Foucault's Pendulum

by Umberto Eco

  Someone—Rubinstein, maybe—once said, when asked if he believed in God: "Oh, no, I believe ... in something much bigger." And someone else—was it Chesterton?—said that when men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

  But everything is not a bigger secret. There are no "bigger secrets," because the moment a secret is revealed, it seems little. There is only an empty secret. A secret that keeps slipping through your fingers. The secret of the orchid is that it signifies and affects the testicles. But the testicles signify a sign of the zodiac, which in turn signifies an angelic hierarchy, which then signifies a musical scale, and the scale signifies a relationship among the humors. And so on. Initiation is learning never to stop. The universe is peeled like an onion, and an onion is all peel. Let us imagine an infinite onion, which has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. Initiation travels an endless Möbius strip.

  The true initiate is he who knows that the most powerful secret is a secret without content, because no enemy will be able to make him confess it, no rival devotee will be able to take it from him.

  Now I found more logical and consequential the dynamic of that nocturnal rite before the Pendulum. Belbo had claimed to possess a secret, and because of this he had gained power over Them. Their first impulse, even in a man as clever as Agliè, who had immediately beat the tom-tom to summon all the others, had been to wrest it from him. And the more Belbo refused to reveal it, the bigger They believed the secret to be; the more he vowed he didn't possess it, the more convinced They were that he did possess it, and that it was a true secret, because if it were false, he would have revealed it.

  Through the centuries the search for this secret had been the glue holding Them all together, despite excommunications, internecine fighting, coups de main. Now They were on the verge of knowing it. But They were assailed by two fears: that the secret would be a disappointment, and that once it was known to all, there would be no secret left. Which would be the end of Them.

  Agliè then thought: If Belbo spoke, all would know, and he, Agliè, would lose the mysterious aura that granted him charisma and power. But if Belbo confided in him alone, Agliè could go on being Saint-Germain, the immortal. The deferment of Agliè's death coincided with the deferment of the secret. He tried to persuade Belbo to whisper it in his ear, and when he realized that wouldn't be possible, he provoked him by predicting his surrender and, further, by putting on a display of pompous melodrama. Oh, the old count knew very well that for people from Piedmont stubbornness and a sense of the ridiculous could defeat even the fear of death. Thus he forced Belbo to raise the tone of his refusal and to say no definitively.

  The others, out of the same fear, preferred to kill him. They might be losing the map—they would have centuries to continue the search for it—but they were preserving the vigor of their base, slobbering desire.

  I remembered a story Amparo told me. Before coming to Italy, she had spent some months in New York City, living in a neighborhood of the kind where even on quiet days you could shoot a TV series featuring the homicide squad. She used to come home alone at two in the morning. When I asked if she wasn't afraid of sexual maniacs, she told me her method. When a sexual maniac approached, threatening, she would take his arm and say, "Come on, let's do it." And he would go away, bewildered.

  If you're a sexual maniac, you don't want sex; you want the excitement of its theft, you want the victim's resistance and despair. If sex is handed to you on a platter, here it is, go to it, naturally you're not interested, otherwise what sort of sexual maniac would you be?

  We had awakened their lust, offering them a secret that couldn't have been emptier, because not only did we not know it ourselves, but, even better, we knew that it was false.

  The plane was flying over Mont Blanc, and the passengers all rushed to the same side so as not to miss the view of that blunt bubo that had grown there thanks to a fluke in the telluric currents. If what I was thinking was correct, then the currents didn't exist any more than the Provins message existed. But the story of the deciphering of the Plan, as we had reconstructed it, that was History.

  My memory went back to Belbo's last file. But if existence is so empty and fragile that it can be endured only by the illusion of a search for its secret, then—as Amparo said that evening in the tenda, after her defeat—there's no redemption; we are all slaves, give us a master, that's what we deserve....

  No. Lia taught me there is more, and I have the proof: his name is Giulio, and at this moment he is playing in a valley, pulling a goat's tail. No, because Belbo twice said no.

  The first no he said to Abulafia, and to those who would try to steal its secret. "Do you have the password?" was the question. And the answer, the key to knowledge, was "No." Not only does the magic word not exist, but we do not know that it does not exist. Those who admit their ignorance, therefore, can learn something, at least what I was able to learn.

  The second no he said on Saturday night, when he refused the salvation held out to him. He could have invented a map, or used one of the maps I had shown him. In any event, with the Pendulum hung as it was, incorrectly, that bunch of lunatics would never have found the X marking the Umbilicus Mundi, and even if they did, it would have been several more decades before they realized this wasn't the one. But Belbo refused to bow, he preferred to die.

  It wasn't that he refused to bow to the lust for power; he refused to bow to nonmeaning. He somehow knew that, fragile as our existence may be, however ineffectual our interrogation of the world, there is nevertheless something that has more meaning than the rest.

