was forced to confront his horrible writing, and to delete entire swathes of text where there were salvageable ideas and phrases. As a historical text, it is a complete hash! Of course, the Library isn't fussy about possible and speculative histories sitting on its shelves.”

“So I have the second draft?”

“We can look that up in the catalogue, but you evidently do not have the final revised edition – until now. What is curious is that in the revised edition, Gimaldi is reading Gimaldi. In fact, he is reading our story right now, trying as you are to develop his disparate set of clues to come to a conclusion to the mystery.

[This added contrivance to the tale was making me feel ill. I was beginning to think that Castellemare had written this himself, knowing I would take this book, and seeming to find great amusement in tormenting me.]

“I don't get it. Gimaldi is reading us right now? This is happening in this book?”

“Right down to the very dialogue,” Castellemare smiled. “Awful as it is – I can almost hear Gimaldi groaning. We are not very convincing or interesting for Gimaldi’s tastes, I’m afraid.”

“How can that be? This is happening in real time.”

“Is it? Also, don't confuse one Gimaldi with another. The Gimaldi you know
here
is not the same Gimaldi of the main story of
Codex Infinitum
. There are very significant differences. Don't be fooled by facile similarities just because the names are identical.”

“There are two Gimaldis?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, losing his patience. “Two of them, if not more. There are, at last count in this book, three of me. There is only one of you, although you are referenced insofar as the other Gimaldi is reading about you trying to wrap your mind around the fact that there are two Gimaldis! And, in at least one implied mention, you are actually Gimaldi, which is another hilarious little hoot!”

This gave him some bizarre pleasure.

“And,” he continued. “Gimaldi – the other one, the one you don't know except through this book I am lending you – is as equally confused as you are. He will likely not take this seriously.”

“Why?”

“I'd suggest you – and the Gimaldi reading this – keep a pen handy and underline the names and dates in this book to refer to later... it may get a bit confusing. Anyway, Gimaldi believes that I am a trickster deceiving him with books designed to drive him mad. Of course, he stole the book in which he is reading us now. However, his trust and understanding of the Library is very small, and part of him doubtless either believes I have written this to fool him and let the book fall into his possession when he thinks he stole it, or that the world itself is founded on irrationality.”

“This is making me a bit dizzy. I'll ask anyway: what is real, then? If we are merely characters in a book, and yet I can read the other Gimaldi as a character in a book where he is reading me, which narrative is real?”

“They both are; they all are. There is even another book based on these two entitled
The Infinite Library
which is simply another version of this story. All are equally real.”

“But this is circuitous! I am reading him, he is reading me reading him, and I am reading him reading me reading him... It is infinite!”

“Yes! An ouroubouros, the snake that eats its own tail, eh? I do get my jollies with paradoxes.”

“But there has to be a starting point; there has to be a true narrative that started all the others.”

“Your tenacity to the artifice known as Reason is adorable. Again, you insist on being so damn linear. If you don't like questions, don't bother asking them. Seek all you want for answers, but the universe pays out in the coin you give it, so for every question, get one in return, quid pro quo. Now, if you'll excuse me... I trust that you can show yourself out,” he said, now departing into the enormous labyrinth of his home. I was left with an alleged revised copy of a book I had jilted, bafflingly published before my own copy.

[This endless recursion could be said to have an end. If Castellemare wrote this, it could all be bogus. Just another attempt to trick me. The scene itself was contrived, the whole purpose for what? Invite someone to see your mirror, lend him a book, start chattering about paradoxes, and then abruptly ask him to leave. No, this was not believable – it was written for my benefit.]

11

Editor's Note: This section of the manuscript was withdrawn very late in the press process at the insistence of the author. The author requested that this notice be put in place of the chapter, and that it once possessed a long discourse on avatars and their relationship to the endings of eras. The author wrestled with keeping such turns of phrase as “drooping crepuscular light” and various connections made between Plotinus and theurgy, and an even looser connection between Plotinus being induced by Ammonius Saccas to become an avatar. In the end, it was the author's request to excise this chapter to avoid any narrative confusion or burthen his story with the complicity of too much assumed knowledge in the history of philosophy. If Gimaldi had written it, as he would write the [title redacted], he would no doubt tart it up as he fancies to tart himself up with bloated language and pretentious references to philosophers he has not the mind to understand properly and patiently. Pity, that.

