by Umberto Eco
I knew who Riccardo was; he was always hanging around Pilade's. But at that moment I didn't understand why Belbo's eyes were fixed so intensely on the ceiling. Having read the files, I realize now that Riccardo was the man with the scar, the man with whom Belbo had lacked the courage to start a fight.
The gallery wasn't far from Pilade's, Lorenza insisted. They had organized a real party—or, rather, an orgy. Diotallevi became nervous at this and immediately said he had to go home. I hesitated, but it was obvious Lorenza wanted me along, and this, too, made Belbo suffer, since he saw the possibility of a tête-à-tête slipping farther and farther away. But I couldn't refuse; so we set out.
I didn't care that much for Riccardo. In the early sixties he turned out very boring paintings, small canvases in blacks and grays, very geometric, slightly optical, the sort of stuff that made your eyes swim. They bore titles like Composition is, Parallax 17, Euclid X. But in 1968 he started showing in squats, he changed his palette; now there were only violent blacks and whites, no grays, the strokes were bolder, and the titles were like Ce n'est qu'un début, Molotov, A Hundred Flowers. When I got back to Milan, I saw a show of his in a club where Dr. Wagner was worshiped. Riccardo had eliminated black, was working in white only, the contrasts provided by the texture and relief of the paint on porous Fabriano paper, so that the pictures—as he explained—would reveal different figures in different lightings. Their titles were In Praise of Ambiguity, A/Travers, Ça, Bergstrasse, and Denegation 15.
That evening, as soon as we entered the new gallery, I saw that Riccardo's poetics had undergone a profound change. The show was entitled Megale Apophasts. Riccardo had turned figurative with a dazzling palette. He played with quotations, and, since I don't believe he knew how to draw, I guess he worked by projecting onto the canvas the slide of a famous painting. His choices hovered between the turn-of-the-century pompiers and the early-twentieth-century Symbolists. Over the projected image he worked with a pointillist technique, using infinitesimal gradations of color, covering the whole spectrum dot by dot, so that he always began from a blindingly bright nuclcus and ended at absolute black, or vice versa, depending on the mystical or cosmological concept he wanted to express. There were mountains that shot rays of light, which were broken up into a fine powder of pale spheres, and there were concentric skies with hints of angels with transparent wings, something like the Paradise of Dore. The titles were Beatrix, Mystic a Rosa, Dante Gabriele 33, Fedeli d'Amore, Atanor, Homunculus 666. This is the source of Lorenza's passion for homunculi, I said to myself. The largest picture was entitled Sophia, and it showed a rain of black angels, which faded at the ground and created a white creature caressed by great livid hands, the creature a copy of the one you see held up against the sky in Guernica. The juxtaposition was dubious, and, seen close up, the execution proved crude, but at a distance of two or three meters the effect was quite lyrical.
"I'm a realist of the old school," Belbo whispered to me. "I understand only Mondrian. What does a nongeometric picture say?"
"He was geometric before," I said.
"That wasn't geometry, that was bathroom tiles."
Meanwhile, Lorenza rushed to embrace Riccardo. He and Belbo exchanged a nod of greeting. There was a crowd; the gallery was trying to look like a New York loft, all white, with heating or water pipes exposed on the ceiling. God knows what it had cost them to backdate the place like that. In one corner, a sound system was deafening those present with Asian music—sitar music, if I recall rightly, the kind where you can't pick out a tune. Everybody walked absently past the pictures to crowd around the tables at the end and grab paper cups. We had arrived well into the evening: the air was thick with smoke, some girls from time to time hinted at dance movements in the center of the room, but everybody was still busy conversing, busy consuming the plentiful buffet. I sat on a sofa, and at my feet lay a great glass bowl half-filled with fruit salad. I was about to take a little, because I hadn't had any supper, but then I saw in it a footprint, which had crushed the little cubes of fruit in the center, reducing them to a homogeneous pavé. This was not that surprising, because the floor was now spattered in many places with white wine, and some of the guests were already staggering.
Belbo had captured a paper cup and was proceeding lazily, without any apparent goal, occasionally slapping someone on the shoulder. He was trying to find Lorenza.
But few people remained motionless; the crowd was intent on a kind of circular movement, like bees hunting for a hidden flower. Though I wasn't looking for anything myself, I stood up and moved, shifted in response to the impulses transmitted to me by the group, and not far from me I saw Lorenza. She was wandering, miming the impassioned recognition of this man, of that: head high, eyes deliberately myopic-wide, back straight, breasts steady, and her steps haphazard, like a giraffe's.
At a certain point the human flow trapped me in a corner behind a table, where Lorenza and Belbo had their backs to me, having finally met, perhaps by chance, and they were also trapped. I don't know if they were aware of my presence, but the noise was so great that nobody could hear what others were saying at any distance. Lorenza and Belbo therefore considered themselves isolated, and I was forced to hear their conversation.
"Well," Belbo said, "where did you meet your Agliè?"
"My Agliè? Yours, too, from what I saw. You can know Simon, but I can't. Fine."
"Why do you call him Simon? Why does he call you Sophia?"
"Oh, it's a game. I met him at a friend's place—all right? And I find him fascinating. He kisses my hand as if I were a princess. He could be my father."
"He could be the father of your son, if you aren't careful."
It sounded like me, in Bahia, talking to Amparo. Lorenza was right. Agliè knew how to kiss the hand of a young lady unfamiliar with that ritual.
"Why Simon and Sophia?" Belbo insisted. "Is his name Simon?"
"It's a wonderful story. Did you know that our universe is the result of an error and that it's partly my fault? Sophia was the female part of God, because God then was more female than male; it was you men who later put a beard on him and started calling him He. I was his good half. Simon says I tried to create the world without asking permission—I, the Sophia, who is also called—wait a minute—the Ennoia. But my male part didn't want to create; maybe he lacked the courage or was impotent. So instead of uniting with him, I decided to make the world by myself. I couldn't resist; it was through an excess of love. Which is true; I adore this whole mixed-up universe. And that's why I'm the soul of this world, according to Simon."
"How nice! Does he give that line to all the girls?"
"No, stupid, just to me, because he understands me better than you do. He doesn't try to create me in his image. He understands I have to be allowed to live my life in my own way. And that's what Sophia did; she flung herself into making the world. She came up against primordial matter, which was disgusting, probably because it didn't use a deodorant. And then, I think, she accidentally created the Demi—how do you say it?"
"You mean the Demiurge?"
"That's him, ves. Or maybe it wasn't Sophia who made this Demiurge; maybe he was already around and she egged him on: Get moving, silly, make the world, and then we'll have real fun. The Demiurge must have been a real screwup, because he didn't know how to make the world properly. In fact, he shouldn't even have tried it, because matter is bad, and he wasn't authorized to touch the stuff. Anyway, he made this awful mess, and Sophia was caught inside. Prisoner of the world."
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, saving 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—I 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, whore of my screwed-up universe.... Some gentleman."
"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—"
"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 in 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—the true rival being yet another—Belbo 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—to 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—whether 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....
—Thomaso Garzoni, Il Theatro de vari e diversi cervelli mondani, Venice, Zanfretti, 1583, discorso XXXVI
The illustrations I found in Milan and Paris weren't enough. Signor Garamond authorized me to spend a few days at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
I spent my evenings in the bars of Schwabing—or 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 s
teins—and 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—I 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 Signor 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."