  What had Belbo sensed, perhaps only at that moment, which allowed him to contradict his last, desperate file, and not surrender his destiny to someone who guaranteed him a mere Plan? What had he understood—at last—that allowed him to sacrifice his life, as if he had learned everything there was to learn without realizing it, and as if compared to this one, true, absolute secret of his, everything that took place in the Conservatoire was irreparably stupid—and it was stupid, now, stubbornly to go on living?

  There was still something, a link missing in the chain. I had all of Belbo's feats before me now, from life to death, except one.

  On arrival, as I was looking for my passport, I found in one of my pockets the key to this house. I had taken it last Thursday, along with the key to Belbo's apartment. I remembered that day when Belbo showed us the old cupboard that contained, he said, his opera omnia or, rather, his juvenilia. Perhaps Belbo had written something there that couldn't be found in Abulafia, perhaps it was buried somewhere in ***.

  There was nothing reasonable about this conjecture of mine. All the more reason to consider it good. At this point.

  I collected my car, and I came here.

  I didn't find the old relative of the Canepas, the caretaker, or whatever she was. Maybe she, too, had died in the meantime. There was no one. I went through the various rooms. A strong smell of mildew. I considered lighting the bedwarmer in one of the bedrooms, but it made no sense to warm the bed in June. Once the windows were opened, the warm evening air would enter.

  After sunset, there was no moon. As in Paris, Saturday night. The moon rose late, I saw less of it now than in Paris, as it slowly climbed above the lower hills, in a dip between the Bricco and another yellowish hump, perhaps already harvested.

  I arrived around six in the evening. It was still light. But I had brought nothing with me to eat. Roaming the house, I found a salami in the kitchen, hanging from a beam. My supper was salami and fresh water: going on ten o'clock, I think. Now I'm thirsty. I've brought a big pitcher of water to Uncle Carlo's study and drink a glass every ten minutes. Then I go down, refill the pitcher, and start again.

  It must be at least three in the morning. I have the light off and can hardly read my watch. I look out the window. On the flanks of the hills, what seem to be fireflies, shooting stars: the headlights of occasional cars going down into the valley or cl
imbing toward the villages on the hilltops. When Belbo was a boy, this sight did not exist. There were no cars then, no roads. At night there was the curfew.

  As soon as I arrived, I opened the cupboard of juvenilia. Shelves and shelves of paper, from elementary-school exercises to bundles of adolescent poems and prose. Everyone has written poems in adolescence; true poets destroy them, bad poets publish them. Belbo, too cynical to save them, too weak to chuck them out, stuck them in Uncle Carlo's cupboard.

  I read for hours. And for hours, up to this moment, I meditated on the last text, which I found just when I was about to give up.

  I don't know when Belbo wrote it. There are pages where different handwritings, insertions, are interwoven, or else it's the same hand in different years. As if he wrote it very early, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, then put it away, then went back to it at twenty, again at thirty, and maybe later. Until he gave up the idea of writing altogether—only to begin again with Abulafia, but not having the heart to recover these lines and subject them to electronic humiliation.

  Reading them, I followed a familiar story: the events of *** between 1943 and 1945, Uncle Carlo, the partisans, the parish hall, Cecilia, the trumpet. These were the obsessive themes of the romantic Belbo, disappointed, grieving, drunk. The literature of memory: he knew himself that it was the last refuge of scoundrels.

  But I'm no literary critic. I'm Sam Spade again, looking for the final clue.

  And so I found the Key Text. It must represent the last chapter of the story of Belbo in ***. For, after it, nothing more could have happened.

  119

  The garland of the trumpet was set afire, and then I saw the aperture of the dome open and a splendid arrow of fire shoot down through the tube of the trumpet and enter the lifeless body. The aperture then was closed again, and the trumpet, too, was put away.

  —Johann Valentin Andreae, Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz, Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, pp. 125–126

  Belbo's text has some gaps, some overlappings, some lines crossed out. I am not so much rereading it as reconstructing, reliving it.

  It must have been toward the end of April of 1945. The German armies were already routed, the Fascists were scattering, and *** was firmly in the hands of the partisans.

  After the last battle, the one Belbo narrated to us in this very house almost two years ago, various partisan brigades gathered in ***, in order to head for the city. They were awaiting a signal from Radio London; they would depart when Milan was ready for the insurrection.

  The Garibaldi Brigades also arrived, commanded by Ras, a giant with a black beard, very popular in the town. They were dressed in invented uniforms, each one different except for the kerchiefs and the star on the chest, red in both cases, and they were armed in makeshift fashion, some with old shotguns, some with submachine guns taken from the enemy. A marked contrast to the Badoglio Brigades, with their blue kerchiefs, khaki uniforms similar to the British, and brand-new Sten guns. The Allies assisted the Badoglio forces with generous nighttime parachute drops, after the passage, every evening at eleven for the past two years, of the mysterious Pippetto, a British reconnaissance plane. Nobody could figure out what it reconnoitered, since not a light was visible on the ground for kilometers and kilometers.

