Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (19 page)

The knights of the Graal
wanted to face no further questions.

¡XWolfram von
Eschenbach, Parzival, XVI, 819

Belbo was brief. He
repeated what he had already said on the phone: The colonel had
told a hazy story about discovering evidence of a treasure in some
documents he had found in France, but he hadn't said much more
about it. He seemed to think he was in possession of a dangerous
secret, and he wanted to make it public so he wouldn't be the only
one who knew it. He mentioned the fact that others who had
discovered the secret before him had disappeared mysteriously. He
would show us the documents only if we guaranteed him a contract,
but Belbo couldn't guarantee a contract without seeing something
first. They vaguely agreed to get together again. The colonel had
spoken of a meeting with someone named Rakosky, describing him as
the editor of Les Cahiers du Mystere. The colonel wanted this
Rakosky to write a preface for him, and apparently Rakosky had
advised him to delay publication. The colonel hadn't told this man
about the appointment at Garamond. That was all.

"I see," De Angelis
said. "What sort of impression did he make on you?"

"He seemed an eccentric
to us, and he spoke about his past in, well, an unrepentant tone.
It included a spell in the Foreign Legion."

"He told you the truth,
though not the whole truth. We were already keeping an eye on him,
at least to some extent. We have so many such cases...First of all,
Ardenti wasn't his real name, but he had a legitimate French
passport. He started reappearing in Italy from time to time a few
years ago, and was tentatively identified as a Captain Arcoveggi,
sentenced to death in absentia in 1945. Collaboration with the SS.
He sent some people to Dachau. They were keeping an eye on him in
France, too. He was tried for fraud there, and just managed to get
off. We have an idea¡Xbut only an idea, mind you¡Xthat Ardenti at
one point was calling himself Fassotti, that he's the Fassotti that
a small industrialist in Peschiera Borromeo filed a complaint
against last year. This Fassotti¡Xor Ardenti¡Xhad convinced the
industrialist that the treasure of Dongo, the legendary Fascist
gold reserve, was still lying at the bottom of Lake Como. Fassotti
claimed to have identified the spot, and said all he needed was a
few tens of millions of lire for a couple of divers and a power
boat. Once he had the money, he vanished. Now you confirm that he
had a kind of mania about treasures."

"And this
Rakosky?"

"We checked. A Vladimir
Rakosky was registered at the Principe e Savoia. French passport.
Distinguished-looking gentleman. It matches the description the
clerk here gave us. Alitalia says his name appears on the passenger
list for the first flight to Paris this morning. IVe alerted
Interpol. Annunziata, anything come in from Paris?"

"Nothing so far,
sir."

"And that's it. So
Colonel Ardenti, or whatever his name is, arrived in Milan four
days ago. We don't know what he did the first three, but yesterday
at two he presumably saw Rakosky at the hotel, didn't tell him
about going to see you¡Xwhich is interesting¡Xthen last night he
came here, probably with the same Rakosky and another man, and
after that your guess is as good as mine. Even if they didn't kill
him, they certainly searched his room. What were they looking for?
In his jacket...which reminds me, if he went out, it was in
shirtsleeves, because the jacket with his passport in the pocket is
still here. But that doesn't make things any easier, because the
old man says the colonel was stretched out on the bed in his
jacket, unless k was a different jacket. God, I feel like I'm in a
loony bin. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, in his jacket we found
plenty of money, too much money. So it wasn't money they were
looking for. And you gentlemen have given me the only lead. You say
the colonel had some documents. What did they look
like?"

"He was carrying a brown
briefcase," Belbo said.

"It looked more red to
me," I said.

"Brown," Belbo insisted.
"But I could be wrong."

"Red or brown," De
Angelis said, "it's not here now. Last night's visitors must have
taken it. The briefcase is what we have to concentrate on. If you
ask me, Ardenti wasn't trying to publish a book at all. He had
probably come up with something he could blackmail Rakosky with,
and talking about a publishing contract was a way of applying
pressure. That would have been more his style. From there, any
number of hypotheses are possible. The two men may have threatened
him and left, and Ardenti was so scared that he fled into the
night, leaving everything behind except the briefcase, which he
clutched under his arm. But first, for some reason, he tried to
make the old man think he was dead. It all sounds too much like a
novel, and it doesn't account for the way the room was torn up. On
the other hand, if the two men killed him and stole the briefcase,
why would they also steal the corpse? Excuse me, but may I see your
IDs?"

