“I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars.
Chapter 110: Queequeg in his coffin
Darting through a shoal of tourists in rude October heat, I step through an airlock into the Weston Library – and take a breath. A change of atmosphere, of context. This is a place of architecture and conditioned air. A palace of hush and ruffle. Clean lines of books jag and perpendiculate over the susurrating square. Like slipping into the ice blue water of the Silfra Fissure, I am submerged between silent continental shelves.
The Benugo café is lit from above by a soaring vault, the high altar in a modernist cargo cult. I join the line of devotees, make my offering, and take my coffee to sit down in quiet contemplation. I have fifteen minutes to kill – a very welcome rest. But before I have ruffled even two pages of my book, I spot what turns out to be the Ascott Park Gateway across the hall and wander over to investigate.
The lintel of the gate bears the phrase ‘Si bonus es intres: si nequam ne quaquam’. I have never studied Latin but it’s something I feel I ought to understand, and that if I ought it hard enough, I will. Like cricket. Or the craft and sullen art of the Rawlplug. ‘If you are good, enter: if …’ I manage to dredge from some cranial oubliette, but the rest appears to be made entirely of relative pronouns. Or be about wigwams. I pull out my phone to complete the translation: ‘…If wicked, by no means’. A message pings – I have to go, and I walk away from the gate and out into the street. No rest for me, apparently.
