Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum

by eco umberto foucault

  Lorenza was drinking a lot. A number of people had started dancing sleepily in the center of the room, their eyes closed, and Riccardo came by every few minutes and filled her cup. Belbo tried to stop him, saying she had already had too much to drink, but Riccardo laughed and shook his head, and she said indignantly that she could hold her alcohol better than Jacopo because she was younger.

  "All right," Belbo said, "don't listen to Granddad, listen to Simon. What else did he tell you?"

  "What I said: I'm prisoner of the world, or, rather, of the bad angels...because in this story the angels are bad and they helped the Demiurge make all this mess...The bad angels, anyhow, are holding me; they don't want me to get away, and they make me suffer. But every now and then in the world of men there is someone who recognizes me. Like Simon. He says it happened to him once before, a thousand years ago¡XI forgot to tell you Simon's practically immortal; you can't imagine all the things he's seen..."

  "Of course...but don't drink anymore now."

  "Sssh...Simon found me once when I was a prostitute in a brothel in Tyre and my name was Helen..."

  "He tells you that? And you're overjoyed. Pray let me kiss your hand, wAore of my screwed-op universe...Satne gea-tleman."

  "If anything, that Helen was the whore. And besides, in those days, when they said prostitute, they meant a woman who was free, without ties, an intellectual who didn't want to be a housewife. She might hold a salon. Today she'd be in public relations. Would you call a PR woman a whore or a hooker, who lights bonfires along the highway for truck drivers?''

  At that point Riccardo came and took her by the arm. "Come and dance," he said.

  In the middle of the room, they made faint, dreamy movements, as if beating a drum. But from time to time Riccardo drew her to him, put a hand possessively on the back of her neck, and she would follow him with closed eyes, her face flushed, head thrown back, hair hanging free, vertically. Belbo lit one cigarette after another.

  Then Lorenza grabbed Riccardo by the waist and slowly pulled him until they were only a step from Belbo. Still dancing, she took the paper cup from Belbo's hand. Holding Riccardo with her left hand, the cup with her right, she turned her moist eyes on Belbo. It was almost as if she had been crying, but she smiled and said: "It wasn't the only time, either." "The only time, what?" Belbo asked.

  "That he met Sophia. Centuries after that, Simon was also Guillaume Postel." "A letter carrier?"

  "Idiot. He was a Renaissance scholar who read Jewish¡X" "Hebrew."

  "Same difference. He read it the way kids read Superman. Without a dictionary. Anyhow, in a hospital in Venice he meets an old illiterate maidservant, Joanna. He looks at her and says, ¡¥You are the new incarnation of Sophia, the Ennoia, the Great Mother descended into our midst to redeem the whole world, which has a female soul.' And so Postel takes Joanna with him; everybody says he's crazy, but he pays no attention; he adores her, wants to free her from the angels' imprisonment, and when she dies, he sits and stares at the sun for an hour and goes for days without drinking or eating, inhabited by Joanna, who no longer exists but it's as if she did, because she's still there, she inhabits the world, and every now and then she resurfaces, that is, she's reincarnated...Isn't that a story to make you cry?"

  "I'm dissolved in tears. Are you so pleased to be Sophia?"

  "But I'm Sophia for you, too, darling. You know that before you met me you wore the most dreadful ghastly ties and had dandruff on your shoulders."

  Riccardo was holding her neck again. "May I join the conversation?" he said.

  "You keep quiet and dance. You're the instrument of my lust." "Suits me."

  Belbo went on as if the other man didn't exist. "So you're his prostitute, his feminist who does public relations, and he's your Simon."

  "My name's not Simon," Riccardo said, his tongue thick. "We're not talking about you," Belbo said. His behavior had been making me uneasy for some while now. He, as a rule so guarded about his feelings, was having a lovers' quarrel in front of a witness, in front of a rival, even. But this last remark made me realize that with his baring of himself before the other man¡Xthe true rival being yet another¡XBelbo was reasserting, in the only way he could, his possession of Lorenza. Meanwhile, holding out her cup for more drink, Lorenza answered: "But it's a game. I love you."