He looked at my student
card, turning it over a few times. "Philosophy student,
eh?"

"There are lots of us,"
I said.

"Far too many. And
you're studying the Templars. Suppose I wanted to get some
background on them¡Xwhat should I read?"

I suggested two books,
popular but fairly serious. I also told him he would find reliable
information only up to the trial. After that it was all raving
nonsense.

"I see," he said. "Now
it's the Templars, too. One splinter group I haven't run into
yet."

The policeman named
Annunziata came in with a telegram: "The reply from Paris,
sir."

De Angelis read it.
"Great," he said. "No one in Paris has heard of Rakosky, and the
passport number shows that it was stolen two years ago. Now we're
really stuck. Monsieur Rakosky doesn't exist. You say he's the
editor of a magazine¡Xwhat was it called?" He made a note. "Well,
we'll try, but I bet we find that the magazine doesn't exist
either, or else it folded ages ago. All right, gentlemen, thanks
for your help. I may trouble you again at some point. Oh, yes, one
last question: Did Argenti indicate that he had connections with
any political organization?"

"No," Belbo said. "He
seemed to have given up politics for treasures."

"And confidence games."
He turned to me. "You seem not to have liked him much."

"Not my style," I said.
"But it wouldn't have occurred to me to strangle him with a length
of wire. Except in theory."

"Naturally. Too much
trouble. Relax, Signer Casaubon. I'm not one of those cops who
think all students are criminals. Good luck, also, on your
thesis."

"Excuse me," Belbo
asked, "but just out of curiosity, are you homicide or
political?''

"Good question. My
opposite number from homicide was here last night. After they found
a bit more on Ardenti in the records, he turned the case over to
me. Yes, I'm from political. But I'm really not sure I'm the right
man. Life isn't simple, the way it is in detective
stories."

"I guess not," Belbo
said, shaking his hand.

We left, but I was still
troubled. Not because of De Angelis, who seemed nice enough, but
because for the first time in my life I found myself involved in
something shady. I had lied. And so had Belbo.

We parted at the door of
the Garamond office, and we were both embarrassed.

"We didn't do anything
wrong," Belbo said defensively. "It won't make any difference if
the police don't learn about Ingolf and the Cathars. It was all
raving anyway. Maybe Ardenti had to disappear for other reasons;
there could be a thousand reasons. Maybe Rakosky was an Israeli
secret-service agent settling old scores. Or maybe he was sent by
some big shot the colonel had conned. Or maybe they were in the
Foreign Legion together and there was some old grudge. Or maybe
Rakosky was an Algerian assassin. And maybe this Templar-treasure
story was only a minor episode in the life of our colonel. All
right, the briefcase is missing, red or brown. By the way, it was
good that you contradicted me: that made it clear we had only had a
quick glimpse of it."

I said nothing, and
Belbo didn't know how to conclude.

"You'll say I've run
away again. Like Via Larga."

"Nonsense. We did the
right thing. I'll see you."

I was sorry for him,
because he felt like a coward. But I didn't. I had learned in
school that when you deal with the police, you lie. As a matter of
principle. But a guilty conscience can poison a
friendship.

I didn't see Belbo for a
long time after that. I was his remorse, and he was
mine.

I worked for another
year and produced two hundred and fifty typewritten pages on the
trial of the Templars. It was then that I learned that a graduate
student is less an object of suspicion than an undergraduate. Those
were years when defending a thesis was considered evidence of
respectful loyalty to the state, and you were treated with
indulgence.

In the months that
followed, some students started using guns. The days of mass
demonstrations in the open air were drawing to a close.

I was short on ideals,
but for that I had an alibi, because loving Amparo was like being
in love with the Third World. Amparo was beautiful, Marxist,
Brazilian, enthusiastic, disenchanted. She had a fellowship and
splendidly mixed blood. All at the same time.

