The Book of Levi (9 page)

Sebastian had all the time in the world to consider such questions. The problem, as it appeared to him, was that though there were many books still in existence, these were an eclectic collection that provided no clearly defined path in any one discipline. The great destruction of books, that he suspected probably occurred either during or after the great nuclear war of the twenty first century, had removed the great flow of human knowledge. The consistency was gone. ‘Contiguity of written texts is civilisation,’ he muttered to himself as he pottered about. And that probably explained why there were no universities and places of higher learning; why there were no emerging great artists or scientists. As he saw it, he was living in another Dark Age. The intelligentsia had gone and had not returned. The scraper dwellers organised pleasure; the street dwellers organised survival; there was basic organised business and basic organised government and a noisy bunch of organised lobby groups – but no organised, institutionalised thinking. Everybody was waiting for someone or something to pull the city back into the light.

‘So what?’ he thought to himself. ‘If the city is wretched; if the whole planet is wretched, it’s not my concern. There’s nothing I can do about it. The city rejected me a long time ago.’

And so he thought and he wandered, as he always did, as he was now, up to his small apartment above the library, muttering incoherent bitterness to himself.

There he cleared his battered spectacles and began to read the small, green book.

*

EXT.MOUNTAIN CLEARING.DAY

A few families are gathered around a camp fire. They are dressed in rags and furs.

Out of the nearby woods a cavalry of mounted men suddenly appear.

With rifles and machetes the men, women and children are mercilessly slaughtered.

It was a very excited Stefan who burst into Elizabeth’s office late afternoon the following day. He wore his perennial, crisply-ironed beige suit, but Elizabeth noticed with interest that he had several strands of hair marginally out of place, a definite giveaway that he was truly excited.

‘I think . . . I’m pretty sure . . .’ he stammered as he sped towards her desk.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

‘We may have. I think we may have . . . In fact, I’m sure we have . . .’

‘Have what?’

‘Found it!’ he boomed.

‘The book?’ she queried, rising from her seat on the buoyancy of the wave.

Stefan nodded with an agonised grin, unable to speak with excitement.

‘Where?’ she entreated

‘The old library.’

‘Well, where is it? Can I have it?’ she asked, leaving her desk and approaching him.

‘No, no,’ Stefan replied, waving his hands about. ‘He’s got it.’

‘Who’s got it?’

‘Sebastian Levi.’

‘Who?’

‘The caretaker of the library.’

‘Why has he got it?’

‘I didn’t find it. He found it. He found the book. And all the time it was just down the road. To think . . .’

‘Alright,’ said Elizabeth, gently taking him by the elbow. ‘Calm down.’

Stefan clasped the hand upon his elbow in feminine embrace, ‘I’ve tried so hard to find it for you these past weeks and now . . .’

‘It’s alright,’ Elizabeth comforted him. ‘It’s alright.’

He nodded his head in a prelude to tears. She placed her hand on his for comfort. ‘You go and have a nice rest. You deserve it. Just take a deep breath and tell me. Where is he?’

‘Waiting for you in the library,’ replied Stefan, biting his lower lip with his upper teeth.

‘Good work, Stefan. A job well done.’

Stefan closed his eyes and pursed his lips together so that they almost disappeared. Then he nodded to indicate that he agreed with the praise accorded him.

Elizabeth raced out of the room and by the time she reached the library several minutes later, Stefan was still shaking, drinking a cup of water unsteadily, while three young office workers listened intently to his dramatic tale.

Elizabeth moved confidently into the dank, musty lobby, where one hundred years before Robert and his friends had been assailed and taken by force to meet Ferret for the first time. Her shoes echoed and clattered on the old stone floor. Eddies of spiralling dust erupted in her wake like mini-tornadoes.

‘Hello,’ she said, quietly at first, and then more loudly, ‘Hello!’ Her salutation bounced off the unadorned and eerie walls.

In the dimness ahead she saw a figure appear in silhouette. It emerged from the gloom through an internal doorway. It did not speak.

‘I’m looking for a Mister Levi,’ she stated. She took two paces towards the figure and stopped. Still it did not speak. ‘Would that be you, sir?’

