by Umberto Eco
Which reminded me of what De Angelis had told me about the synarchy. The fine thing about the whole story—our story, and perhaps also History itself, as Belbo hinted, with feverish eyes, as he handed me his file cards—was that groups locked in mortal combat were slaughtering one another, each in turn using the other's weapons. "The first duty of a good spy," I remarked, "is to denounce as spies those whom he has infiltrated."
Belbo said: "I remember an incident in ***. At sunset, along a shady avenue, I always ran into this guy named Remo—or something like that—in a little black Balilla. Black mustache, curly black hair, black shirt, and black teeth, horribly rotten. And he would be kissing a girl. I was revolted by those black teeth kissing that beautiful blonde. I don't even remember what her face was like, but for me she was virgin and prostitute, the eternal feminine. And great was my revulsion." Instinctively he adopted a lofty tone to show irony; aware that he had allowed himself to be carried away by the innocent tenderness of the memory. "I asked myself why this Remo, who belonged to the Black Brigades, dared allow himself to be seen around like that, even in the periods when *** was not occupied by the Fascists. Someone whispered to me that he was a Fascist spy. However it was, one evening I saw him in the same black Balilla, with the same black teeth, kissing the same blonde, but now with a red kerchief around his neck and a khaki shirt. He had shifted to the Garibaldi Brigades. Everybody made a fuss over him, and he actually gave himself a nom de guerre: X9, like the Alex Raymond character whom I had read about in the Avventuroso comics. Bravo, X9, they said to him.... And I hated him more than ever, because he possessed the girl by popular consent. Those who said he was a Fascist spy among the partisans were probably men who wanted the girl themselves, so they cast suspicion on X9...."
"And then what happened?"
"See here, Casaubon, why are you so interested in my life?"
"Because you make it sound like a folktale, and folktales are part of the collective imagination."
"Good point. One morning, X9 was driving along, out of his territory; maybe he had a date to meet the girl in the fields, to go beyond their kissing and pawing and show her that his prick was not as rotten as his teeth—I'm sorry, I still can't make myself love him. Anyway, the Fascists set a trap for him, captured him, took him into town, and at five o'clock the next morning, they shot him."
A pause. Belbo looked at his hands, which he had clasped, as if in prayer. Then he held them apart and said, "That was the proof that he wasn't a spy."
"The moral of the story?"
"Who said stories have to have a moral? But, now that I think about it, maybe the moral is that sometimes, to prove something, you have to die."
97
I am that I am.
—Exodus 3:14
Ego sum qui sum. An axiom of hermetic philosophy.
—Madame Blavatskv, Isis Unveiled, 1877, p. 1
"Who are you?" three hundred voices asked as one, while twenty swords flashed in the hands of the nearest ghosts....
"I am that I am," he said.
—Alexandre Dumas, Giuseppe Balsanw, ii
I saw Belbo the next morning. "Yesterday we sketched a splendid dime novel," I said to him. "But maybe, if we want to make a convincing Plan, we should stick closer to reality."
"What reality?" he asked me. "Maybe only cheap fiction gives us the true measure of reality. Maybe they've deceived us."
"How?"
"Making us believe that on one hand there is Great Art, which portrays typical characters in typical situations, and on the other hand you have the thriller, the romance, which portrays atypical characters in atypical situations. No true dandy, I thought, would have made love to Scarlett O'Hara or even to Constance Bonacieux or Princess Daisy. I played with the dime novel, in order to take a stroll outside of life. It comforted me, offering the unattainable. But I was wrong."
"Wrong?"
"Wrong. Proust was right: life is represented better by bad music than by a Missa solemnis. Great Art makes fun of us as it comforts us, because it shows us the world as the artists would like the world to be. The dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the world as it actually is—or at least the world as it will become. Women are a lot more like Milady than they are like Little Nell, Fu Manchu is more real than Nathan the Wise, and History is closer to what Sue narrates than to what Hegel projects. Shakespeare, Melville, Balzac, and Dostoyevski all wrote sensational fiction. What has taken place in the real world was predicted in penny dreadfuls."
"The fact is, it's easier for reality to imitate the dime novel than to imitate art. Being a Mona Lisa is hard work; becoming Milady follows our natural tendency to choose the easy way."
Diotallevi, silent until now, remarked: "Or our Agliè, for example. He finds it easier to imitate Saint-Germain than Voltaire."
"Yes," Belbo said, "and women find Saint-Germain more interesting than Voltaire."
Afterward, I found this file, in which Belbo translated our discussion into fictional form, amusing himself by reconstructing the story of Saint-Germain without adding anything of his own, only a few sentences here and there to provide transitions, in a furious collage of quotes, plagiarisms, borrowings, clichés. Once again, to escape the discomfort of History, Belbo wrote and reexamined life through a literary stand-in.
FILENAME: The Return of Saint-Germain
For five centuries now the avenging hand of the All-Powerful has driven me from deepest Asia all the way to this cold, damp land. I carry with me fear, despair, death. But no, I am the notary of the Plan, even if nobody else knows of it. I have seen things far more terrible; preparing the night of Saint Bartholomew was more irksome than the thing I am now preparing to do. Oh, why do my lips curl in this satanic smile? I am that I am. If only that wretch Cagliostro had not usurped from me even this last privilege.
