Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (39 page)

I went to the buffet.
There were pitchers with colored liquids I couldn't identify. I
poured myself a yellow beverage that resembled wine; it wasn't bad,
tasting like an old-fashioned cordial, and it was definitely
alcoholic. Perhaps there was a drug in it as well: my head began to
swim. Around me facies her-meticae swarmed, the stern countenances
of retired prefects, fragments of conversation...

"In the first stage you
must renounce all communication with other minds; in the second you
project thoughts and images into beings, infuse places with
emotional auras, gain control over the animal kingdom, and in the
third stage you project your double¡X bilocation¡Xlike the yogis,
and you can appear in different plates simultaneously and in
different forms. Beyond that, it's a question of passing to
hypersensitive knowledge of vegetable essences. Then, you achieve
dissociation, you assume telluric form, dissolving in one place,
reappearing in another, but intact, not just as a double. The final
stage is the extension of physical life,..."

"Not
immortality..."

"Not at
once."

"What about
you?"

"It takes concentration,
it's hard work, and, you know, I'm not twenty
anymore..."

I found my group again.
They were just entering a room with white walls, curved corners. In
the rear, as in a muse'e Grevin¡X but the image that came into my
mind that evening was the altar I had seen in Rio,' in the tenda de
umbanda¡Xwere two wax statues, almost life-size, clad in material
that glittered like sequins, pure thrift shop. One statue was of a
lady on a throne, with an immaculate (or almost immaculate) garment
studded with rhinestones. Above her, from wires, hung creatures of
indefinite form, made, I thought, out of Lenci felt. In one corner,
a loudspeaker: a distant sound of trumpets, music of good quality,
perhaps Gabrieli. The sound effects showed better taste than the
visuals. To the right, a second female figure, dressed in crimson
velvet with a white girdle, and on her head a crown of laurel. She
held gilded scales. Aglie explained to us the various symbols, but
I was not paying attention; I was interested in the expressions of
many of the guests, who moved from image to image with an air of
reverence and emotion.

"They're no different
from those who go to the sanctuary to see the Black Madonna in an
embroidered dress covered with silver hearts," I said to Belbo. "Do
the pilgrims think it's the mother of Christ in flesh and blood?
No, but they don't think the opposite, either. They delight in the
similarity, seeing the spectacle as a vision and the vision as a
reality."

"Yes," Belbo said, "but
the question isn't whether these people here are better or worse
than Christians who go to shrines. I was asking myself: Who do we
think we are? We for whom Hamlet is more real than our janitor? Do
I have any right to judge¡XI who keep searching for my own Madame
Bovary so we can have a big scene?"

Diotallevi shook his
head and said to me in a low voice that it was wrong to make images
of divine things, that these were all epiphanies of the Golden
Calf. But he was enjoying himself.

Alchemy, however, is a
chaste prostitute, who has many lovers but disappoints all and
grants her favors to none. She transforms the haughty into fools,
the rich into paupers, the philosophers into dolts, and the
deceived into loquacious deceivers...

¡XTrithemius, Annalium
Hirsaugensium Tomi II, S. Gallo, 1690,141

Suddenly the room was
plunged into darkness and the walls lighted up. I realized that
three-quarters of the wall space was a semicircular screen on which
pictures were about to be projected. When these appeared, I became
aware that a part of the ceiling and of the floor was made of
reflecting material, as were some of the objects that had first
struck me as cheap because of the tawdry way they sparkled: the
sequins, the scales, a shield, some copper vases. We were immersed
in a subaqueous world where images were multiplied, fragmented,
fused with the shadows of those present. The floor reflected the
ceiling, the ceiling the floor, and together they mirrored the
figures that appeared on the screen. Along with the music, subtle
odors spread through the room: first Indian incense, then others,
less distinct, and sometimes disagreeable.

At first the penumbra
about us fell into absolute night. Then a grumbling was heard, a
churning of lava, and we were in a crater, where dark and slimy
matter bubbled up in the fitful light of yellow and bluish
flames.

Oily vapors rose, to
descend again, condensing as dew or rain and an odor of fetid earth
drifted up, a stench of decay. I inhaled sepulcher, tartar,
darkness; a poisonous liquid oozed around me, snaking between
tongues of dung, humus, coal dust, mud, smoke, lead, scum, naphtha,
a black blacker than black, which now paled to allow two reptiles
to appear¡Xone light blue, the other reddish¡Xentwined in an
embrace, each biting the other's tail, to form a single
circle.

