The Infinite Library (56 page)

At the same time, another man was crossing. This man wore a tweed jacket, spectacles that couldn't decide whether to be at his eyes or on the end of his nose, and he carried a leather satchel—a perforated and torn stereotype image of the professorial. He did not like the disheveled man, his goblin walk, his muttering, his undignified composure, the way he wore those cheap winter boots year round. He did not like the way the man's loose slacks seemed to be rolled up over the boot on one leg and bunched on the other. No, he found these things repulsive. To this proper man, professional scholarly appearance was of vital importance, perhaps too important (”Truth, Beauty, and Justice are jealous sisters; deny one, and the other two set to squabbling... “). His steps were sure and arrogant, but with a slightly unsteady shyness that lurched alongside in an awkward gait, usually attendant in mid-stride. The sound of his shoes seemed to beat out a weak rhythm that punctuated his lie, mocking what he truly was behind this sartorial facade. He feared that one misstep, one inconsistency in the rhythm of his steps or a slip in speech would expose him for what he truly was. The desperation of his ego demanded that others see him for this image of the philosopher when, in fact, his true occupation was that of a dishwasher. So pronounced was his desire that it had began to worm its way inward, creating a delusion that he came to believe, causing him to stack lie upon lie about credentials he did not have, and the titles of books he never wrote. Blurring the line between fantasy and reality, he would spend his time off lurking in campus pubs and trying to look meaningful and meaningfully at books in the library. At times, he would attend public lectures and make an utter fool of himself during the question period. Of course, he never thought himself the fool, but rather that he was somehow superior in his intellect, wildly creative and daring. With his meagre finances, he swooped up any and all philosophy books he could find in used bookstores, and he would carry them about his person like ornaments, being sure that all around him could see that he was a serious intellectual. When he did bother to read these dense tomes, he feigned understanding, weaving ever more into his lie, impatiently speeding through these books as if he had read it before. If pressed with the truth, he would declare that fate had been unkind in granting someone like the disheveled man the honour of position that he himself felt was rightfully his.

He observed the impromptu professor-student consultation from a distance he was gradually closing. With a stiffly false confidence, he brazenly interrupted the conversation. He recognized the disheveled man from a dream, a dream where his false credentials were not questioned.

“Greetings,” he said with no mean pomp, interrupting the student in mid-sentence. “I think it vitally urgent that we convene a discussion on a few matters of extreme importance.”

“Certainly, and especially if the energies I see burning brightly in you are in accord with my temperament at the moment,” the professor said, a disagreeable collection of spittle collected in the corners of his mouth. “Flows and circuits, a whole landscape of electric intersubjectivity!”

The student concealed his insult, thinking the interlocutor was a colleague, and so immediately forgiven.

“I should be getting to class. Can I visit you during your office hours, Professor Wyman?”

“Yes, yes, of course!” The professor said jovially.

The two men – the professor and his shadow – wandered in the direction of the professor's office.

“Your name is Wally, am I correct?” asked the faux philosopher.

“Why, yes, it is. Wally Wyman. And you are?”

“Russell. I had a dream where you were present.”

“So did I! In fact, I had a dream where not only I was present, but you were, too. A philosopher, by my recollection. Oh, how I adore philosophers!”

Russell felt fluffed by the acknowledgement.

“The winter's setting in early,” the professor said, a random jetty of small talk.

“Yes it is.”

“The ducks are still here,” the professor indicated with a stained finger at the now more languidly flowing river.

“They never leave,” Russell corrected.

“Is that so? How splendid!”

When they both reached the professor's office, the office in more disarray than the man's appearance, Russell blurted out random philosophical fragments as if to captivate the professor with his diverse knowledge, to convince the professor of his trapped genius. The professor merely nodded as if his mind was on other things, which it was. He suddenly said, “I wonder what an orange laugh would sound like.”

The proper man was deflated; he was obviously talking to a tenured crackpot. “I wouldn't know,” Russell replied disappointedly.

“Or what hard smoke tastes like, or how to sleep lividly, or how one would mend saltiness... “

“We should return to the matter of the dream and its philosophical significance. Even allowing for coincidence, the state of affairs that would allow both of us to have the same dream is untenable according to any theory of consciousness. It would imply that consciousnesses can operate in a shared capacity.”

“You know, that's right,” said Professor Wyman. “It is a distinct impossibility, and yet we both experienced it. I suppose we would have to revise our assumptions and assign possibility to that kind of dreaming. You know, ever since that dream, I haven't been able to shake this one image, that of the red lion that was emblazoned upon that book the prophet showed us.”

“Red lion?” asked Russell, who had obviously not paid attention to that detail in the dream. “And, I hardly doubt that uppity dandy should be called a prophet.”

“Yes, a red lion. Very ornamental, almost Chinese. I noticed that every time the prophet spoke, he would caress it, like it was a touchstone of some sort.”

“I believe this detail to be a side issue to our more chief concern on this aspect of shared consciousness.”

“Maybe... maybe... but I just can't seem to shake it. I'm sorry to cut this short mister... ?”

“Russell.”

“Yes, Russell. I am due to lecture about five minutes ago, you see, so I'm awfully late. Like the rabbit what's-his-name. Perhaps you could come back during my office hours and we can talk strange dreams and red lions again. I would like that.”