But my triumph is near. Soapes, when I was Kelley, told me everything in the Tower of London. The secret is to become someone else.
By shrewd plotting I had Giuseppe Balsamo imprisoned in the fortress of San Leo, and I stole his secrets. Saint-Germain has vanished; now all believe I am the Conte di Cagliostro.
***
Midnight is struck by all the clocks of the city. What unnatural peace. This silence does not persuade me. A beautiful evening, though cold; the high moon casts an icy glow over the impenetrable alleys of old Paris. It is ten o'clock: the spire of the abbey of the Black Friars has just tolled eight, slowly. The wind with mournful creaks moves the iron weathercocks on the desolate expanse of rooftops. A thick blanket of clouds covers the sky.
Skipper, are we turning back? No. We're sinking! Damnation, the Puma's going to the bottom. Jump, Seven Seas Jim, jump! To be free of this anguish I'd give a diamond the size of a walnut. Luff the mainsail, take the tiller, the topgallant, whatever you like, curse you, it's blowing up!
Horribly I clench the cloister of my teeth as a deathly pallor flushes my green, waxen face.
How did I come here, I who am the very image of revenge? The spirits of Hell will smile with contempt at the tears of the creature whose menacing voice so often made them tremble even in the womb of their fiery abyss.
Holla, lights!
How many steps did I come down to reach this den? Seven? Thirty-six? There is no stone I grazed, no step taken that did not hide a hieroglyph. When I have uncovered them all, the Mystery will be revealed at last to my faithful followers. The Message will be deciphered, its solution will be the Key, and to the initiate, but only to the initiate, the Enigma will then be revealed.
Between the Enigma and the deciphering of the Message, the step is brief, and from it, radiant, the Hierogram will emerge, upon which the Prayer of Interrogation will be defined. Then the Arcanum will be drawn aside, the veil, the Egyptian tapestry that covers the Pentacle. And thence to the light, to announce the Occult Meaning of the Pentacle, the Cabalistic Question to which only a few can reply, and to recite in a voice of thunder the Impenetrable Sign. Bent over it, the Thirty
-six Invisibles will have to give the Answer, the uttering of the Rune whose Meaning is open only to the sons of Hermes. To them let the Mocking Seal be given, the Mask behind which is outlined the Countenance they seek to bare, the Mystic Rebus, the Sublime Anagram....
***
"Sator Arepo!" I shout in a voice to make a specter tremble. And Sator Arepo appears, abandoning the wheel he grips with the clever hands of a murderer. At my command, he prostrates himself. I recognize him, for I had already suspected his identity. He is Luciano, the handicapped shipping clerk, who the Unknown Superiors have decreed will be the executor of my evil and bloody task.
"Sator Arepo," I ask mockingly, "do you know what is the Final Answer concealed behind the Sublime Anagram?"
"No, Count," the imprudent one replies. "I wait to learn it from your lips."
From my pale lips infernal laughter bursts and reechoes through the ancient vaults.
"Fool! Only the true initiate knows he does not know it!"
"Yes, master," the maimed clerk replies stupidly. "As you wish. I am ready."
We are in a squalid den in Clignancourt. This evening I must punish, first of all, you, who initiated me into the noble art of crime, who pretend to love me, and who, what is worse, believe you love me, along with the nameless enemies with whom you will spend the next weekend. Luciano, unwelcome witness of my humiliations, will lend mc his arm—his one arm—then he, too, will die.
The room has a trapdoor over a ditch or chamber, a subterranean passage used since time immemorial for the storage of contraband goods, a place always dank because it is connected to the Paris sewers, that labyrinth of crime, and the ancient walls exude unspeakable miasmas, so that when with the help of Luciano, ever faithful in evil, I make a hole in the wall, water enters in spurts; it floods the cellar, the already rotting walls collapse, and the passage joins the sewers, and dead rats float past. The blackish surface that can be seen from above is now the vestibule to perdition: far, far off, the Seine, and then the sea....
A ladder hangs dow n, fixed to the upper edge of the trap. On this, at water level, Luciano takes his place, with a knife: one hand gripping the bottom rung, the other holding the knife, the third ready to seize the victim. "Now wait in silence," I say to him, "and you will see."
I have convinced vou to destroy all men with a scar. Come with me, be mine forever, let us do away with those importunate presences. I know well that you do not love them—you told me as much—but we two will remain, we and the subterranean currents.
Now you enter, haughty as a vestal, hoarse and numb as a witch. O vision of hell that stirs my age-old loins and grips my bosom in the clutch of desire, O splendid half-caste, instrument of my doom! With talonlike hands I rip the shirt of fine batiste that adorns my chest, and with my nails I stripe my flesh with bleeding furrows, while a horrible burning scars my lips as cold as the scales of the Serpent. A hollow roar erupts from the black pit of my soul and bursts past the cloister of my fierce teeth—I, centaur vomited by the Tartar.... But I suppress my cry and approach you with a horrid smile.