‘Would that be me?’ repeated the figure. ‘Not if I had any choice in the matter, but as it turns out, yes it is me. And you are President Dawson.’ Sebastian shifted out into the shaft of light illuminating the central portion of the lobby.

It struck Elizabeth, as she watched the butterfly emerge form the cocoon, that this man had some charisma about him. His voice was educated, quiet and sonorous. When she saw him fully cast in the shifting afternoon sunlight he could have been a pirate from a romantic novel, or perhaps an errant knave, discarded by society and forced into incarceration in this silent and timeless world.

‘I believe that you have something that belongs to me?’ she said. She sounded confident but she approached him no closer.

But he moved towards her. ‘It is the property of the state, I think.’

‘I represent the state,’ she replied.

‘And what is the state?’ he asked her, moving into her personal space.

Uneasy, she stepped back half a pace. ‘It is what I represent,’ she replied.

‘Ah, I see. I see,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘It really is simple when you look at it like that, isn’t it?’

Elizabeth was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable. She was wishing that she had brought her retinue with her and not simply burst down Macquarie Street and recklessly entered the domain of this whispering and sinister man.

‘You have a book,’ she persevered. She raised her chin in defiance of this dark-eyed man who stared penetratingly at her over the rims of his glasses. He was far too close for her comfort.

‘I have many,’ he replied with a slow smile.

‘You have one in particular, I believe,’ she returned with a further nervous upturning of her chin.

For a moment there was silence. Elizabeth came close to turning on her heel and exiting the building, with the intention of returning later with an entourage of large men. But just before she did, Sebastian whispered, ‘Follow me.’

He disappeared through the doorway from whence he had appeared, leaving Elizabeth indecisive, considering her options and momentarily glued to the floor.

A few seconds later Sebastian’s head reappeared in silhouette in the doorway. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘I shan’t bite you.’ And again he disappeared.

Elizabeth drew in her breath and followed. Down the spiral stairwell she trailed the man and into the bowels of the library. As she descended she assessed the folly of her action. The man uttered no more words throughout the long journey down.

Eventually they reached the lowest level of the library. They were now well below ground level and around about the same spot where Rueben had met Weena many years before. Sebastian reached a pile of magazines. He turned suddenly. Elizabeth pulled up quickly in response and her heels skidded. The walls echoed with the sound.

Out of the blue he shot a question at her. ‘What is the main perquisite of power do you think, President Dawson?’

‘Perquisite?’ she asked, trying desperately to retain her equanimity.

‘Yes. The main perquisite. The main perk.’

‘Oh,’ she said, brushing her dark tousled hair away from her emerald eyes in consideration of the question. ‘Well, there’s the ability to help others, of course.’

Sebastian said nothing.

‘And the joy that springs from having a sense of purpose and being able to realise that purpose on a grand scale.’

Sebastian still said nothing.

‘And, of course, there is a certain self satisfaction in achieving goals.’ She hesitated, ‘And, I can’t deny that there’s a benefit to one’s self and one’s family when one achieves great office.’

‘Aha,’ pronounced Sebastian with enough volume to make Elizabeth flinch. ‘Aha! Now we are getting closer to it. Self satisfaction. Satisfaction of the self. The joy you speak of is the joy the self feels from attaining and maintaining its power.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Elizabeth, entirely on her guard by now.

‘I mean,’ replied Sebastian very quietly and intensely, ‘that the driving force of power, the major perquisite of power, the main reason for power is . . . power. Those, like you who have it, Miss Dawson, only barely understand this because you have it. It is only when one is disempowered that one sees that anger is the expression of the impotent and the powerless.’

Sebastian’s voice had risen ever so slightly in volume and Elizabeth was looking upward towards the safety of the world above through the spiralling dust and the myriad books coating the walls. She began to imagine how quickly she could take off one her of her heels and smash this man in the eye with it, should that become necessary.

Sebastian, however, continued without falter, apparently oblivious to the fear his understated tone and volume was engendering.

