Book 6
Moths circled in the glow of the chandelier while dust sparkled on beams of light. The peaceful surroundings were deceptive: voices floated down the corridors. Digby, the head librarian, said, “Look for signs. Remove those two miscreants!”
Phipps and Alf hurried toward the Rare Books Collection but suddenly stopped at the Romantic Poets Room where Phipps removed a panel, slipping into their apartment. Half the joy of hiding in the library was because Digby and Aurelia were obsessed with removing them; the other half was their existence at the shoreline of eternity — books, an untold number of them.
Book 7
Life feels right in the library. Boredom, indecision, bills, dread, climate change, evil, death – no need to worry. Phipps and Alf had time because there was no time. No hothouse of emotions. The cries & concerns of others seemed distant, private. Like time travel, books brought one elsewhere.
They lingered at breakfast. Oatmeal for Phipps, hay for Alf (Phipps had food stored and water from the fountains).
Afterwards, Alf looked up: “two-legged killer stench.” It was Lenora Lighthouse with a cart.
“Excuse me, Phipps? I’ve been holding a letter for you. Didn’t you retire?”
“The alliterative, Lenor, a delight,” replied Phipps, with a bow, looking over his reading glasses; “Retirement is for the dead.”
“Would kill me too,” Lenora said; “But rabbits aren’t allowed–”
“Thinks he’s a professor.”
“Phipps — ageless trickster. Take care; you too little fellow.”
Phipps thanked Lenora and put the letter away. He grabbed Alf and headed to a study room with students reading or using devices. Finally! The letter from Father Presto di Philippo of the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana:
“Dear Phipps:
Yes, so wise your views. Jesus, Buddha & Mohammed combined cosmopolitan meanderings and mystical delight in nature. They broke through normal experience and the box of time. –Pax. Father Presto di Filippo.
NB: King Tut did indeed have a dagger made from a meteorite.”
Book 8
9 AM Wed. Phipp’s old office: Digby and Aurelia Adams looking for clues. Coffee steaming, croissants, free-range beef sandwich with mayo sitting on Phipp’s desk. The oak drawers sticking out, the room of ghostly leftovers. Digby checked flowerpots and derelict papers. Digby saw a covered dumbwaiter; inside was a manuscript — an archaeological, deep-memory moment.
Phipps placed it on the desk. Library as Soul, From Ancient to Modern Times by Phipps Araby-Smith, Ph.D. Digby cracked his neck, looked with consternation and read:
“’The narrator knows that Alexander the Great & Deinocrates of Rhodes planned the city of Alexandria by sprinkling seeds. Seeds turned into avenues, temples, districts, lighthouse, theaters, library.
This is the story of the Library at Alexandria, the greatest axis mundi, flame-tip, wonderland of art, literature, science, key to the universe, mirror of mind, empire of books, totality of knowledge, mind-fuck; indeed, a public space for conversation & invention. The library contained lyric visions and history that peeled away time — and pillow books that did the same thing under the sheets. It had Socrates and those who laughed at him; the most loving mothers like Isis and Penelope and Mary, and the unspeakable mothers, Medea and Agrippina. Nine muses inhabited it like organs in the human body. Do not the greatest libraries evoke the heights of the greatest forests, taking us back to our origins? From the time when knowledge was unified, it was the prototype of all libraries. The library consumed your hours but not your mind; the dread internet, in contrast, never forgetting anything, ruins memory, unsettles the soul…
We are programmed by machines, doomed. Like all things human, the narrator knows that the library was fated to be destroyed by time & conquest, but that illumination continued; that a good mind cannot be cancelled; that all libraries and the internet are avatars of the library.’”
Aurelia Adams picked up the card with Phipps’s name and the due date for books & silver astrolabe. (Would Phipps return everything on time?) Aurelia massaged her forehead. Digby continued: “’The Ptolemies ordered ships to be searched for books that were copied for the collection… Anaxagoras knew the earth was round; Eratosthenes the circumference of the earth; Democritus the smallest particles: atoms. Here, the first steam engine was developed for toys & gimmicks in temples. How wonderful to be surrounded by scrolls and marble.’”