"My beloved, my Sophia," I purr as only the secret chief of the Okhrana can purr. "I have been waiting for you; come, crouch with me in the shadows, and wait." And you laugh a hoarse, slimy laugh, savoring in advance some inheritance, loot, a manuscript of the Protocols to sell to the tsar.... How cleverly you conceal behind that angel face your demon nature, how modestly you sheathe vour body in androgynous blue jeans, and vour T-shirt, diaphanous, still hides the infamous lily branded on your white flesh by the executioner of Lille!
***
The first dolt arrives, drawn by me into the trap. I can barely make out his features within the cloak that enfolds him, but he shows mc the sign of the Templars of Provins. It is Soapes, the Tomar group's assassin.
"Count," he says to me, "the moment has come. For too many years we have wandered, scattered over the world. You have the final piece of the message. I have the one that appeared at the beginning of the Great Game. But this is another story. Let us join forces, and the others..."
I complete his sentence: "The others can go to hell. In the center of the room, brother, you will find a coffer; in the coffer is what you have been seeking for centuries. Do not fear the darkness; it does not threaten, but protects us."
The dolt takes a few steps, groping. A thud, a splash. He has fallen through the trapdoor, but Luciano grabs him, wields the knife, the throat is quickly cut, the gurgle of blood mingles with the churning of the chthonian muck.
***
A knock at the door. "Is that you, Disraeli?"
"Yes," answers the stranger, in whom my readers will have recognized the grand master of the English group, now risen to the pomp of power, but still not satisfied. He speaks: "My lord, it is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal that a great part of Europe is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads...."
"You said that in the Commons, on July 14, 1856. Nothing escapes me. Get to the point."
The Baconian Jew mutters a curse. He continues: "There are too many. The Thirty-six Invisibles are now three hundred and sixty. Multiply that by two: seven hundred and twenty. Subtract the hundred and twenty years at the end of which the doors are opened, and you get six hundred, like the charge of Balaclava."
Devilish man, the secret science of numbers holds no secrets for him. "Well?"
"We have gold, you have the map. Let us unite. Together we will be invincible."
With a hieratic gesture, I point toward the spectral coffer that he, blinded by his desire, thinks he discerns in the shadows. He steps forward, he falls.
I hear the sinister flash of Luciano's blade, and in the darkness I see the death rattle that glistens in the Englishman's silent pupil. Justice is done.
***
I await the third, the French Rosicrucians' man, Montfaucon de Villars, ready to betray the secrets of his sect.
"I am the Comte de Gabalis," he introduces himself, the lying ninny.
I have only to whisper a few words, and he is impelled toward his destiny. FIc falls, and Luciano, greedy for blood, performs his task.
You smile with me in the shadows, and you tell me you are mine, that your secret will be my secret. Deceive yourself, yes, sinister caricature of the Shekhinah. Yes, I am your Simon; but wait, you still do not know the best of it. When you do know, you will have ceased knowing.
***
What to add? One by one, the others enter.
Padre Bresciani has informed me that, representing the German Illuminati, Babette d'Interlaken will come, the great-granddaughter of Weishaupt, the grand virgin of Helvetic Communism, who grew up amid roués, thieves, and murderers. Expert in stealing impenetrable secrets, in opening dispatches of state without breaking the seals, in administering poisons as her sect orders her.
She enters then, the young agathodemon of crime, enfolded in a polar-bear fur, her long blond hair flowing from beneath the bold busby; her eyes haughty, sarcastic. With the usual fraud, I direct her toward her destruction.
Ah, irony of language—this gift nature has given us to keep silent the secrets of our spirit! The Daughter of Enlightenment falls victim to Darkness. I hear her spewing horrible curses, impenitent, as Luciano twists the knife three times in her heart. Déjà vu...
***
It is the turn of Nilus, who for a moment thought to possess both the tsarina and the map. Filthy lewd monk, you wanted the Antichrist? He stands before you, but you do not know him. I send him on, blind, amid a thousand mystical flatteries, to the evil trap awaiting him. Luciano rips open his breast with a wound in the form of a cross, and he sinks into eternal sleep.
***
I must overcome the ancestral distrust in the last, the Elder of Zion, who claims to be Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, immortal like me. He is suspicious as he smiles unctuously, his beard still steeped in the blood of the tender Christian creatures he habitually
slaughters in the cemetery of Prague. But I will be as clever as a Rachkovsky, cleverer. I hint that the coffcr contains not only the map but also uncut diamonds. I know the fascination uncut diamonds have for this deicide race. He approaches his destiny, dragged by his greed, and it is his own God, cruel and vengeful, that he curses as he dies, pierced like Hiram, but it is difficult for him to curse even now, because his God's name cannot be uttered.
***
In my delusion, I thought I had concluded the Great Work.
As if struck by a gust of wind, once again the door opens, and a figure appears, a livid face, numbed fingers devoutly held to the chest, a hooded gaze: he cannot conceal his identity, for he wears the black habit of his black Society. A son of Loyola!
"Crétineau!" I cry, misled.