  There was tension between the Garibaldini and the Badogliani. It was said that on the evening of the battle the Badogliani had flung themselves at the enemy, shouting "Forward, Savoy!" Well, but that was out of habit, some said. What else could you shout when you attacked? It didn't necessarily mean they were monarchists; they, too, knew that the king had grave things to answer for. The Garibaldini sneered: You could cry Savoy if you attacked with fixed bayonets in the open field, but not darting around a corner with a Sten. The fact was, the Badogliani had sold out to the British.

  The two forces arrived, nevertheless, at a modus vivendi; a joint command under one head was needed for the assault on the city. The choice fell on Mongo; he led the best-equipped brigade, was the oldest, had fought in the First World War, was a hero, and enjoyed the trust of the Allied command.

  In the days that followed, sometime before the Milan insurrection, I believe, they set out to take the city. Good news arrived: the operation had succeeded, the brigades were returning victorious to ***. There had been some casualties, however. Rumor had it that Ras had fallen in battle, and Mongo was wounded.

  Then one afternoon the sound of vehicles was heard, songs of victory, and people rushed into the main square. From the highway the first units were arriving, clenched fists upraised, flags and weapons brandished from the windows of the cars and the running boards of the trucks. The men had already been strewn with flowers along the way.

  Suddenly some people shouted, "Ras, Ras!" and Ras was there, seated on the front fender of a Dodge, his beard tangled and his sweaty, black, hairy chest visible through his open shirt. He waved to the crowd, laughing.

  Beside Ras, Rampini also climbed down from the Dodge. He was a nearsighted boy who played in the band, a little older than the others; he had disappeared three months earlier, and it was said he'd joined the partisans. And there he was, with a red kerchief around his neck, a khaki tunic, a pair of blue trousers—the uniform of Don Tico's band—but now he had a big belt with a holster and a pistol. Through the thick eyeglasses that had earned him so much teasing from his old companions at the parish hall, he now looked at the girls who crowded around him, as if he were Flash Gordon. Jacopo asked himself if Cecilia was there, among the people.

  In half an hour the whole square was full of colorful partisans, and the people called in loud voices for Mongo; they wanted a speech.

  On a balcony of the town hall, Mongo appeared, leaning on his crutch, pale, and with one hand he tried to calm the crowd. Jacopo waited for the speech, because his whole childhood, like that of others his age, had been marked by the great historic speeches of il Duce, whose most significant passages were memorized in school. Actually, the students memorized whole speeches, because every sentence was a significant declaration.

  Silence. Mongo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: "Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices ... here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom."

  And that was it. He went back inside.

  The crowd yelled, and the partisans raised their submachine guns, their Stens, their shotguns, their '91s, and fired festive volleys. With shell cases falling on all sides, the kids slipped between the legs of the armed men and civilians, because they'd never be able to add to their collections like this again, not with the war looking like it would end in a month, worst luck.

  But there had been some casualties: two men killed. By a grim coincidence, both were from San Davide, a little village above ***, and the families asked permission to bury the victims in the local cemetery.

  The partisan command decided that there should be a solemn funeral: companies in formation, decorated hearses, the village band, the provost of the cathedral—and the parish hall band.

  Don Tico accepted immediately. Because, he said, he had always harbored anti-Fascist sentiments. And because, as the musicians murmured, for a year he had been making them practice two funeral marches, and he had to have them performed sooner or later. Also because, the sharp tongues of the village said, he wanted to make up for "Giovinezza."

  The "Giovinezza" story went like this:

  Months earlier, before the arrival of the partisans, Don Tico's band had gone out for some saint's feast or other, and they were stopped by the Black Brigades. "Play 'Giovinezza,' Reverend," the captain ordered, drumming his fingers on the barrel of his submachine gun. What could Don Tico do? He said, "Boys, let's try it; you only have one skin." He beat time with his pitch pipe, and horrible clattering cacophony drifted over ***. Only someone desperate to save his skin would have agreed that the sounds heard were "Giovinezza." Shameful for everyone. Shameful for having consented, Don Tico said afterward, but even more shameful for having played lik
e dogs. Priest he was, and anti-Fascist, but, above all, damn it, he was an artist.

  Jacopo had been absent on that day. He had tonsillitis. On the bombardons there were only Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo, and their presence, without Jacopo, must have made a crucial contribution to the collapse of Nazism-Fascism. But this was not what troubled Bclbo, at least at the time he was writing. He had missed another opportunity to find out if he would have had the courage to say no. Perhaps that is why he died on the gallows of the Pendulum.

  The funeral, anyway, was scheduled for Sunday morning. In the cathedral square everyone was present: Mongo with his troops, Uncle Carlo and other municipal dignitaries, with their Great War decorations—and it didn't matter who had been a Fascist and who had not, it was a question of honoring heroes. The clergy were there, the town band in dark suits, and the hearses with the horses decked in trappings of cream, black, and gold. The Automedon was dressed like one of Napoleon's marshals, cocked hat, short cape, and great cloak, in the same colors as the horses' trappings. And there was the parish hall band, their visored caps, khaki tunics, and blue trousers, brasses shining, woodwinds severe black, cymbals and drums sparkling.