“His manuscript is,” said Digby, “Like the cosmos in a box. It expands you so that you aren’t you. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Aurelia circled the room. “What in gloomy Hades? I thought Phipps was a Dodo Bird, a leftover of generations prior. Has Phipps picked up secrets amidst his Homeric wanderings? Is he and that rabbit’s foot hiding so he can finish the manuscript here? Did he show how the library aids critical thinking and assessment?”
“Assessment is the death of the library — asses assess.”
“Digby, you’re full of bile and fuck,” Aurelia replied. “It’s for funding. Without funding, this all turns to dust.”
“We use numbers; numbers don’t use us. Did I miss that lesson? Phipps is here in the way Thoreau swam in Walden each day: to gain a new vision of nature, to fuse nature and man, ancient and modern. He was America’s first yogi.”
“A man with various hats,” Aurelia said, smiling. “The directors will hammer us. Wait, a lightbulb moment, sir knight. Contact Phipps’ friend, another non-paying resident of our library–”
“Peabody?” growled Digby; “Didn’t she exit the library last year? Why do people live anywhere they want?”
“If they died, no one would notice them,” she said, smashing an antique ink well.
“They must leave.”
Book 9
Phipps and Alf relaxed on the marble floor, peering at the dome. Chandeliers and columns with globe tops, balconies, tapered columns, inlaid woodwork – magnificent like a wizard’s study.
After a stop in the Margaret Fuller Study, Phipps and Alf ventured east, following the marble statues peering from opposite sides and the globe. There — Bibles, Illuminated Manuscripts, Analects, Mayan glyphs, a page of Leonardo’s mirror-writing; letters from Cervantes, Frederick Douglass, Virginia Woolfe, the Beatles…
After a turn, they met a group of men and a woman with deep-set eyes and a classical nose at a blackboard. Tulip-shaped lights illuminated the room.
Marie Curie and Werner Heisenberg dropped sugar in their coffee, while Niels Bohr appeared angry until seeing the rabbit. Albert Einstein, in a black suit with a red tie under the vest fronted by six buttons, swept his hair back. “God does not play dice,” said Einstein.
“Herr Einstein: Stop telling God what to do,” Bohr replied.
Phipps and Alf infiltrated the group with a tray of Apfelstrudel. Einstein lit his pipe, then nodded at the visitors. Puff, puff. Marie Curie made a sketch of the rabbit. He was delighted and hoped it wasn’t radioactive.
Madame Curie had her hair in a bun, frizzy on the sides, with serious eyes, sculptured nose and lips, and a necklace with a pendant. “Friendship in a tiny bundle.”
“Indeed, Madame Curie,” said Phipps.
“Who’s your partner?” asked Einstein, sipping some glowing cognac.
“Alf the rabbit,” Phipps replied; “He’s into time space concepts.”
Einstein stuck out his tongue. He bent down to pet the rabbit. “Not Alf the kangaroo?” he replied, fluffing up his air.
Bohr invited Phipps and Alf on a sailing trip. Phipps marked his calendar.
“Thanks for this momentous evening,” said Phipps; “Forgive me, but the things you discover are not always innocent. God is the greatest librarian.” Phipps and Alf went through bronze doors, continuing through arches.
Book 10
Percival, searching for words, stands before the Holy Grail. “Oops,” said Phipps.
Next door. Lao Tzu telling a story about a man who found a horse in his yard.
“So true,” said Phipps, “Judgement is myopic.”
A candle illuminated an old face. The alchemist was bearded, in medieval garb, next to a globe and a skull on the table.
“Gold meant nothing to indigenous people,” said Phipps.
Next door. The Titanic taking on water. While Alf’s fur shook, Phipps stared at the lifeboats and the starlight rolling on the cold, bottomless waves.
