The Infinite Library (2 page)

Codes and ciphers are enormously important to me. I think the Library knew that, why I must have been
selected
, never mind the means it did so, the agents it sent. There are keys in a code to unlock it, and keys in the frets of ornamental friezes, and everything is
in hand... con clave
. But given a handful of keys and being tossed in a world of locks does not demystify anything.

I have never met a book I could not decipher with but a few maddening exceptions (all exceptions in this field are the source of madness and infuriation, a dirty secret kept under the floorboards of one’s reputation and profession). But it is time-consuming work to an extreme, and I am rarely rewarded for efforts by either monetary compensation or a bump in scholarly reputation; the members of this global fraternity who occupy their time obsessively devoted to deciphering could not even fill a room at a party, and I do not mean the legion of amateurs and closet hobbyists. Besides, a party of our kind should be strictly avoided. The “community” is small, vicious, insular, zealous, and populated by professional cutthroats, inimitable egos, and belligerent windbags. We keep mostly to ourselves and share nothing until we are absolutely certain that no further work need be done. That is, none of us publish a “lead” in the cracking of the code without having deciphered it entirely unless we have to, for this community is also covetous over others’ work. The numbers have dwindled over the last twenty years for two reasons; at first the best cryptologists were seduced by stable incomes provided by governmental secret agencies and private sector think tanks with large budgets, and now computers have outmoded our antique methods, being able to cycle through a decade’s worth of permutations performed by hand in a matter of minutes. Others in our trade lament that we are an endangered breed, whereas I am more the realist by knowing that we are in fact extinct and in absolute denial of this grimly real circumstance. Why forestall the inevitable when it is already here, when it has already been here for so long? But I take comfort in the fact that there are codes written in hand that only another hand, not a computer, can decode. I like to think of this as coding with the right and decoding with the left, the symmetry of all mystery.

I once held an adjunct position at a university, lecturing on old manuscripts… But this I abandoned when it seemed that my students, and even my colleagues, ceased to share any enthusiasm when in the presence of an extremely rare manuscript. Their indifference was symptomatic of my trade’s decline; the people are no longer interested in books or book-related mysteries, and so it stands to reason that the unity of the two would cease to hold anyone’s interest for more than a fleeting moment before running toward the certainty of science or formulaic television programming. However, I do not wish to malinger here with my heavy baggage of complaint when I have in fact accepted the fate of my trade, and have supplemented my own joy by peddling texts to keep solvent. I can do nothing to change the tide of indifference, and I am too arrogant a creature to believe that I am responsible in making the attempt. And so, I made my way teaching on occasion, on a part time basis, gypsying about from one institution to another. Same old yawn.

Enough about that.

Of all places the narrative would choose for me to meet the librarian, it was just outside Vatican City, that little religious satrapy of itself. Swiss guards in their ridiculous blue suits trafficked by history’s own haberdasher rotated in their appointed guard patterns. Faith met finance in the swatches of coffee and ice-cream shops that plucked the tourist-faithful into its overpriced maw. The day began with oppressive heat that later reconciled itself with a drop in humidity. Cool winds arced into the piazzas and stirred up dust into faint rosette patterns matching souvenir Romanesque reproductions frozen in keychains. The sun was partially occulted by menacing cloud that clotted the sky with the threat or promise of melodramatic biblical weather to follow. The Vatican Library was an occasional haunt of mine, and I was but another face plucked from the indistinct sea of greying scholarly types all eager to plunder some obscure text to resolve some meaningless little conspiratorial riddle, to worship at the spine’s edge of the
Codex Vaticanus Graecus
. I had just finished my research stint in one of the stuffy manuscript rooms, and was satisfied with my findings the way one must justify to oneself that the research in such an illustrious place was fruitful… even if it was a dismal failure. To be honest, I had wandered through the catalogue of the Vatican holdings on so many occasions that it seemed to me what a city’s public library is to its populace: just another nexus of books sheltered from the elements, a collection point like a heavily populated car on a commuter train. By my many frequent visitations, I perhaps knew the Vatican holdings catalogue and Holy Index better than I knew the details of my own childhood. Not that I enjoyed the tedious arguments of theologically involved scholastics, but some of these books were the basis upon which codes were written, and they were beautifully bound - the finest crafted materials for the dullest possible content.

There had been a rush to acquire photocopies for study given that the announcement gave urgency to any researcher’s aims: that the Library would be closing for three years. I finished up, went to my rental car, and trundled myself off to a nearby small town.

I do not fancy myself a grand gourmand, but I could usually determine good cuisine from what was merely slapped together for the indiscriminate tongues of tourists. I knew the best local food was always in a small and narrow street, in an establishment with a modest lit sign that read VINO. I stepped in just as the wind went into crescendo and the sky’s bloated bladder emptied its contents upon the city with its hissing relief. I was determined to get a hot meal, return to my hotel, and then depart the next morning for Barcelona, then make my connector flight back to Toronto where the only living thing affected by my absence would be a pathetic and neglected house plant in one of those made in China dollar store pots that are far more florid than whatever can grow inside them.

