"Terrible," Diotallevi said. "I wouldn't want such a responsibility. You'd have to take the vessels with you everywhere and find all that manure wherever you went. And then what would you do in the summer, on vacation? Leave them with the doorman? ¡¥¡¥
"But perhaps," Aglie concluded, "they are only Cartesian imps. Or automata."
"The devil!" Garamond said. "Dr. Aglie, you're opening a whole new universe to me. We should all be more humble, my dear friends. There are more things in heaven and earth...But, after all, a la guerre comme a la guerre..."
Garamond was awestruck; Diotallevi maintained an expression of cynical curiosity; Belbo showed no feeling at all.
To dispel my doubt, I said to him, "Too bad Lorenza didn't come; she would have loved this."
"Mm, yes," he replied absently.
So Lorenza hadn't come.
And I was the way Amparo had been in Rio. I was ill. I felt somehow cheated. They hadn't brought me the agogo.
I left the group and went back into the building, picking my way through the crowd. I passed the buffet, drank something cool, though I was afraid it might contain a philter. I looked for a bathroom, to splash cold water on my temples and neck. This accomplished, I again felt better. But as I came out, I saw a circular staircase and, suddenly curious, I was unable to resist the new adventure. Perhaps, even though I thought I had recovered, I was still looking for Lorenza.
60
Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out.
¡XArtephius
Descending, I came to a room below the ground, dimly lighted, with walls in rocaille like those of fountains in a park. In one corner I saw an opening like the bell of a trumpet. I heard sounds coming from it. When I approached, the sounds became more distinct, until I could catch sentences, as clear and precise as if they were being uttered at my side. An Ear of Dionysius! Evidently the ear communicated with one of the upper rooms, picking up the conversation of those who stood near its aperture.
"Signora, I'll tell you something I've never told anyone else. I'm tired...I've worked with cinnabar, with mercury, I sublimated spirits, did distillations with salts of iron, fermentations, and still I haven't found the Stone. I prepared strong waters, corrosive waters, burning waters, all in vain. I used eggshells, sulfur, vitriol, arsenic, sal ammoniac, quartz, alkalis, oxides of rock, saltpeter, soda, salt of tartar, and potash alum. Believe me, do not trust them, avoid the imperfect metals; otherwise you will be deceived, as I was deceived. I tried everything: blood, hair, the soul of Saturn, marcasites, aes ustum, saffron of Mars, tincture of iron, litharge, antimony. To no avail. I extracted water from silver, calcified silver both with and without salt, and using aqua vitae I extracted corrosive oils. I employed milk, wine, curds, the sperm of the stars which falls to earth, chelidon, placentas, ashes, even..."
"Even...?"
"Signora, there's nothing in this world that demands more caution than the truth. To tell the truth is like leeching one's own heart..."
"Enough, enough! You've got me all excited."
"I dare confess my secret only to you. I am of no place and no era. Beyond time and space, I live my eternal existence. There are beings who no longer have guardian angels: I am one of them..."
"But why have you brought me here"
Another voice: "My dear Balsamo! Playing with the myth of immortality, eh?"
"Idiot! Immortality is not a myth. It's a fact."
I was about to leave, bored by this chatter, when I heard Salon. He was speaking in a whisper, tensely, as if gripping someone by the arm. I also recognized the voice of Pierre.
"Come now," Salon was saying, "don't tell me that you too are here for this alchemical foolishness. And don't tell me you came to enjoy the cool air of the gardens. Did you know that after Heidelberg, Caus accepted an invitation from the king of France to supervise the cleaning of Paris?"
"Les facades?"
"He wasn't Malraux. It must have been the sewers. Curious, isn't it? The man invented symbolic orange groves and apple orchards for emperors, but what really interested him were the underground passages of Paris. In the Paris of those days there wasn't an actual network of sewers; it was a combination of canals on the surface and, below, conduits, about which little was known. The Romans, from the time of the republic, knew everything about their Cloaca Maxima, yet fifteen hundred years later, in Paris, people were ignorant of what went on beneath their feet. Caus accepted the king's invitation because he wanted to find out. What did he find out?
