How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The pursuit of the interrupted book, which instilled in you a special excitement since you were conducting it together with the Other Reader, turns out to be the same thing as pursuing her, who eludes you in a proliferation of mysteries, deceits, disguises… (13.53).
You're at Ludmilla's apartment, and you become aware that she has had a past relationship with Ermes Marana. Uh oh. This passage draws a direct connection between your pursuit of the interrupted books you've read and the pursuit of Ludmilla herself, both based on "mysteries" and "deceits." It's because you can't fully "know" Ludmilla that you want so badly to possess her. And guess what? The same is true for the books you've read. Since you can't trust anything you read because of Marana's deceit, this fills you with an even stronger urge to hold a book in your hands that you can actually finish. It's the things that elude you that make you most crazy for control—like when something's right on the tip of your tongue and you just can't say it.
Quote #5
"He was here. Now time has passed. He shouldn't come back here again. But by now all his stories are so saturated with falsehood that anything said about him is false. He's succeeded in this, at least. The books he brought here look the same as the others on the outside, but I recognize them at once, at a distance. And when I think that there shouldn't be any more here, any more of his papers, except in that storeroom... But every now and then some trace of him pops up again. Sometimes I suspect he puts them here, he comes when nobody's around and keeps making his usual deals, secretly...." (13.55)
Here, Irnerio is telling you that Marana has a previous (and possibly ongoing) relationship with Ludmilla. Marana, the king of deceit in this novel, seems to come and go from Ludmilla's apartment, and it's impossible to tell when he's been back to inject lies into everything he touches. At this point, you can't be certain that this man even exists, or if he's been created by the international book conspiracy you've stumbled upon.
Quote #6
"I don't know… Ludmilla says that whatever he touches, if it isn't false already, becomes false. All I know is that if I tried to make my works out of books that were his, they would turn out false: even if they looked the same as the ones I'm always making…" (13.57).
While hanging out in Ludmilla's apartment, Irnerio tells you that Marana has some sort of Midas touch when it comes to infecting the things around him with falseness. But while you might think that this falseness exists only in the words that Marana writes down, Irnerio (who doesn't care about words) suggests that there's actually something in Marana's deceit that goes beyond words and seems to infect physical objects. Wait, what? How can a physical object be false? Well, Calvino is always implying that when it comes to truth and lies in books, there is something going on beneath the surface of what you're reading. He'll develop this idea further in the rest of the book, but in this particular scene, he decides to leave the meaning of what he's saying uncertain. What else is new, right?