Be it the meal or my sense of liberality with my wallet (since I had just been paid a handsome sum for a rare text that netted me a fair profit), I seduced myself into ordering a liter of expensive wine to attend my meal. The patrons seemed slightly rough without being ignorant and abrasive; working people, bakers and butchers and other such trades that still have a sense of familial honour. The place was small, a bit dingy, but very homelike. There were decorative votive candles with opulent depictions of the Virgin and child, seemingly painted in an effusive hybrid Medieval iconic and Renaissance style, softened by mass production, a holdover from that Cult of Mary now 800 years stale-dated. The tablecloths were damask. Tucked away in one corner, seated by himself over a heaping feast of pasta, soup, buns, salad, and wine, was a very odd looking fellow, as out of place as I was. I contrived to draw some attention to myself without being obtuse. The fellow ate his food greedily, but his eyes seemed fixed, perhaps mulling over an amusing anecdote. He wore the slightly apprehensive grin of someone who was unsure when it was his cue to laugh. His long, knotted fingers were ridiculously ringed like a wizard’s, and the hands were a gangly roadmap of one of those ancient, overcrowded cities where one was unsure if something was being renovated or demolished. I observed his hands for quite some time without staring too obviously - for his hands were the real scene of action. He was both ravenous and mechanical. Even his operation of the spoon betrayed his famished aspect. There were dark orange smudges on his right index and middle fingers, undeniable truth that he was a heavy smoker; in fact, there were three packages of cigarettes by his knobby elbow, and there was a cigarette on the go in the overflowing ashtray just astern his soup bowl as he absentmindedly lit another. He managed his fare and cigarette in such a precise choreography that I could look away and predict what his hands would be busying themselves with in accordance to the rhythm: fork dipping into pasta, twirl, puff, slurp soup, tear piece of bun, chew, chew, slurp wine, puff, more wine, soup, puff. It was only with the salad that he was dainty, his fingers lightly pinching the salad fork between thumb and middle finger while the other fingers splayed out like dainty antennae, an out of place affectation, hovering over the salad like one trying to sneak up on a fly, dabbing at it gingerly but with purpose for a particular green. Only later would I realize just how adept those hands actually were; he once made a signal to me with them, later on during our strange acquaintance, forming a kind of narrow edge, declaring that, “one must know where to make the division between books in order to pluck the one that is not apparently there.” He called it, ineloquently enough, a knife in the ribs.

He must have noticed that I noticed him, for he spoke to me without raising his head from the meal: “care to join me, traveler?” His accent was a mix of sultry French washing over the harsh rocks of a Slavic tongue, but even this was amorphous. There was no consistent accent; I was guessing and not half as worldly as I would liked to have been.

I felt a bit flush and embarrassed, but curious all the same. His choreography ceased, and he merely raised an eye and eyebrow hung in the complete stillness of his body to see if my reply would be to take him up on his offer. I motioned to the server that I would be changing seats, and the server grunted assent. Upon closer inspection, the man seemed and sounded like a baroque dandy - or at least some bastard derivation thereof made possible by an appetite for anachronism. He was most likely a crazy person, and yet I was choosing to sit with him for no defensible reason other than laggard, desultory curiousity.

The man gestured with an inviting sweep to the empty chair across from him, now resuming his brusque and voracious attention to his meal. I can only paraphrase a conversation that was far more awkward and filled with the gaps and lapses of my slow thought-to-speech ratio.

“Thank you,” I said.

Without any small talk preamble, he went right for it: “Yes, and so you are here to do research at the library, I take it?”

“Which?”

“There is only one library, extended in its parts, but all part of a whole. But I really mean the Pope’s not-so-secret textual booty. You have to wonder just how many of those books were acquired
a poignard
. Inquisitions always seem to increase knowledge for some. Oh, well. Book acquisition doubled after the Lateran Council in 1215… The invention of penance made it so. Full of guilt? Murderer? Rapist? Forgiveness conditional on serving in his Holiness’ Crusade. Endless bulls, diplomas, indulgences for labour traded, remissions of penance during Lent, and so forth. Dreary stuff, so blandly historical! And without an inch of humour or an inkling of character and style. The Church was one of the first bodies to effectively practice information control.”

“How did you know that I was at the library?”

“Nothing happens in Vatican City without my knowing it, it seems. As well, you are festooned with books and notes, and your eyes seem bleary with text. I know your type well, and one does not need some sort of special radar to pick you out of the crowd. Come now… no one who lives here actually reads! Unless one is a member of the College of Cardinals, what point is there? Life is simple. Texts only increase upon the burdens, giving us new puzzles to occupy our time.”

“I don’t know if I would agree with you.”

He sat back, corking me with a mischievous grin, dabbing now at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. It seemed like he was all bones, wrapped tautly with skin, perhaps too tight, which made his eyes seem to bulge slightly which made him seem as comical as it also made him appear like a regulation nightmare nemesis. He lit another cigarette and was about to, if his gestures could be read, launch into a schoolmaster's lecture.

“Listen,” he said, “I am not an enemy of books and their retinue of paramours; quite the contrary. But it will always astound me that so many of you wander into deserts in search of trees when the forest is all around you.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying the Vatican’s holdings are sub par? That would be a controversial statement. A bit glib, maybe arrogant. I’m sorry, but I’m not following what you’re driving at.”

“You’re right. I should remember well to qualify my statements. Cigarette?”

He pointed the open pack at me; I politely and mutely declined with a low wave of my hand. I was currently on one of my short-lived jags of quitting that would invariably fail soon.

“Anyway,” he continued, “what is a library?”

“Are you asking me to provide you with a definition? Of what kind?”

“Oh, any definition will do,” he said as if it didn't matter.

“I presume that this is your Socratic way of demonstrating to me that I have no conception of what a library is?”

“If you prefer… You may be sharp, but a bit defensive. It seems that one follows the other. How refreshing it would be to hear someone who has been in libraries all his life to declare that he had no real idea what a library actually was! Oh, I would relish that day! But men are arrogant and full of words, and they think that by making noises with their mouths and so much pen scratching they will somehow stumble upon the truth.”