"After Caus, Colbert sent prisoners down to clean the conduits¡Xthat was the pretext, and bear in mind that this was also the period of the Man in the Iron Mask¡Xbut they escaped through the excrement, followed the current to the Seine, and sailed off in a boat, because nobody had the courage to confront those wretches covered with stinking slime and swarms of flies...Then Colbert stationed gendarmes outside the various openings of the sewer, and the prisoners, forced to stay in the passages, died. In three centuries the city engineers managed to map only three kilometers of sewers. But in the eighteenth century there were twenty-six kilometers of sewers, and on the very eve of the Revolution. Does that suggest anything to you?"
"Ah, you know, this¡X"
"New people were coming to power, and they knew something their predecessors didn't. Napoleon sent teams of men down into the darkness, through the detritus of the capital. Those who had the courage to work there found many things: gold, necklaces, jewels, rings, and God knows what else that had fallen into those passages. Some bravely swallowed what they found, then came out, took a laxative, and became rich. It was discovered that many houses had cellar trapdoors that led directly to the sewer."
"Ca alors..."
"In a period when people emptied chamber pots out the window? And why did they have sewers with sidewalks along them, and iron rings set in die wall, to hang on to? These passages were the equivalent of those tapis francs where the lowlife gathered¡Xthe pegre, as it was called then¡Xand if the police arrived, they could escape and resurface somewhere else."
"Legendes..."
"You think so? Whom are you trying to protect? Under Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann required all the houses of Paris, by law, to construct an independent cesspool, then an underground corridor leading to the sewer system...A tunnel two meters thirty centimeters high and a meter and a half wide. You understand? Every house in Paris was to be connected by an underground corridor to the sewers. And you know the extent of the sewers of Paris today? Two thousand kilometers, and on various levels. And it all began with the man who designed those gardens in Heidelberg..."
"So?"
"I see you do not wish to talk. You know something, but you won't tell me."
"Please, leave me. It's late. I am expected at a meeting." A sound of footsteps.
I didn't understand what Salon was getting at. Pressed against the rocaille by the ear, I looked around and felt that I was underground myself, and it seemed to me that the mouth of that phonurgic channel was but the beginning of a descent into dark tunnels that went to the center of the earth, tunnels alive with Nibelungs. I felt cold. I was about to leave when I heard another voice: "Come. We're ready to begin. In the secret chamber. Call the others."
61
The Golden Fleece is guarded by a three-headed Dragon, whose first Head derives from the Waters, whose second Head derives from the Earth, and whose third Head derives from the Air. It is necessary that these three Heads belong to a single and very powerful Dragon, who will devour all other Dragons.
¡XJean d'Espagnet, Arcanum Hermeticae Philosophiae Opus, 1623, p. 138
I found my group again, and told Aglie I had overheard something about a
meeting.
"Aha," Aglie said, "what curiosity! But I understand. Having ventured into the hermetic mysteries, you want to find out all about them. Well, as far as I know, this evening there is the initiation of a new member of the Ancient and Accepted Order of the Rosy Cross."
"Can we watch?" Garamond asked.
"You can't. You mustn't. You shouldn't. But we'll act like those characters in the Greek myth who gazed upon what was forbidden them to see, and we'll risk the wrath of the gods. I'll allow you one peek."
He led us up a narrow stairway to a dark corridor, drew aside a curtain, and through a sealed window we could glance into the room below, which was lighted by burning braziers. The walls were covered with lilies embroidered on damask, and at the far end stood a throne under a gilded canopy. On one side of the throne was a sun, on the other a moon, both set on tripods and cut out of cardboard on some plastic material, crudely executed, covered with tinfoil or some metal leaf, gold and silver, of course, but effective, because each luminary spun, set in motion by the flames of a brazier. Above the canopy an enormous star hung from the ceiling, shining with precious stones¡Xor bits of glass. The ceiling was covered with blue damask spangled with great silver stars.
