Read Salamander for Free Online Page B

word? No. Will we utter the last word? Not likely. Those glorious absolutes are reserved for the youngest and the oldest of nations. Consult any history book and where do you find us? We are a footnote people, briefly mentioned in vast tracts about others. All too often I glimpse our name in an index, I flip to the page and am informed that
such and such an event also affected the Slovaks and the What-have-yous
. Well, we are going to do something about that, you and I. When we are finished it will be possible to say that the Slovaks are truly the People of the Word.
    The descending wall came to rest and immediately folded in the middle to form a corner. The immense hall Flood’s bed had rolled into earlier had vanished, and they were now in a small rectangular room, into which bookshelves began to rise from the floor. The Count smoothed out his silk napkin on the tabletop. He folded it in half, then in half again, his eyes not for a moment leaving the printer’s.
    After several folds he held up a thick, compact white bundle.
    – I want you, Mr. Flood, to create for me an infinite book.
    – Infinite?
    –
Nekonečný. Unendlich. Sans fin
. A book without end. Or beginning, for that matter.
    The Count’s wrist flicked and the folded napkin snapped open like a sail catching the wind.
    – The way you go about it is up to you. My one stipulation is that you bring every ounce of your native wit, imagination, and cleverness to this undertaking. No pasteboard trickery, nofeeble jokes. I have shelves of that kind of thing already. No, this is to be a book that truly reflects what I have accomplished here. A book that poses a riddle without answering it.
    – I can’t think how one could –
    – Don’t try to solve the problem right now. Infinity can’t be pounced upon. It is like a walled town that must be observed from concealment, reconnoitred, mined carefully from beneath. You’re a young man. You’re still on friendly terms with time. For the moment, let’s just get you settled in. You can work on other things to begin with, like your book of mirrors.
    The Count pushed his empty plate away and leaned back in his chair, nodding his head in time to the music. After a while he turned back to Flood.
    – This one is called Tancovala.
On she danced
. Crystalline, aren’t they? From Vienna, but they do know the old songs of my land. Which proves that something worthwhile may arise now and again from the Royal Capital of Mud.
    Flood opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. The Count’s hawklike eyes fastened on his face.
    – Long ago I thought I was creating this castle of riddles in order to outwit a handful of government lackeys and thus protect my purse. But lately I understand more clearly what I have really been doing.
    He clicked open his pocketwatch, frowned at what it told him, and tucked it away again.
    – This is not a castle, this is a system. The priests and the madmen make systems out of dreams. The writers, like our handsome Abbé there, make systems out of words. I have made this system, my system, out of stone and wood and metal and glass. And why? To what purpose? Push your chair back.
    – Pardon me?
    – Push your chair back, I say. Quickly now.
    Flood did as he asked, and at the same moment the musicians abruptly ceased playing. At Flood’s feet a narrow gap opened in the floor, a slot stretching across the floor of the room and bisecting it into two hemispheres. With a whirr of unseen machinery, a huge metal bar, an arrow, a room-length, Brobdingnagian clock hand rose out of the slot, sending Flood scrambling from his chair. When the barbed point had risen to his eye level, something subterranean and metallic went
clank
and the gigantic ictus stopped, wavering slightly.
    – The planets, the Count began, leaning sideways to sight along the arrow’s diagonal while glancing again at his watch. The planets, the starry firmament, the unfathomable abysses of darkness and time through which we plummet