The Infinite Library (6 page)

I once asked Castellemare if the Library was infinite, and he replied in the affirmative. I asked him why he thought Borges chose not to make the Library of Babel actually infinite. His response:

“The story would have failed since it would not give the reader hope. An infinite library has no meaning other than itself, has no reference frame by which it can be measured. In that way, it evades meaning and becomes a tautology: the Library is its own definition, its own reason. There is no preceding explanation, and thus no principle of sufficient reason will suffice! Leibniz would be aggravated by this Library.”

So, the implications of this library were clear: there is no hope - to find meaning or ever to create anything new.

3

The Broken Colophon

Tho.V. Castellmare, G.L.O.T.U.

I
spent only a few more days in Vatican City before departing. Truth be told, I was too shaken by my meeting with Castellemare to get any significant research done; and, if the theory of his library held true, then indeed all my research was at bottom insignificant. My travels were sorely uneventful after that, yet I resisted the urge to break the spell of the mundane in calling upon Castellemare. It would only be a matter of time before he contacted me with a list of chores anyhow.

I was back in Toronto, cutting my journeys short. I had acquired some exquisite texts at an estate auction in Barcelona, but my heart wasn’t into it. The potential buyers must have noticed my preoccupied and nebulous malaise, for they employed their instinct in haggling down my list price, effectively narrowing my profit margin to a pittance. Fortunately, I did not own a store, but kept all my connections and catalogue online. Many of the books I had in virtual stock were ones that were not yet in my possession, or otherwise kept in a climate-controlled storage locker in my home town of Woodstock. Part of my business was to act as a sales conduit between owner and collector, taking my modest commission. I mostly operated out of my small, bachelor apartment near York University, an apartment modestly and tactfully furnished with various pieces of imitation Empire furniture I had picked up on the cheap. My walls were sparsely peppered with miniature reproductions of medieval manuscripts - mostly blown up details of woodcuts from various astrological incunabula and the like, including one reproduction of Hildegaard von Bingen’s portrait where she is being infused with the word of God while her ecclesiastical assistant looks on in shock and awe upon a madness von Bingen is taking as a pure ecstasy transporting her out of space and time. I usually worked late, scouring the online auction sites for texts the sellers were listing at ridiculously low prices, obviously ignorant beasts who had no inclination of their own collection’s value. I, of course, had the entire Lincolnshire Librorum in my Rolodex memory, and could spot a good deal from an attempted gouge. It was about two in the morning when I received an email alert from a [email protected]. In my line of work, my customers were global and had all sorts of bizarre email addresses, so I dismissed very little as being merely spam. The subject line read: “Texted!”

And so there it was: my first day on the job. Although all the metrics were provided, the question remained as to how I would remove these books without incident. When I was in college, I used to steal books from the library by removing the magnetic strip inserted in the spine - easier to do with some books than others; the books rebound by the library were too hard to remove unless one was so intent on the book as to slit the entire spine in search of this little strip. But how much had changed in library security since I was a student? How could I remove these books without getting caught? Just then, as if he was adjacent to my thoughts, a follow-up email:

…

I set myself to task right away, checking the library catalogue online for the holdings of St. Michael’s College. Indeed, there it was, listed in its scant metric order, yet gleaming as a dangerous potential gaffe by the drunk at dinner. It looked as though Castellemare's information was a bit stale since the book had now been officially entered into the catalogue. I wondered how the librarians decided to include it in the collection; if what Castellemare said was true, it just magically appeared, and was not a text the Acquisitions Officer would have purchased. Perhaps they thought it was some sort of oversight and decided to shelve it rather than inquire further. The library would not be open for another six or seven hours yet. I decided to forego sleep and move forward with the plan. I booked a ticket to Essen at a usurious price.

Hunting down books has always given my life a sense of purpose. The quarry may not appear elusive, and it has no legs upon which to scurry away, but the hunt can prove difficult nonetheless. Books have a pernicious habit of blending in and effectively disappearing altogether in their surroundings. Their means of camouflage is to nuzzle in, cover to cover, with others of their kind, and only time, luck, and a keen eye can jiggle them loose… like some obstinate, hard-to-reach tooth under the labour of an ill-equipped dentist. Although books are my life, I never have more than a hundred or two in my personal collection. Books are the means, the resources by and through which I facilitate sales and research. I love books, but not enough to keep them. As one learns from those engaged in the sale of illicit substances, it is never a good idea to cut profit by using what one sells. I try not to let my love of books get the better of me, even though I am the sort predisposed to collection fetishism. And so my tendency is to create an impassable, indifferent gulf between myself and the books I am hunting, to not become too attached. Perhaps I justify this to myself with some twisted secret belief that I will one day be reunited with every book that has ever come into my possession… perhaps the only way I could make my mercenary trade in books bearable.

I know that books carry innate mysteries and histories. Who owned them is as important as their contents, origin of publication, materials utilized to fabricate them, and edition; otherwise, books are little more than blocks of cut paper stuffed with the words of someone as fallible as any other. Without their histories, books have no content in being articles of conversational intrigue. One could indicate the exceptions in every case such as this, perhaps pointing to some vintage text that purports - or has purported on its behalf - to hold some secret, a code, a key, a portal to personal enlightenment, a means to achieve mystical intuition. Certainly, I do not deny this. However, the personal embroidery we cannot see appended to the book’s journey is, for me, a sense of its reality, its narrative vitalism in this world as a participant object. Books are a form of cultural currency in so many ways. This is why I spend so many hours studying various high end catalogues of rare books - the pedigree of prior ownership is as valuable to the book merchant in locating its true origins and in adding to its value as a soil index layer on an archaeological dig is for dating relics. There is a particular cachet among those of us who trade in books, for there are some names among the book collections that carry an indisputable weight of respect and validity. For instance, Hon. Johann V. Sturges who lived in Fairfield from 1734 to 1791 had an enviable collection of texts, each one he meticulously sought out and authenticated… Now, if I come across his name in a list of previous owners, I presumably know the text to be genuine and in good condition. Sturges was a borderline maniac when it came to the care of the book, and his methods of care and restoration antedate many of our more technical means today - and are arguably still more effective. I look around at the books produced today by the large print mills, a cheap mass production line of indifference and widespread market deluge of disposable bilge… These books of today are not built to last. Their paper will crumble and the glue that binds them will disintegrate in less than two centuries, and that is with proper care. But when editions and print runs exceed the millions, and just about anyone publishes nowadays instead of only the moneyed nobility of classical learning, the value of the book, per unit, has plummeted. All attempts to manufacture scarcity to drive value only succeeds in contrivance, and eventually the publisher relents once the sales marker is so high by pushing the pedal on production once more.