Before the throne was a long table decorated with palms. A sword had been placed on it, and between throne and table stood a stuffed lion, its jaws wide. Someone must have put a red light bulb inside the head, because the eyes shone, incandescent, and flames seemed to come from the throat. This, I thought, must be the work of Signer Salon, remembering the odd customers he had referred to that day in the Munich coal mine.
At the table was Bramanti, decked out in a scarlet tunic and embroidered green vestments, a white cape with gold fringe, a sparkling cross on his chest, and a hat vaguely resembling a miter, decorated with a red-and-white plume. Before him, hi-eratically deployed, were about twenty men, also in scarlet tunics but without vestments. On their chests they all wore a gold medal that I thought I recognized: I remembered a Renaissance portrait, the big Hapsburg nose, and the curious lamb with legs dangling, hanging by the waist. They had adorned themselves with imitations, not bad, of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Bramanti was speaking, his arms upraised, as if uttering a litany, and the others responded from time to time. Then Bramanti raised the sword, and from their tunics the others drew stilettos or paper knives and held them high. At this point Aglie lowered the curtain. We had seen too much.
We stole away with the tread of the Pink Panther (as Diotallevi put it; he was remarkably abreast of the perversions of popular culture) and found ourselves back in the garden, slightly breathless.
Garamond was overwhelmed. "But are they...Masons?"
"And what," Aglie replied, "does Mason mean? They are the adepts of a chivalric order inspired by the Rosicrucians, and indirectly by the Templars."
"But what does that have to do with the Masons?'' Garamond asked again.
"If what you saw has anything in common with the Masons, it's the fact that Bramanti's rite is also a pastime for provincial politicians and professional men. It was thus from the beginning: Freemasonry was a weak exploitation of the Templar legend. And this is the caricature of a caricature. Except that those gentlemen take it extremely seriously. Alas! The world is teeming with Rosicrucians and Templars like the, ones you saw this evening. You mustn't expect any revelation from them, though among their number occasionally you can come across an initiate worthy of trust."
"But you, after all," Belbo said, without irony, as if the matter concerned him personally, "spend time with them. Which ones do you believe in? Or did you once believe in?"
"None, of course. Do I look like a credulous individual? I consider them with the cold objectivity, the understanding, the interest with which a theologian might observe a Naples crowd shouting in anticipation of the miracle of San Gennaro. The crowd bears witness to a faith, a deep need, and the theologian wanders among the sweating, drooling people because he might encounter there an unknown saint, the bearer of a higher truth, a man capable of casting new light on the mystery of the most Holy Trinity. But the Holy Trinity is one thing, San Gennaro is another."
He could not be pinned down. I didn't know how to define it¡Xhermetic skepticism? liturgical cynicism?¡Xthis higher disbelief that led him to acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he scorned.
"It's simple," he was saying to Belbo. "If the Templars, the real Templars, did leave a secret and did establish some kind of continuity, then it is necessary to seek them out, and to seek them in the places where they could most easily camouflage themselves, perhaps by inventing rites and myths in order to move unobserved, like fish in water. What do the police do when they seek the archvillain, the evil mastermind? They dig into the lower depths, the notorious dives filled with petty crooks who will never conceive the grandiose crimes of the dark genius the police are after. What does the terrorist leader do to recruit new acolytes? Where does he look for them and find them? He circulates in the haunts of the pseudosubversives, the fellow-travelers who would never have the courage to be the real thing, but who openly ape the attitudes of their idols. Concealed light is best sought in fires, or in the brush where, after the blaze, the flames go on brooding under twigs, under trampled muck. What better hiding place for the true Templar than in the crowd of his caricatures?''
62
We consider societies druidic if they are druidic in their titles of their aims, or if their initiations are inspired by druidism.
¡XM. Raoult, Les druides. Les societes initiatiqu.es celtes contemporaines, Paris, Rocher, 1983, p. 18
Midnight was approaching, and according to Agile's program the second surprise of the evening awaited us. Leaving the Palatine gardens, we resumed our journey through the hills.