Next door. Count Dracula hung upside down on the crenellated wall. As wolves howled, Phipps and Alf hurried across the moat…
Book 11
A week later, Phipps and Alf had a vacation in the Ibn Battuta Travel Room. Phipps tossed sand and read some of Treasure Island. Phipps ordered home delivery.
Upon returning home, Phipps had an uncanny feeling that guards loomed nearby. He and Alf weaved around a column and bookcases, then ascended the stairs.
The bell tower and sky.
There were crosswinds and crows. A seed sprinkle of stars lit the sky with gods and heroes. Phipps cast the electronic bell over the side. “The Eighth circle of hell is for fraud.” Phipps rang the original bell. It was pure joy, clang, clang, clang: all through the library and across the quad, through the town itself, to the people strolling, to the spectators watching a baseball sail over the field…
Book 12
The next morning, Phipps overheard a guard talking about the order to arrest them.
“Get snares and rat poison.”
On the first floor of the South Wing, Barclay glanced at the statue of Seneca, “No man was ever wise by chance.” She descended into the subterranean level where rodents and history flicker. She got lost in intestine-like passageways, emerging in a closet. From a cart, she borrowed a Sherlock Holmes anthology. “Due March 29,” she wrote on a card. She descended as far as possible, finding a catacomb — one skeleton held a book.
“Died reading,” said Barclay. “Middlemarch, good choice, 2 pages left. Oh.”
Book 13
Barclay drifted into a room with dust and shadows and antique books. Moss and mushrooms grew from the powdery bricks. Barclay saw Alf, and they ran toward each other, “Alf, I missed you.”
“Salve, Barclay. So happy. Tell, tell.”
“Hey forever friend.” Barclay carried him. He twitched.
“Agape,” said Alf, “Souls together.”
“A classical rabbit,” said Barclay, scanning a shelf. “And rabbit books — Alice in Wonderland, Watership Down and The Ten Rabbit Commandments.”
“Great Rabbit says eat grass, raise family,” said Alf; “Rewards follow.”
“Metaphysical,” said Barclay.
With his hindquarters sticking out, Alf said, “The worst beast uncivilized human.”
“Man is a predator,” Barclay said, sweeping her fist across her forehead. “Civilization is a planet killer — but we need its gifts to be good, to be interesting.”
“I will eat hay now.”
Book 14
She rubbed her eyes as if unraveling a paradox. They passed a statue of Charles Belford whose wealth from sugar and rubber made the library rise. Belford sponsored, during the Jazz Age, the renowned Saqqara and Lake Titicaca excavations.
“Let’s mess Mr. McGregor’s garden.”
“Alf, let’s weigh the ethical dimensions.”
“McGregor cruel, breaks Great Rabbit’s Commandments.”
Alf taught her some Rabbit-speak. Except for the absence of deceit, it was like human language with nouns for objects, verbs for actions — but words had aromas.
“Alf, you miss your kinfolk,” said Barclay; “Trapped in an alien landscape – oh the terrible things humans have done to the animal kingdom. I am vegetarian now.”
“Alf has two girlfriends,” Alf said; “Helen and Penelope. Tell, tell.”
“Bad rabbit.”
“Rabbits’ rabbit,” Alf replied, jumping on the couch; “No rabbit’s foot, I.”
Book 15
Phipps, hand to heart, hurried down the corridor. His two favorite beings amidst millions of books! “The library is the universe,” said Phipps.
They turned a corner – suddenly Digby and Aurelia appeared! “Gottcha,” said Digby; “The library isn’t the universe. It’s a picture of it.”
“Digby, you fool,” said Barclay; “You’ve missed the library by being inside the library.”
Phipps, Alf and Barclay hurried down the corridor and, after a short time, entered the secret room. Their strife turned into relaxation. The broken violin that is the human lot – fate — fell silent. They found the mind of the mind, the library of the library.
Richard has had stories in The Raven’s Perch Magazine and Coneflower Cafe, as well as digital humanities articles in The Collector.com, Ancient Origins.com, Popular Archaeology.com, Expat Athens and others. He also gave a keynote address recent sustainability and community conference at Sorsogon State University in Philippines.
