Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (35 page)

"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¡Xto 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¡Xwhether 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."

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...

¡XThomaso Garzoni, //
Theatre de vari e diversi cervelli mondani, Venice, Zanfretti,
1583, discorso XXXVI

The illustrations I
found in Milan and Paris weren't enough. Signer Garamond authorized
me to spend a few days at the Deutsches Museum in
Munich.

I spent my evenings in
the bars of Schwabing¡Xor 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
steins¡Xand 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¡XI 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 Signer 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."

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"¡Xhe gestured
vaguely¡X"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 creches 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 Metro. 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 1'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 facade, an enclosure with no room, no interior. It is really
a chimney, a ventilation flue that serves to release the vapors of
the regional Metro. 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 Metro,
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, Signer 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¡Xwhat was his name?¡Xthe 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.

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.

¡XSaint-Yves d'Alveydre,
Mission de I'lnde en Europe, Paris, Calmann Levy, 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 Ar-denti, 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, Aglie came to
the office to report on some manuscripts Belbo had sent him. His
opinions were precise, severe, comprehensive. Aglie 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..."

Aglie 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 Eugenic. But by
the time she met Saint-Yves, she was over fifty. And he was in his
early thirties. For her, a mesalliance, of course. What's more, to
give him a title, she bought some property¡XI can't remember
where¡Xthat 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¡Xthe 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
I'lnde 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?"

Aglie 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¡Xwhat a
coincidence!¡Xit's a treatise on secret societies."

"Any good?" Belbo
asked.

"Perish the thought. But
it could do for Manutius."