‘You see, Miss Dawson, I have been thus disempowered. I have been angry and frustrated. I believe that I have ability far beyond my station. I believe that I have been overlooked. I believe . . .’

‘Stop!’ Elizabeth shouted. The word thundered up the walls and dissipated into the books above. ‘I’ve heard enough. I don’t care what you believe. I am president of this city and you have something that belongs to me and I want it back.’ She was asserting herself as the bloated lizard displays the fake armour of its gills.

‘Belongs to you?’ Sebastian echoed, completely undaunted. ‘You see. That’s my point. You see yourself as the state. You are the state. You are power and power is a means to its own end.’

‘That’s quite enough,’ she repeated. ‘Are you going to give me the book, or not?’

‘Oh the book’s not here,’ he replied. ‘It’s well hidden.’

‘Then why are we here?’ she said shakily, giving voice to the realisation of her vulnerability. President or no president, she had no power way down here right at this moment. She stared at the man before her. Silently, she began to slide off her long-heeled shoe.

‘There’s no need to be frightened,’ he said, watching the slow but purposeful retraction of her foot from its casing. ‘We’re here because I want to show you something. But first, before I do, I want a guarantee from you, as head of the state.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Elizabeth asked, halting momentarily the removal of her shoe.

‘I mean that I have made a great discovery – one that will have great consequences for you, for me, and for others. But,’ and he looked at her over the rim of his glasses, ‘I will not show you without an iron-clad promise that I shall be included in the bounty that this discovery will generate. You see,’ he moved closer to her and she did not budge, ‘I have been, as I told you, overlooked by the world. In fact it would be more accurate to say that I have been ostracised by it and this book is my opportunity to deal myself back into the game. What do you say?’

He waited for her response at an obscenely close distance from her face. She could smell his breath, but surprisingly, it was not unpleasant, merely unexpected.

‘I could have you ripped apart in the public square for what you have said to me,’ she whispered. His face was centimetres from hers. His dark eyes were boring deep into her soul. He was a startling and scary man, but he was exciting too in a strange kind of way. She was oddly aroused by his quiet but manic self-possession.

‘And way down here, right now, I could do the same to you, Miss Dawson,’ he replied. His face was right next to hers now. He edged gently forward and he kissed her softly on the lips. And to her surprise, she didn’t resist.

‘Come,’ he said. And, in a daze, she followed him down the hallway until they reached the end of it.

Sebastian turned to her with a smile. ‘I would never have found it without the map. It took me hours to encrypt it but I eventually managed. It led me to the hiding place of the latch that opened the hidden door. I’m surprised, Miss Dawson, that no-one in one hundred years has thought to find its location.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s all in the blueprints.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh some, come, Miss Dawson – a bright girl like you? You’re not going to tell me that you never noticed the map and the riddles? The section had the heading: ‘Transference.’

‘I have no idea what you mean. I’ve never bothered to read the green book. It’s mainly technical. It means nothing to me.’

‘Pity,’ Sebastian replied, with a glint in his eye. ‘Colin Dunnett’s blueprints are exceptional. The man was a genius.’

‘What about Dunnett?’

‘He’s the man responsible for what I am about to show you. He’s the man you and I are never going to credit with changing the world. The glory will be ours.’

‘Responsible for what? What credit? What glory? What are you talking about?’

‘Do I have your promise that you will involve me in all matters related to my discovery?’

‘I don’t know what your discovery is, yet, Mister Levi but I can promise you this: if there is financial gain because of it, you will be duly rewarded.’

‘No,’ he replied emphatically. ‘I want more assurance than that. We are talking about far more than wealth. We are talking about power. Real, naked power.’

He held her momentarily with his glittering eye.

She considered him for a short while. There he stood perched like a parrot on some invisible bar, watching her intently. Was he mad? Perhaps. But perhaps not, too. And if he could deliver only half of what his dramatic ramblings seemed to suggest, than whatever it was, was worth owning, even if she did have to share some of it with this strange, enigma of a man. At length she replied, ‘If it aids the state I promise you a share and an ongoing stake in whatever it is you feel you have discovered. Now what is it?’