by Umberto Eco
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"—he gestured vaguely—"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 crèches 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 Métro. 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 l'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 façade, an enclosure with no room, no interior. It is really a chimney, a ventilation flue that serves to release the vapors of the regional Métro. 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 Métro, 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, Signor 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—what was his name?—the 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.
—Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, Mission de l'Inde en Europe, Paris, Calmann Lévy, 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 Ardenti, 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 similars.
One day, Agliè came to the office to report on some manuscripts Belbo had sent him. His opinions were precise, severe, comprehensive. Agliè 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...."
Agliè 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 Eugénie. But by the time she met Saint-Yves, she was over fifty. And he was in his early thirties. For her, a mésalliance, of course. What's more, to give him a title, she bought some property—I can't remember where—that 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—the Church and the scientists, in other words. An enlightened oligarchy that would eliminate class conflicts. We've heard worse."
"What about Agarttha?"
"Saint-Yves claimed to have been visited one day by a mysterious Afghan, a man named Hadji Scharipf, who can't have been an Afghan, because the name is clearly Albanian.... This man revealed to him the secret dwelling place of the King of the World, though Saint-Yves himself never used that expression: he called it Agarttha, the place that cannot be found."
"Where did he write this?"
"In his Mission de l'Inde en Europe, a work that, incidentally, has influenced a great deal of contemporary political
thought. In Agarttha there are underground cities, and below them, closer to the center, live the five thousand sages that govern it. The number five thousand suggests, of course, the hermetic roots of the Vedic language, as you gentlemen know. And each root is a magic hierogram connected to a celestial power and sanctioned by an infernal power. The central dome of Agarttha is lighted from above by something like mirrors, which allow the light from the planet's surface to arrive only through the enharmonic spectrum of colors, as opposed to the solar spectrum of our physics books, which is merely diatonic. The wise ones of Agarttha study all holy languages in order to arrive at the universal language, which is Vattan. When they come upon mysteries too profound, they levitate, and would crack their skulls against the vault of the dome if their brothers did not restrain them. They forge the lightning bolts, they guide the cyclic currents of the interpolar and intertropical fluids, the interferential extensions in the different zones of the earth's latitude and longitude. They select species and have created small animals with extraordinary psychic powers, animals which have a tortoise shell with a yellow cross, a single eye, and a mouth at either end. And polypod animals which can move in all directions. Agarttha is probably where the Templars found refuge after their dispersion, and where they perform custodial duties. Anything else?"
"But ... was he serious?" I asked.
"I believe he was. At first, we considered him a fanatic, but then we realized that he was referring, perhaps in a visionary, figurative way, to an occult direction of history. Isn't it said that history is a bloodstained and senseless riddle? No, impossible; there must be a Design. There must be a Mind. That is why over the centuries men far from ignorant have thought of the Masters or the King of the World not as physical beings but as a collective symbol, as the successive, temporary incarnation of a Fixed Intention. An Intention with which the great priestly orders and the vanished chivalries were in touch."
"Do you believe this?" Belbo asked.
"Persons more balanced than d'Alveydre seek the Unknown Superiors."
"And do they find them?"
Agliè laughed, as if to himself. "What sort of Unknown Superiors would they be if they allowed the first person who comes along to know them? Gentlemen, we have work to do. There is one more manuscript here and—what a coincidence!—it's a treatise on secret societies."
"Any good?" Belbo asked.
"Perish the thought. But it could do for Manutius."
53
Unable to control destinies on earth openly because governments would resist, this mystic alliance can act only through secret societies.... These, gradually created as the need for them arises, are divided into distinct groups, groups seemingly in opposition, sometimes advocating the most contradictory policies in religion, politics, economics, and literature; but they are all connected, all directed by the invisible center that hides its power as it thus seeks to move all the scepters of the earth.
—J. M. Hoene-Wronski, quoted by P. Sédir, Histoire el doctrine des Rose-Croix, Bibliothèque des Hermétistes, Paris, 1910
One day I saw Signor Salon at the door of his laboratory. Suddenly, for no reason, I expected him to hoot like an owl. He greeted me as if I were an old friend and asked how things were going at work. I made a noncommittal gesture, smiled at him, and hurried on.
I was struck again by the thought of Agarttha. Saint-Yves's ideas, as Agliè had explained them, might be fascinating to a Diabolical—but certainly not alarming. And yet in Salon's words and in his face, when we met in Munich, there had been alarm.
So, as I went out, I decided to drop in at the library and look for La Mission de l'Inde en Europe.
There was the usual mob in the catalog room and at the call desk. With some shoving I got hold of the drawer I needed, found the call number, filled out a slip, and handed it to the clerk. He informed me that the book had been checked out—and, as usual in libraries, he seemed to enjoy giving me this news. But at that very moment a voice behind me said, "Actually, it is available. I just returned it." I looked around and saw Inspector De Angelis.