It was as if I had drunk
too much alcohol: I could no longer see my companions, who were
lost in the shadows, I could not recognize the forms gliding past
me, hazy, fluid outlines...Then I felt my hand grasped. I didn't
turn, not wanting to discover that I had deceived myself, because I
caught Lorenza's perfume, and only then did I realize how great was
my desire for her. It must have been Lorenza; she had come to
resume the dialog of fingernails scraping on my door, to finish
what she had left unfinished the night before. Sulfur and mercury
joined in a wet warmth that made my groin throb, but without
urgency.

I was expecting the
Rebis, the androgynous youth, the philosopher's salt, the
coronation of the Work of the White. I seemed to know everything.
All my reading of the past few months was, perhaps, now resurfacing
in my mind, or perhaps Lorenza was transmitting the knowledge to me
through the touch of her hand. Her palm was moist with
sweat.

I surprised myself by
murmuring obscure names, names that the philosophers, I knew, had
given to the White. With them, perhaps, I was calling Lorenza to
me, or perhaps I was only repeating them to myself, in a
propitiatory litany: White Copper, Immaculate Lamb, Aibathest,
Alborach, Blessed Water, Purified Mercury, Orpiment, Azoch,
Baurach, Cambar, Caspa, Cherry, Wax, Chaia, Comerisson, Electron,
Euphrates, Eve, Fada, Fa-vonius, Foundation of the Art, Precious
Stone of Givinis, Diamond, Zibach, Ziva, Veil, Narcissus, Lily,
Hermaphrodite, Hae, Hypostasis, Hyle, Virgin's Milk, Unique Stone,
Full Moon, Mother, Living Oil, Legume, Egg, Phlegm, Point, Root,
Salt of Nature, Leafy Earth, Tevos, Tincar, Steam, Evening Star,
Wind, Virago, Pharaoh's Glass, Baby's Urine, Vulture, Placenta,
Menstruum, Fugitive Slave, Left Hand, Sperm of Metals, Spirit, Tin,
Juice, Oil of Sulfur...

In the pitch, now
grayish, dark, an outline of rocks and withered trees, a black sun
setting. Then an almost blinding light, and sparkling figures
reflected everywhere, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. Now the
smell was liturgical, churchly; my head ached; there was a weight
on my brow, I saw a sumptuous hall lined with golden tapestries,
perhaps a nuptial banquet, with a princely bridegroom and a bride
in white, then an elderly king and queen enthroned, beside them a
warrior, and another king with dark skin. Before the dark king, a
little altar on which a book was set, covered with black velvet,
and a lighted candle in an ivory candlestick. Next to the
candlestick, a rotating globe and a clock surmounted by a tiny
crystal fountain from which a liquid flowed, blood-red. Above the
fountain was a skull; from an eye socket slid a white
serpent...

Lorenza was breathing
words into my ear. But I couldn't hear her voice.

The serpent moved to the
rhythm of slow, sad music. The king and queen now wore black, and
before them were six closed coffins. After a few measures of grim
bass tuba, a man in a black hood appeared. At first, in a hieratic
performance, as if in slow motion, the king submitted with mournful
joy, bowing his meek head. The hooded man raised an ax, and then
the rapid slash of a pendulum, the blade multiplied in every
reflecting surface, and the heads that rolled were a thousand.
After this, the images succeeded one another, but I had difficulty
following the story. I believe that all the characters in turn,
including the dark king, were decapitated and laid in the coffins.
The whole room was transformed into the shore of a sea or a lake,
and we saw six vessels land, and the biers were carried aboard
them; then the vessels departed across the water, faded into the
night. All this took place while the incense curled, almost
palpable, in dense fumes, and for a moment I feared I was among the
condemned. Around me many murmured, "The wedding, the
wedding..."

Lorenza was gone. I
turned to look for her among the shadows.

The room now was a crypt
or sumptuous tomb, its vault illuminated by a carbuncle of
extraordinary size.

In every corner women
appeared in virginal dress. They gathered around a cauldron two
stories high, in a framework with a stone base and a portico like
an oven. From twin towers emerged two alembics emptying into an
egg-shaped bowl; a third, central, tower ended in a
fountain...

Inside the base of the
framework the bodies of the decapitated were visible. One of the
virginal women carried a box and drew from it a round object, which
she placed in a niche of the central tower, and immediately the
fountain at the top began to spurt. I had time to recognize the
object: it was the head of the Moorish king, which now burned like
a log, making the water of the fountain boil. Fumes, puffs of
steam, gurgling...

Lorenza this time put
her hand on the back of my neck, caressing it as I had seen her
caress Jacopo in the car.

The woman brought a
golden sphere, turned on a tap in the oven, and caused a thick red
liquid to flow into the sphere. Then the sphere was opened, and, in
place of the red liquid, it contained an egg, large, beautiful,
white as snow. The woman took the egg out and set it on the ground
in a pile of yellow sand. The egg opened, and a bird came out,
still unformed and bloody. But, watered with the blood of the
decapitated, it grew before our eyes, became handsome and
radiant.

