bookcases, but when he peered around a shelf he saw her with the Abbé, the two of them sharing a laugh. He backed quietly away and waited until they came looking for him.
At the end of the day Flood’s work table was barricaded with a wall of books. He spent that night and the next three days reading, collating and taking notes, gathering and comparing the thoughts of poets, mathematicians, philosophers, and mystics, searching for ideas that might somehow be applied to the physical object known as a book, a finite sequence of words printed upon a finite number of sheets of paper. Invariably he found that what each of these authors had to say about infinity was both too much and not enough.
Hoping at least to organize his acquired material, he decided it was possible to divide his growing swarm of infinities into two main categories:
1) the same thing recurring endlessly;
2) almost the same thing, but not quite, recurring endlessly.
In an argosy of Hellenistic authors he found an amusing diatribe against the reading of novels.
Section XXVII:
Lassitude during public debates indicates the chronic reader of books full of lies, coincidences, and impossibilities
.
Some of these pernicious works have been known to bring on fits of sneezing, others cause blood to flow from the ears. Those which contain didactic passages may fill the lungs with mucosity and impair breathing
.
Inflammation of the eyes from protracted reading of such works may be alleviated by drinking slightly watered wine
.
Care should be taken of the books given to a pubescent female; if the breasts begin to swell to unusual fullness, reading should cease
.
These noxious books are often hastily bound with pastes derived from the boiling of animal hides. The inferiority of such bindings is usually matched by the worthlessness of the contents
.
Curiously, eunuchs do not read these books, nor do they go bald
.
He was intrigued by Sabbatai Donnolo’s comparison of God to a book. If you could cradle this fearful volume in your hand, and were to open it anywhere, beginning, middle, or end, you would find that between any two pages there would be always a third, between any two words there would be always another, between any two letters would be an unheard, invisible letter, a doorway to the void known only to mystics, where reigns a silence so profound that the roar of the entire universe rushes to fill it.
Each morning Irena arrived, took away the books that he had sifted, and brought him new ones. When no one was about, Flood did some searching of his own, often turning up volumes that revealed the Count’s weakness for puns and riddles. The
Little Treatise on the Teeth
, a disguised case for combs. A fat tome titled
Fuel for Enlightening Thought
, which turned out to be a solid block of cleverly painted pine.
Yet everything he read and examined, no matter how frivolous or profound, how elliptical or to the purpose, left the completion of his task as remote from the reach of his hands as the moon.
Well and good
, he told himself, slamming shut another long-untouched volume that sent up a plume of fine dust.
I will carry on. I will go along with this, I will stay here and humour him, as the Abbé does, because it is profitable. And because in so doing I am honing my craft and thus not really taking advantage of anyone
.
And because of her
.
– Irena Ostrova, Flood whispered to Ludwig later that day, and leaned close to catch the buzzing reply.
– Rain. Trove.
He turned to see Djinn watching him with his steady blue eyes.
He had more or less ignored the boy until now, but Djinn’s extra digits, Flood quickly realized, would be of tremendous help in the laborious composing of type. The problem was that they would have only the bare rudiments of German in common to converse with. Having chosen to print in English to begin with, Flood would have to teach the boy to set type from manuscripts he could not read. It was not long, however, before Djinn had
At the end of the day Flood’s work table was barricaded with a wall of books. He spent that night and the next three days reading, collating and taking notes, gathering and comparing the thoughts of poets, mathematicians, philosophers, and mystics, searching for ideas that might somehow be applied to the physical object known as a book, a finite sequence of words printed upon a finite number of sheets of paper. Invariably he found that what each of these authors had to say about infinity was both too much and not enough.
Hoping at least to organize his acquired material, he decided it was possible to divide his growing swarm of infinities into two main categories:
1) the same thing recurring endlessly;
2) almost the same thing, but not quite, recurring endlessly.
In an argosy of Hellenistic authors he found an amusing diatribe against the reading of novels.
Section XXVII:
Lassitude during public debates indicates the chronic reader of books full of lies, coincidences, and impossibilities
.
Some of these pernicious works have been known to bring on fits of sneezing, others cause blood to flow from the ears. Those which contain didactic passages may fill the lungs with mucosity and impair breathing
.
Inflammation of the eyes from protracted reading of such works may be alleviated by drinking slightly watered wine
.
Care should be taken of the books given to a pubescent female; if the breasts begin to swell to unusual fullness, reading should cease
.
These noxious books are often hastily bound with pastes derived from the boiling of animal hides. The inferiority of such bindings is usually matched by the worthlessness of the contents
.
Curiously, eunuchs do not read these books, nor do they go bald
.
He was intrigued by Sabbatai Donnolo’s comparison of God to a book. If you could cradle this fearful volume in your hand, and were to open it anywhere, beginning, middle, or end, you would find that between any two pages there would be always a third, between any two words there would be always another, between any two letters would be an unheard, invisible letter, a doorway to the void known only to mystics, where reigns a silence so profound that the roar of the entire universe rushes to fill it.
Each morning Irena arrived, took away the books that he had sifted, and brought him new ones. When no one was about, Flood did some searching of his own, often turning up volumes that revealed the Count’s weakness for puns and riddles. The
Little Treatise on the Teeth
, a disguised case for combs. A fat tome titled
Fuel for Enlightening Thought
, which turned out to be a solid block of cleverly painted pine.
Yet everything he read and examined, no matter how frivolous or profound, how elliptical or to the purpose, left the completion of his task as remote from the reach of his hands as the moon.
Well and good
, he told himself, slamming shut another long-untouched volume that sent up a plume of fine dust.
I will carry on. I will go along with this, I will stay here and humour him, as the Abbé does, because it is profitable. And because in so doing I am honing my craft and thus not really taking advantage of anyone
.
And because of her
.
– Irena Ostrova, Flood whispered to Ludwig later that day, and leaned close to catch the buzzing reply.
– Rain. Trove.
He turned to see Djinn watching him with his steady blue eyes.
He had more or less ignored the boy until now, but Djinn’s extra digits, Flood quickly realized, would be of tremendous help in the laborious composing of type. The problem was that they would have only the bare rudiments of German in common to converse with. Having chosen to print in English to begin with, Flood would have to teach the boy to set type from manuscripts he could not read. It was not long, however, before Djinn had
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