And he recognized me—too quickly, I thought, since I had seen him in circumstances that for me were exceptional, whereas he had met me in the course of a routine inquiry. Also, in the Ardenti days I had had a wispy beard and longer hair. What a sharp eye!
Had he been keeping me under surveillance since my return to Italy? Or was he simply good at faces? Policemen had to master the science of observation, memorize features, names...
"Signor Casaubon! We're reading the same books!"
I held out my hand. "It's Dr. Casaubon now. Has been for a while. Maybe I'll take the police entrance exam, as you advised me that morning. Then I'll be able to get the books first."
"All you have to do is be here first," he said. "But the book's returned now, and you can collect it. Let me buy you a coffee meanwhile."
The invitation made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't say no. We sat in a neighborhood cafe. He asked me how I happened to be interested in the mission of India, and I was tempted to ask him how he happened to be interested in it, but I decided first to deflect his suspicion. I told him that in my spare time I was continuing my study of the Templars. According to Eschenbach, the Templars left Europe and went to India, some believe to the kingdom of Agarttha. Now it was his turn. "But tell me," I asked, "why did you take out the book?"
"Oh, you know how these things go," he replied. "Ever since you suggested that book on the Templars to me, I've been reading up on the subject. I don't have to tell you that after the Templars, the next logical step is Agarttha." Touche. Then he said: "I was joking. I took out the book because..." He hesitated. "The fact is, when I'm off duty, I like to browse in libraries. It keeps me from turning into a robot, a mechanical cop. You could probably express the idea more elegantly.... But tell me about yourself."
I gave a performance: an autobiographical summary, down to the wonderful adventure of metals.
He asked me: "In that publishing firm, and in the one next door, aren't you doing books on the occult sciences?"
How did he know about Manutius? From information gathered years before, when he was keeping an eye on Belbo? Or was he still on the Ardenti case?
"With characters like Colonel Ardenti turning up constantly at Garamond, and with Manutius there to handle them," I said, "Signor Garamond decided that was rich soil, worth tilling. If you look for such types, you can find them by the carload."
"But Ardenti disappeared. I hope the others don't."
"They haven't yet, though I almost wish they would. However, satisfy my curiosity, Inspector. I imagine in your job people disappear, or worse, every day. Do you devote so much time to all of them?"
He looked at me with amusement. "What makes you think I'm still devoting time to Colonel Ardenti?"
All right, he was gambling, had raised the ante, and it was up to me now to call his bluff if I had the courage, make him show his cards. What was there to lose? "Come, Inspector," I said, "you know everything about Garamond and Manutius, and you were looking for a book on Agarttha...."
"You mean Ardenti spoke to you about Agarttha?"
Touché again. Yes, Ardenti had spoken to us about Agarttha, too, as far as I could remember. But I parried: "No, only about the Templars."
"I see," he said. Then he added: "You mustn't think we follow a case until it's solved. That only happens on television. Being a cop is like being a dentist: a patient comes in, you give him a little of the old drill, prescribe something, he comes back in two weeks, and in the meantime you deal with a hundred other patients. A case like the colonel's can remain in the active file maybe for ten years, and then, while you're in the middle of a different case, taking some confession, there's a hint, a clue, and, wham!, a short circuit in the brain, you get an idea—or else you don't, and that's it."
"And what did you find recently that brought on a short circuit?"
"An indiscreet question, don't you think? But there are no mysteries, believe me
. The colonel came up again by chance. We were keeping an eye on a character, for quite different reasons, and found he was spending time at the Picatrix Club. You've heard of it?..."
"I know the magazine, not the club. What goes on there?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. People a bit loony, maybe, but well behaved. Then I remembered that Ardenti used to go there—a cop's talent consists entirely of remembering things, a name, a face, even after ten years have gone by. And so I began wondering what was happening at Garamond. That's all."
"What does the Picatrix Club have to do with your political squad?"
"Perhaps it's the impertinence of a clear conscience, but you seem tremendously curious."
"You're the one who invited me for coffee."
"True, and both of us are off duty. See here: if you look at the world in a certain way, everything is connected to everything else." A nice hermetic philosopheme, I thought. He immediately added: "I'm not saying that those people are connected with politics, but ... There was a time when we went looking for the Red Brigades in squats and the Black Brigades in martial arts clubs; nowadays the opposite could be true. We live in a strange world. My job, I assure you, was easier ten years ago. Today, even among ideologies, there's no consistency. There are times when I think of switching to narcotics. There, at least you can rely on a heroin pusher to push heroin."
There was a pause—he was hesitating, I think. Then, from his pocket, he produced a notebook the size of a missal. "Look, Casaubon, you see some strange people as part of your job. You go to the library and look up even stranger books. Help me. What do you know about synarchy?"
"Now you're embarrassing me. Almost nothing. I heard it mentioned in connection with Saint-Yves; that's all."
"What are they saying about it, around?"
"If they're saying anything, I haven't heard. To be frank, it sounds like fascism to me."