I met her at a party,
and acted on impulse. "Excuse me," I said, "but I would like to
make love to you."

"You're a filthy male
chauvinist pig."

"Forget I said
it."

"Never. I'm a filthy
feminist."

She was going back to
Brazil, and I didn't want to lose her. She put me in touch with the
University of Rio, where the Italian department was looking for a
lecturer. They offered me a two-year contract with an option to
renew. I didn't feel at home in Italy anymore; I
accepted.

Besides, I told myself,
in the New World I wouldn't run into any Templars.

Wrong, I thought
Saturday evening as I huddled in the periscope. Climbing the steps
to the Garamond oifice had been like entering the Palace. Binah,
Diotallevi used to say, is the palace Hokhmah builds as He spreads
out from the primordial point. If Hokhmah is the source, Binah is
the river that flows from it, separating into its various branches
until they all empty into the great sea of the last Sefirah. But in
Binah all forms are already formed.

The analogy of opposites
is the relation of light to shadow, peak to abyss, fullness to
void. Allegory, mother of all dogmas, is the replacement of the
seal by the hallmark, of reality by shadow; it is the falsehood of
truth, and the truth of falsehood.

¡XEliphas Levi, Dogme de
la haute magie, Paris, Bailie re, 1856, XXII, 22

I went to Brazil out of
love for Amparo, I stayed out of love for the country. I never did
understand how it was that Amparo, a descendant of Dutch settlers
in Recife who intermarried with Indians and Sudanese blacks¡Xwith
her Jamaican face and Parisian culture¡Xhad wound up with a Spanish
name. For that matter, I never managed to figure out Brazilian
names. They defy all onomastic dictionaries, and exist only in
Brazil.

Amparo told me that in
their hemisphere, when water drains down a sink, the little eddy
swirls counterclockwise, whereas at home, ours swirls clockwise. Or
maybe it's the other way around: I've never succeeded in checking
the truth of it. Not only because nobody in our hemisphere has ever
looked to see which way the water swirls, but also because, after
various experiments in Brazil, I realized it's very hard to tell.
The suction is too quick to be studied, and its direction probably
depends partly on the force and angle of the jet and the shape of
the sink or the tub. Besides, if this is true, what happens at the
equator? Maybe the water drains straight down, with no swirling, or
maybe it doesn't drain at all.

At that time I didn't
agonize over the problem, but Saturday night in the periscope I was
thinking how everything depended on telluric currents, and the
Pendulum contained the secret.

Amparo was steadfast in
her faith. "The particular empirical event doesn't matter," she
said. "It's an ideal principle, which can be verified only under
ideal conditions. Which means never. But it's still
true."

In Milan, Amparo's
disenchantment had been one of her most desirable traits. But in
Brazil, reacting to the chemistry of her native land, she became
elusive, a visionary capable of subterranean rationality. Stirred
by ancient passions, she was careful to keep them in check; but the
asceticism which made her reject their seduction was not
convincing.

I measured her splendid
contradictions when I watched her argue with her comrades. The
meetings were held in shabby houses decorated with a few posters
and a lot of folk art, portraits of Lenin and Amerindian fetishes,
or terra-cotta figures glorifying the cangaceiros, outlaws of the
Northeast. I hadn't arrived during one of the country's most lucid
moments politically, and, after my experiences at home, I decided
to steer clear of ideologies, especially in a place where I didn't
understand them. The way Amparo's comrades talked made me even more
uncertain, but they also roused a new curiosity in me. They were,
naturally, all Marxists, and at first they seemed to talk more or
less like European Marxists, but the subject somehow was always
different. In the middle of an argument about the class struggle,
they would suddenly mention "Brazilian cannibalism" or the
revolutionary role of Afro-Brazilian religions.