  "Thank God you don't hate me. Listen, I'd like to go home, I have a stomachache. I'm still a prisoner of base matter. Simon hasn't done me any good. Will you come with me?"

  "Let's stay a little longer. It's so nice. Aren't you having fun? Besides, I still haven't looked at the pictures. Did you see? Riccardo made one on me."

  "There are other things I'd like to do on you," Riccardo said.

  "You're vulgar. Stop it. I'm talking about Jacopo. My God, Jacopo, are you the only one who can make intellectual jokes with your friends? Who treats me like a prostitute from Tyre?

  You do."

  "I might have known. Me. I'm the one pushing you into the arms of old gentlemen."

  "He's never tried to take me in his arms. He isn't a satyr. You're cross because he doesn't want to take me to bed but considers me an intellectual partner." "Allumeuse."

  "You really shouldn't have said that. Riccardo, get me something to drink.''

  "No, wait," Belbo said. "Now, I want you to tell me if you take him seriously. Stop drinking, dammit! Tell me if you take him seriously!"

  "But, darling, it's our game, a game between him and me. And besides, the best part of the story is that when Sophia realizes who she is and frees herself from the tyranny of the angels, she frees herself from sin..." "You've given up sinning?"

  "Think it over first," Riccardo said, kissing her chastely on the forehead.

  "I don't have to," she replied¡Xto Belbo, ignoring the painter. "Those things aren't sins anymore; I can do anything I like. Once you've freed yourself from the flesh, you're beyond good and evil."

  She pushed Riccardo away. "I'm Sophia, and to free myself from the angels I have to perpet...per-pet-rate all sins, even the most marvelous!"

  Staggering a little, she went to a corner where a girl was seated, dressed in black, her eyes heavily mascaraed, her complexion pale. Lorenza led the girl into the center of the room and began to sway with her. They were belly to belly, arms limp at their sides. "I can love you, too," Lorenza said, and kissed the girl on the mouth.

  The others gathered around, mildly aroused. Belbo sat down and looked at the scene with an impenetrable face, like a producer watching a screen test. He was sweating, and there was a tic by his left eye, which I had never noticed before. Lorenza danced for at least five minutes, with movements increasingly suggestive. Then suddenly he said: "Now you come here."

  Lorenza stopped, spread her legs, held her arms straight out, and cried: "I am the saint and the prostitute!"

  "You are the pain in the ass." Belbo got up, went straight to her, grabbed her by the wrist, and dragged her toward the door.

  "Stop it!" she shouted. "Don't you dare..." Then she burst into tears and flung her arms around his neck. "But darling, I'm your Sophia; you can't get mad..."

  Belbo tenderly put an arm around her shoulders, kissed her on the temple, smoothed her hair, then said to everybody: "Excuse her; she isn't used to drinking like this."

  I heard some snickers from those present, and I believe Belbo heard them, too. He saw me on the threshold, and did something¡Xwhether for me, for the others, or for himself, I've never figured out. It was a whisper, when everybody else had turned away from the couple, losing interest.

  Still holding Lorenza by the shoulders, he addressed the room, softly, in the tone of a man stating the obvious: "Cock-a-doodle-doo."

  51

  When therefore a Great Cabalist wishes to tell you something, what he says will not be frivolous, vulgar, common, but, rather, a mystery, an oracle...

  ¡XThomaso Garzoni, // Theatre de vari e diversi cervelli mondani, Venice, Zanfretti, 1583, discorso XXXVI

  The illustratio
ns I found in Milan and Paris weren't enough. Signer Garamond authorized me to spend a few days at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

  I spent my evenings in the bars of Schwabing¡Xor in the immense crypts where elderly mustached gentlemen in lederhosen played music and lovers smiled at each other through a thick cloud of pork steam over full-liter beer steins¡Xand in the afternoons I went through card catalogs of reproductions. Now and then I would leave the archive and stroll through the museum, where every human invention had been reconstructed. You pushed a button, and dioramas of oil exploration came to life with working drills, you stepped inside a real submarine, you made the planets revolve, you played at producing acids and chain reactions. A less Gothic Conservatoire, totally of the future, peopled by unruly school groups being taught to idealize engineers.