They decapitated the
bird and reduced it to ashes on a little altar. Some kneaded the
ash into a paste, poured the thin paste into two molds, and set
them in the oven to bake, blowing on the fire with some pipes. In
the end, the molds were opened, and two pretty figures appeared,
pale, almost transparent, a youth and a maiden, no more than four
spans high, as soft and fleshy as living creatures but with eyes
still glassy, mineral. They were set on two cushions, and an old
man poured drops of blood into their mouths...

Other women arrived,
with golden trumpets decorated with green garlands. They handed a
trumpet to the old man, who put it to the lips of the two creatures
still suspended in their vegetable lethargy, their sweet animal
sleep, and he began to insufflate soul into their bodies...The room
filled with light; the light dimmed to a half-light, then to a
darkness broken by orange flashes. There was an immense dawn while
the trumpets sounded, loud and ringing, and all was a dazzle of
ruby. At that point I again lost Lorenza and realized I would never
find her.

Everything turned a
flaming red, which slowly dulled to indigo and violet, and the
screen went blank. The pain in my forehead became
intolerable.

"Mysterium Magnum,"
Aglie said calmly at my side. "The rebirth of the new man through
death and passion. A good performance, I must say, even if the
taste for allegory perhaps marred the precision of the phases. What
you saw was only a performance, but it spoke of a Thing. And our
host claims to have produced this Thing. Come, let us go and see
the miracle achieved."

And if such monsters are
generated, we must believe them the work of nature, even if they be
different from man.

¡XParacelsus, De
Homunculis, in Operum Volumen Secundum, Genevae, De Tournes, 1658,
p. 465

He led us out into the
garden, and I felt better at once. I didn't dare ask the others if
Lorenza had come after all. Probably I had dreamed it. After a few
steps we entered a greenhouse; the stifling heat dazed me. Among
tropical plants were six glass ampules in the shape of pears¡Xor
tears¡Xhermetically sealed, filled with a pale-blue liquid. Inside
each vessel floated a creature about twenty centimeters high: we
recognized the gray-haired king, the queen, the Moor, the warrior,
and the two adolescents crowned with laurel, one blue and one
pink...They swayed with a graceful swimming motion, as if water
were their element.

It was hard to determine
whether they were models made of plastic or wax, or whether they
were living beings, and the slight opacity of the liquid made it
impossible to tell if the faint pulse that animated them was an
optical illusion or reality.

"They seem to grow every
day," Aglie said. "Each morning, the vessels are buried in fresh
horse manure¡Xstill warm¡Xwhich provides the heat necessary for
growth. In Paracelsus there are i prescriptions that say homunculi
must be grown at the internal temperature of a horse. According to
our host, these homunculi speak to him, tell him secrets, utter
prophecies. Some revealed to him the true measurements of the
Temple of Solomon, others told him how to exorcise demons...I must
confess that I have never heard them speak."

They had very mobile
faces. The king looked at the queen tenderly.

"Our host told me that
one morning he found the blue youth, who had escaped somehow from
his prison, attempting to break the seal of the maiden's
vessel...But he was out of his element, could not breathe, and they
saved him just in time, returning him to his liquid."

"Terrible," Diotallevi
said. "I wouldn't want such a responsibility. You'd have to take
the vessels with you everywhere and find all that manure wherever
you went. And then what would you do in the summer, on vacation?
Leave them with the doorman? ¡¥¡¥

"But perhaps," Aglie
concluded, "they are only Cartesian imps. Or automata."

"The devil!" Garamond
said. "Dr. Aglie, you're opening a whole new universe to me. We
should all be more humble, my dear friends. There are more things
in heaven and earth...But, after all, a la guerre comme a la
guerre..."

Garamond was awestruck;
Diotallevi maintained an expression of cynical curiosity; Belbo
showed no feeling at all.

To dispel my doubt, I
said to him, "Too bad Lorenza didn't come; she would have loved
this."

"Mm, yes," he replied
absently.

So Lorenza hadn't
come.

And I was the way Amparo
had been in Rio. I was ill. I felt somehow cheated. They hadn't
brought me the agogo.

I left the group and
went back into the building, picking my way through the crowd. I
passed the buffet, drank something cool, though I was afraid it
might contain a philter. I looked for a bathroom, to splash cold
water on my temples and neck. This accomplished, I again felt
better. But as I came out, I saw a circular staircase and, suddenly
curious, I was unable to resist the new adventure. Perhaps, even
though I thought I had recovered, I was still looking for
Lorenza.