Hearing them talk about
these cults convinced me that at least ideological suction, down
there, swirled in the opposite direction. They described a panorama
of internal migrations back and forth, the disinherited of the
north moving down toward the industrial south, where they became
subproletarians in immense smog-choked metropolises, eventually
returning in desperation to the north, only to repeat their flight
southward in the next cycle. But many ran aground in the big cities
during these oscillations, and they were absorbed by a plethora of
indigenous churches; they worshiped spirits, evoked African
divinities...And here Amparo's comrades were divided: some
considered this a return to their roots, a way of opposing the
white world; others thought these cults were the opiate with which
the ruling class held an immense revolutionary potential in check;
and still others maintained that the cults were a melting pot in
which whites, Indians, and blacks could be blended¡Xfor what
purpose, they were not clear. Amparo had made up her mind: religion
was always the opiate of the people, and pseudo-tribal cults were
even worse. But when I held her by the waist in the escolas de
samba, joining in the snaking lines to the unbearable rhythm of the
drums, I realized that she clung to that world with the muscles of
her belly, her heart, her head, her nostrils...Afterward, she was
die first to offer a bitter, sarcastic analysis of the orgiastic
character of people's religious devotion¡Xweek after week and month
after month¡Xto the rite of carnival. Exactly the same sort of
tribal witchcraft, she would say with revolutionary contempt, as
the soccer rituals in which the disinherited expended their
combative energy and sense of revolt, practicing spells and
enchantments to win from the gods of every possible world the death
of the opposing halfback, completely unaware of the Establishment,
which wanted to keep them in a state of ecstatic enthusiasm,
condemned to unreality.

In time I lost any sense
of contradiction, just as I gradually abandoned any attempt to
distinguish the different races in that land of age-old, unbridled
hybridization. I gave up trying to establish where progress lay,
and where revolution, or to see the plot¡Xas Amparo's comrades
expressed it¡Xof capitalism. How could I continue to think like a
European once I learned that the hopes of the far left were kept
alive by a Nordeste bishop suspected of having harbored Nazi
sympathies in his youth but who now faithfully and fearlessly held
high the torch of revolt, upsetting the wary Vatican and the
barracudas of Wall Street, and joyfully inflaming the atheism of
the proletarian mystics won over by the tender yet menacing banner
of a Beautiful Lady who, pierced by seven sorrows, gazed down on
the sufferings of her people?

One morning Amparo and I
were driving along the coast after having attended a seminar on the
class structure of the lumpen-proletariat. I saw some votive
offerings on the beach, little candles, white garlands. Amparo told
me they were offerings to Yemanja, goddess of the waters. We
stopped, and she got out and walked demurely onto the sand, stood a
few moments in silence. I asked her if she believed in this. She
retorted angrily: How could I think such a thing? Then she added,
"My grandmother used to bring me to the beach here, and she would
pray to the goddess to make me grow up beautiful and good and
happy. Who was that Italian philosopher who made that comment about
black cats and coral horns? ¡¥It's not true, but I believe in it'?
Well, I don't believe in it, but it's true." That was the day I
decided to save some money to venture a trip to Bahia.

It was also the day I
began to let myself be lulled by feelings of resemblance: the
notion that everything might be mysteriously related to everything
else.

Later, when I returned
to Europe, I converted this metaphysics into mechanics¡Xand thus
fell into the trap in which I now lie. But back then I was living
in a twilight that blurred all distinctions. Like a racist, I
believed that a strong man could regard the faiths of others as an
opportunity for harmless daydreaming and no more.

I learned some rhythms,
ways of letting go with body and mind. Recalling them the other
evening in the periscope, to fight off growing numbness I moved my
limbs as if I were once again striking the agogd. You see? I said
to myself. To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself
that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed
atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly
doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of
indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in
his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make
the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of
brimstone.

What happened to me was
like what might happen to a pedantic ethnologist who has spent
years studying cannibalism. He challenges the smugness of the
whites by assuring everybody that actually human flesh is
delicious. Then one day a doubter decides to see for himself and
performs the experiment¡Xon him. As the ethnologist is devoured
piece by piece, he hopes, for he will never know who was right,
that at least he is delicious, which will justify the ritual and
his death. The other evening I had to believe the Plan was true,
because if it wasn't, then I had spent the past two years as the
omnipotent architect of an evil dream. Better reality than a dream:
if something is real, then it's real and you're not to
blame.