12

“
Now you know,” Gimaldi said with tender resignation. “Blood has been spilt, and so we must take time and reflect on our given positions in this matter. Castellemare plays this game like a chess master, and he thinks like one, too.”

“I don't fully understand the danger in this situation,” I said, no longer disturbed by his usual melodrama. We were at his house.

“He brought you to see his mirrors, didn't he? That scoundrel of sensibilia! I should have cut him down a long time ago.”

“That doesn't seem so generous of you. I've always had this picture of you as being a man of patient reserve and cryptic wordplay rather than swordplay.”

“As you might have noticed, I do not live in generous or enlightened times,” he said, leaving me with his wife in the parlour while he fetched another drink.

Some time had passed and I felt the awkward ambiguity of either leaving or staying. A house like this, with its eclectic decor of antiques and old conte prints of lithe nude women, had with it a strange gravity that rooted me where I stood. With all the clutter in that humid parlour, the walls seemed to close and expand, like a moist lung. Gimaldi's wife was smoking from a hookah with her feet dangling like heavy fruit, legs hung over the arms of the cushioned armchair. She would not pass a word to me for some time, absorbed in her little act of exoticism.

“Don't mind,” she said, issuing a dragon's breath of billowing shisha smoke from her thin lips. “He gets over-emotional about Castellemare. He is upset with having this reminder of the man who defied him, who keeps turning up at the most inopportune times. It is like a teacher who carries an eternal fault for not having corrected an unruly student who keeps haunting him. That's what Castellemare does.”

“Castellemare haunts him?” I asked, absorbed by a stark, high-contrast charcoal drawing of a tall, nude woman with what seemed to be a swastika tattooed on her breast.

“Oh, incessantly. It's all part of their meta-fiction, and a fabulation at that. Gimaldi is happiest when surrounded by the past. You know the elation one feels when rediscovering a childhood teddy-bear? Multiply that tenfold when my husband encounters books and prints from times gone past. Now reverse this elation, and then you'll understand how he feels about Castellemare. Castellemare is the one that kills any hope for history.”

The east wall was made up of one enormous shelf of books. I pointed to it and asked, “May I?” She nodded.

I will not list the texts Gimaldi had in his possession. I had been delving into my borrowed copy of
Codex Infinitum
, and the other Gimaldi (in that other world) only kept as many volumes as would not sell. By contrast, this Gimaldi that I knew hoarded his books, and perhaps the very thought of selling even one of them would have been agony. The Gimaldi of the book I was reading seemed younger in many ways, but with some of the same closeted habits. I began to wonder what the other Gimaldi would have thought of this one, or me for that matter... But the answer that would dispel my wonder was tucked somewhere within the book I had in my possession. Were we doing the same thing, I wonder? Was that other Gimaldi reading my story just as much as I was reading him in order to discover the answer? In my reading, I had just finished the chapter where Gimaldi met Setzer and was introduced to Setzer's own version of the Library.

[If this was my invitation to editorialize what I thought of the narrator or this depiction of myself, it would not be kind.]

Gimaldi returned, and I spared no time in haranguing him with questions.

“Castellemare gave me a book to read and -”

“I don't want to hear it,” Gimaldi said, waving his hands as if frantically trying to erase my utterance from the air. “Next thing you'll say is that it is about me. His entire collection of books is filled with maddening lies, fabrications, things that should and cannot possibly exist. He makes a mockery of Reason, and you would do well to refuse his so-called gifts. You will only end up like many of the others he has enticed into his labyrinth of error. He is trying to turn you against me. He is trying to win you over as his disciple, but do not be fooled: he is not doing this because he desires disciples or thinks you of any merit; he is doing this only to ensure that I have no one on my side. That I remain alone!”

It was a pathetic outburst despite the dramatic intention.

“Did you write the
Codex Infinitum
?” I asked.

“Did I... did I –
what
, now?”

“As a means of libeling Castellemare. Or did he write it. The edition I bought gives a publication date of 1977, but there are some pretty sure signs that it was a self-published job, maybe a few years ago.”