Russell agreed, but was disappointed nonetheless. Wally turned out to be a burnout, and Russell still every inch a fraud.

3

where the prophet presents a gift to the artist

Ensopht knew that the book he carried was a dangerous one, but one that had been foretold in the Library. He had seen the book only once before in another incarnation, as a luridly opulent folio edition that Castellemare had chanced to show him. “This,” he remembered Castellemare instructing, “is what you must find... out there. This, I must impress upon you, is the engine of what must come to pass. You will facilitate the transaction, changing its carrier. Let none other than the appointed artist take possession of that book, and I will manage the who will assume authorship of the main script. You will recognize it by its cover, a red lion.” With those instructions firmly pressed upon Ensopht, his work as Castellemare's agent would have direct purpose. He now had the book, and now it was time for it to possess its new owner.

After another failed bout with the canvas, Leopold decided to make his way to the bar. With his creative zeal having abandoned him yet again, he reasoned that perhaps much drink would resurrect it. This tactic, of course, never succeeded. While en route, he was buttonholed by his frankest critic.

“Hello, Leopold,” Ensopht greeted.

“Um, hi.”

“Off to the bar, I presume?”

“Yeah.”

“Creative dysfunction?”

“I suppose so,” Leopold said indifferently.

In actual fact, Leopold was deeply suspicious of Ensopht. There was something not quite right about him, and it had nothing to do with Ensopht's negative appraisal of his pretension toward art. No, there was something almost palpably sinister about the man with the opalescent eyes, his eerie manner of dress, the comportment of someone who was highly unusual and unsettling. Leopold was more comfortable with conventional oddities: those who
try
to look weird.

“There is a cure for your ills; you need to become someone else,” said Ensopht.

“What? I don't quite follow you.”

“How we cleave so desperately to our sinking selves when it would be much easier to scrap it all and start fresh. All one needs is the right motivation.”

“Are you suggesting I become someone else?”

“Yes, it may be time to abandon the smoking wreck of the old Leopold. Listen to me carefully: an artist had recently terminated his lease on life, and his artistic territory has been left vacant in obscurity. He was never formally recognized and his work awaits an occupant. All that remains is for someone, the right someone, to take his place.”

“So you want me to 'move in' and claim the work as my own? That's someone else's labour, their blood and effort. I can't just take it over and claim it as my own. It's theft. It's morally wrong. It says that I can't create my own work. I won't do it.”

“Your unconvincing morality is being propped up as a blind. Your view of artists and their work is also rather facile. There is nothing original left in the world, and nothing left but plagiarism. Don’t be ridiculous: when there is an infinite library, we are all but plagiarists. I am offering you creative salvation. The
work
is what matters, not the artist. It doesn't matter who signs the masterpiece, but that the masterpiece is brought to the public. There is no original work – everything is derivative of everything else. Perhaps, under the right conditions and circumstances, you would have made these works.”

“Why me? Why have you selected me to be the plagiarist? What you are asking me is simply insulting to me as an artist.”

“Seems like you care more about yourself than about art. This gift I have for you is necessary. I am giving you the one-time opportunity to act as its author.”

Ensopht handed the sketchbook to Leopold who immediately recognized the red lion on the black cover from the dream. Leopold held it with delicate care.

“You say this comes from a dead guy?” asked Leopold.

“Very dead.”

“What does this mean?” Leopold pointed at the red lion.

“It means many things,
Leo,
” Ensopht said with a wry smile.

“The artist's girlfriend had asked me if I had seen this,” Leopold said. “She asked me to tell her if I came across it.”

“If I were you, I wouldn't dare parting with it under any circumstances. The previous owner did not dare to, and nor should you. You and this sketchbook were meant for each other. Was it by coincidence the artist killed himself, or that I was present to remove the artifact and hand it off to whom I consider its
current
rightful owner? Remember that all of this is foretold, but not forever. Eventually this sketchbook will become the property of someone else. Make use of it now and it will be retrieved and given to someone else when the time is right.”

That would be Ensopht's final word before departing. Leopold was left in the street, burdened with a dead man's sketchbook, caught between home and the bar.

4

where the philosopher is given a stern warning from the Third Man

It was a savage cruelty that the owner in his bristly moustache and grease-stained apron barked his orders to the faux philosopher - nowhere near recognizing the academic fantasy of his employee - an order half in Greek by this owner who was less than half a cook. No translation was necessary: the dishes were piling up insensibly with chaotic vengeance. Russell was attempting to phase out the harsh reality of his predicament by focusing on whatever dim philosophical reflections had earlier been beguiling him. His boss' snarling orders performed were quick to jolt Russell back into the moment, to the automatic task of hosing congealed egg yolk that clung stubbornly to over-washed plates. The breakfast rush was the cruelest shift of them all. His own wash apron was slicked in filth and soap, soiling his now damp pants underneath. The smell of his job clung to him despite repeated washings, and the heat of the dishwashing machine and the plates that needed to be removed from it immediately to make up the short stack had all but removed his fingerprints.

In another half hour the breakfast rush would be over, but the dishes would keep trickling in and the massive strata of ceramic and metal would not be under control for an hour yet.