  In the Deutsches Museum you also learned everything about mines: you went down a ladder and found yourself in a mine complete with tunnels, elevators for men and horses, narrow passages where scrawny exploited children (made of wax, I hoped) were crawling. You went along endless dark corridors, you stopped at the edge of bottomless pits, you felt chilled to the bone, and you could almost catch a whiff of firedamp. Everything life-size.

  I was wandering in a tunnel, despairing of ever seeing the light of day again, when I came upon a man looking down over the railing, someone I seemed to recognize. The face was wrinkled and pale, the hair white, the look owlish. But the clothes were not right¡XI had seen that face before, above some uniform. It was like meeting, after many years, a priest now in civilian clothes, or a Capuchin without a beard. The man looked back at me, also hesitating. As usually happens in such situations, there was some fencing of furtive glances before he took the initiative and greeted me in Italian. Suddenly I could picture him in his usual dress: if he had been wearing a long yellow smock, he would have been Signer Salon: A. Salon, taxidermist. His laboratory was next door to my office on the corridor of the former factory building where I was the Marlowe of culture. I had encountered him at times on the stairs, and we had nodded to each other.

  "Strange," he said, holding out his hand. "We have been fellow-tenants for so long, and we introduce ourselves in the bowels of the earth a thousand miles away."

  We exchanged a few polite remarks. I got the impression that he knew exactly what I did, which was an achievement of sorts, since I wasn't sure myself. "How do you happen to be in a technological museum? I thought your publishing firm was concerned with more spiritual things."

  "How did you know that?"

  "Oh"¡Xhe gestured vaguely¡X"people talk, I have many customers..."

  "What sort of people go to a taxidermist?"

  "You are thinking, like everyone else, that it's not an ordinary profession. But I do not lack for customers, and I have all kinds: museums, private collectors."

  "I don't often see stuffed animals in people's homes," I said.

  "No? It depends on the homes you visit...Or the cellars."

  "Stuffed animals are kept in cellars?"

  "Some people keep them in cellars. Not all creches are in the light of the sun or the moon. I'm suspicious of such customers, but you know how it is: a job is a job...I'm suspicious of everything underground."

  "Then why are you strolling in tunnels?"

  "I'm checking. I distrust the underground world, but I want to understand it. There aren't many opportunities. The Roman catacombs, you'll say. No mystery there, too many tourists, and everything is under the control of the Church. And then there are the sewers of Paris...Have you been? They can be visited on Monday, Wednesday, and the last Saturday of every month. But that's another tourist attraction. Naturally, there are catacombs in Paris, too, and caves. Not to mention the Metro. Have you ever been to 145 rue Lafayette?''

  "I must confess I haven't."

  "It's a bit out of the way, between Gare de 1'Est and Gare du Nord. An unremarkable building at first sight. But if you look at it more closely, you realize that though the door looks wooden, it is actually painted iron, and the windows appear to belong to rooms unoccupied for centuries. People walk past and don't know the truth."

  "What is the truth?"

  "That the house is fake. It's a facade, an enclosure with no room, no interior. It is really a chimney, a ventilation flue that serves to release the vapors of the regional Metro. And once you know this, you feel you are standing at the mouth of the underworld: if you could penetrate those walls, you would have access to subterranean Paris. I have had occasion to spend hours and hours in front of that door that conceals the door of doors, the point of departure for the journey to the center of the earth. Why do you think they made it?"

  "To ventilate the Metro, as you said."

  "A few ducts would have been enough for that. No, when I see those subterranean passages, my suspicions are aroused. Do you know why?"

  As he spoke of darkness, he seemed to give off light. I asked him why his suspicions were aroused.

  "Because if the Masters of the World exist, they can only be underground: this is a truth that all sense but few dare utter. Perhaps the only man bold enough to say it in print was Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. You know him?"

  I may have heard the name mentioned by one of our Diabolicals, but I wasn't sure.