After we had driven three-quarters of an hour, Aglie made us park the two cars at the edge of a wood. We had to cross some underbrush, he said, to arrive at a clearing, and there were neither roads nor trails.
We proceeded, picking our way through shrubs and vines, our shoes slipping on rotted leaves and slimy roots. From time to time Aglie switched on a flashlight to find a path, but only for a second, because, he said, we should not announce our presence to the celebrants. Diotallevi made a remark¡XI don't recall it exactly, something about Little Red Riding-Hood¡Xand Aglie, with tension in his voice, asked him to be quiet.
As we were about to come to the end of the brush, we heard voices. We had reached the edge of the clearing, which was illuminated by a glow from remote torches¡Xor perhaps votive lights, flickering at ground level, faint and silvery, as if a gas were burning with chemical coldness in bubbles drifting over the grass. Aglte told us to stop where we were, still shielded by bushes, and wait.
"In a little while the priestesses will come. The Druidesses, that is. This is an invocation of the great cosmic virgin Mikil. Saint Michael is a popular Christian adaptation, and it's no accident that he is an angel, hence androgynous, hence able to take the place of a female divinity..."
"Where do they come from?" Diotallevi whispered.
"From many places: Normandy, Norway, Ireland...It is a very special event, and this is a propitious place for the rite."
"Why?" Garamond asked.
"Certain places have more magic than others."
"But who are they¡Xin real life?"
"People. Secretaries, insurance agents, poets. People you might run into tomorrow and not recognize."
Now we could see a small group preparing to enter the clearing. The phosphorescent light, I realized, came from little lamps the priestesses held up in their hands. They had seemed, earlier, to be at ground level because the clearing was on the top of a hill; the Druidesses had climbed up from below and were approaching the flat, open hilltop. They were dressed in white tunics, which fluttered in the slight breeze. They formed a circle; in the center, three celebrants stood.
"Those are the three hallouines of Lisieux, Clonmacnoise, and Pino Torinese," Aglie said.
Belbo asked why those three in particular. Aglie shrugged and said: "No more. We must wait now in silence. I can't summarize for you in a few words the whole ritual and hierarchy of Nordic magic. Be satisfied with what I can tell you. If I do not tell you more, it is because I do not know...or am not allowed to tell. I must respect certain vows of privacy."
In the center of the clearing I noticed a pile of rocks, which suggested a dolmen. Perhaps the clearing had been chosen because of the presence of those boulders. One of the celebrants climbed up on the dolmen and blew a trumpet. Even more than the trumpet we had seen a few hours earlier, this looked like something out of the triumphal march in At da. But a muffled and nocturnal sound came from it, as if from far away. Belbo touched my arm: "It's the ramsing, the horn of the Thugs around the sacred banyan..."
My reply was cruel, because I didn't realize he was joking precisely to repress other associations, and it must have twisted the knife in the wound. "It would no doubt be less magical with the bombardon," I said.
Belbo nodded. "Yes, they're here precisely because they don't want a bombardon," he said.
Was it on that evening he began to see a connection between his private dreams and what had been happening to him in those months?
Aglifc hadn't followed our words, but heard us whispering. "It's not a warning or a summons," he explained, "but a kind of ultrasound, to establish contact with the subterranean currents. You see, now the Druidesses are all holding hands, in a circle. They are creating a kind of living accumulator, to collect and concentrate the telluric vibrations. Now the cloud should appear..."
"What cloud?" I whispered.
"Tradition calls it the green cloud. Wait..."
I didn't really expect a green cloud. Almost immediately, however, a soft mist rose from the ground¡Xa fog, I would have said, if it had been thicker, more homogeneous. But it was composed of flakes, denser in some places than in others. The wind stirred it, raised it in puffs, like spun sugar. Then it moved with the air to another part of the clearing, where it gathered. A singular effect. For a moment, you could see the trees in the background, then they would be hidden in a whitish steam, while the turf in the center of the clearing would smoke and further obscure our view of whatever was going on, as the moonlight shone around the concealed area. The flake cloud shifted, suddenly, unexpectedly, as if obeying the whims of a capricious wind.
Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum Page 37