  "He is the one who told us about Agarttha, the underground headquarters of the King of the World, the occult center of the Synarchy," the taxidermist said. "He had no fear; he felt sure of himself. But all those who spoke out after him were eliminated, because they knew too much."

  As we walked along the tunnel, Signer Salon cast nervous glances at the mouths of new passageways, as if in those shadows he was seeking confirmation of his suspicions.

  "Have you ever wondered why in the last century all the great metropolises hastened to build subways?''

  "To solve traffic problems?"

  "Before there were automobiles, when there were only horse-drawn carriages? From a man of your intelligence I would have expected a more perceptive explanation."

  "You have one?"

  "Perhaps," Signor Salon said, and he looked pensive, absent. The conversation died. Then he said that he had to be running along. But, after shaking my hand, he lingered another few seconds, as if struck by a thought. "Apropos, that colonel¡Xwhat was his name?¡Xthe one who came to Garamond some time ago to talk to you about a Templar treasure...have you had any news of him?''

  It was like a slap in the face, this brutal and indiscreet display of knowledge about something I considered private and buried.

  I wanted to ask him how he knew, but I was afraid. I confined myself to saying, in an indifferent tone, "Oh, that old story. I'd forgotten all about it. But apropos: why did you say apropos?"

  "Did I say that? Ah, yes, well, it seemed to me he had discovered something, underground..."

  "How do you know?"

  "I really can't say. I can't remember who spoke to me about it. A customer, perhaps. But my curiosity is always aroused when the underground world is involved. The little manias of old age. Good evening."

  He went off, and I stood there, to ponder the meaning of this encounter.

  52

  In certain regions of the Himalayas, among the twenty-two temples that represent the twenty-two Arcana of Hermes and the twenty-two letters of some sacred alphabets, Agarttha forms the mystic Zero, which cannot be found...A colossal chessboard that extends beneath the earth, through almost all the regions of the Globe.

  ¡XSaint-Yves d'Alveydre, Mission de I'lnde en Europe, Paris, Calmann Levy, 1886, pp. 54 and 65

  When I got back, I told the story to Belbo and Diotallevi, and we ventured various hypotheses. Perhaps Salon, a gossiping eccentric who dabbled in mysteries, had happened to meet Ar-denti, and that was the whole story. Unless Salon knew something about Ardenti's disappearance and was working for the ones who had caused him to disappear. Another hypothesis: Salon was a police informer...

  Then, as our Diabolicals came and went, the memory of Salon faded, was lost among his sim
ilars.

  One day, Aglie came to the office to report on some manuscripts Belbo had sent him. His opinions were precise, severe, comprehensive. Aglie was clever; it didn't take him long to figure out the Garamond-Manutius double game, and we now talked openly in front of him. He understood: he would destroy a text with a few sharp observations, then remark with smooth cynicism that it would be fine for Manutius.

  I asked him what he could tell me about Agarttha and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre.

  "Saint-Yves d'Alveydre..." he said. "A bizarre man, beyond any doubt. From his youth he spent time with the followers of Fabre d'Olivet. He became a humble clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, but ambitious...We naturally took a dim view of his marriage to Marie-Victoire..."

  Aglie couldn't resist shifting to the first person, as if he were reminiscing.

  "Who was Marie-Victoire? I love gossip," Belbo said. "Marie-Victoire de Risnitch, very beautiful when she was the intimate of the empress Eugenic. But by the time she met Saint-Yves, she was over fifty. And he was in his early thirties. For her, a mesalliance, of course. What's more, to give him a title, she bought some property¡XI can't remember where¡Xthat had belonged to a certain Marquis d'Alveydre. So, while our unscrupulous character boasted of his title, in Paris they sang songs about the gigolo. Since he could now live off his income, he devoted himself to his dream, which was to find a political formula that would lead to a harmonious society. Synarchy, as opposed to anarchy. A European society governed by three councils, representing economic power, judicial power, and spiritual power¡Xthe Church and the scientists, in other words. An enlightened oligarchy that would eliminate class conflicts. We've heard worse." "What about Agarttha?"